Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Controversial Books


So, I was interested in reading The Golden Compass series by Phillip Pullman (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass) because some parents have asked us to remove it from the shelf at the school lbrary. After hearing the allegations about the books (that they are intended to persuade children to become atheists), I was feeling like people had not given them a chance. I had already begun to read The Golden Compass before I had heard about any of the controversy, after all, and there was nothing that I could find that was questionable. So I continued to read. Even after the second book, it seemed as though he was only speaking out against corrupt religion, which I think is a good thing. Not too far into the third book, however, it was clear that he believes all religion is corrupt.

The premise of the books is essentially that there was an angel a long time ago that put himself above the other angels and called himself God and the Creator (even though he was not) and that his goal is to keep people from gaining knowledge(that's why gaining knowledge was the original sin). The rebel angels (you know, that 1/3 from the war in heaven) have been fighting against him ever since and trying to help humans learn. And they enlist the help of two children to help them destroy God and create the Republic of Heaven (rather than the Kingdom).

There's a lot more to the stories, of course, and they are well written and interesting, but they still really hurt my feelings. In his books, the only religious people are either power-hungry hypocrites or fearful and ignorant. He writes about love and accepting people even with their faults (his main characters are flawed on purpose, I think) and the power of human relationships and following your instincts and the great value of learning. I am in complete agreement with pretty much everything he writes about those things. He seems to have a good understanding of how we all interact with and need each other. But the major flaw I see is that his goal is to show that religion is the antithesis of all of those good things; it is only useful for repressing people. So, while he may know a lot about life, he is quite ignorant about religion and people's reasons for being religious. Maybe he should stick to writing about things with which he is familiar.

For the record, I still don't think it should be removed from the shelves at school. As Anna said to me, "Nothing good ever came from censorship." I agree. It would probably create more problems than it would solve. And I want to have my freedom of expression protected, so I can't take away someone else's. Still, I think parents should be making informed decisions about what their children are reading.

Past events

Here are a couple of pictures from December that I never got around to posting:



Laurel was baptized Dec. 1. We had a conflict with the scheduled Stake baptisms (Jared was going to be out of town), so she got to have her own. It was really nice to have all of Jared's family and also Mom and Dad here for the baptism. Our house was pretty packed with people, but all the cousins on the Meeker side seemed to have a good time.


Our Christmas picture. We can never get one with everyone looking at the camera.