The December issue of The Atlantic Monthly has a feature piece about The Golden Compass. Summary: Pullman's books are rabidly anti-Christian (the dark and murderous institution that pursues the protagonist is "the Magisterium"--subtle stuff), but Hollywood bent over backwards to take out the atheistic material. But Pullman is still content with the results. They say it's because Pullman is so laid back, but I have my doubts. I'll wait until folks like Greydanus weigh in.
What I found particularly interesting about the article: a description of Pullman's atheism. It's the same old shallow stuff: sexual liberation requires liberation from theology; it's a lot harder to get laid in church; sex is god. Excerpt:
When pressed, Pullman grants that he's not really trying to kill God, but rather the outdated idea of God as an old guy with a beard in the sky. In his novels, he replaces the idea of God with “Dust,” made up of invisible particles that begin to cluster around people when they hit puberty. The Church believes Dust to be the physical evidence of original sin and hopes to eradicate it. But over the course of the series, Pullman reveals it to be the opposite: evidence of human consciousness, a kind of godlike energy that surrounds everyone. People accumulate Dust by “thinking and feeling and reflecting, by gaining wisdom and passing it on.” It starts to build up around puberty because, for Pullman, sexual awakening triggers the beginning of self-knowledge and intellectual curiosity. To him, the loss of sexual innocence is not a tragedy; it's the springboard to a productive and virtuous adulthood.
The most curious aspect of Pullman's theology is the primacy he places on teen sexuality; like the best heavy-metal songs, the whole series builds up to a celebration of losing your virginity, or at least getting to first base.
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"We just need to get the Muslims to, you know, assimilate. It'll happen eventually. All new immigrant groups are slow to assimilate at first." Not so fast. Also from The Atlantic:
Neither education nor the amount of time spent in Britain appears to have weakened Islamic identity. The authors found no evidence that the formation of Islamic identity was strengthened in segregated neighborhoods; if anything, living in an integrated neighborhood appeared to reinforce a strong Islamic identity, as did higher incomes, better job qualifications, and mixed-work environments (defined as places where English is spoken). In other words, even if Muslim immigrants are well-educated, well-paid, and living and working among non-Muslims, the “intense and oppositional identities” that stoke Europe's current religious and cultural tensions may persist.
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Interesting graphic from The Atlantic:
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From Zadok the Roman:
An Indian man who believed he had been cursed for stoning to death two dogs has atoned for his sin by marrying another dog in a traditional Hindu wedding ceremony.
P. Selvakumar, a 33-year-old farm labourer from the southern state of Tamil Nadu, married the four-year-old stray bitch after it was bathed and processed to his village temple dressed in an orange sari and garlanded with flowers.
The guy's probably just happy he didn't kill a gay gorilla.
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Received in an email:
Ed was in trouble. He forgot his wedding anniversary, and his wife was really angry. She told him "Tomorrow morning, I expect to find a gift in the driveway that goes from 0 to 200 in less then 6 seconds AND IT BETTER BE THERE!!"
The next morning Ed got up early and left for work. When his wife woke up, she looked out the window and saw a box gift-wrapped in the driveway. Confused, the wife put on her robe and ran out to the driveway and brought the box back in the house. She opened it and found a new bathroom scale.
