The Whitbread prize-winning children's writer Philip Pullman has dismissed his best-selling predecessor CS Lewis as "blatantly racist" and "monumentally disparaging of women".
Pullman, attacked by a rightwing columnist as "the most dangerous author in Britain" and "semi-satanic", is celebrated for a trilogy which deliberately takes an opposite line to CS Lewis's Christian tales. In Pullman's world, the universe is ruled by a senile, viciously sadistic deity who has to be deposed in battle so that its inhabitants can join with angels in creating a "republic of heaven".
His impassioned discussion of imagination, spirituality and the poverty of modern secularism chimed with the themes of a 65-minute lecture given to one of the festival's biggest audiences by the archbishop.
A republic of heaven! What an interesting idea! Pullman can't mean a republic though.. He must mean a democracy. Republics have representatives who assume the power of the individual and make decisions for him. Better a democracy where all have a voice in what is approved and disapproved.
That idea stands the test if biology takes us past the point of being able to create ourselves. That idea would make God alive and visible. That idea makes each idividual responsible for themselves.
We have no idea where current discoveries in biology will lead us. We can't say what life is. Without knowing what life is, how do we know what death is? Some regard life as information. Information that is made physical and actual by being expressed in material and actuated by energy. As biology takes us closer and closer to knowing what that material and energy are, will we be able to create ourselves. Some say no! In fact, they scream it, but the test is upon us. We will have an answer. Suppose the answer is a creature that is created by us, that looks talks and acts like us and claims to have a soul. A creature made by man from common materials and energy.
Yes, a Republic of Heaven can stand in that world. A vastly superior, creator God would have to be explained in that world for sure!Tags: God, biology, creation, theology, Philip Pullman, CS Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia, Information, Energy, Culture
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