by Adam R. Holz

Sympathy for the Devil

A gargantuan polar bear bounds through snow dunes. A well-coifed gentleman whispers to the snow leopard at his side. A golden-hued beauty gives her ferocious monkey a furtive glance. And a young girl traces her fingers over symbols on a device vaguely reminiscent of … a compass.

If you’ve been to the movies lately (or watched much TV), these images from the Dec. 7 film The Golden Compass (starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig) may have caught your attention … and perhaps even whetted your appetite for fantasy and adventure.

Which is, of course, exactly what New Line Cinema is hoping.

To stoke the fires of imagination further, the studio’s early promotional material went so far as to equate this adaptation of author Philip Pullman’s work with The Lord of the Rings. “In 2001, New Line Cinema opened the door to Middle-earth,” says one trailer, “This December, they take you on another epic journey.” It’s a safe bet, however, that J.R.R. Tolkien wouldn’t be amused by the comparison of his story to that of Pullman (who, coincidentally, also hails from Oxford).

The 1995 book The Golden Compass is the entry point to Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy—a series of fantasy novels aimed at children that loosely draws inspiration from John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost. This time around, however, “God” gets overthrown and the “Fall” becomes the source of humankind’s redemption, not failure.

These three books, along with at least one (and presumably two more) movies, constitute British agnostic Philip Pullman’s deliberate attempt to foist his viciously anti-God beliefs upon his audience.

A Different Kind of Wardrobe
The Golden Compass begins with a precocious 12-year-old girl named Lyra clambering into a wardrobe to avoid detection … a choice that unwittingly launches her into a universe-altering adventure. (Sound familiar?) Lurking in the wardrobe, she hears her uncle, an iconoclastic explorer named Lord Asriel, describe a mysterious substance called Dust to a group of scholars.

Several events then occur almost simultaneously: Lyra is given a truth-telling device called an alethiometer (the golden compass) and told to keep it secret; she begins to hear rumors of children disappearing without a trace; and she’s whisked into the care of a glamorous but ruthless agent of the church named Mrs. Coulter. Lyra soon discovers that the church is also desperate to learn about Dust—a substance they believe is somehow connected to original sin—and that Mrs. Coulter is spearheading chilling experiments on children in her pursuit of “truth.” Specifically, she’s separating children from their dæmons (pronounced demon), animal spirits that physically embody each person’s soul and accompany them throughout life.

As The Golden Compass draws to a close, the forces of good (represented by the church-rejecting Lord Asriel) have begun to array themselves against the forces of tyranny and wickedness (represented by Mrs. Coulter and churchmen who blend the worst of, say, the Spanish Inquisition and Adolf Hiter’s dreaded SS). The battle will span not only Lyra’s world, but many other alternate worlds. In Vol. 2, The Subtle Knife, Lyra meets 12-year-old Will, who comes into possession of a potent blade with the power to slice portals between those worlds. The Amber Spyglass concludes the series, with angels, armored bears, witches, a shaman, a lapsed nun-turned-physicist and other fantastical creatures marshalling their resources against the hated Authority—the “god” whose reign they can tolerate no longer—even as the mystery of Dust is finally resolved.

The Anti-Lewis
There are no shortage of parallels between His Dark Materials and C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series. Lyra instead of Lucy. A wardrobe. Alternate worlds. Talking animals. Cosmic consequences linked to a final battle. Oh, and witches—this time on the side of so-called good rather than evil.

But beyond those superficial similarities, Pullman represents the polar opposite of Lewis. Pullman has repeatedly—and with apparent glee—lashed out at both Lewis and the faith he represents. “I hate the Narnia books, and I hate them with a deep and bitter passion,” he told one interviewer, “with their view of childhood as a golden age from which sexuality and adulthood are a falling-away.”

Such venom isn’t the exception when it comes to Pullman’s stance on all things Christian. He told the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph, “Atheism suggests a degree of certainty that I’m not quite willing to accede. I suppose technically, you’d have to put me down as an agnostic. But if there is a God, and he is as the Christians describe him, then he deserves to be put down and rebelled against. As you look back over the history of the Christian church, it’s a record of terrible infamy and cruelty and persecution and tyranny. How they have the bloody nerve to go on Thought for the Day and tell us all to be good when, given the slightest chance, they’d be hanging the rest of us and flogging the homosexuals and persecuting the witches.”

Given such ferocious antipathy for Christianity, it’s only a matter of time before those beliefs sneak into heavy-handed sermonettes, delivered by the story’s protagonists, such as this one from a witch: “There are churches there, believe me, that cut their children too, as the people of Bolvangar did—not in the same way, but just as horribly. They cut their sexual organs, yes, both boys and girls; they cut them with knives so that they shan’t feel. That is what the church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling.” Without exception, Pullman characterizes churches and anyone connected to them as agents of wickedness, oppression, torture, murder and malevolence.

A Tale of Two Insights
Still, Pullman wants his readers to believe he’s more interested in telling a good story (and his is engaging at points) than delivering a particular message. On his personal Web site, he writes, “The meaning of a story emerges in the meeting between the words on the page and thoughts in the reader’s mind. So when people ask me what I meant by this story, or what was the message I was trying to convey in that one, I have to explain that I’m not going to explain. Anyway, I’m not in the message business; I’m in the ‘Once upon a time’ business.”

Don’t believe him.

Not the least because Pullman contradicts himself when he talks about his understanding of how stories naturally influence people’s beliefs. “All stories teach,” he’s said, “whether the storyteller intends them to or not. They teach the world we create. They teach the morality we live by. They teach it much more effectively than moral precepts and instructions. … We don’t need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do’s and don’ts: We need books, time and silence. ‘Thou shalt not’ is soon forgotten.”

That is a more honest and insightful statement than the first one.

Therefore, it’s a fair question for those curious about this story to ask what it is teaching. At the most basic level, His Dark Materials is an attempted refutation of the Christian faith: “The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that’s all,” says an influential character named Mary Malone, who then goes on to relate her own “testimony” of why she abandoned her calling as a nun.

Other messages woven into this story exalt witchcraft, evolution, divination, homosexuality and premarital sex. Accompanying them are smoking, drinking, occasional mild profanity and moments of visceral violence.

That Pullman’s message is blasphemous and heretical goes without saying. What’s more diabolical—a word carrying with it an original Greek meaning that literally means to separate into two pieces—is the fact that he’s aimed his well-written tale and its messages directly at children. “I wanted to reach everyone,” he says, “and the best way I could hope to do that was to write for children.” Pullman’s strategy for inculcating his beliefs involves planting these bad seeds in the minds of those who may not have the discernment to understand what he’s doing.

Beliefnet’s Rod Dreher writes that that’s exactly why he intends to protect his children from Pullman’s poisonous influence. “One expects that religious parents will keep their children away from the [Golden Compass] film. ‘But why?’ the question arises from liberals. ‘What are you afraid of?’ My children losing God, especially before they have a firm hold on Him, that’s what. At some point they will question the existence of God. I did. It’s normal to do so. I want more than anything else I want for my children, even their own happiness in this life, for them to believe in God, who is their salvation. If you believe in God, and that the loss of God is the worst thing that can happen to a person, then you would sooner give your child a rattlesnake to play with than expose him or her at an early age to the work of a man who openly says he wishes to destroy God in the minds of his audience.”

Trying to Kill God
Pullman has said unambiguously, “My books are about killing God.” But despite a great deal of publicity on this subject, the series never addresses the issue of God’s existence with any real certainty. There is a character who masquerades as God, known as the Authority. But we discover he was simply the first being to evolve—and there’s definitely a heavy emphasis on evolution in this story—out of Dust into conscious existence.

As to whether or not a real Creator is responsible for everything, however, another character says simply, “There may have been a creator, or there may not: We don’t know.” Ultimately, then, the story remains agnostic about God’s existence. And with regard to death and the afterlife, Pullman first imagines a dark underworld where all the dead go, regardless of their actions or beliefs. The dead are then released by Lyra, and their molecules are dispersed throughout the world.

Pullman tries desperately to convince us that this vision of annihilation after death is a hopeful one. One of the dead contemplating this fate says, “This child has come offering us a way out, and I’m going to follow her. Even if it means oblivion, friends, I’ll welcome it, because it won’t be nothing. We’ll be alive again in thousands of blades of grass and a million leaves; we’ll be falling in the raindrops and blowing in the fresh breeze; we’ll be glittering in the dew under the stars and the moon out there in the physical world, which is our true home and always was.”

If that doesn’t sound much like happily ever after, that’s because, well, it isn’t. In the final analysis, Pullman has nothing of substance to offer when it comes to concocting an alternative to the Christian faith he detests so venomously. Which is why, perhaps, flowery-but-empty passages and promises like the one above seem to echo those of a well-known serpent.

And lest that comparison sound too harsh, the author himself seems quite comfortable with the association. “[English poet William] Blake said that Milton was a true poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it,” Pullman has said. “I am of the Devil’s party and know it.”

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This is an article from www.foxnews.com. I would also add to the discussion, everyday clothes for girls. A pushup bra, low cut top and mini skirt is not OK for a 12 year old. Pediphiles don’t look at them as cute little girls. It is the wrong way to get attention.

WWW.FOXNEWS.COM

GRRR! Halloween Pedophiles
Monday , October 29, 2007

By Mike Straka
 Parents beware: the pedophiles will be out in full force on Wednesday, while your kids are out trick-or-treating in their Halloween costumes.

And little do you know that you might be helping child predators live out their fantasies by allowing your kids to wear inappropriate costumes?

In a simple Web search for “preteen” costumes — for ages 7 through 12 — I found several costumes that would make many a pervert’s day.

For instance, I saw one called “Mega Star,” which might as well be called “Britney in ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’ Video Costume.” In other words, NO.

Of course, if that’s not colorful enough for your 8-year-old, you can always shell out for the “Leopard Rock Star,” which — with its midriff-baring top — is sure to get the blood boiling for pedophiles everywhere.

At PartyCity.com, by first clicking Halloween and then girls, you’ll be treated to pics of prepubescent girls who make even the most ridiculous JonBenet Ramsey beauty pageant photos look tame in comparison. “Winners” include the “Bad Spirit” cheerleader’s costume.

More and more Halloween costumes for young girls have become so inappropriate that even the most jaded parents are turning to Disney characters by the droves, just so their daughters don’t look like hookers on Wednesday.

To paraphrase Tina Fey, who wrote the film “Mean Girls,” “Halloween is the one day of the year when girls can dress like sluts and nobody can talk about them.” The scene then goes on to feature a teenage girl wearing lingerie and stating when asked what she’s supposed to be, “I’m a bunny.”

Look, when it comes to adults, I’m all for it, as you can see from this piece I did with FOX News entertainment correspondent Jill Dobson over the weekend.

Hey, mom and dad … when your daughters become adults, they can dress as naughty as they’d like. But what’s the rush? Why say yes all the time? When did our children’s innocence get so lost?

Sure, we can blame the Britney revolution or the Paris era, but we all know what happened to those two. Britney lost her kids and Paris went to jail. No, it’s not enough to blame celebrities and the media that cover them.

It’s time to blame the parents.

Moms and dads, put your foot down and say no to the whining tween who wants to dress like a scantily clad woman and trick-or-treat looking like a prostitot, or head to the local party where Joe Jock’s parents are out of town looking like Julia Roberts in the opening scene of “Pretty Woman.”

It’s a recipe for trouble. You can’t always be your children’s friend. Here’s an idea: for Halloween this year, try dressing yourself up as your kids’ parents. That might be the best treat they’ll get this year.
 

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The question has come up, should a Christian date? Before you dismiss it as a silly question. Let’s look at it from a purely Christian perspective. If you are a Christian, do you believe God has your spouse already picked out for you? Like Isaac you could be praying and look up and there is your spouse, the perfect person, that God has picked for you. If this is true for today also, then why would you date? By date I mean be in a relationship with someone not just go to the movies. Someone you are investing some time in, without knowing if this is the right person THAT person God has picked for you. If you are investing time in the relationship that you are not sure of, fall in love then things don’t work out are you setting a precident for your marriage? Well I’m in love with you now, but if it doesn’t work out, I’ll just breakup with you like a bad relationship. My question is, why even get that close to someone you are not sure is the ONE. You could end up settling for that person just because you have invested time in them. Our culture has cheapened relationships to the point where it is ok to share the most intimate part of yourself with someone then just walk away. No wonder divorce is so common. I think we need to take a whole new look at dating. I know I have. 

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I have been watching world events for several years and how they fit into Bible prophecy. We know that Jesus said that the generation that sees Jerusalem back into Jewish hands would not pass away before He returns for those who are born again and surrendered to Him. You may wonder why I am saying born again AND surrendered to Him. I think there is a huge difference between someone who goes to an altar and says they believe that Jesus is the son of God and someone who believes and turns away from their past life and dedicates themselves to God and His will for them. It is not OK to continue living in and practicing sin day in and day out and think because you went to an altar one time that you will be saved from hell. That is deception. It is not OK to be a ”church worker”, ”pew sitter”, ”brother and sister judger” or never ever open the Word of God or hit the floor with your knees in prayer. Paul said that to sacrifice our lives is just our reasonable service for what Jesus did for us. Many of us have fallen (me especially) and not lived up to what God would have for us, however, He loves us. His desire is that no one perish. You may have been judged harshly by religious people. Forget them, they are sinning for judging. God is not happy with them. He loves you. He wants you back. Turn to Him, He will help you find your way.  Christian examine yourself what are you putting ahead of God. Are you too busy to read the Bible and pray? Do you try to do what the Bible says to do? Are you committed to putting God first? Can you wake up an hour earlier and spend it in prayer before you start your day? Do you have time to speak to someone about your Lord or help someone who needs it? I know I am guilty of being way too busy. These words are not meant to condemn, but to make you think. Deception is a huge tool of the enemy. he will let you think you are doing just fine and will enter into heaven. How do you know you are doing ok if you never open the word of God? Do you just trust what someone else says? That is a huge chance to take. Heaven is a real place and so is hell. Time is very short. Just take a minute and think about where you are in your life with God. Are you ready to leave this earth or more importantly are you ready to stay and fulfill God’s plan for your life? Think about it. 

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I don’t know who else feels this way but wouldn’t you sometimes just like to put on your best prairie skirt and sell flowers by the road instead of being chained to an office all day long?

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Mulch Your Spring Flower Bulbs in the Fall for a Beautiful Spring Display 
by Michael J. McGroarty 

http://gardening-articles.com

Flower bulbs need a good, long, winters sleep. Like some people we know, if they wake up before they are fully rested, they get kind of cranky, and then they don’t bloom well at all. 

Actually what happens is during a mild winter, the soil stays too warm, and the bulbs begin to come out of dormancy early. They start to grow, and once the tips emerge above the soil line, they are subject to freezing if the temperatures dip back down below freezing. And that’s usually what happens. After the bulbs have emerged, they freeze and then don’t bloom at all, or if they do it’s a very sad display. 

Another reason this happens is because the bulbs are not planted deep enough. They may have been deep enough when you planted them, but as the soil goes through the freezing and thawing process, the bulbs can actually work their way up in the ground. One way to keep your flower bulbs sleeping longer, which will protect them from freezing, is to mulch the bed. 

In the fall just apply a 3-4” layer of well composted mulch. This layer of mulch will do a couple of things. It will maintain a higher moisture content in the soil, which is good, as long as the soil isn’t too soggy. Well composted mulch also adds valuable organic matter to the planting bed. Organic matter makes a great natural fertilizer. 

A 3-4” layer of mulch also acts as an insulator. It will keep the soil from freezing for a while, which is good because you don’t want the bulbs going through a series of short cycles of freezing and thawing. Then when the temperatures drop below freezing and stay there for a while, the soil does eventually freeze. Then the mulch actually works in reverse and keeps the soil from thawing out too early. Keeping it in a frozen state is actually good because the bulbs remain dormant for a longer period of time. 

When they finally do wake up it is spring time, and hopefully by the time they emerge from the ground the danger of a hard freeze is past and they will not be damaged. If you can keep them from freezing, they will flower beautifully. The extra organic matter will help to nourish the bulbs when they are done blooming, and the cycle starts all over again. 

We also plant annual flowers in the same beds with our spring bulbs. By the time the danger of frost is past and it’s time to plant the annuals, the top of the bulbs have died back and are ready to be removed. The mulch that is added in the fall also helps to nourish the annual flowers, as well as improve the soil permanently. Anytime you add well composted organic matter to your planting beds, you are bound to realize multiple benefits. The key words here are “well composted”. Fresh material is not good.

Michael J. McGroarty is the author of this article.  Visit his most interesting website, http://www.freeplants.com and sign up for his excellent gardening newsletter.  Article provided by http://gardening-articles.com.  If you use this article the above two links must be active.

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How Brilliant Marketing Transformed America
By David Kupelian
Impact Newsletter
D. James Kennedy, Coral Ridge Ministries

As Americans, we’ve come to tolerate, embrace, and even champion many things that would have horrified our parents’ generation. Things like abortion-on-demand virtually up to the moment of birth, judges banning the Ten Commandments from public places, a national explosion of middle-school sex, the slow starvation of the disabled, thousands of homosexuals openly flouting the law and getting “married,” and online porn creating late-night sex addicts in millions of middle-class homes.
     At the same time, our courts have scrubbed America’s school rooms surgically clean of every vestige of the religion on which this nation was founded—Christianity.
     Indeed, in 50 years we’ve gone from a nation unified by traditional Judeo-Christian values to one in which those same values are increasingly scorned, rejected, and demonized.
     What’s going on? Are today’s Americans inherently more morally confused and depraved than previous generations?

Repackaging Evil
     Of course not. But we have been taken in—big-time—by some of the boldest and most brilliant marketing campaigns in modern history.
     A generation ago, in his perceptive best seller The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard explained how Madison Avenue was greedily using knowledge of mass manipulation gleaned from modern psychology and psychiatry to induce us to buy everything from cigarettes to cars to soap.
     But do we really think modern marketing’s sophisticated and powerful propaganda techniques are being used just to sell soap? No, there are far more precious commodities being sold to us every day—namely, new beliefs and, especially, new feelings about things we formerly rejected. And we’ve bought some whoppers in recent years.
     The plain truth is, within the space of our lifetimes, much of what Americans once almost universally abhorred has been packaged, perfumed, gift-wrapped, and sold to us as though it had great value.
     By skillfully playing on our deeply felt national values of fairness, generosity, and tolerance, these marketers have persuaded us to embrace as enlightened and noble that which all previous generations since America’s founding regarded as grossly self-destructive—in a word, evil.
     In his classic book, People of the Lie, Dr. M. Scott Peck reflects on what “evil” actually means:

It is a reflection of the enormous mystery of the subject that we do not have a generally accepted definition of evil. Yet in our hearts I think we all have some understanding of its nature. For the moment I can do no better than to heed my son, who, with the characteristic vision of eight-year-olds, explained simply, “Why, Daddy, evil is ‘live’ spelled backward.” Evil is in opposition to life. It is that which opposes the life force.

     Peck also points out that people caught up with evil are liars, “deceiving others as they also build layer upon layer of self-deception.” The marketers of evil not only lie to us continually—and to themselves—but the purpose of their lies is to promote behavior and beliefs that oppose life.

Marketing Abortion, Sex, “Gay Rights”
     For instance, most people believe—in accord with our modern cultural mythology—that the “abortion rights” and “gay rights” movements were spontaneous grassroots uprisings of neglected or persecuted minorities wanting to breathe free. Few people realize America was actually “sold” on abortion thanks to an audacious, calculated, and brazenly deceptive public relations plan that relied heavily on lies and fabrications—as the campaign’s cofounder confesses in these pages. Or that giant corporations voraciously competing for America’s $150 billion teen market routinely infiltrate young people’s social groups with undercover “culture spies” to find out how better to lead children into ever more debauched forms of “authentic self-expression.”
     Few of us realize that the widely revered father of the “sexual revolution” has been irrefutably exposed as a full-fledged sexual psychopath who encouraged pedophilia and whose vaunted “scientific surveys” included interviewing incarcerated sex offenders and prostitutes while pretending they were typical World War II–era Americans. Or that the “gay rights” movement—which transformed America’s former view of homosexuals as self-destructive “deviants” into their current status as victims and cultural heroes—is following an in-depth, published plan laid out by professional Harvard-trained marketers.

The plain truth is, within the space of our lifetimes, much of what Americans once almost universally abhorred has been packaged, perfumed, gift-wrapped, and sold to us as though it had great value. 

     But beyond exposing these campaigns by today’s not-so-hidden persuaders who have transformed modern America, this book will show you how the marketing juggernaut continues at full-throttle into the present. You’ll see—often in the marketers’ own words—exactly how corruption, selfishness, and foolishness are expertly positioned and packaged so as to make them appear enlightened, liberated, and even spiritually advanced. In effect, turning reality on its head.
     How can this be happening in America? How does child molesting become “man-boy love”? How does crushing a baby’s skull and sucking out his brains become a “constitutional right”? How does quoting the Bible become “hate speech”? How exactly is evil made to appear good, and good made to appear evil? How has America—which still boasts an 80 percent Christian population—seen fit to embrace what can only be called a culture of death, rather than a culture of life?
     We’re about to discover how all this has been accomplished—right before our eyes. Think of this book as an up-close, modern-day look at what is traditionally known as temptation—the “art and science” of making evil look attractive by appealing to the weaknesses in all of us that invite such deception.
     Thus, while we’re discovering why, when, where, and how phony experts and social revolutionaries have sold us the lies that now threaten the future of the greatest nation in history, we’ll also discover something else: we’ll see clearly how the moral confusion and relativism that have permeated the West, especially since the 1960s, have made us ripe for all this deception—and more. And that’s a critically important part of the story.

Breaking the Spell
     After all, if we don’t understand what the marketers of evil in this world are doing—and especially if we don’t comprehend our own inherent flaws that allow us to be conned—our fate is already sealed. But when we finally come to understand, with crystal clarity, the subtle seductions and bold manipulations that have led our culture into captivity, the spell is broken and we’re free.
     It’s that simple. If we know the marketer is a con man, we just tell him to get lost.
     We’ll start our exploration of the marketing of evil with one of today’s most successful and intimidating public relations campaigns—the selling of homosexuality to America. The explanations by “gay rights” marketers of their own tactics of mass manipulation are so amazingly clear and brazen that they will enhance your understanding of all that follows throughout the book.

Excerpted with permission from The Marketing of Evil, published by Cumberland House Publishing, © David Kupelian.

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