Why does this thing I read in Snopes demand to be put up? It doesn’t surprise me, not in the least, but every time the logical part of me says it doesn’t need to be talked about, another part of me screams that it does.
There’s apparently a movie coming out in December called the Golden Compass, and a bunch of religious folk are sending up in arms emails about it, telling their fellow Christians to boycott the movie. Bla bla bla. They say the book on which it is based is written by Phillip Pullman, an English writer who is an atheist, can’t stand C. S. Lewis’s Narnia books and wants to write a rebuttal. For this, they say that no good Christian should watch it. But here’s why something in me screams that I have to blog about this whole campaign. They say the reason no one with any religious belief in them should watch the movie is because people may like the movie, which is watered down, and then go buy the book on which it is based for their kids for Christmas, selling Atheism and dooming the kids to want to kill god.
How is what Pullman is doing any different than sending the kids to Sunday school, forcing the bible on them, simplifying things to the point that they will understand it in the way you want, thus getting them to believe in it? I think if you’re going to make your kids read the bible, at least let them read the other side.
And this really speaks to how stupid the religious higher-ups think their “sheep” are. Well, they do call them sheep, after all. They think reading one book is going to turn them from being pro-God zombies to anti-God zombies. Come on, guys. It’s a book. It’s designed to make them think. Oh yeah, that’s bad too in the eyes of religion. See what I mean about this whole thing being not that big of a surprise? Oh well, it’s written down. Now that other part of me can stop screaming.