His Dark Materials

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

That last point was, for me, the key thing.

The representation of the Church as an Evil Empire was extreme (though one might argue around just how inaccurate it was), but the main attack was on how the Church attempts to hijack individuals' spirituality in order to control us.

Pullman's alternative is to build the Kingdom of Heaven in our heads.

It's been a while since I read the books. Would you explain to me how that last works?

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

though one might argue around just how inaccurate it was

Very, very inaccurate. Unless you're just trying to describe the Spanish Inquisition .

Originally Posted by Bran

But I think we also do need to take into acount how evil the church truely was, and how much of that Pullman had to draw from. What about the Cruesades? The church couldn't control their knights, whose bloodlust would drive them to ride throw towns slaughtering all in their path only to satisfy their own bloodlust. So what the Pope do? He came up with the idea of sending them all out to murder a bunch of people for living in there homeland, and throw them out of their own city. Propaganda is spreaded, and they end up doing it nearly a dozen times. That's just plain evil. Even if the crusades went underway because of the reason the propaganda said it was, they still didn't have a good enough reason to kill the amount of people they did. The church did some really terrible things in the middle-ages.

Some terrible things, and some absolutely wonderful, glorious things. I've already mentioned how they were the center of everything good and noble in the past. They were the center of culture and education. Monasteries and many churches practiced giving to the poor, caring for the needy. There was a wonderful side to the church.

The fact is that people are people. Many people claim to be a part of a religion, but they don't practice that religion in a true way. The Bible itself talks about people that pose as Christians but aren't. Paul describes people who come among his flock as "wolves among sheep." Jesus talked about those who would say, "did we not preach in the streets in your name," but who he never knew and who would be thrown into hell. There are Buddhists that aren't real Buddhists, Muslims that aren't real Muslims, Hindus that aren't real Hindus, and Christians that aren't real Christians.

To organized church there is a wonderful side. There is a dark side to humanity, however. Philip Pullman says that the dark side is in the organized church. He does not say that the dark side is in humanity itself. In fact, while trouncing the church, he celebrates humanity. This is a very deep error.

I think I can easily demonstrate just as hideous of wrongs taking place in non-denominational churches as happened in organized churches. Many cults and other groups that aren't responsible to a higher structure go off on tangents, try to control their participants, and fall into many kinds of errors. This is not about whether church is organized or not. It's about whether people will ever be truly good.