Follow-ups: Pullman

[jack]

Pullman

* I think "God is bad, therefore doesn't exist" is a humorous paraphrasing and simplification of how many people, including me, saw the books [expanded below] whether or not they agreed with it, or the books intended it.

* However, I assumed Pullman intended that, but it seems quite probably not. Not everything is covered by what an author says, but from interviews eg. http://www.thirdway.org.uk/past/showpage.asp?page=3949 it sounds like it was deliberately anti-organised-church but not anti-god.

* He also specified that there was a deliberate portrayal of the bad aspects of organised religion, which he does feel are sometimes overwhelming in this world, but that there would naturally be good churchmen in that world (and there certainly are in this, he describes as a child knowing a very unobjectionable, nice sort of church community) even if he didn't portray any in the books.

* He described God as, if I interpret correctly, plainly to him absent from current influence on the world, but may or may not be out there somewhere.

Wanting to believe

A lot of interesting views arose from the discussion. Specifically, the relationship between wanting to believe and believing. Several people pointed out (with very articulate, interesting views, actually, thanks) that a common progression might be someone becoming disillusioned with God, and then naturally progressing to being a hard no-evidence-occam's-razor-doesn't exist atheist. And conversely, an appeal of the idea ("Maybe there never was any Narnia, but I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't,") certainly is part of people believing it.

For that matter, in real life, people often believe things they want to be true -- apart from normal statistical difficulties, if you're examining a complex social or card-play situation, you often seize on the chance you want to be true, and almost expect it, although a sober calculation would lead you to expect otherwise.

Which is normal, but I don't think sensible, it'd be better not to if you could (in most situations). However, I don't think that's all that's going on with religion, I have an instinctive feeling that the progressions I describes *do* make sense in some way, but can't explain what.

Can anyone expand on that?

ETA: cf. [dagger]

The underlying point of the previous post

I described Narnia, in the ways it talks about Christianity, as potentially being described by two thrusts:

(a) Factual, painting a picture of how God could goodly, justly, etc run a world
(b) Emotional, explaining why we might want to live in such a world

And that correspondingly, the Northern Lights argument (that Pullman maybe didn't intend, but many people saw) might be described as:

(a) Factual, drawing attention to the problems of a world where people follow a God who isn't there
(b) Emotional, comparing the situation with the authority to this world, that God (in this argument) appears absent and non-intervening, so if he exists, is as disastrous as the situation with the authority.
(c) And conflating not liking the evolved conception of God with not thinking he exists
(d) And for that matter, having an uplifting metaphor of instead of *rejecting* god, having to successfully *rebel* against God.

(And if that seems complicated or potentially flawed, well exactly, that's the point I was making, that's why people seeing the books in that light feel uncomfortable about it.)

However, despite many people seeing them more as anti-church than anti-god, some people said they *did* feel more atheist afterwards, or at least more sympathetic. If anyone's willing to share, how did you think you saw the argument -- more atheist as in less organised-religion-y, or less theistic, and if so, does my description make any sense to you?

Replies later, but ETA:

Does anyone know, "Job: A Comedy of Justice" by Heinlien? I thought it was funny, but weird. However, I just remembered it as that was a one-view-of-Christian-theology that seemed to share God-sucks with being perceived as an atheist position (at least by me).

Comments

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, I'm not sure that was well-written, or even that I'm very certain. But I'd rather keep the debate going.

On a slight tangent

[simont]

I re-read the Narnia books a couple of years ago in order to see what all the allegations of religious allegory were about, since I'd been too young to notice that sort of thing the previous time I'd read it. (I did this at around the time the LWW film was being trailered, in fact; I wasn't aware of that when I made the decision, and was surprised by the coincidence, though with hindsight it's possible that there was some chain of causation such as the upcoming film leading people to talk about Narnia in general, leading me to remember about it and decide to reread the books).

The thing I most noticed was that in almost all the series there was a clear divide between religious allegory and interesting plot: nearly all the most obviously and objectionably Christian bits (most notably, the apple tree in TMN) were bits that had fallen completely out of my memory since my last re-read, and conversely nearly all the memorable plot was not particularly Christian. I seemed to have mentally tuned out the propaganda in the same way as I mentally tune out the adverts in a TV programme, and just skipped lightly over until I found good bits again. Not because I realised I was being advertised at at the time, but simply because the advertising bits weren't fun.

The one exception was Aslan's self-sacrifice and resurrection in LWW, of course, which is really so central to the plot of the entire book that it's impossible to forget it. Though even then, I wasn't usefully able to remember before the reread what he did it for and what good it did.

Another odd thing about the propaganda was that by overstating the case I felt it had negative effect. For example, Aslan's self-sacrifice (I recalled after rereading) had the immediate effect of granting Edmund a very palpable continued existence in this life rather than a nebulously specified bonus in the hypothetical next life; this could easily have led me to be less convinced by Jesus's version in this world (if, that is, I hadn't already been thoroughly unconvinced by it). "So, if a God sacrifices himself for someone, they know beyond any doubt that it benefited them. Since I don't know beyond any doubt that Jesus's sacrifice has benefited me or anyone else, that's clearly not the same sort of thing."

So my general conclusion from the reread was that yes, there was clearly religious allegory in there and some of it was quite irritating, but on the other hand if the intention was to actually proselytise to any great extent then (at least for me and people like me) it failed by being heavy-handed and somewhat self-defeating.

Re: On a slight tangent

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's an interesting thought. That most parts are good in addition to being inspired by the Christian story, rather than because of it? Which parts stay with you is certainly a good metric.

Although, Aslan, generally is such a Jesus figure in many ways (if not totally so). *He* certainly stuck in my mind, and so much of what he does is arbitrary, majestic good, in direct line with his parallel.

Although at the time, I was annoyed/confused by several points, it felt appropriately disappointing, but also potentially inconsistent, that he kept vanishing. And the deeper magic thing resonated so little with me (so he had an ace up his sleeve, so what?) that it nearly detracted from the resurrection.

Re: On a slight tangent

[pizza.maircrosoft.com (from livejournal.com)]

I went to see the film with some Australian rellies, was struck by the Christian allegory which I never noticed as a kid either; but my uncle told me that as well as re-using/retelling a part of the Christian story, there are all kinds of classical allusions in there. Mostly people only recognise the Christian stuff... I am not informed enough to know if this is true though I don't imagine my uncle would go around telling porkies.

Re: On a slight tangent

[pizza.maircrosoft.com (from livejournal.com)]

(er, the Narnia film. Not the Pullman one which I haven't seen.)

Re: On a slight tangent

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I don't know for sure but I assume/expect it does have, it sounds like exactly the sort of thing he would use.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Did many people think it was anti-god? You have said this a few times, but in my circle people thought it was anti-catholic / anti-evil-organised-church. Is it that we are in different circles, or is it that you have read something that has said this is what people outside of our circles thought?

However, despite many people seeing them more as anti-church than anti-god, some people said they *did* feel more atheist afterwards, or at least more sympathetic.
You'd expect that thought, wouldn't you? If there was a film that portrayed the theists are the lovely great people being oppressed by the evil atheists you'd come away from it feeling less atheistic. If a story is well written you get immersed in it, feel part of the world, and see it from the perspective of the heroes. When you leave that world it will have changed you a bit, even if only emotionally.

[simont]

Did many people think it was anti-god? You have said this a few times, but in my circle people thought it was anti-catholic / anti-evil-organised-church.

The most obvious example is the American Catholic Church, who certainly said loudly that it was pursuing an atheist agenda.

Mind you, I suppose it's not so surprising that the hierarchy of a Catholic church in particular can't draw a clear distinction between God and their specific organised religion (or perhaps, more cynically, that they have a vested interest in convincing other people that there is no such distinction to be drawn).

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Ah yes. How silly of me.

That's what I get for filtering out the Catholic church.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

You do need a really rather large filter size for all the cathedrals to pass through intact.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

:) Perhaps not filtering them *out* so much as sticking handy cardboard cutouts in front of them and pretending that the skylines of old cities are dominated by elephants or secular polling booth centres with stained glass windows, etc :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

You'd expect that thought, wouldn't you?

Well, yes, I did expect that, but then you got through persuading me that the film doesn't show good atheists oppressed by evil theists but good non-organised-religionists oppressed by organised-religion-ists.

The extent to which there's a, and the nature of the, metaphor between Atheist and Asrielist is what I want to understand :)

Although, indeed, if you get immersed then whether the metaphor works on a superficial level (eg. Asriel doesn't follow God) or deep level (eg. has a similar philosophical basis as atheists do) it certainly feels like that, but what I was originally saying was that I wanted to be immersed in that aspect of it, but wasn't, because of problems with the metaphor.

(Hm, that's another way of looking at it -- that Asriel's position is that of one not disbelieving in God but refusing to put faith in him (correctly) and the film bolsters *that* belief, with the aforementioned indirect relationship to being atheist and disbelieving God.)

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I think...

It's down to what people mean when they say they feel more atheist. They can't (technically) mean anti-god at all because atheists don't think there is a god.

I suspect what they mean is that they felt more anti-religion. You don't have to be anti-religion to be an atheist, but that's what a lot of atheists are known for, so I think it's reasonable for people to say they felt more atheistic if they mean more anti-religion.

OTOH if you're a paid up religious believer you might assume that 'atheist' means "someone who intentionally rebels against God". I'd be interested to know what people meant when they said they felt more atheist afterwards (what [Bad username or site: atreic' / @ livejournal.com] meant for example).

Given that intellectually the books only aim their main cannons at a kind of hyper catholicism, the question is why people would feel anti-religion or anti-god at all as a result of watching it. I think the reason for this is that when you immerse yourself in a story you emotionally become part of that world, and in Lyra's world that is what "religion" is. So when you leave the book you remember intellectually all the reasons that hyper-catholicism is bad, but you feel less friendly towards religion in general.

Maybe?

[pavanne.livejournal.com]

Disclaimer: I'm a strong agnostic - I don't know if there is a God, and neither do you. In addition, I was raised CoE and think that, while the community and architecture aspect is nice, the actual religious bit is repellent and religious conviction is a (usually harmless) symptom of mental instability.

I never saw HDM as an *atheist* text. The existence of angels and someone pretending to be God seems to support, rather than preclude, the existence of a real Creator. The focus (in my reading) was more humanitarian: "We can build the republic of Heaven right here" doesn't completely rule out the possibility of a Heaven after death, but it definitely relegates the notion to an irrelevance.

And not just religious authority is contested, but religious morality. Lyra embraces what the Church regards as sin, and that is a Good Thing.

So while not going so far as to challenge the *existence* of God, my reading had it that God was at best irrelevant in that universe, and that it didn't matter if there is no God, while we on Earth have one another. Religion has just as much of an issue with "there might be a God but it doesn't matter" as with "there is no God".

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I think Narnia more or less works for me now as stories except The Last Battle, in which the story is stretched too thin over the bones of allegory. [ Not to mention that there's a sort of bait-and-switch to the "Narnia is ended but this Narnia is even better and will last forever, I promise." ] A large part of Amber Spyglass fails for me in similar ways, in becoming too polemical for what the story seems to need.

Pullman's comments at whatever that Unicon was in Oxford where he was GoH sounded to me like he did have a specifically anti-the Christian God perspective in mind for the trilogy.

I think Pullman confuses atheism with anti-authoritarianism in general, and I have a problem with anti-authoritarianism that makes no distinctions regarding the moral character of the authority in question; Pullman does read a bit knee-jerk to me on this. The position that a three-omni God is not compatible with the universe as experienced and that therefore God either a) does not exist or b) exists and is the enemy is one that these books seem to be blurring on.

Myself, I'm atheist wrt the God of the peoples of the Book, though agnostic with a strong sense of pietas in re the gods of most other traditions I know, but I don't have that anti-authoritarian streak, which seems a bit perverse to me.

I have read Job, which effectively short-circuits the problem there by postulating the other universes with other gods and higher levels of authority and judgement at the end; I like it as a conceit, but not as a thing to live in. Pullman's notion of a Republic of heaven seems a drastic scale error, at least.

[alextfish.livejournal.com]

Does anyone know, "Job: A Comedy of Justice" by Heinlien? I thought it was funny, but weird. However, I just remembered it as that was a one-view-of-Christian-theology that seemed to share God-sucks with being perceived as an atheist position (at least by me).
I remember that book. It was strange. Certain bits of it were compelling, but I didn't really like it. I certainly didn't like the whole "everything is actually just a big joke on you" message.