Anti-God Movie for Children on the Horizon
Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials is about to make the leap to the big screen on December 7, 2007 with “The Golden Compass.” Pullman, an atheist has create a mythology in which a group of children must band together to save the “multiverse” from a senile God. The Christian Heaven is exposed as a lie in the books.
Here’s the wikipedia entry for His Dark Materials.
Pullman is an open critic of C.S. Lewis and his Chronicles of Narnia, but denies that these books were written in reaction to him.
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So calling all imaginative children’s pastors: We’ve just been handed a tool to create a conversation with non-believing parents and children. How to we start conversation and not a shrill protest? I just ordered the trilogy so I can get my mind around this.
The timing of this movie release is interesting. On an adult level, “athiest books” and the response books are moving. I guess it was only a matter of time until the debate trickled down into the world of children and adolescents.
It appears that the marketing machine is trying to target children’s pastors since I got an email yesterday detailing the ways to use it…I also saw the trailer yesterday just prior to “Dan In Real Life” (which was loved by my kids). It’ll be interesting to see the movie FIRST and then review later!
Really? Grassroots marketing to sell an anti-God movie to kids through CP’s.
Who sent that material?
I downloaded the ebooks and have started reading The Golden Compass. So far, I haven’t run into anything that I would categorize as “anti-God,” but from what I’ve read about the stories is that they get more and more explicit. I am holding off any judgement I have about the books or the movies. The books are definitely in the fantasy genre, so we’ll see how it all pans out. Just because an author is an atheist and has a book that talks about “God” doesn’t mean he is talking about the God we put our faith in. Anyway, I do think that these stories should serve more as bridges and conversation pieces to point people to the God we have chosen to follow and worship and hopefully reshape people’s incomplete view of God (which, admittedly the evangelical world has helped to mess up). We can’t just boycott it, close up ranks and bury our heads in the sand. We need to engage it and help families to learn how to find truth wherever it may be and discard the rest.
Henry,
These books might be a tool hold help a Christian preteen child understand an atheist’s concerns about theism.
Parental involvement is really the key to anything good coming from this.
and your point? your leave your brain at the door believers mentality..never ceases to amaze me..i have concluded that believers are caught in the “jack n the beanstalk” syndrome which is right up there with the tooth fairy and the easter bunny.face it..i know its difficult for you, but we are mortal and no agrivated fear of mortality will make the fairy tales of the “holy books” any truer than they already are not. why not allow our children to make their own minds up concerning which fairy tale they like…?