In fourteen hundred ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue
Movies such as The Golden Compass should by all means be criticized, and criticized vigorously. For Christians, to do otherwise would be the height of irresponsibility. Although the movie's release is now more than a year-and-a-half in the past, the potential damage from such a production is not. But before we look at the reasons why, let's squeeze aboard the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, and sail off to India with Christopher Columbus.
Now, what in the world could Christopher Columbus have to do with The Golden Compass, other than using a compass to get where he wanted to go? Well, let's all recall what we were taught, during our carefree school days, about Columbus' voyage.
If you were taught what I was, Christopher Columbus wanted to sail around the world for two reasons. First, he wanted to connect Spain to India, and thus to the East, to establish trade with that part of the world. Second, he wanted to prove the world was round, to overturn the prevailing viewpoint of scientists and the church - especially the latter- that the earth was flat, and any such voyage would sail right off the edge. And we were told he failed at the first, discovering America instead, but achieved the second. We were told wrong.
While researching his 1991 book, "Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and the Historians", professor and historian Jeffrey Burton Russell went in search of the earliest belief in a flat earth. He searched medieval Europe to no avail. He marched on back through the sands of time - all the way back to the 3rd century B.C. And he found that even that far back, a spherical earth was the rule among those with an education. But that surprise was nothing like the shock that awaited him when he tracked down the true source of the error.
Russell discovered that Christopher Columbus' quarrel with flat-earthers dated all the way back to ... um ... 1828. And its main promulgator was none other than a pioneer of the American historical novel, Washington Irving. How could this be? How could the author of such whimsical tales as "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" have launched an error that is still often taught today, even though most encyclopedias have long since excised it from their pages? The truth is, he had some help, and here it turns a little ugly and quite sinister.
The story of Columbus and the flat-earthers is contained in Irving's historical novel "The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus." Irving places Columbus at a council at Salamanca, where the would-be explorer must overcome the objections of the hooded churchmen who oppose him on the basis of their flat earth beliefs. There was, of course, a real council at that location, but a flat earth was not part of it, since nobody believed in such a thing. That part was pure fiction, dreamed up by Washington Irving. But, according to Russell, it played right into the hands of someone waiting in the wings.
"This vast web of falsehood," Russell writes, "was invented and propagated by the influential historian John Draper (1811-1882) and many prestigious followers, such as Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918), the president of Cornell University, who made sure that the false account was perpetrated in texts, encyclopedias, and even allegedly serious scholarship, down to the present day. A lively current version of the lie can be found in Daniel Boorstin's 'The Discoverers,' found in any bookshop or library." But why would anyone do such a thing - especially an educator? Russell provides the answer.
The purpose was to support the wider lie that religion and science were natural enemies in the Western world, and to thus promote Darwinism. The intent, he says, was to make Christians look stupid. "The flat-earth lie was ammunition against the creationists," Russell writes. It worked then, and it still does.
To this very day, children are taught this lie, and for the same reason that Russell points out. And so what if it's a lie? After all, if there is no God, there is no problem. Without Him, there are no absolutes, and in the view of the godless elite, whatever works is fair. This same kind of relativism cost millions their lives in officially atheistic countries in one century alone, when the godless elite - bearing names like Mao, Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot - decided mass murder was the thing to do. Apparently, ideas really do have consequences.
And thus we complete our voyage around the world, and arrive home with one question. What does all this have to do with The Golden Compass? The answer is stark and brutal.
The movie is but a dumbed-down advertisement for the book series. But again, so what? It is, after all, nothing but a fictional series. If parents watch the movie, and find no harm in it, why not let children read the books? The answer is simple.
The movie glosses over the harsher parts of the first story specifically to avoid offending, and thereby alerting, Christian parents. The books, by all accounts, become progressively more and more strongly atheistic. The series was written by strident atheist Philip Pullman, whose writing would sow the seeds of that bleak philosophy into the fertile and defenseless minds of children. Thus, their parents must be constantly defensive on their behalf. Remember, nobody objected to Washington Irving's fictional portrayal of European churchmen in his Columbus book, but in the hands of Darwinists with an agenda, look where it led. Fiction or not, anything that slithers out from the darkness of falsehood must be placed squarely in the spotlight of truth, especially if aimed at children.
The Golden Compass is but one film in need of critique. Any sequels to it must also do their time in the light. When asked about the furor, Pullman, quoted by another essayist on this topic, merely shrugged it off. "I am a story teller," he said. "If I wanted to send a message, I would have written a sermon."
Apparently the author just doesn't quite understand. So, it might profit us to remind him. Washington Irving was only a story-teller too, Mr. Pullman.
Washington Irving was only a story-teller, too.