{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2770",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 2770,
    "subject": "Pullman nearly lost me...",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-08-07T09:55:21+00:00",
    "last": "2001-08-07T09:55:21+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0617@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes",
        "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com"
      },
      "date": "2001-08-07T09:55:21+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Pullman nearly lost me...",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Perhaps you recall my saying that the ending of Chapter Two of TGC\ncaptured me totally?\n\nChapter Two of TSK very nearly lost me. I refer to a speech by \nRuta Wossername, the guest witch queen, to the effect that all\nchurches are evile because \"that is what Churches do: control,\ndestroy, obliterate every good feeling.\"\n\nAssuming (which I grant is something of an assumption) that \nthis is the point of view Pullman subscribes to -- it lacks\na certain basic integrity. \n\nThere are plenty of valid arguments for an anti-clerical \nviewpoint; but to say, in the face of the thousands, probably \nmillions, of people who experience good feelings in, and as \nresult of, their churches [and I'm taking this word, in the \ncontext of an anti-clerical rant, to mean pretty much any \norganized or hierarchical religion, from Catholicism to the \nO.T.O., to Scientology, to the various Eastern cults that center \non obedience to a guru or master), so please don't think I'm \noffering any apologia for Christianity or any particular flavor \nthereof at this time], that destroying and obliterating every\ngood feeling is what Churches do -- well, it's intellectual\ndishonesty.\n\nCan Pullman get away with it? _Almost_; it's being said by a \ncharacter in a world where \"the Church\" is a monolithic, evil\nthing. If she'd said \"that's what the Church does,\" it would\nhave been fine. But by speaking of \"Churches,\" she's prophesying, \nspeaking of all-churches-everywhere-and-at-all-times, and it's\nbushwah.\n\nNo, it hasn't ruined the book (so far). The book nearly hit\nthe wall at that point, but the goodwill Pullman had gathered\nin the first volume kept me going.\n\nOne other observation: I feel some discontinuity between Lyra's\ncharacter in TGC and what I've seen so far (about 80 pg) in TSK.\nI'm not sure why but I feel it.\n\n--Dan'l"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}