Anti-Theist Theism in Fantasy

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kuwisdelu

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While it's tempting to label your children's story example as a strawman, I don't want to get into an Oz, Neverland mashup.

I'm honestly baffled as to how it could be considered a strawman.

Okay, seriously. I don't see that an object or being having power or even manifest form in a fantasy setting means that it has independent existence, sapience, or anything else beyond whatever power imagination has in that world.

I'm talking about within that setting. I think it's obvious Tinker Bell is intended to have an independent existence and sapience within the context of the story, and I think we're supposed to interpret it that way.

Implicit in the ascription of the power to create to human belief is the ascription of that power to human imagination. So, if imagination can bring a being into existence, that being is a figment of imagination.

I fundamentally disagree. Say I'm an aeronautical engineer, and I imagine an airplane. If that airplane is eventually built and exists, does that mean it is still a figment of my imagination, simply because my imagination was the fundamental initiator in bringing it into existence?

Yes, there are some steps missing in between, but I think you're also discounting the possibility of in-between steps between human belief and the existence of a new god.

The point is that under that trope human minds have the underlying power and gods are created and sustained expressions of that power.

Again, I think there are some nuances that can be debated there, but I'll ignore them for now. I still don't see how that would make gods a figment of the imagination if the end result is that they actually exist.

In the example of Tinkerbell, it's not asserted that she was created by beleif, but that belief has the power to heal her. Again, the power is fundamentally a power of human minds, not of beings external to those minds.

Okay, this goes back to those nuances. Is that power really fundamental to human minds? Or is there a missing in-between step?

...

Or here's another way to put it... are imagination and reality mutually exclusive?

You continue to use the phrase "figments of imagination", which implies non-existence in reality. But if imagination can bring an existence into reality, then it ceases to be a "figment of imagination", because it also exists within reality, even if it originally existed and also exists in imagination.
 

RichardGarfinkle

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I'm honestly baffled as to how it could be considered a strawman.



I'm talking about within that setting. I think it's obvious Tinker Bell is intended to have an independent existence and sapience within the context of the story, and I think we're supposed to interpret it that way.



I fundamentally disagree. Say I'm an aeronautical engineer, and I imagine an airplane. If that airplane is eventually built and exists, does that mean it is still a figment of my imagination, simply because my imagination was the fundamental initiator in bringing it into existence?

Yes, there are some steps missing in between, but I think you're also discounting the possibility of in-between steps between human belief and the existence of a new god.



Again, I think there are some nuances that can be debated there, but I'll ignore them for now. I still don't see how that would make gods a figment of the imagination if the end result is that they actually exist.



Okay, this goes back to those nuances. Is that power really fundamental to human minds? Or is there a missing in-between step?

...

Or here's another way to put it... are imagination and reality mutually exclusive?

You continue to use the phrase "figments of imagination", which implies non-existence in reality. But if imagination can bring an existence into reality, then it ceases to be a "figment of imagination", because it also exists within reality, even if it originally existed and also exists in imagination.

Let's back up a second. Assume that you are correct about intermediate steps. I'll accept godmaking as equivalent of engineering, that mind must work through the nature of reality to bring something about. Please note that in accepting that we are drifting very far from the trope.

But I'll accept it for now, Doesn't that get back to my equivalence of gods and tools which you were uncomfortable with?

It seems to me that if we're on the Tinkerbell principle, we're looking at human-centric magic that can heal or conjure rather than divinely created or sustained world.

I'm saying that this trope moves us away from a world with divine nature and supernature to one with human controllable nature and supernature. In other words, I would argue that far from being a theist trope, it's a humanist one.

I'd further point out that two of the primary writers who employed that trope: Michael Moorcock and Terry Pratchett use it in a way that explicitly makes humans and humanity more important, capsble, and potentially moral beings than the gods.

In short, I find it odd that this trope has been adopted into some theist perspectives because it seems to be quite antitheist in origin and use.

To further my point, there is the fact that as a trope it reverses the view of faith centrifc religions wherein belief benefits the human not the god.


ETA: Sorry to temporarily this. I'm dead tired after a four day con. I'll be back at a more insomniac hour.
 
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kuwisdelu

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Let's back up a second. Assume that you are correct about intermediate steps. I'll accept godmaking as equivalent of engineering, that mind must work through the nature of reality to bring something about. Please note that in accepting that we are drifting very far from the trope.

But I'll accept it for now, Doesn't that get back to my equivalence of gods and tools which you were uncomfortable with?

Oy, oy, no, I didn't mean that belief is anything like engineering. I only used that example to show that existence in imagination and existence in the real world are not mutually exclusive.

I've never personally seen or read the trope in a way such that humans have any kind of direct control or conscious control over the influence of human belief on gods, so we may be coming at this from completely different understandings of the trope.

You seem to be pointing to examples where humans have direct and conscious control over their influence on the supernatural, which isn't anything like the works I associate with this trope.

In such a work, I'd see it as the humans becoming more like gods, so the work would be more about the deification of humanity.

(There is an anime Shin Sekai Yori that approaches the idea from this perspective: humans gain psychic powers, and those without such power come to regard those humans as gods.)

I feel like the more we discuss this, the less I am understanding your point of view.

I'd further point out that two of the primary writers who employed that trope: Michael Moorcock and Terry Pratchett use it in a way that explicitly makes humans and humanity more important, capsble, and potentially moral beings than the gods.

I don't think there's anything inherently anti-theist about that.

To further my point, there is the fact that as a trope it reverses the view of faith centrifc religions wherein belief benefits the human not the god.

It's certainly antithetical to the beliefs of certain religions, but that doesn't make it anti-theist.
 
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kuwisdelu

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Or here's another way to put it... are imagination and reality mutually exclusive?

You continue to use the phrase "figments of imagination", which implies non-existence in reality. But if imagination can bring an existence into reality, then it ceases to be a "figment of imagination", because it also exists within reality, even if it originally existed and also exists in imagination.

This is the crux of the issue to me.

I don't understand how one can insist something is a figment of imagination if it is actually real.

Once something becomes real, it is no longer a figment, no matter how it originated.
 

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You continue to use the phrase "figments of imagination", which implies non-existence in reality. But if imagination can bring an existence into reality, then it ceases to be a "figment of imagination", because it also exists within reality, even if it originally existed and also exists in imagination.

Or alternatively, imagination was/is the inciting incident of the creation of the universe.
 

RichardGarfinkle

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This is the crux of the issue to me.

I don't understand how one can insist something is a figment of imagination if it is actually real.

Once something becomes real, it is no longer a figment, no matter how it originated.

We do seem to be having a couple of gaps here. I'm not asserting the need for direct or conscious control. And you seem to be asserting that once a thing becomes real it continues to exist, but I would argue that something whose existence is contingent on it being continually imagined to exist is a figment of imagination manifest in reality.

Let me take a specific fictional example and then shift into non-fictional instances and then generalize.

In Terry Pratchett's Hogfather, a group of entities hire an assassin to kill the Discworld's equivalent of Santa Claus. In order to do this the assassin uses rather amusing but spoilerific means of manipulating the beliefs of children so they no longer believe in The Hogfather, as a result he ceases to exist. The MCs in the book work to undo this in two directions: one by stopping the manipulation and two by faking evidence for the existence of the Hogfather. The children who bring this about do not have conscious control of the god, but he exists as they imagine him to be and acts as they imagine he does.

On a more real,world example, consider the idea of a nation. Nations are products of shared human imagination. They do no actions, since in reality all their acts are really collective human (and tool) actions. But the nation as object of multiple imaginations is given a personality and attitudes and responsibility for actions taken. It is both useful and dangerous to deem that it exists outside of imagination, but does it?

There's also the question of agency. One presumes that a figment of imagination would have no ability to act beyond how its creators would consciously want it to. But it is the direct experience of many writers that characters act as they act rather than following plotlines. Our imaginations are more sophisticated creators than fits the idea of simple order following phantasms.

Flipping this around, there's also the question of what it means that a thing exists. I can't source this unfortunately, but in the writings of a muslim philosopher, I ran into the idea that Allah continually sustains the universe (hence he is called compassionate and merciful). For the universe to end he merely needs to stop expending the effort to keep it going.

This struck me as a very different idea of creation from the, you build it and there it is concept. But it is a creation idea that works for certain kinds of objects.
 

Maxx

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I would argue that in a universe where this phenomenon worked, it would be possible to create scientific experiments in godmaking (Frank Herbert wrote a book called The Godmakers). All that would be necessary would be to get sufficient numbers of people to believe in a similar fashion.

My point is that this isn't faith in a being outside of human control, but it is the use of human belief to create beings that act according to ideas shared between a set of humans.

Religion then becomes a feat of social engineering with gods as the product of that feat.

Seems theistic to me. The Aztec empire created gods who needed enormous amounts of human sacrifices to keep the world going. This implies that the gods definitely exist since the Aztec Empire is there doing the sacrifices and the world keeps going. So the gods must exist. The astoundingly obvious circularity of the logic is a theistic strength, not a weakness. It works so well you can build a huge empire on it.
 

Dawnstorm

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We do seem to be having a couple of gaps here. I'm not asserting the need for direct or conscious control. And you seem to be asserting that once a thing becomes real it continues to exist, but I would argue that something whose existence is contingent on it being continually imagined to exist is a figment of imagination manifest in reality.

Even if I agree with you here, the "manifest in reality" part makes a difference. Let me quote you out of sequence:

On a more real,world example, consider the idea of a nation. Nations are products of shared human imagination. They do no actions, since in reality all their acts are really collective human (and tool) actions. But the nation as object of multiple imaginations is given a personality and attitudes and responsibility for actions taken. It is both useful and dangerous to deem that it exists outside of imagination, but does it?

A nation is never "manifest in reality". It's a phenomenon, but not a thing. Gods in such stories are different: they're there. You can throw rocks at them (or if they're too small, you can throw them at rocks). That has implications:

1. An object that manifests in reality must contain more detail than we imagine. Imagination always stays incomplete in some way or another; real things don't have the luxury.

2. Meeting an object (even if it were exactly the same) you merely imagine has an effect on your imagination; e.g. you might be focussing on "hidden" sides now that you've seen the real thing.

3. (1) and (2) are only about the imagination of one person. But if we're dealing with more than one person, there might be contradictions in how the object is imagined. As long as the object doesn't manifest, this is merely a problem of imagination. Not so if you actually concentrate all that imagination into a single formed space-time co-ordinate.

How you deal with these problems determines whether the trope comes across as anti-theist or not. The trope itself, IMO, is not inherently anti-theist.

(1) and (3) suggest that there's something that concretises overlooked detail, or engages in pick-and-mix activity from different imaginations. It might be an abstract principle, it might be the instinct of a formless sentience...

(2) suggests that interaction grants a sense of reality all by itself, in the sense that you can't imagine what you actually see. The philosophical implications run deep, here, all the way to "All the world's a dream."

So on to Pratchett:

In Terry Pratchett's Hogfather, a group of entities hire an assassin to kill the Discworld's equivalent of Santa Claus. In order to do this the assassin uses rather amusing but spoilerific means of manipulating the beliefs of children so they no longer believe in The Hogfather, as a result he ceases to exist. The MCs in the book work to undo this in two directions: one by stopping the manipulation and two by faking evidence for the existence of the Hogfather. The children who bring this about do not have conscious control of the god, but he exists as they imagine him to be and acts as they imagine he does.

In this instance, I'd actually agree with you. Pratchett has always struck me as a humanist, though, not only in the way he treats gods, but also in the way he treats animals.

You also mentioned Moorcock. I've read a lot of Moorcock, but my memories are vague. Could you tell me where he used the trope? From what I remember about the Elric books, for example, gods don't seem to dependant on blieve - they're more general principals with realms of their own who need a contract to "cross over". The theme I remember is more that you shouldn't rely too much on things outside yourself (which includes the gods).

As a counter example, have a quote from TV Tropes, about an anime called Natsume Yuujinchou:

The second episode of Natsume Yuujinchou has a very poignant example of this trope (that also doubles as a Tear Jerker) when a Youkai that took up residence in a roadside shrine begins to lose his power (and his tether to the living world) as the people who once prayed to him all begin to die of old age. Natsume himself offers to pray to him but the Youkai refuses saying: "It's impossible, because you are my friend."

Here we have a being that depends on believe, but it's also real for non-believers, and it can interact with them. There's an explicit difference between praying at a shrine and being a friend, to the point that the activities are mutually exclusive.

This doesn't strike me as anti-theist. It's world view that doesn't place emphasis on isolated existances. Animism or pantheism in particular don't have a hard time reconciling being dependent on blieve with being real and a person of your own. In shinto-inspired anime, the creation of gods are usually sedimented emotion. You were someone or something before you were a god, and you don't lose that aspect just because you became one.

A world where everything is connected and everything has divine potential could easily see the god and your imagination of it as two sides of the same coin.

There's also the question of agency. One presumes that a figment of imagination would have no ability to act beyond how its creators would consciously want it to. But it is the direct experience of many writers that characters act as they act rather than following plotlines. Our imaginations are more sophisticated creators than fits the idea of simple order following phantasms.

But whether our imagination is entirely our own is not a given, depending on the world-view in question. Even the word "inspriation" hints at an outside source. Are visions strictly internal, or could they come from outside, etc.

It's possible to draw borderlines between the divine and mundane in different ways, if you draw them in the first place. The evolution of consciousnesses and the evolution of the divine/supernatural might be linked through spiritual laws.

(For me the divine is the figment of someone else's imagination; if I ever met a god, I'd probably not recognise him/her/it as such.)

Flipping this around, there's also the question of what it means that a thing exists. I can't source this unfortunately, but in the writings of a muslim philosopher, I ran into the idea that Allah continually sustains the universe (hence he is called compassionate and merciful). For the universe to end he merely needs to stop expending the effort to keep it going.

This struck me as a very different idea of creation from the, you build it and there it is concept. But it is a creation idea that works for certain kinds of objects.

(That sounds similar to me to how a radical constructivist would think of the world s/he knows.)

On a more relevant note there's the question whether divine imagination has properties that mundane imagination doesn't.

I also wonder how broad or narrow the scope of the words "divine" or "god" are in the context of this thread. I'm reminded of kuwidelu's thread about what makes a god (over in the comparative forum). It's an important question here, since we might be talking past each other.
 

RichardGarfinkle

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Dawnstorm you and kuwi have brought up a number of valid and interesting points, but I think that what I'm trying to say has gotten lost in the complexities, so let me see if I can say it more simply.

The dominant western religions posit a primacy to the divine in all aspects. That primacy is manifest in an assertion of coming first, being the creator of humanity, etc. It also manifests in titles such as father, lord, etc.

Yes, of course, there are other theistic structures, but the trope under discussion arose in the context of that particular theistic view. My argument is that the trope originates as a challenge to that primacy by asserting human primacy.

While it is not inherently the case that a structure that sustains gods by human belief is anti-theist, I maintain that this trope is so, and that it is therefore strange to have it embraced by theists arising from the same cultue and traditions as a support for theism.

On the matter of Moorcock, his writing is allegorical, and in The Quest For
Tanelorn (the book that wraps up the four major Eternal Champion stories), the character of Humanity is introduced. He asserts that the gods are his creation. This is a little more esoteric, but as I say it's allegory.

ETA: Next attempt at clarity: in Abrahamic and several Indo-European religions, coming first and being the creator are considered signs of claim to the title of divine. In that metaphysical context if humans come first and create the gods, they are more divine than the gods.

In an interesting, but much older parallel, there is an early Buddhist sutra with anti-Hindu elements that asserts that Brahma is not the creator, but only the first being to come into existence.
 
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Dawnstorm

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Yes, of course, there are other theistic structures, but the trope under discussion arose in the context of that particular theistic view. My argument is that the trope originates as a challenge to that primacy by asserting human primacy.

The tvtropes page quotes anime and manga. To make your point, you'd have to disagree that those are valid example, because - to me - they seem to grow naturally from shinto (I'm no expert; take this with a grain of salt).

I'd say you're talking not about the trope, as it is defined by content, but about a specific interpretation of it. In that case, I can't add a lot, because I haven't heard (or paid attention to) modern monotheists embracing it. I'd need an example of that to see where they come from. I suppose it came up at the convention?

I've grown up in Austria, among lots of Roman Catholics. Intuitively, it doesn't strike me as odd, but I have hard time articulating why. Maybe because nobody around me seems to care much about divine ontology, and it's all about the relationship, which is personal and different for everyone.

A specific question I have is this: most fantasy stories that use the trope also use polytheistic set-ups, I think. What's the relationship between metaphor in a faith context and metaphor in fictional context. Can there be such a thing as a metaphor for a metaphor for an abstract belief?

- Who embraces this trope?
- How do they embrace this trope?
- What about it strikes you as odd (in a way that using polytheistic setups apparently doesn't)?

I know the trope, but I've never really looked into the spirituality of the authors or readers. It's a new or at least uncharted country for me.

On the matter of Moorcock, his writing is allegorical, and in The Quest For
Tanelorn (the book that wraps up the four major Eternal Champion stories), the character of Humanity is introduced. He asserts that the gods are his creation. This is a little more esoteric, but as I say it's allegory.

Gotcha. I know about that book, but haven't read it. (My sister owns it, so it's accessible to me.)
 

RichardGarfinkle

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The tvtropes page quotes anime and manga. To make your point, you'd have to disagree that those are valid example, because - to me - they seem to grow naturally from shinto (I'm no expert; take this with a grain of salt).

I'd say you're talking not about the trope, as it is defined by content, but about a specific interpretation of it. In that case, I can't add a lot, because I haven't heard (or paid attention to) modern monotheists embracing it. I'd need an example of that to see where they come from. I suppose it came up at the convention?

I've grown up in Austria, among lots of Roman Catholics. Intuitively, it doesn't strike me as odd, but I have hard time articulating why. Maybe because nobody around me seems to care much about divine ontology, and it's all about the relationship, which is personal and different for everyone.

A specific question I have is this: most fantasy stories that use the trope also use polytheistic set-ups, I think. What's the relationship between metaphor in a faith context and metaphor in fictional context. Can there be such a thing as a metaphor for a metaphor for an abstract belief?

- Who embraces this trope?
- How do they embrace this trope?
- What about it strikes you as odd (in a way that using polytheistic setups apparently doesn't)?

I know the trope, but I've never really looked into the spirituality of the authors or readers. It's a new or at least uncharted country for me.



Gotcha. I know about that book, but haven't read it. (My sister owns it, so it's accessible to me.)

The thing about this trope is that I have been familiar with it for a long time and had simply taken it as another form of theism. But at the con I was just at there was a panel on mythology (as I mentioned in the OP). During this panel I heard from the same people a disparagement of atheism and an assertion of this trope as a theistic viewpoint.

For the first time I heard a cognitive dissonance between those two points. That, by the way, is why I posted this on the Atheism board as opposed to Comparative Religion.

The cognitive dissonance, to my mind, lies in the assertion of spiritual primacy for beings that are spiritually contingent on humanity. The trappings of spiritual primacy (reverence, deference, presumption of superior oversight, etc) seem to not belong with beings that come into existence from something as ephemeral and changeable as belief.

It therefore seemed to me that what was being espoused as a justification for accepting and following gods was just the opposite.

Back to Moorcock, Quest For Tanelorn is the culmination of his four major Eternal Champion series (Elric, Hawkmoon, Corum, and Erekose). It doesn't make a lot of sense if one hasn't read all of them. That's about 20 books in total (and one graphic novel if you can find it).
 

Dawnstorm

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The thing about this trope is that I have been familiar with it for a long time and had simply taken it as another form of theism. But at the con I was just at there was a panel on mythology (as I mentioned in the OP). During this panel I heard from the same people a disparagement of atheism and an assertion of this trope as a theistic viewpoint.

For the first time I heard a cognitive dissonance between those two points. That, by the way, is why I posted this on the Atheism board as opposed to Comparative Religion.

The cognitive dissonance, to my mind, lies in the assertion of spiritual primacy for beings that are spiritually contingent on humanity. The trappings of spiritual primacy (reverence, deference, presumption of superior oversight, etc) seem to not belong with beings that come into existence from something as ephemeral and changeable as belief.

It therefore seemed to me that what was being espoused as a justification for accepting and following gods was just the opposite.

Well, I can't remember a single instance of this quote that says the "one true god" will go away if you stop believing in it. Having grown up among Catholics with a natural immunity to theistic interpretation, I'd guess that it's a form of refraining from making images of Lord. We indulge in polytheistic fun, but it'll all go away to reveal what remains when no images are left.

To summarise: You can't really imagine the one true god, so once you stop believing in what can be imagined, you arrive the truth. But the time spent believing wasn't wasted, either, because that's what you believed in all along.

That's probably not what your panelists would answer, but that's an example of me improvising an answer on the spot.

Back to Moorcock, Quest For Tanelorn is the culmination of his four major Eternal Champion series (Elric, Hawkmoon, Corum, and Erekose). It doesn't make a lot of sense if one hasn't read all of them. That's about 20 books in total (and one graphic novel if you can find it).

I've read only Elric, but I'm passingly familiar with the contents of the other books.
 

kuwisdelu

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Richard, like Dawnstorm, most of my experiences with this trope are from Shinto interpretations in anime and manga, and so are very detached from the dominant Western religions. I don't associate the trope with the dominant Western religions.

I agree that it is eminently possible to write an version of this trope that is anti-theist, and some of the authors you mention may have done just that. However, I'm not familiar with them or those interpretations.

I post #33, Dawnstorm walked through my main issue and confusion I have with your assertion far better than I could. I would only add that I'm not asserting that once something becomes real, that it continues to exist, but rather that once something becomes real, you can't undo the fact that at the time, it was real — even if it is later erased from existence. You can't change the fact that it was real.

To conclude, I think it's possible to explore the trope from both directions, and I can certainly think of same ways to explore the trope that call into question "what makes a god?", but I don't think the trope itself is inherently anti-theist at all. It depends on the author's interpretation. And therefore, to an extent, the reader's too. Another anime I'd recommend that explores the concept is Serial Experiments Lain.

Also, Bakemonogatari explores the trope in terms of supernatural creatures in general (not gods).
 
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