Lalwende wrote:
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It's Eru's very omnipotence which causes the issue. He creates everything, including Melkor, free will and the whole caboodle - therefore Eru must logically also create the potential for evil if nothing can exist without his having created it.
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All right - if this is the charge against Eru, then I think it makes perfect sense. It also should be noted that the charge applies generally to omnipotent deities. I was merely pointing out that there is a
worse charge made by some (most relavantly, by Pullman) against the God of Abraham - namely, that he is petty, ill-tempered, jealous, and vengeful.
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That's why people in our society getting so worked up about HDM having caused them 'offence' puzzle me. The Magisterium is a literary creation, at worst an analogy of things in our own world, and so drawn colourfully.
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Yet the thrust of the analogy is very clear. I have to say that I am not at all surprised at the outrage; that the Magisterium is a metaphor for the Catholic Church (or Christian Church, as this is a world without the Reformation) is fairly transparent. And if the metaphor is dealt with subtly in
The Golden Compass, it is not so in the second and third books. This is not intended in any way as a criticism. On the contrary, I am very much in sympathy with Pullman on the matter of organized religion (though I certainly do have other criticisms for HDM). But if one considers the degree of 'offence' taken at, for instance,
The Life of Brian, one will not be shocked at an outcry over a series of books in which . . . well, I won't say it, as I don't wish to spoil
The Amber Spyglass for anyone - but consider the Authority as portrayed in that book.
And yet, as you pointed out earlier, Pullman does not, in the end, come across as anti-religion in HDM. Anti-Islamo-Judeo-Christianity, even anti-organized religion, yes, but anti-religion no. And I suspect that for many Christians of the less extreme sort, the Dust comes closer to their conception of God than does the Authority. Whether this is a virtue or a flaw in HDM is another matter, of course.