Feeling a little better now...

I think my fever might have finally gone away for good. It has been 4 hours and no fever. And I actually was able to get my house cleaned up and dishes done. My house still has a ton of work to be done but at least it doesn't look like a tornado ripped through it!

Ok here are my thoughts on The Golden Compass.
Lyra - main character, a child free from dust or sin
Daemons - agency or your true self
Magisterium - the church
Lord Asriel - good guy, Lyra thinks he's her uncle and finds out that he is her father
Mrs Coulter - head of an organization of the church. She is stealing children and experimenting on them. Lyra finds out she is her mother.
DUST - Sin, it only shows up in certain kinds of photographs and only on adults not children.
City in the sky (aurora) - hell, it is the source of the dust.
The Alethiometer or Golden Compass - ouija board, it answers any question that Lyra asks of it. And it is powered by the same energy from the dust.
Lyra escapes from Mrs Coulter and finds refuge in a Gyptian clan. They have connections with a clan of witches who also help her. The witch queen says that Lyra has a destiny to fulfill but she must not know she is doing it. Lyra is the one who will eventually "kill God". The church is doing horrible things in order to prevent this dust from collecting around people. So Lyra is confused about who is good and who is bad. She decided in the the end of this book that if Mrs Coulter is bad and Lord Asriel who betrays her is bad and they are afraid of Dust then dust must be good. Lord Asriel is trying to get to the city in the sky so he can find the source of the dust and destroy it. So Lyra decides to follow him into the city in the sky to stop him from destroying the dust.

I wonder why the author made it that Lyra must not know about her destiny. To me that proves that Lyra would never go against God unless she is fooled into thinking she is doing the right thing. This is what Satan does to many of us every day. He confuses us and makes us think we are on the right track but leads us away into sin. I guess though that the author himself said "my books are about killing God". So if he is an atheist he sure knew enough about the church and about God to write a book about killing him. It sounds to me like he is a man who knows there is a God but wants to convince himself and others that there is none.