Originally posted by: skyjedi2005
"By the end of the third book the protagonist, the little girl, kills God."

i hardly think pullman's god is the father of jesus christ and and spiritual author of the gospels as well as creator of the earth and heavens if a little girl can kill him. LOL yeah right so is this like pullmans admitting to being gay or something?

it's been a long time since I've read the book, but here goes. I was, at the time, not very religious, so I found nothing wrong with it. My friend, who practiced religion and goes to catholic school, also has no trouble with it. I take it as nothing more than a book.
"Pullman portrays the Christian heaven to be a lie. In the third book, the real afterlife is depicted as a bleak place where people are tormented by harpies until Lyra and Will descend into the land of the dead. Through their intercession, the harpies agree to stop tormenting the dead souls, and instead receive the true stories of the dead in exchange for leading them again to the upper world. When the dead souls emerge, they dissolve as they become one with the universe."
There's one problem you may have with it. (taken from wikipedia.) They also treat Lyra's world's God as merely the first angel, however that's wikipedia - from what I read, it only seemed to say that God is not as all-powerful as we think.
"support from other Christians, most notably Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who argues that Pullman's attacks are focused on the constraints and dangers of dogmatism and the use of religion to oppress, not on Christianity itself." His arguments about how the Church can be oppressing can be applied to all religions.
Well, I guess my point is that you can take it offensive if you want - I just take it as a book, IMO written very well.