I have NOT. (now, hold..hear me out.)
I've merely read the plot summaries on Wiki, and a couple of the interviews he's had on Guardian, etc.
I do not watch network news, and am STRONGLY reticent to follow the herd mentality on the web...I can assure you.
Furthermore, my fascist radar goes bonkers when I hear "book ban" or even "boycott."
I -DO NOT- support the squelching of this author.
In fact, I agree with him and with you likely that he explores some interesting alternative conceptualization of morality etc...even not reading the book. (BTW, his concepts are not that difficult to understand through his interviews. He doesn't have the breadth of Machiavelli...not that hard to figure out!)
What I think is deplorable, as a conservative, is his focus on delivering these concepts to immature minds via childrens books and movies.
OTOH, you may think I'm hyprocritical when I say that I embrace CS Lewis's attempts to introduce Christian concepts to children.
Why?
Because I am a Burkian conservative.
I believe that first and foremost, consistency with and a reverence for the wisdom of our elders trumps the most recent good idea.
Even if Pullman is right and Christianity is a cruel hoax and The Almighty is a senile fool, then according to conservatism, the worst thing to do to humanity is to yank the rug out from under it instantaneously. It should be introduced gradually, over dozens of generations....NOT in one fell swoop.
Free love, homosexuality, open-marriages, joy killings, embezzlement, communism, slavery, abortion, cloning....these are all experiments in humanity---which---have and some day may be commonly accepted as good for society. Burke believes that even though computers and technology progresses, that inter-human relations don't change that much over time and the long human experiment has pretty much provided the answers to what is basically right and wrong by the time Christ came around.
If Pullman had written the trilogy as a philosophical treatise, or a pulp-fiction series for adults, then maybe he could begin to counter the decisions of moral time.
But by chossing to destabilize the foundations of faith at the immature children's level, that's simply something that is anti-conservative, and I perceive that every bit as hurtful to children as any other abuse.
Let CHILDREN grapple with his new concepts after they have a strong understanding of philosophy from the Greeks and the Apostles and the Renaissance first!
In my opinion, Pullman is using children in his experiments in the same nefarious way as his 'evil' Magisterium does...
Liberalism is the adolescent arrogance that they know everything, their elders are idiots, and we'd have world peace and happiness if everyone would just adopt this or that latest new wave. And children are naturally liberal because they are omnicient at birth and only become aware of their ignorance and mortality as they age over 30.
To be honest, I expected little more than a denunciation. What I got was a well thought-out response, with little I can or will argue with. Thank you.
Firstly, I see most children’s fiction as something that should not be aiming to deliver a particular point of view, and, while I honestly don’t see the series as something that gives a resoundingly atheist worldview to children (rather, the story is delivered, like most good children’s fiction, on two levels - a more basic plotline for the younger readers, and a more advanced philosophical view-in for older readers).
And whilst I dislike the whole idea of indoctrinating a child with ANY belief, my support for the book tends to stem more from the C.S Lewis “factor”, as many people decry his ‘indoctrination’, whilst calmly ignoring other examples of the same thing.
Many facets of Burkian conservatism appeal to me - primarily that we should not simply throw away the accumulated knowledge of the past in favor of future speculation. That sort of thing, I feel, is what allows liberalism to ignore the failure of previous policies, such as those of appeasement.
However, I don’t feel he’s trying to sweep away an old order with his children’s fiction. A good comparison to draw here, I find, is with the steroetypical militant atheist’s book, the God Delusion. Whilst His Dark Materials are in some way aimed at changing the viewpoints of those who read them, it is less of an overt movement, and more of those expressed by the author as his morality and personality would dictate.
When you are talking about the slow change of society, those sorts of books are those least likely to attempt to bring about rapid change, as opposed to manifestos such as the God Delusion.
I find most children’s fiction reprehensible for the sole reason that the moniker “children’s fiction” is so often used to push a particular lifestyle viewpoint. While I believe a certain general moral belief can be expressed (in many children’s books where you tend to have the child protagonist do something wrong, such as hit a sibling, and receive consequences accordingly), espousing a particular worldview to the exclusion of all others for a child is, in my view, morally repugnant.
However, in the same vein, I believe that children’s fiction cannot be wholly blamed, or scarcely blamed at all, for any changes in belief. It is the duty of the parents (and, if you go to a public school, perhaps the state in some measure, though I do not advocate this), to ensure children have an upbringing that allows them to make their own choices.
That is what prevents any real condemnation of such fiction, in my eyes. Such viewpoints can be communicated by the parents regardless of whether or not such books exist.