"All of the believers are shown to be cruel, horrible men who do things such as kidnap children and murder people," McCaffrey said. "They perform torture on a mass scale - all to keep everybody oppressed and under this fake God."

CNSNews article on Catholic boycott of Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass, in which Pullman's quoted out of context in order to make him appear basically Satanic, basically.
Philip Pullman's website:

His Dark Materials seems to be against organised religion. Do you believe in God?

I don't know whether there's a God or not. Nobody does, no matter what they say. I think it's perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it, but I don't know everything, and there may well be a God somewhere, hiding away.

Actually, if he is keeping out of sight, it's because he's ashamed of his followers and all the cruelty and ignorance they're responsible for promoting in his name. If I were him, I'd want nothing to do with them.