[ SECRET POST #1906 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #1906 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


__________________________________________________



02.
[Green Wing]


__________________________________________________



03.
[*NSYNC]


__________________________________________________



04.
[Supernatural]


__________________________________________________



05.
[2 Broke Girls]


__________________________________________________



06. [repeat]


__________________________________________________



07.
[How I Met Your Mother]


__________________________________________________



08.
[GCB]


__________________________________________________



09.
[Scrubs]


__________________________________________________



10.
[Brows Held High]


__________________________________________________



11.
[Dracula (1992)]


__________________________________________________



12.
[Game of Thrones]


__________________________________________________



13.
[His Dark Materials]


__________________________________________________



14.
[Game of Thrones]


__________________________________________________



15.
[Bored to Death]


__________________________________________________



16.
[Elder Scrolls: Skyrim]


__________________________________________________



17.
[Legend of Korra]


__________________________________________________



18.
[Psycho]


__________________________________________________



19.
[Third Star]


__________________________________________________



20.
[Stargate: Atlantis]


__________________________________________________



21.
[Parks and Recreation]


__________________________________________________



22.
[The Hunger Games, America's Next Top Model]


__________________________________________________







Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 025 secrets from Secret Submission Post #272.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 2 3 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[lilweirdomokyn.livejournal.com]

But... wasn't HDM a very atheist story? It's about how God lied to the angels and everyone, and is basically Pullman saying organized religion is crap so being kind to people is more important than caring about who is sinning and all that.

I re-read the series a few months ago, did I miss something?

[(Anonymous)]

Anti-organized religion =/= atheist. You can be anti-religion and still believe in God/the existence of things not seen/etc.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, but Pullman is an atheist.

[(Anonymous)]

If it's about god lying then it's not an atheist story?

[(Anonymous)]

It wouldn't be the first time an atheist used God in their story to take a dump on him (see Garth Ennis) for the purpose of their message. HDM still tells an atheist message even if God is depicted in it.

[fenm.livejournal.com]

HDM still tells an atheist message even if God is depicted in it.

No. If God exists, then the message is not "atheist". It's anti-theist, which is not the same thing.

[(Anonymous)]

That's a great way of explaining it. I always wondered how it could really be atheist if Pullman is just replacing the Christian God with the Force. I mean, there's still a semi-sentient, supernatural thing affecting the flow of the universe...

Or, isn't Dust made of angels? It's been a long time since I read HDM.

[antialiasis.livejournal.com]

It's about how God lied to the angels and everyone

...a notion which is completely antithetical to atheism, because it says God exists. God existing but being kind of a dick isn't atheism.

I mean, you're right that His Dark Materials was intended as an atheist story, and I even rather like it (aside from the Will/Lyra romance), but as an atheist it's always annoyed me terribly that it's touted as atheistic fiction when, I repeat, God exists in it. Anti-Catholic, definitely, but you cannot possibly make the point that God probably doesn't exist by writing a book series about how actually he does but Christianity happens to be wrong about him and the Catholic church is corrupt.

(I don't even think the series ought to have been atheistic; I think the God concept is fascinating and that fiction has tons of things to explore about it. It just bugs me how people keep calling a book series where God clearly and unambiguously exists atheistic and not seeing the contradiction.)

[karuvapatta.livejournal.com]

Er, no? There's no God in HDM, the Authority is simply the oldest of the angels who later claimed he created the rest of them. Unless the Dust represents God in some way.

[othellia.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I was starting to think that maybe I had read a different series of books.

[inversecalico.livejournal.com]

It's been years and years since I read the series, but I remember thinking that to me the Dust read as an analog for God. I just wasn't sure whether or not Pullman had intended that. (That was also about the time scientists were making discoveries about dark matter, so double the super coolness!)

[mollywobbles867.livejournal.com]

I see the Dust as more the dust of the universe, all rooted very much in science.

[inversecalico.livejournal.com]

::shrug:: I was 16 or 17 at the time I read them, and I'd grown up in the Bible Belt. Everything was theistic, whether or not it wanted to be.

[dentedsky.livejournal.com]

It's been years for me too but I was under the impression that Dust was sin...?

[spicandspan89.livejournal.com]

Not quite. That was the position of the Magisterium (basically the Catholic Church in Lyra's universe). Dust is more like... sentient matter. It settled on children at puberty since that's when they begin to mature and become fully conscious.

[dentedsky.livejournal.com]

Ahhh that's right.

[mollywobbles867.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I thought I had taken hallucinogens or something.

[spicandspan89.livejournal.com]

MTE. God doesn't really exist in the books, although the Authority masquerades as him. However, I also interpreted Dust as being a representation of God (except that Dust couldn't care less what shenanigans sentient beings get up to).

[strangetwn-god.livejournal.com]

That's making a big assumption that the use of god in HDM is scripture and not a figurative or literary device (ala Lucretius, On the Nature of Things) or satire (Job, A Comedy of Justice or Good Omens).