His Dark Materials trilogy: The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass, by Phillip Pullman
If I had a dollar for every time the Christian "establishment" has declared something in pop culture to be of or from the devil, from Elvis Presley to Harry Potter, I'd be rich. And I don't mean that derisively. Anything of mass popularity has the potential to draw people from God so, in a generalized way, almost everything is of the devil. That's why I've never joined in with group-think even within the social communities that I belong to and identify with because more times than not, the group-think messaging ends up being ill informed panic spreading. However, in the case of these books, they actually got it right. They are almost literally of the devil. The atheist's answer to Narnia, God is merely a sentient and malevolent scientific phenomenon and, in a bid to have it both ways, the way to defeat this authority hinges on the writer's misguided idea of original sin as being the virtue that must be repeated in order to save the world(s). (There's so much misguided ignorance and a perpetuation of every depressing notion that caters to people who want to believe in the evils of Christianity.) Yes, it's as weird as it sounds. That's all the detail I'll go into about it though. I'd rather not dive into philosophical discussions unless it's with others who have read the books since there's some denominational specificity to the underlying narrative.
I'm not even sure of how much popularity it actually had. I'd never heard of it until they adapted the first book, The Golden Compass, and the controversy may have thrown more attention on it than what it generated on its own. It's just such a shame because after reading them, I found that I genuinely couldn't help but like these books. They are so well written with creative scifi/fantasy world building elements that have little or nothing to do with the religious, or rather, anti religious overtones. There's a multiverse and a specially made knife that enables people to travel between alternate worlds. One world is our own, but the main world is Lyra's steampunk world in which people's souls are physically represented by animals that they have to keep safe with them, as well as talking bears and witches when more magic is needed than science. Then there's another that is peopled only with societies of intelligent, non Terran like beasts that have very different skeletal structures and means of mobility. So there's a lot of imaginative variety. The characters are three dimensional and are easy to become fully and quickly invested in. They grow, mature, and even change alignments. Even if the growth seems to be in the wrong direction from a believer's perspective, the point is that they're not written stagnantly as vapid vehicles to push the religion of atheism. The tensions and motivations aren't saturated with the agenda either. Pullman is so blunt and honest about his beliefs that he doesn't need to keep beating away at them with endless hints, allegory, and preachy dialog.
Of course all of this adds to the temptation to see it as the right way to believe. Devilishly clever? 😂 It's a kid's series but I would absolutely not recommend it be shown to any children unless you're an atheist who wants to hand down your faith to your child. I can't deny though that I recommend it to adult lovers of science fiction and fantasy who are secure enough in whatever their beliefs are to remain disconnected from the sad affront to religion, especially Christianity. Isn't it strange that Christianity is the only religion that offends so deeply that people feel compelled to attack it so vehemently? That only solidifies my belief in it even more strongly.
