Why are we talking so much about God?/writing as an atheist

CINO

veinglory said:

It seems to me akin to opening a vegetarian forum to talk about meat. (which also effectively happens quite a lot).

Is it that atheist is a postion defined only about what it is not?

Oris it that we are so unfamilar with being in a group of like-minded writers than we simply don't know how to put the matter aside and talk about what we are, from the perspective of what we are, without having to spend 90% of the time defining and defending what we are?

It seems to me that this area could be about

1) writing for secular markets, and
2) writing as an atheist

So, going with 2)

What are you writing now and how, if at all, is it affected by being an atheist?

Click to expand...

Well...I'm just a CINO. But being a CINO and writing for anyone who likes antique supernatural entities powered by ultra-modern postmetaphysical superphysics, allows me to use religious imagery, motifs and topoi and indeed entire religious universes, as part of the fun of the story (like sex and violence only with a more gratuitously Cosmic Savor).

So I like writing apocalytic things in an expansively comic way and not being a Christian (except in name) definitely helps with that.

I'm writing a tragic/comic love story. My MC is an atheist, his love interest leans more toward deism. My book is about my characters' loyalty, faith and hope in each other, rather than in gods.

I really dislike texts where characters are used as puppets to try to get the author's viewpoints or opinions across (tried to read My Ishmael recently and failed to get passed that issue - talking gorilla spouts environmentalism. Zzzz).

So, my MC doesn't ever say "here's what I don't believe and why." But it comes across in subtext, I think. How he responds to the big rocks I throw at him is different from how a believer would respond.

ETA: This Douglas Adams quote sums up my interest in religion:

I am fascinated by religion. (That’s a completely different thing from believing in it!) It has had such an incalculably huge effect on human affairs. What is it? What does it represent? Why have we invented it? How does it keep going? What will become of it? I love to keep poking and prodding at it.

veinglory said:

What are you writing now and how, if at all, is it affected by being an atheist?

Click to expand...

Right now I am trying to put together a synopsis for a story with a theist/atheist/scientific twist. As a matter of fact the idea came to me after having read through some of the discussions here.

In short I am trying to put a story together about 3 people, one from each group of conviction, who are not only perceiving the world according to their point of view, but also creating it.

It's still a wee bit blurry in my mind how I will be able to get things right, especially the scientific part, but I'm sure I'll figure it out.

The various POV:s discussed here in AW have been helpful, insofar that they have, to a certain extent, enlightened me when it comes to understand how both believers and non-believers think.

It had never really occured to me before I started participating in these various threads, that I was in fact constantly defending my POV. This suddenly made me want to write this story, and I will too.

Even though the 3 characters will get equal space, though I couldn't be sure of that because somehow they always take on a life of their own, my aim would be to make the non-believer the main character. I hope it will enable me to balance the story.

There are probably two reasons.

One: I don't think atheism is interesting without religion. Clarifying that - there are many things that do not involve God in any capacity that are tremendously interesting. One can be an atheist one's whole life simply because everything else took up too much of your time to even consider the concept of God. But these things are not, I feel, "atheist" literature, any more than Star Trek or The Golden Girls are "Atheist TV" because they don't engage with the issue at all. Atheism, while a positive belief, is a belief in a negative.

Two: atheism's bedmate humanism necessarily stakes out ground on that claimed by religion for millennia. Just as one cannot really discuss the sea without talking about the shoreline, and hence about the land, one cannot talk about humanistic conceptions of morality without talking about that which it seeks to replace, the religious side.

Melisande said:

Right now I am trying to put together a synopsis for a story with a theist/atheist/scientific twist. As a matter of fact the idea came to me after having read through some of the discussions here.

In short I am trying to put a story together about 3 people, one from each group of conviction, who are not only perceiving the world according to their point of view, but also creating it.

Click to expand...

From a pure writerly perspective, I'd like to say this may be more difficult than you think it is, because you're describing a concept, not a story. While, should you have the talent, a novel can be about anything and anyone, most people tend to want their characters to do something. Rather than concentrate on the nuances of scientific or theological arguments, I'd first start with what you want these characters to achieve at the quarter-points of your novel, especially at the mid and end points, then ask specific questions about how each character would respond to the situations.

Stories are the masters, not the messages. The message will come through the prose, and it might surprise even you.

McDuff said:

From a pure writerly perspective, I'd like to say this may be more difficult than you think it is, because you're describing a concept, not a story. While, should you have the talent, a novel can be about anything and anyone, most people tend to want their characters to do something. Rather than concentrate on the nuances of scientific or theological arguments, I'd first start with what you want these characters to achieve at the quarter-points of your novel, especially at the mid and end points, then ask specific questions about how each character would respond to the situations.

Stories are the masters, not the messages. The message will come through the prose, and it might surprise even you.

Click to expand...

Thank you for taking your time and give me this advice.

veinglory said:

I am currently writing a high fantasy in which there is casual mention of gods although the hero is a non-believer. It really hasn't intersected with atheism accept to the extent that one person commented that my world must actually have gods becaue it has magic. I am not sure why. In my mind magic existing in this word as a force that is something like electrivity crossed with a virus. It is produced by dragon and magical abilities are a side effect of a human becoming infected. It is fantasy because the characters consider these things magical and apart from nature--but given the cosmology of my word they actually aren't.

So, on the whole 'can their be magic without supernatural beings' issue I still would say there can--but it does start looking more like sci fi in some ways.

Click to expand...

That's interesting, because I got exactly the opposite reaction. I've got a fantasy novel in which there IS religion. In fact, there are many religions. Some people believe, some don't, others don't care. Much the same as the world today. The comment I got was if there was magic, why would there be religion? It was as if magic was religion, so there was no place for any other.

I thought it very strange, but I thanked them for their comments anyway.

I'm mulling an idea in which the god of the universe is the villain--well, okay, he's the antagonist. He's not more evil than what most Christians believe in, but well, he's omnipotent, omniscient, and not necessarily omni-benevolent. But as my Partner in Crime pointed out, the ending is very nihilistic. Which might just because I have a poor imagination, but I can't think of a single reasonable way for the protagonist to defeat god, so he just has to take the best of a bunch of bad choices.

I honestly don't know if I'd be able to sell this book if I ever did write it. It's pretty much the antithesis of my one rule--there should always be a happy ending.

Anyway, beyond that, since I'm an atheist, my books are a-religious. The only time I even think about religion is when I'm engaged in some discussion about my status as an atheist. Since it is completely and totally a non-issue in every single way in my life, it's a complete and total non-issue in every single way in my characters' lives. They don't profess any particular believe, they don't attend any particular church, the weddings are never religious--if they get married at all!--and so on.

His Dark Materials sold alright.

I hope I'm not inadvertently ripping off His Dark Materials--I've never read it.

Sokal said:

Well...I'm just a CINO. But being a CINO and writing for anyone who likes antique supernatural entities powered by ultra-modern postmetaphysical superphysics, allows me to use religious imagery, motifs and topoi and indeed entire religious universes, as part of the fun of the story (like sex and violence only with a more gratuitously Cosmic Savor).

So I like writing apocalytic things in an expansively comic way and not being a Christian (except in name) definitely helps with that.

Click to expand...

O' my. I like read this three times and me thinks the structure of the paragraph above is sufficient to make a case of a God of chaos.

Thanks for making my eyes bleed. Cheers

Its' been done

pepperlandgirl said:

I'm mulling an idea in which the god of the universe is the villain--well, okay, he's the antagonist. He's not more evil than what most Christians believe in, but well, he's omnipotent, omniscient, and not necessarily omni-benevolent. But as my Partner in Crime pointed out, the ending is very nihilistic. Which might just because I have a poor imagination, but I can't think of a single reasonable way for the protagonist to defeat god, so he just has to take the best of a bunch of bad choices.

I honestly don't know if I'd be able to sell this book if I ever did write it. It's pretty much the antithesis of my one rule--there should always be a happy ending.

Anyway, beyond that, since I'm an atheist, my books are a-religious. The only time I even think about religion is when I'm engaged in some discussion about my status as an atheist. Since it is completely and totally a non-issue in every single way in my life, it's a complete and total non-issue in every single way in my characters' lives. They don't profess any particular believe, they don't attend any particular church, the weddings are never religious--if they get married at all!--and so on.

Click to expand...

The evil God thing has been done. God lost. People had to use secret decoder-rings and special cryptic gem stones. Very high tech for the time. Check under Gnosticism, a Late Antique Religion.

Christ!

SpookyWriter said:

O' my. I like read this three times and me thinks the structure of the paragraph above is sufficient to make a case of a God of chaos.

Thanks for making my eyes bleed. Cheers

Click to expand...

Christ, Sppoky, if I'd have known you were coming...I would have written it all very differently:

Well...I'm just a CINO. I am writing for anyone who likes antique supernatural entities powered by ultra-modern postmetaphysical superphysics. Being a CINO allows me to use religious imagery, motifs and topoi and indeed entire religious universes, as part of the fun of the story (like sex and violence only with a more gratuitously Cosmic Savor).

So I like writing apocalytic things in an expansively comic way and not being a Christian (except in name) definitely helps with that.

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to have a Gnostic Cosmos (as in Harold Bloom's very bad fantasy novel)...but, that's another story anyway.

Gnostic writings

pepperlandgirl said:

I'm mulling an idea in which the god of the universe is the villain--well, okay, he's the antagonist. He's not more evil than what most Christians believe in, but well, he's omnipotent, omniscient, and not necessarily omni-benevolent.

Click to expand...

Sokal said:

The evil God thing has been done. God lost. People had to use secret decoder-rings and special cryptic gem stones. Very high tech for the time. Check under Gnosticism, a Late Antique Religion.

Click to expand...

Website: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/gnostics.html

I'm with the Douglas Adams quote. It sums up what I think so breathtakingly well, it's as if I am a clone of DA. But I doubt that is true for some strange reason.

Sokal said:

Christ, Sppoky, if I'd have known you were coming...I would have written it all very differently:

Well...I'm just a CINO. I am writing for anyone who likes antique supernatural entities powered by ultra-modern postmetaphysical superphysics. Being a CINO allows me to use religious imagery, motifs and topoi and indeed entire religious universes, as part of the fun of the story (like sex and violence only with a more gratuitously Cosmic Savor).

So I like writing apocalytic things in an expansively comic way and not being a Christian (except in name) definitely helps with that.

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to have a Gnostic Cosmos (as in Harold Bloom's very bad fantasy novel)...but, that's another story anyway.

Click to expand...

Much better, thanks. Now I have to go and feed my elderly neighbor who is glowing at the moment. Have a nice evening.

veinglory said:

It seems to me akin to opening a vegetarian forum to talk about meat. (which also effectively happens quite a lot).

Is it that atheist is a postion defined only about what it is not?

Oris it that we are so unfamilar with being in a group of like-minded writers than we simply don't know how to put the matter aside and talk about what we are, from the perspective of what we are, without having to spend 90% of the time defining and defending what we are?

It seems to me that this area could be about

1) writing for secular markets, and
2) writing as an atheist

So, going with 2)

What are you writing now and how, if at all, is it affected by being an atheist?

Click to expand...

As an atheist who is a secular activist, I don't debate theology, and I rarely get into god-debates. I prefer instead to focus on atheists and our community; who we are and what we do, etc.

As an atheist writer, I'm really slacking... I've got a book review to do (as soon as I read the book), articles I've promised to various websites and newsletters, and a presentation to plan for the AAI convention in September. As a writer, I try to focus on my audience. I've spent plenty of time researching the audience, so I feel comfortable writing for this market. I've mostly given up on writing my memoirs; I read here on AW that very few memoirs are as interesting as the author believes, so I'm taking the advice. The whole "months past deadline" problem also keeps me from starting a new writing project.

When writing for this audience I try to take into account the diversity and and scope of the potential audience. I've learned what people expect to see; for example, no one capitalizes the "a" in "atheist," and few people capitalize the "h" in "humanism." Not everyone agrees with or uses the "weak/strong distinction." Not everyone is a pro-choice liberal. Not everyone joins or supports groups, much less attends meetings or events. So when I write about such things, I have to bear in mind that most of my audience is not receptive to my subject matter.

As I said, I haven't been writing lately, but I'm thinking about it. Back burner and all that. It's simmering. I prefer writing when I am in my zone, which is usually on some soapbox.

veinglory said:

What are you writing now and how, if at all, is it affected by being an atheist?

Click to expand...

The novel that I should be submitting right now is a fantasy that starts with an intensely devout soldier arresting a skeptical, sarcastic psychologist for blasphemy against her gods. I try to work sexual tension and romance into all my books, but I soon realized that the most I could expect from these two would be a somewhat grudging tolerance. I also tried my best not to bash religion, and my critiquer, who's an atheist as well, was amused by the final scene. In it, the soldier prays that her gods will show her a sign that they exist, since during the course of the story, her faith was badly shaken. But after asking for a sign, she acknowledges that her faith is not dependent on that. She leaves the room, closing the door - and the sign occurs, behind the closed door.