What is the big uproar about The Golden Compass?

Is it the Daemon thing?

Granted Pullman I think was deliberately baiting a right wing segment of the population who didn't pursue a classical education...

But daemons weren't necessary flaming red horned things running around smacking people with evil sticks.

"Eudaemons resembled the Abrahamic idea of the guardian angel; they watched over mortals to help keep them out of trouble." -Wiki

Your Daemonion, according to Plato was your soul, divine spark, etc.

Personally I didn't find the movie to be anti-Christian, rather I found it to be anti-totalitarian.

Is the anti-Christian accusation being made by totalitarian Christians?

At no point in the movie did I have any urge to get my hate on for the big J. Actually I almost fell asleep at times. :P

What specifically about this movie is corrupting our youth onto a dark path?

(*laments removal of classical education from schools*)

I think the film is lovely, if a little slow and is less theocratic than the novel in that the absolute rule of the quasi religious body, the Magisterium, was severly underplayed. The truth is that the religious bigot and the zealot and those lacking confidence in their faiths will castigate the films that dare to offer a different viewpoint to the standard Christian belief. I dont believe that the soul made corporeal in the form of daemons is the unsettling aspect for the unimaginative detractor of this film. It is the use of children to defy and bring down the establishment that they find unacceptable. This opens up the possibility that chidren dont have to believe as their parents do...a fundamentalist nightmare.
In the final analysis, these films are entertainment, not propaganda and the world will be a finer place when the neurotic amongst us cease to look for gremlins under the beds!

Well the whole movie is sack-religious and the writer of the movie is an athius. i mean, the demon thing is probably a big thing to but i havent seen it and dont wanna see it!

People always love to have something to b**** about. It always seems to be the churches.

You didn't see atheists crying about The Passion of the Christ.

Who knows. I think that religious ppl like to find the evil in everything. It gets on my nerves. I've seen the movie and I didn't see anything anti-religious in it. I kinda liked it. It's just for fun anyways.

In a larger sense, it is about a struggle in a totaltarian world, but with the original athesitic message in the books, many are afraid that by the time the third film comes around, we will be up to our collective iPhones in young atheists!

someone said that lyra was on a quest to kill god but i have read all three books and i didnt realize if that was what she was doing

Well, the author is atheist, and, his main goal for writing the book was to convince children that there is no god. So, in the book the characters kill god, or a representation of god.

This is what I have been told, no I haven't watched it or read the books. But the screaming I hear about the movie is...

1) They kill God in the end.

2) It's written by an atheist and when you visit his website, gives you a pretty good impression on how he feels about God.

Again I haven't seen the movie, thats just what I have been told. No clue if its truthful or not, however I have checked out the website from him.

Seeya girl ;)

I didn't know there was a uproar...of course I live in the middle of no where too...lol. But the previews of the movie look great and I can't wait to see it. Who cares if it's about atheist's...geez people it's a movie!

Hi ya PH...good question...my answer wasn't directed at you...it's amazing how people in the old times tried to do away with certain books! Now in the more modern times...people still can't just enjoy a movie or a book with calling it sacrilegious...lol

I enjoyed reading the books and I also found the film very entertaining, if very toned down for children - these were never, ever good books for children.

As a Christian, I have less worries with this film, or the books, than I would the Poseidon Adventure - Gene Hackman shouts something along the lines of "come on God, if you want to kill another, take me", or some such line.

This is far more insulting to God and Christians, because it encourages people to blame God for a world that is 'going down the pan', when in Christian reality, he sent his only son to remedy the problems of mankind, to save us from certain damnation - Jesus died to give us a way out of certain destruction by sacrificing his life for ours. It is far worse when people blame God for natural disasters - he made the world, then we screwed it up! Our fault, not his.

As for the deamons; what is a deamon but a fallen Angel? They are the same being, one is a rebel, one is loyal. It is just terminology, and fantasy - exciting and entertaining, what are people worried about?

It is annoying when people endow the devil with more power than he really has. Hell will be a place created for his punishment, his eternal torment, we seem to forget, or are lied to so often that we believe hell is is residence, his seat of power - what a great lie, fantastic dis-information there folks, as in Christian reality, the EARTH is his domain, for now. He is the Prince of the Skies - he rules here! We live in his dominion, he should be blamed for the natural disasters, the freak occurances and untimely deaths, after all, his mission is to take as many souls to hell with him and his minions as possible. He is the lier, the twister of the truth, the MASTER of deception.

The god who features in the Pullman trilogy bares no resemblance to the God I know, the father whose heart was so broken, he found a solution for a broken world, the suffering and pain, humiliation of his beloved son - all the result of giving is free will, intelligence - a mind of our own.

Pullman himself is on record as saying he would like to be the opposite of Lewis but he fails; there is no parallel. I can read his works and enjoy them for the fiction that they are :D

Forget Pullman and his Dark Materials, don't take your eye off the ball, watch out for the crap on ER, CSI, Eastenders (UK) and all the general Soap opera's. He is subtle, subversive, and your "best friend" on the TV.

The Devil will appear "as an Angel of light" .......... ....... and don't you forget it!