Philip Pullman

A critical look at Philip Pullman's

"HIS DARK MATERIALS" trilogy

Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass

Propaganda is most efficient when presented as fiction. Ideas which would fall flat in a rational debate can still gain credence by emotional appeals in a fiction story. Philip Pullman's trilogy is a work of fiction with a message. It reflects some modern trains of thought in the field of popular philosophy, and has gained a large following among young people.

The green text below is a description of the trilogy; if you have read the books, you can skip it and go on to the black text below.

General description

HDM is set in a universe with many parallell worlds, some similar to each other and some very different. We follow the adventures of the girl Lyra and her friend the boy Will who come from different worlds but are brought together by circumstances. As the story moves on, we learn that our world is also part of the multi-universe; the boy Will comes from here. This is an adventure story written for kids age ca 10-12 and up. It is exciting, well written, full of surprises and intriguing developments. Lyra and Will come to play a major part in a great crisis which has befallen their entire universe.

The plot

In Lyra's world, as well as in most worlds populated by humans, people are being oppressed by religious authorities. The church is effectively the government in the Victorian-style England where Lyra lives. Everything is theology and any idea the government doesn't like is called heresy. The church rules even over science and decides which findings are correct and which will be hushed up or condemned. The church knows about multiple worlds, but has kept this a secret. Other worlds are afflicted by the same kind of religious-dogmatic oppression but Lyra's home world is the most clearly described example.

Ontology (the ultimate nature of reality)

Pullman gradually reveals the history and ultimate nature of his multi-universe. It turns out that angels exist, but they are not messengers of God but simply a race of half-spiritual, half-material beings with the ability to fly. The ontology can be described in a few brief points:

The universe contains Dark Matter, or "Dust", a form of invisible matter that is conscious and omniscient. It exists everywhere but is attracted to sentient beings. It acts as a sort of universal consciousness. Those who learn how to communicate with Dark Matter can gain knowledge and guidance from it. But it does not act on its own, lays down no moral rules and makes no demands.

God (explicitly identified as the God of Christianity in our world) is not the creator, nor is he omnipotent. He is simply a very powerful being, one of the oldest in the universe. God is ruthless, oppressive and obsessed with perpetuating his own power. He has revealed himself to people in order to create religions, and all these religions are founded on the false belief that people must obey God, worship him and submit to his will. Thus they are simply instruments of oppression.

The fundamental conflict in Pullman's world is that between "submission and obedience" and "growing in strength and wisdom". In a key scene, one of the main characters says: "Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit." The heroes of the story are engaged in a rebellion to kill God and thereby set people free.

Fantasy vs reality

The very basis for the fantasy genre is that the author invents his own world and peoples it with whatever creatures he desires. This gives him total freedom from all constraints of history or science. In a fantasy world, dragons and trolls may really exist, witches can fly on broomsticks and magic can actually work. This literature is not harmful or deceitful. The reader knows that it's a fairy tale, and within the framework of the story he can accept things that would have been impossible in reality. Even if the story is set in the environment of our own world, readers will be aware of the differences.

A similar theme is historic speculation. The author asks what could have happened if Napoleon had won the battle of Waterloo or if Julius Caesar had never been murdered. The story is set in reality, but a few important events have been altered. One then speculates about how things might have been different, "what if?". This is also perfectly OK. The reader knows what really happened and is aware that the story is an entertaining but fictitious alternative.

My principal objection to Pullman is that he claims to describe reality as it really is. I'm not saying that Pullman claims that everything in his books (such as armoured bears and flying witches) literally exists. But he expressly states that what he says about God and religions in his fantasy world, is also true in reality. The church is evil and God is a harmful, false idea which we should get rid of. At the end of the trilogy, one of the main characters tells about how she was once a nun but discovered that everything she believed in was nonsense. She vividly depicts the sense of freedom once she threw out all religios beliefs. She sums up: "The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that's all."

If you want to argue against Christianity, there are plenty of real problems ini the church's history and teaching which you can use. But Pullman does not. He casts off all constraints of truth and realism by setting his story in a fantasy world, and then uses this construed reality to argue about reality. His "evidence" against Christianity lies wholly inside the borders of his own fiction. I call this deception and intellectual dishonesty, especially when it is done in books intended for children.

Pullman's image of religion

Pullman said in an interview: "The God who dies [in the trilogy] is the God of the burners of heretics, the hangers of witches, the persecutors of Jews, the officials who recently flogged that poor girl in Nigeria who had the misfortune to become pregnant after having been forced to have sex - all these people claim to know with absolute certainty that their God wants them to do these things. Well, I take them at their word, and I say in response that that God deserves to die." Most of us would agree with that. If there really was a false, oppressive "god" like that, he would deserve to be overthrown. In so far as religious ideas promote evil, they must be opposed, just as we fight against bad political systems and philosophical ideologies. However, there are several problems with Pullman's approach:

Pullman seems to think that religions, regardless of their idea contents, always lead to oppression because they tell us that there is a Deity to whose will we should submit. In his own words: "Instead of being the dependent children of an all-powerful king, we are partners and equals with Dust in the great project of keeping the universe alive." Regardless of whether a religion depicts God as good, loving and benevolent or as a heavenly dictator, the result is the same: slavery. In Pullman's opinion, humans should rule themselves -- which is the opposite of thinking of ourseves as created beings or subjects of a Supreme Being.

But there is no evidence for the notion that godless humans act any better than religious humans. Further, there is no evidence for the notion that religious believers are incapable of free, responsible, rational and morally good acts and thoughts. In fact, there is a good deal of evidence for the opposite, in that religious people have been inspired by their faith to stand up against tyrannies when non-believers have not. Witness Karl Barth, Martin Luther King, Kaj Munk, archbishop Romero, Maximilian Kolbe and countless others. In other words, the conflict Pullman describes does not exist. It is merely a vehicle for his false thesis.

A context search reveals that Pullman's ideas are very close to those propagated by modern satanism, as developed during the 1960s by Anton LaVey. This form of satanism is not devil-worship but rather an atheist, rationalist philosophy, expressly formulated in opposition to Christianity. Its fundamental principle is that "there is no God except man". Mankind must throw off religious guilt feelings, non-existent deities and other self deceptions in order to grow in knowledge and be free. Pullman's basic beef with religion seems indeed to be the same as LaVey's, namely the idea that there is someone or something over and above us humans, preventing us from being our own gods and masters.

I do not wish to use "guilt by association" here, but I'd like to point out that such ideas are usually part and parcel with a bundle of other ideas which are malevolent. The leader of the war against God in HDM is Lord Asriel, a man who ignores and even despises his own daughter, willingly murders an innocent child and generally behaves without any regard for ethics in order to achieve his goal. Is this the sort of person Pullman would like to put forth as a hero? Unfortunately, this is my impression.

Pullman flatly claims that religion is the major cause of all human evil. It is true that much evil has been -- and still is -- done in the name of God. But with the least psychologic and historic insight, you will know that people seek justification for their actions by appealing to a superior value, especially when they do something controversial or unethical. Since most human cultures have been religious, the supreme value has usually been "the will of God", but in a modern secularized world it can just as well be Freedom, Democracy, Justice, Reason, Science or some other non-religious value. Pullman's claim is simply false. The misuse of values does not invalidate the values themselves. The misuse of religion by power-hungry people in order to oppress others, does not mean that religion, or the idea of God, are in themselves conductive to oppression.

Conclusion
The HDM trilogy is anti-religious indoctrination disguised as an adventure story for kids. It purports to strike a blow against oppressive ideas, but does this by propagating demonstrably false ideas and an ignorant (or deceitful) view of psychological, religious and historical reality. The blow is misdirected, but hits hard since it is intended to affect the minds of young people who lack the necessary knowledge and experience to see through the emotional appeal.

In a secularized Western world where understanding of fundamental religious concepts is quickly vanishing from people's minds and where the news are full evil acts perpetrated in the name of Allah or other deities, it is hardly surprising that these books have received such wide acclaim from the critics. Let us hope that people with greater wisdom than Mr Pullman will take up the gauntlet and write children's books which give a better balanced and more truthful account of the problems concerning religion vs. oppression!