(no subject)

[jack]

One of the thoughts about different aspects of atheist belief is that the natural one is not believing "God exists", but some people do believe something like "If He does exist, He's a bastard."

But it occurred to me, that's basically the point of the Northern Lights trilogy. The central message is "God doesn't exist because he's a bastard". If that sounds confusing, well, exactly, that's why the message the books send seems to be confusing :)

It's not a wrong way to go about it. Narnia could be described as partly carrying the message "God *does* exist because he's nice," and does it very well indeed. Using God's metaphorical absence as a metaphor for his literal absence is a good metaphor -- I can see if the books had clicked for me more, it might be quite exciting, if instead of having no unifying message, atheism was a crusade against an uncaring God and a malicious power-hungry arch-angel. Yay!

For that matter, in some sense, it's a real argument: if you say "If God were running the world, I don't like it," you might get from there to "then He isn't," via "if he's not doing it right, he's not God or not there".

But Pullman's presentation didn't really work for me, and so all the flaws in the presentation continued to bother me.

Contrariwise, sometimes people do over-seize on the second aspect of atheism, especially if they're used to their religion being the default and assume an atheist *is* not someone factually thinking God doesn't exist, but someone morally choosing not to follow Him.

Comments

[atreic.livejournal.com]

"God exists, but is evil" is not an atheist belief (I'm sorry if this is stating the obvious, but your post came across as confused over this) although it is a belief that some people have (including me, at times)

I don't think you're right about the message being "God doesn't exist because he's a bastard", or that the message is confusing. I see Northern Lights as a story about "There was a universe with a bad god, the bad god was defeated, then they had to work out how to live in a universe with no god"*. This is a perfectly coherant story, (f'rexample, it makes sense if you replace "god" with "king"). And as a story, it works - it makes people think about "just because there's a god, is he good and should we follow him" and also "if there is no god, how should we choose to live"

Err, I'm not sure if this comment says much beyond "I don't understand what you think the flaw is".

*Well, it's not quite true, because "god" in the books is just useless and forgotten, it is the structure around god that is bad.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

No, very well put. But I think the trilogy is supposed to, and is often read as, the story about the God in *that* universe is supposed to suggest we shouldn't believe in a God in *this* universe. So we're agreed that doesn't work, but I was also saying (a) I liked that metaphor in theory but (b) that fact that I think it's supposed to and fails makes the story internal to the books annoying/confusing.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

So we're agreed that doesn't work,

Have we? I always end up feeling a bit more atheist, and very anti-church at the end of Northern Lights, so it clearly does work.

I think it's supposed to suggest that we shouldn't go along with religious authority, and should think about whether "sinful" things are bad. Most Christians I know see it as suggesting that "we shouldn't believe in a god like that" and deal with it easily by knowing their god is not like that.

But I haven't read it for ages, so I'm not arguing from a very good memory here.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

No, thank you for being clear. I was working it out as I went along, and phrasing in an amusing way. It's not a core or necessary atheist belief, but I think it's *an* aspect that applies to some people in some ways, namely:

* Some atheists say, "Even if God does exist as described [either monotheistic or polytheistic Gods], I don't agree with that, I don't think that makes him good or gives him moral authority, I'm not following". (FWIW, I wouldn't go that far, but many aspects of God and gods as described do give me problems, it's not as simple as, I don't think God doesn't exist, if he did, it would all be ok.)

* Some atheists say much the same thing, but rather than arguing about theoretical moral absolutes say "People are starving, my grandparents died, if there's any sort of God at all, he sucks." (That's not a whole argument, there's lots of reason there *can* be God, but still suffering.)

* Almost no-one says "There *is* a God, but I don't like him," though that's what Lord Asrael says. Which isn't atheist, literally, although many religious people get the ideas confused.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

Almost no-one says "There *is* a God, but I don't like him"

Me and a lot of my friends (both who have ended up atheist and have ended up Christian) seem to wibble through that stage. I think it's an uncomfortable position to be in, which is maybe why it doesn't get talked about a lot, but I would have thought it was a very common one.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Some atheists say, "Even if God does exist as described [either monotheistic or polytheistic Gods], I don't agree with that, I don't think that makes him good or gives him moral authority, I'm not following"
Yeah. A lot of atheists (like me) say "If God does exist then we know he is not good and so therefore should be opposed (or at least not followed)".

I've never heard of anyone saying "God if he exists would be evil therefore he doesn't exist" unless they're playing philosophical games with the term 'god'.

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

"God exists, but is evil" is not an atheist belief

Well, you can take it as inherent in the definition of God that God is good - and then denying the existence of a good God means denying the existence of God at all.

Yes, this is a very silly argument. But isn't it just an inversion of the various ontological arguments for existence of God? [I can conceive of a perfect being, therefore there is a God --> there can't be a perfect being running this imperfect worlds, therefore there is no God]

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

It's not very silly. It's silly to use it to disprove the existence of God in general, but if you're considering disproving a particular sort of God who is described as good, that would be a legitimate objection. That's where I was going in saying that it *sometimes* had *something* to do with it, without being an athiest belief itself.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

Narnia could be described as partly carrying the message "God *does* exist because he's nice," and does it very well indeed.
Huh? That seems to make even less logical sense than the atheist converse, and I can't see the logically-minded Lewis going for it. Maybe I'm missing some intervening steps?
Besides, Aslan isn't nice. Refusing to turn up when people want him to, and sneaking up behind people riding horses and clawing the skin off their back.

[lizzip.livejournal.com]

Besides, Aslan isn't nice. Refusing to turn up when people want him to, and sneaking up behind people riding horses and clawing the skin off their back.

IIRC that's Aslan working in mysterious ways for non-obvious reasons that turn out to be For The Best?

It's a long time since I last read the books, though.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is. Maybe cartesiandaemon and I are using different senses of "nice".

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I may well be off base. I think what I was going for is that Narnia, from a Christian perspective, works on me on at least two levels:

* Presenting a description of how God might intervene in a world, in good, just, mysterious, etc, ways, so I might understand better how He *might* intervene in this one.
* Presenting a description of how God might be that I *want* to believe.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Hm, and if you look at it like that, it helps amplify what I was trying to say, maybe that Northern Lights achieved something like:

* An atheistic world we can be emotionally committed to
* But failed to make that a good explanation of how our world works
* And failed to make a world we want to live in (I mean, the Polar Bears are great, but I can do without the Angelic oppression, I'd rather any sense of progress comes from building up from chaos, not overthrowing oppression, however uplifting that is to imagine)

[gareth-rees.livejournal.com]

The gnostics believed something along these lines. Confronted with the paradox of a perfectly good God but a flawed world they posited a second being, a demiurge, who created the world, but not being God, was unable or unwilling to do a better job. In some conceptions of gnosticism, the demiurge is a lesser being or servant of God; in others it is coequal and positively evil.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's interesting! Separating "creating the world" and "being good".

Speaking of history, I know I tend to see movements away from traditional religion as steps towards abandoning religion entirely -- that thinking God may not intervene in the world, or may not be both powerful and good, or should be worshipped as you see fit, or exists in a theistic way but doesn't necessarily fulfil all the things people say of him. Which is mainly just my perspective, but that there seems to be some truth in that somewhere or other, both as a historical trend and in individual progressions...?

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Yes, that seems like a better solution than the general modern Christian hand wavey answers.

I want a deity loyalty card where every time someone says "God works in mysterious ways", "You wouldn't expect to understand how God does things", and the like I get a stamp. When I have enough stamps I can get them redeemed for something appropriate (Bibles / Korans / Cute Christian Girls / Eternal Salvation?)

[ilanin.livejournal.com]

It has never in any way occurred to me to consider His Dark Materials to be an atheist argument. I accept that I may be somewhat unusual in seeing it as a liberal argument, but the imagery used is fairly irrelevant to what's actually happening. It's anti-clerical and anti-authoritarian, with the enemy being organized religion, not anti-deistic. Indeed, it turns out that the existence of God* is irrelevant to the entire plot, which is not a struggle between God and Man but simply a revolt against an (Angelic) oppressor - and Asriel seems to know this.


*God does not, in fact, exist in His Dark Materials. The Authority did not, at least according to the various Angels who talk about it, create the Universe.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean, that makes more sense, but to me it felt more like "The book falsely tries to equate religion with dogmatic organised religion" than "The book is against dogmatic organised religion, (but other religion might be ok)". (However, I don't have any basis for that, I might be wrong. Or it might try to be one but your reading might be a more consistent way to interpret it whatever Pullman felt.)

[ilanin.livejournal.com]

Liberalism has throughout history been regarded as a godless and atheistic philosophy because it rejects dogma of organised religion - currently that's most easily seen in the United States, but it's been true enough everywhere throughout the last three hundred years.

[alextfish.livejournal.com]

Mm, I think my reaction on reading HDM was fairly close to "The book is against dogmatic organised religion (but other religion might be ok)". Or indeed, as atreic put it up-thread, "it's suggesting that "we shouldn't believe in a god like that" but I deal with it easily by knowing that my God is not like that."

I think to the extent that people try to take HDM as an allegory about the real world, they usually do mis-equate "dogmatic organised religion" with "all religion".

[aldabra]

Mmm, that's me. Fundamentalism hit my school when I was but fourteen or so, and I was damned if I was going to believe in that God. It's really psychically painful believing in a God who's going to damn you for not agreeing with him, so I don't do it any more. So fundamentally I'm an atheist because if God exists then everything is too horrible to think about (and you'd have to behave as if he didn't anyway).

[alextfish.livejournal.com]

I can very much see the pain in what you describe. The one thing I'd like to reassure you of is that not all Christians are fundamentalists, and a lot of us think God is a bit different to the impression you got in school. :)

[aldabra]

Thank you. I know that, on a lot of levels. I'm much less spiky about it all than I was. My atheism is quite strongly focussed on That God, and at some level I think if there *is* a God and he's any good he's not going to hold it against me that I didn't believe in That God.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

So you're an atheist because you don't want to face the pain of that God being real?

I imagine that's a tricky place to be. What is your feeling about whether God exists (and who that god is)? Maybe the big evil fundamentalist Christian god does exist (that'd be pretty awful), maybe there is no God, maybe there is a God disinterested in what happens in the world, etc... have you thought about this?

I would like to know if God exists, even if it's a god I don't like. Whether I'd choose to follow her is a different question.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Rob -- you were perfectly polite, but that sounded perfectly normal to me, and your questions might be a little bit personal (someone can be happy to share, but trying to describe exact philosophical positions is fraught with misunderstandings, and nigh impossible to quit half-way through), so no problem, but it sounds like an example of what I was describing, so Aldabra, please don't feel obliged to come and analyse your description unless you also find it interesting.