Killing The Imposter God

Freitas and King address the complex religious and spiritual dimensions of Philip Pullmans His Dark Materials trilogy.

While atheists such as Richard Dawkins have now become public figures, there is another and perhaps darker strain of religious rebellion that has remained out of sight--people who hate God. In this revealing book, Bernard Schweizer looks at men and women who do not question God's existence, but deny that He is merciful, competent, or good. Sifting through a wide range of literary and historical works, Schweizer finds that people hate God for a variety of reasons. Some are motivated by social injustice, human suffering, or natural catastrophes that God does not prevent. Some blame God for their personal tragedies. Schweizer concludes that, despite their blasphemous thoughts, these people tend to be creative and moral individuals, and include such literary lights as Friedrich Nietzsche, Mark Twain, Zora Neale Hurston, Rebecca West, Elie Wiesel, and Philip Pullman. Schweizer shows that literature is a fertile ground for God haters. Many authors, who dare not voice their negative attitude to God openly, turn to fiction to give vent to it. Indeed, Schweizer provides many new and startling readings of literary masterpieces, highlighting the undercurrent of hatred for God. Moreover, by probing the deeper mainsprings that cause sensible, rational, and moral beings to turn against God, Schweizer offers answers to some of the most vexing questions that beset human relationships with the divine.

The popularity of the His Dark Materials trilogy has generated a major motion picture, a stage play, video games, and a new prequel. The series has also been highly controversial with its use of exciting adventure stories for children to comment on organized religion. These books have piqued the interest of the contributors to this fascinating volume, who use it to probe the philosophical issues that inform them. Could a golden compass, or alethiometer, really work? Can a person's soul or daemon have a mind of its own? What are the ramifications of pursuing the diabolical "intercision" process, or of trying to bring about the death of God, a plot that Lyra and her mysterious Father struggle over? These are some of the questions explored by these essays that try to get to the heart of Lyra's bewildering, inspiring, and multifaceted world.

In a time when almost any gritty topic can be featured in a young adult novel, there is one subject that is avoided by writers and publishers. Faith and belief in God seldom appear in traditional form in novels for teens. The lack of such ideas in mainstream adolescent literature can be interpreted by teens to mean that these matters are not important. Yet a significant part of growing up is struggling with issues of spirituality. The underlying problem, of course, is that there are so few writers who are willing to talk to teenagers about God, even indirectly, or who themselves have the religious literacy for the task. Spirituality in Young Adult Literature: The Last Taboo tackles a subject rarely portrayed in fiction aimed at teens. In this volume, Patty Campbell examines not only realistic fiction, but young adult literature that deals with mysticism, apocalyptical end times, and even YA novels that depict the Divine Encounter. Campbell maintains that fantasy works are inherently spiritual, because the plots nearly always progress toward a showdown between good and evil. As such, the author surmises that the popularity of fantasy among teens may represent their interest in the mystical dimensions of faith and the otherworldly. In this study, Campbell examines works of fiction that express perspectives from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism. Distinguished YA novelist Chris Crowe provides a chapter on Mormon values and Mormon YA authors and how their novels integrate those values into their books. By looking at how spirituality is represented in novels aimed at teens, this book asks what progress, if any, has been made in slaying the taboo. Although most of the books discussed in this study are recent, an appendix lists YA books from 1967 to the present that have dealt with issues of faith. A timely look at an important subject, Spirituality in Young Adult Literature will be of interest to young adult librarians, junior and senior high school teachers, and students and instructors of college courses in adolescent literature, as well as to parents of teens.

Three recent and commercially successful series of novels employ and adapt the resources of popular fantasy fiction to create visions of religious identity: J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, Phillip Pullman's Dark Materials and Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins' Left Behind series. The act of creating fantasy counter-worlds naturally involves all three stories in the creation of what Mike Gray terms "transfigurations of transcendence": hopeful albeit paradoxical encodings of the ambiguous, non-observable reality whose primary locus in modern society is the societally extra-systemic human individual. Popular fantasy fiction turns out to involve acts of world-creation that are inherently religious and inherently paradoxical.A substantive examination shows that all three are involved in more or less intentional re-narrations of traditional Christian beliefs and narratives. The »atheist« His Dark Materials series does not deny but re-imagines the Christian visions of selfhood; the »traditionalist« Left Behind series does not simply replicate but modifies its own declared values; the apparent secularity of the Harry Potter series is shaped by its creative reception of Christian patterns and narratives. While the stories' visions of selfhood clearly clash, the basic paradoxes involved in their struggle to articulate transcendence expose significant parallels and a productive conversation with the Christian tradition.It is not simply that popular fantasy fiction is theologically relevant – the Christian Heilsgeschichte, too, proves to be highly relevant in popular culture. However, while far from obsolescent, models of religious identity in contemporary society require criticism and creativity – and, as evinced most powerfully in the Harry Potter stories, a flair for constructive engagement with paradox.

"The press has become a tool of oppression—politicized, self–aware, self–motivated, and power–hungry. . . . In short, these people can no longer be trusted." —From S. E. Cupp’s Losing Our Religion It’s time to wake up and smell the bias. The go-to commentator for such programs as Fox News’s Hannity and CNN’s Larry King Live and Reliable Sources, S. E. Cupp is just that—a reliable source for the latest news, trends, and forecasts in young, bright, conservative America. Savvy and outspoken when shattering left-leaning assumptions as she did in Why You’re Wrong About the Right, Cupp now takes on the most pressing threat to the values and beliefs held and practiced by the majority of Americans: the marginalizing of Christianity by the flagrantly biased liberal media. From her galvanizing introduction, you know where S. E. Cupp stands: She’s an atheist. A non-believer. Which makes her the perfect impartial reporter from the trenches of a culture war dividing America and eroding the Judeo-Christian values on which this country was founded. Starting at the top, she exposes the unwitting courtship of President Obama and the liberal press, which consistently misreports or downplays Obama’s clear discomfort with, or blatant disregard for, religious America—from covering up religious imagery in the backdrop of his Georgetown University speech to his absence from events surrounding the National Day of Prayer, to identifying America in his inaugural address as, among other things, "a nation of non-believers." She likens the calculated attacks of the liberal media to a class war, a revolution with a singular purpose: to overthrow God and silence Christian America for good. And she sends out an urgent call for all Americans to push back the leftist propaganda blitz striking on the Internet, radio, television, in films, publishing, and print journalism—or invite the tyrannies of a "mainstream" media set on mocking our beliefs, controlling our decisions, and extinguishing our freedoms. Now, discover the truth behind the war against Christmas—and how political correctness keeps the faithful under wraps . . . the one-sided analyses of Prop 8 and the gay marriage debate . . . the media pot-shots at Sarah Palin’s personal faith . . . the politicization of entertainment mainstays such as American Idol and the Miss USA Pageant . . . and much more. Also included are her penetrating interviews with Dinesh D’Souza, Martha Zoller, James T. Harris, Newt Gingrich, Kevin Madden, and Kevin Williamson of National Review, delivering must-read analyses of the latest stunning lowlights from the liberal media.

Arranged chronologically from 1950 to the present, this accessible work explores the theological themes in 101 well-established figures and trends from film, television, video games, music, sports, art, fashion, and literature.

“The essence of Spirituality is Love. Any delineation from this motive is hypocrisy created to destroy.” Author, Will Huttunen show how your Path, Destiny and Planetary Shift is the movement toward Unconditional Love. This book teaches how to take fear and pain and undo the only karmic patterns that create it. It is the repression of yourself. This experience is felt as a surrender of your judgments and a relinquishing of your control over your own Will. You cannot perform God’s Will while condemning your own. As one represses self, the Universe acts in like reply (karma/attraction) and creates un-Lovingness. The more we heal this, the more Loving you and the World will be. “By the standards of the dark ego, Hell is made to keep Earth safe from what it deems as unwanted. Hell is created as a holding cell so that we would not be bothered by parts of ourselves we judged due to The Will's unwillingness to prostitute itself.” “The discipline and obedience to God without Love is domination and control. Your hatred of how you feel is mostly observed as the discipline of God, the righteous control of evil.” “The pronouncement of salvation and the boasting of gratitude and happiness can be seen as The Light of God. Yet notice how willing this display is to actually feel any fear Lovingly. The talk of salvation is empty and fallacious without the action behind it. This empty boasting is not designed to heal. It is here to congratulate itself so to validate its position in power over The Will.” website - spiritandwill.com