The Anti-Christ is Here (Thank God!)

Wow. I didn't know I was rooting for the antichrist. I mean, as a Jew with a sharp tongue, I certainly _hope_ I'm rooting for the other guy. Just not that one. Whatever he stands for. Our people have no connection to 'The Rapture,' a construct of 19th century umm, passionate people. I disingenuously paused, because, again, as a Jew, the whole thing is hooey to me. We didn't have a 1st coming, so the second one makes no sense. We have no hell, only the absence of being part of God. There's no purgatory. No wacky 'what SHALL we do with all these unbelievers.' No fire, no brimstone. [Full disclosure: while Christianity is fully Thanotic (death- and afterlife-focused), Judaism does refer to this life as the 'prosdor' (literally: the hallway) and the next life as the room. But we Jews get do-overs in the form of reincarnation, and a chance for our souls to make right what we failed in previous lives.]

The Obama = Nicholae Carpathia idea is hideous. It's hateful, paranoid, and smacks of all the things for which the KKK was and is reviled. The Nazis used fear of the Jew, the unknown, the other to kill my family. And the hateful, prejudiced, zealots aligned with the McCain campaign are using the exact same tactics now, in 2008.

Debate is great. McCain certainly presents a different set of options to Obama. I welcome discussions of substance, of the priorities, strategies and even tactics of the two candidates in solving our upcoming problems. But bringing religion into this is a wedge designed to scare the Evangelical, the dim-witted, or those that bought the last lie: that Obama is actually a Muslim. Not that that is wrong in any way! (I'd love to see a Muslim President! He'd be just as fair as Kennedy was, as a Catholic, in a majority Protestant country.)

The Golden Compass Can't Find North

As a firm disbeliever in anything dogmatic, and one who rarely takes things "on faith," I initially snorted at the Catholic League's well-reasoned denouncement of The Golden Compass. (Okay, the trailer, with a sinuous Nicole Kidman and very impressive graphics also more than held my interest.)

I read the first book, then saw the movie. Then read the other two books.

Cinematically, the movie of the first book in the Dark Matter trilogy is badly reminiscent of the Harry Potter movies. If you haven't read the book, the movie barely skitters across the time alloted, and does not do the book (or the author) justice. It was clear that, aside from any well-publicized crises of angst by the director, that Hollywood definitely bent the book. Almost severed it (that's an inside phrase, and a spoiler).

The second and third books of the Dark Matter trilogy definitely bear out the worries of those representing dogmatic, doctrinal religion. I can't see Unitarians griping about it, but hierarchical religions should definitely see this as an attack not only of their system of governance, but on theism itself.

I have more objections to this series, aimed at children, than the Narnia books (to be fair, I've only read the first two in the series). In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, one can choose to ignore the Christian references in the book: it's a lion, pretty vs. ugly is a Hollywood prejudice, who cares how many days the lion lies injured/tortured... It's not much different from Starman, which is much more the prototypical Christian story than even Narnia. But greatest stories ever told (whether the "original" was fiction or not) are common movie riffs.

In the Dark Matter trilogy, Pullman makes a cogent case against theism. It's not just calling for deicide (killing of god) -- it brings in negative stereotypes like the almost successful pederast priest and the essential evil of those charged with teaching morals. It mocks angels, portraying them as gentle, delicate, homosexual lovers.

There are many reasons to poke fun at religion, to question it, to question one religion over another. But Pullman's books take the dark matter of theologic dogma to the edge -- and then distastefully over it, to the level of 'discourse' similar to portraying Islam's Mohammad with porcine qualities.

My only hope is that Hollywood manages to as effectively neuter the second and third movies as "well" as they did the first, since clearly this first movie was only a portent of things to come, and not a work that stands on its own -- unlike even the least of the Harry Potter movies.