AFA Issues Golden Compass Warning

This time in the great Golden Compass controversy, it’s the American Family Association raising alarms about this film’s supposed atheistic views.  While I certainly expect this sort of thing from the AFA (whose mailing list I am on in a “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” sort of way), I can’t help but roll my eyes.  The His Dark Materials trilogy certainly has a lot to say against organized religion and the corruption that power can bring to just about anything, but its religious views, if it could be said to have any, are both complex and ambiguous, while being liberally sprinkled with ideas both from gnosticism and classic philosophy.

While the AFA worries about the tone of The Golden Compass in one direction, long-time fans of Pullman’s work worry in another.  Will the books, which can be considered to be Paradise Lost fan fiction, be softened to appeal to a broader audience and to fit time constraints?