(no subject)
Feb. 5th, 2008 12:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackOne 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.
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.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-05 02:49 pm (UTC)I always end up feeling a bit more atheist, and very anti-church at the end of Northern Lights, so it clearly does work.
Yes, I didn't read HDM in the same way [Bad username or site: cartesiandaemon' / @ livejournal.com] did. I don't think it is anti-God at all. It's anti-catholic.
I believe Pullman is very unhappy with the catholic church, so the Magesterium are a kind of hyper catholicism which I suspect wouldn't be recognised by many Catholics (including you I guess). I recognised almost nothing of the god I once thought I knew in the books (and as [Bad username or site: ilanin' / @ livejournal.com] has already said the god of Pullman's world remains as hidden as ours does*, the angel that claimed to be god was lying about it).
Pullman has, however, found support from some other Christians, most notably from Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury (head of the Anglican church), who argues that Pullman's attacks focus on the constraints and dangers of dogmatism and the use of religion to oppress, not on Christianity itself. Pullman himself has said in interviews and appearances that his argument can extend to all religions. Williams has also said that the His Dark Materials series of books should be included and discussed in Religious Education classes, and that "To see large school-parties in the audience of the Pullman plays at the National Theatre is vastly encouraging." (source: Wikipedia (which should be fair game to quote as I wrote that paragraph)
* well... you know what I mean