I just glanced at it and instead got this
http://www.thegoodmanjesusandthescoundrelchrist.com/

Clever getting that domain registered and using it to sell Christian nonsense. Still you’ve got to wonder if registering the domain is a tacit admission of the statement.

However, I’m not sure if what he said really answered the question he was asked. I didn’t interpret the question as: “How dare you write something that I find offensive?! Your book ought to be banned!” Rather, I interpreted the question as asking: “Given the fact that some people are bound to be turned off by the title of your book, why did you choose that particular title?” It seemed to me like an honest inquiry into the thought process behind the writer’s craft rather than a thinly-veiled cry of “j’accuse!”

I heart Pullman’s speech here. Clear, concise, unambiguous, unapologetic. Bravo.

As to why an athiest would write about the Christian mythos: because he’s soaking in it! Why might any author, believer or non, might find fertile ground in the mythological underpinnings of the society in which she lives?

Seriously, the guy can — should — write whatever he wants to. But I do wonder why pretty much everything he writes is about christianity.

Got to love it when people cherry pick their religious observances.

“Do you have a right to say this?” is a different question entirely than “did you say this with the intent of offending people?”

I couldn’t agree more with the sentiment but it’s not necessarily a good defence here. Just because no one has the right not to be offended, doesn’t mean that Mr Pullman has the right to offend with impunity and without repercussion.

What do you mean by “repercussion”?

Also, he’s fully counting on, and even encouraging, people like you to call him an asshole. It’s your right.

So, again, what do you mean by “repercussions”?

Your question seems to ignore the exchange: he himself said, “And if you read it and you dislike it, you don’t have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book.” That doesn’t mean without impunity and without repercussion.

May I add that Pullman is just restating the definition of acceptable social discourse, the alternative to which is a threat to individual persons, and that this definition is nothing shocking to anyone for whom God isn’t simply a substitute for rich parents.

That’s what I get for reading the written summary instead of watching the actual video. I take back my earlier comment also.

“It was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say.”

…and the rest would be blindingly obvious even to those that hated it and wished it was not so. But there’s also the right to be an insensate and a fool and demand what is not your right, to be made law. So, Phillip Pullman has to waste his breath in telling the world what the sensible approach is regardless of opinion.

As Salman Rushdie said, when asked if he’d written SATANIC VERSES deliberately: ‘Of course. How can one NOT write a book deliberately?’

There is nothing easier to deflate than a complaint about something that the complainer has no first hand knowledge of.