The Tolkien quote by Pullman was taken a little bit out of context -- he was talking about both C.S. Lewis and Tolkien (and actually said that he preferred Tolkien over Lewis) and how Lewis would always address these very serious issues in his books because he was constantly questioning his faith; whereas Tolkien, who was secure with his beliefs and what the church represented for him, wrote about things that were "trivial" because he wasn't wrestling with the greater questions that Lewis was. That being said, he's a really eloquent speaker and very funny. :-)

(The atheism-selling thing boggles me. The books are not particularly against religion as a concept, though they are anti-organized religion. I don't know, it just kind of bugs me that they don't specify that, because Pullman's coming off as a crazy here.)