His Dark Materials / Religion

I like to think of myself as a religiously tolerant person, I really do. I'm an atheist, but I believe that everyone has the right to believe what they want to believe, and as long as my views aren't challenged I'm not going to challenge someone else's views. Possibly this comes from living in an extremely religious town in which I would be tarred and feathered if I said anything against religion. However, with the Golden Compass movie recently released and the controversy surrounding it, I can't help but be a little irked at the way some of my classmates are behaving. Scenario one:

Student walks up to the lunch table at which I am sitting. Begins telling the lunch table that no one should see The Golden Compass because we will go to Hell if we do. Now, I've loved the His Dark Materials trilogy and have been reading it since I was ten. No, I was not an atheist when I read the books. No, the books didn't turn me into an atheist. That happened four years later after a Greek Mythology unit in school -- but that's a different story altogether. Anyway, I didn't even pick up on the religious message in the books when I was ten. I was like: OMG talking polar bears sweeeet. So I raise my eyebrows at this girl and ask her what's so wrong with the movie. "It's fiction," I inform her.

"They're killing my God!" she says.

"Um... no?" I answer.

"Yes, they are."

"Have you read the books?"

"Well... no," she admits, looking all the more determined.

"If you had, you would know that a) IT'S FICTION," I reiterate, "which means that it can't be YOUR God, and b) God doesn't die until The Amber Spyglass, which is not The Golden Compass. So what's wrong with this movie?"

We argue back and forth for a while, and I feel that I have the upperhand in the argument (I could have been wrong, but I still feel like I did), and she sputters, "Well. The author's an ATHEIST!" she says, like it's a swear word or something. I should note that this is the same girl who told me, like so many others have, that she wants to be the first one to read my books when I write them. Oh, the irony. So I calmly inform her that I'm an atheist, too, and she huffs off with a superior look on her face, probably to use me as an example or something for later arguments. Which would be really stupid, I guess, because people constantly ask me if I'm Catholic because I'm one of those goody-two-shoes type girls and that's the stereotype of that religion or something, I don't know.

Now, don't get me wrong. She's one of only a few in my school who was so adamant about it. Several of my friends haven't read the books and won't see the movie, either, for the same reasons. But they respect that I'm a fan and aren't about to try to convince me otherwise. Luckily they're sane enough that I could discuss this with them, and they tried to explain to me why these books and this movie were so controversial. It seemed to me, you see, that peoples' faith must be pretty weak if they thought they were going to be converted to atheism by a children's story.

Turns out that most people were afraid their children were going to be converted. This doesn't make sense to me either, perhaps someone might explain. Surely kids would know it was fiction? Surely it would be a good learning tool for parent and child to sit down and maybe analyze the book -- the parent could point out the symbolism a child might overlook and, if the parent didn't think the child was capable, point out how this was different from the Bible (or other religious text) and thus fictional. In my opinion, forbidding a kid from doing something is just going to make that kid more likely to rebel in the future. My parents never forbade me from doing... well, anything, really. I can do anything... but "anything" just isn't as appealing when you haven't been told you can't do it.

Yay, tangents.