His murky materials
I recently read Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” series, curious about the first book and the movie based on it, The Golden Compass. I had heard rumors that Pullman is like C.S. Lewis, but insistent that God must die and religious people are nuts; that fans were disappointed that the (anti-)religious aspects of the book had been toned down for the movie; that this was destined to be recognized as the next big fantasy series. Personally, I think all that’s a bit overly inflated, but there was some food for thought in the series.
First, the basics of the series, summed up in one paragraph (and leave now if you fear spoilers): There’s a girl named Lyra, who has a golden compass that will tell her the “truth” in response to any question. Later, there’s a boy named Will, who can cut holes between worlds. A bunch of adults and angels are engaged in a war to overthrow the Authority (also referred to as “God”), who is the oldest angel, but not really the Creator he purports to be. The adults want Lyra and Will to kill God. In the end, though, God is more of a senile figurehead who blows away in the wind, and His right-hand man/angel, the Metatron, is the real villain, who wants to establish a permanent inquisition on every world. Acting independently from these is Dust, which is what scientists call dark matter, which is what theologians might call fallen angels from the first war in heaven. Dust is what tells Lyra the truth through her compass, what gave intelligence and free-will to humankind, and what needs to be … well, it’s never really clear, but Lyra needs to fall in love with Will in order for Dust to flow properly or something. This sucks for them, because they’re from different worlds, they’ll die if they stay in an alien world too long, and all the windows between the worlds need to be closed up or else Dust will die and soul-eating specters will roam freely.
Next, regarding the adaptation: Aside from major pacing issues in both forms (Pullman foreshadows clumsily in the book, and the movie just feels sped through), I don’t see what fans were all up in arms about. There were old, creepy guys dressed as Catholic priests saying stuff about “heretics” every five minutes. It was pretty clearly a critique of religious institutions, even if the little story about Adam and Eve from the book never makes the cut.
And finally, regarding the theological argument implicit in the book: It’s weak, but not entirely useless. The church is an easy target to pick on in Western society nowadays, I think — you just say that it’s better to think for yourself than to follow rules laid down by old white guys who want to maintain world power — but Pullman stumbles into murkier territory when he implies that God isn’t really worth worshipping at all.
I found it particularly weird that a certain irony never seems to go explicitly recognized: The war against heaven is all about free will versus slavery, but the good guys seem just as manipulative and pushy as the bad guys, just more idealistic about it. Everyone’s telling Lyra and Will that they have no choice, they must go and do this thing. The Dust itself admits that granting free will on humanity was an act of “vengeance” against God, which you’d think would make us feel kind of used. I guess maybe Pullman gets around this by making his protagonists so willful that they do as expected, but on their own terms. Still, it’s weird that Dust is kind of cast as the “good” supreme intelligence in contrast to God, the “bad” supreme intelligence, and there’s no recognition that the Dust is giving orders here too.
As I said, though, this is not without food for thought. For me, this series provided an interesting exercise in pondering the nature of God. See, there are several functions theologians and believers typically ascribe to a single Judeo-Christian God, but those are broken up into various agents in this series. In “His Dark Materials,” we have no idea who or what created everything; an old angel going by the name of “God” hands down cold and arbitrary moral rules via the church; the afterlife is presided over by characters from Greek mythology who are inexplicably ordered by God to be jerks; and fallen angels are the ones who really granted consciousness and free will to hominids, which is arguably the creation of humankind. I’m not sure that there’s anybody taking over the job of answering prayers, though, unless you have a golden compass handy.
This is interesting to me. I’m not sure if you’d call it a polytheistic view of the universe or what. It also got me thinking, of course, of one of the main points I return to repeatedly on this site: How do you explain morality as something true and universal, rather than culturally subjective, without considering some force outside ourselves? In Pullman’s world, there are a couple directions to look to explain morality, but the one deserving our thanks and worship just happens to not be the one called “God,” getting all the attention from the church.
I think I would be satisfied with this explanation, if you could offer it to me in real life. I am less concerned with the specific name or nature of the divine than with the idea that Right and Wrong are more than just products of our imagination. I’d appreciate if the divine were some force that actually gave a darn about my life and might be able to offer some decent conversation (mental or otherwise), but I don’t mean to ask too much.
Ultimately, I’m of the understanding that Pullman’s conception of God is just a reflection of (his understanding of how) the Catholic church has constructed “God.” He doesn’t seem entirely atheistic, though, despite having been championed as the atheist fantasy author. He seems comfortable with the idea that there might be something else out there, and maybe even embraces the idea of a real, human soul. I don’t quite see why some religious people seem so up in arms about him, aside from his books being a little overhyped for what they are.
