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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.
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Date: 2008-02-05 03:11 pm (UTC)I think you're conflating God and religion too tightly. The book is obviously anti religion, if by religion we mean the human system around God (priests, rules, hierarchies of authority, control of knowledge, violence / laws against people and groups, etc), but that doesn't mean it's anti-God.
God appears to be absent in Pullman's universe (in the same way he is in ours), so I don't think the book can rightly be seen as being anti-God. I don't think Pullman intended it to be either. I think he meant it to be anti-Catholic, which is quite different.
Perhaps this distinction which seems obvious to me is only obvious because I was once a religious person who believed in God myself. I think all the Christian people (well, [Bad username or site: atreic' / @ livejournal.com], [Bad username or site: alextfish' / @ livejournal.com], and [Bad username or site: woodpijn' / @ livejournal.com]) would make this distinction and see God and the religion of following God as being distinct, because the people who run the religion can misunderstand things / get things wrong / do things for their own gain. Whereas Christians usually* think God is this really wonderful loving father figure, even if the people in their church / denomination / Vatican are complete bastards.
* wobbling and bad life experiences aside
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Date: 2008-02-05 03:41 pm (UTC)I know it's often seen that way (validly or not). Now I feel I should check how Pullman intended it, and perhaps a more detailed reading to see if there is any indication of non-religion god stance in the books.
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Date: 2008-02-05 03:45 pm (UTC)Lyra even discovers the angel who claimed to be God, and they aren't angry with him.
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Date: 2008-02-05 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-07 01:33 am (UTC)