In place of God, Pullman has Dust. In George Lucas’ world it might be “the force.” This childish, simple-minded pantheism is supposed to liberate everyone from the horrible mistake of Christianity. (One of his hero characters says, “I thought physics could be done to the glory of God, till I saw there wasn’t any God at all and that physics was more interesting anyway. The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that's all.”)

…Pullman seems upset that Christianity teaches that we’re sinners…. Avoid this series altogether. It’s a sophomoric anti-Christian diatribe, but dangerous precisely because it is packaged as a fun series of books for young adults.”

Let us turn to Pullman himself and see what his philosophy is; in an interview with Huw Spanner for Third Way on 13th February 2002, he says:

“What were the values that were instilled into you?”

“The conventional middle-class ones of the time. My grandfather was a clergyman and so every Sunday I went to Sunday school and church. I was confirmed, I was a member of the choir, all that sort of stuff…”

“You’re not really giving us any clues to the source of the extreme antipathy to the Church in your books.”

“Well, all right, it comes from history. It comes from the record of the Inquisition, persecuting heretics and torturing Jews and all that sort of stuff; and it comes from the other side, too, from the Protestants burning the Catholics. It comes from the insensate pursuit of innocent and crazy old women, and from the Puritans in America burning and hanging the witches - and it comes not only from the Christian church but also from the Taliban. Every single religion that has a monotheistic god ends up by persecuting other people and killing them because they don’t accept him. Wherever you look in history, you find that. It's still going on.”

“In The Amber Spyglass, Mary Malone tells Lyra and Will that the Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake. Is that your opinion?”

“I think I'd agree with her, yes.”

“What do you find powerful and convincing about it?”

“It’s a very good story. It gives an account of the world and what we’re doing here that is intellectually coherent and explains a great deal. But then so do other stories. The Gnostic myth, for example, explains a great deal in a very different way. Very different. The Christian story gives us human beings a very important and prominent part. We are the ones who Jesus came to redeem from the consequences of sin, which our parents - you know. It is a very dramatic story and we are right at the heart of it, and a great deal depends on what we decide. This is an exciting position to be in, but unfortunately it doesn’t gel at all with the more convincing account that is given by Darwinian evolution - and the scientific account is far more persuasive intellectually. Far more persuasive. And, as I have said, there is another consequence of any belief in a single god, and that is that it is a very good excuse for people to behave very badly.