Non-theistic Spiritual Writing - what are you writing?

Ruv Draba · Jun 16, 2008

I think that the title stands for itself. Like Veinglory who complained of this recently I'm seeing a lot of posts about atheism, but not a lot of posts about atheistic writing.

I'm interested in what posters are writing. Especially, is anyone writing any athestic values-related fiction?

My last explicitly atheistic story was a Dark Ages humanistic piece involving a child of two cultures - an invading culture and an occupying culture - who was rejected by both. After running afoul of society and its laws, he ended up living in the church because it was the only way he could live outside of society - but it was a social refuge for him rather than a spiritual one. He had no belief in God (because the church condoned the injustices of the time), but was content to help his fellow man through the institution. Too solitary to be a revolutionary, he contented himself to try and make things better one day at a time. Over time he realised that he had a valuable place in the world after all: as an irreligious priest who actually loved people for who they were, rather than for who dogma said they were.

Most of my critters didn't get it. One Christian friend got irate that my main character didn't get any spiritual strength from the church. She also got annoyed at me that the MC was guilty of the so-called 'pelagic heresy': that man can be the source of his own salvation. She I think, was the only reader who got it, but just didn't like it.

veinglory · Jun 16, 2008

I just had a book accepted by Loose Id which uses that old idea that what appear to be gods to the characters are simply people with access to higher technology (the 'Gods' themselves are atheist). But this doesn't actually come up in this book so I am not sure it counts. In the first book they are just pretty incompetant gods.

I keep meaning to write a story about a far future where all religious texts have basically been lost and everyone is atheist. It would be one character basically reinventing religion because he is just psychologically set up that way (the atheist version of 'The Breeders'). But actually now I think most people would pretty much miss the point unless I made it strong enough to annoy heck out of them. And its never good to ask for someone's money and then annoy heck out of them : /

Shweta · Jun 16, 2008

I don't know if this counts, but here goes

I'm writing a fantasy novel in which people... more or less... believe in gods, but belief has dropped off some with technology changing. The characters also have to grapple with cross-cultural and cross-religious issues, and I figure at some point they will hit religious questioning (So we have sun gods, but we know the sun is an astronomical body that the planet circles, so are either of our sun gods real?)

Part of what interests me about this is -- it's a world where magic is very real indeed. When that's the case, how do characters deal with religious doubt and scientific thinking?

The setting is somewhat historical, so there's only going to be one character (at most) who will make the leap to deities being social/cultural constructs. And the other characters will not like this at all.

AMCrenshaw · Jun 16, 2008

The book I am working on now (and have been researching here in this subforum) is about a man's spiritual journey. He grows up in the Christian church, but is pushed away for many reasons (a personal injustice he witnesses concerning his first Pastor, hierarchical imposition on ekklesia, and finally a clash of vision). His vision of spirituality is relevant without God, and so his sermons reflect that view. He publically speaks out against societal injustice- credit card company exploitation, global abuse of women, inner city disparities, etc- and is active in aiding the poor, but does so for love of humanity and existence. While the Church helped him form a conscience, helped him form empathy, it didn't allow him to grow to really be himself; there was simply too much dogma forming his "identity," which had nothing to do with who he really was.

Of course by the end of the narrative he is shot and killed. It's meant to reflect the way Power asserts itself for self-preservation.

Also I've had essays and articles about Zen Buddhism published by The Phil Berrigan Institute for Nonviolence.

William Haskins · Jun 16, 2008

Ruv Draba said:
I think that the title stands for itself. Like Veinglory who complained of this recently I'm seeing a lot of posts about atheism, but not a lot of posts about atheistic writing.

i would think that there's a lot of talk about atheistic writing, only it's not conspicuous because it's simply writing about reality.

atheism need not be explicit.

benbradley · Jun 16, 2008

Iinteresting question - I've got a memoir in me that includes a few years of believing in God, and then having that belief fade away, falling apart like a house of cards or dissipating like a cloud turning into water vapor (I thought both similies around the time my loss of faith was happening). <Insert short explanation that turns into 100,000 words of memoir here>

I've also had ideas for including theism and atheism in fiction, but I don't think I have enough experience as a writer to write that sort of thing well (but I know I shouldn't let that stop me, and I've got at least one "trunk novel" in me). I just know I'd be too lecturing if I wrote more than a passing reference to spiritual/religious beliefs or a lack thereof.

veinglory said:
...
I keep meaning to write a story about a far future where all religious texts have basically been lost and everyone is atheist. It would be one character basically reinventing religion because he is just psychologically set up that way (the atheist version of 'The Breeders'). But actually now I think most people would pretty much miss the point unless I made it strong enough to any heck out of them. And its never good to ask for someone's money and then annoy heck out of them : /

I'm not sure if you should let that stop you. As a reader, sometimes I WANT to be annoyed.

Shweta · Jun 16, 2008

William Haskins said:
i would think that there's a lot of talk about atheistic writing, only it's not conspicuous because it's simply writing about reality.

atheism need not be explicit.

Agreed, but is that spiritual in particular? I think Ruv's asking something a bit more specific than your interpretation -- about writing that grapples with spiritual issues from a viewpoint that isn't yay-god(s).

Ruv Draba · Jun 16, 2008

veinglory said:
I just had a book accepted by Loose Id which uses that old idea that what appear to be gods to the characters are simply people with access to higher technology (the 'Gods' themselves are atheist).

Congratulations!

I keep meaning to write a story about a far future where all religious texts have basically been lost and everyone is atheist. It would be one character basically reinventing religion because he is just psychologically set up that way (the atheist version of 'The Breeders'). But actually now I think most people would pretty much miss the point unless I made it strong enough to any heck out of them.

It seems to me that a lot of atheistic stories are about there being no answers, or the answers being dissatisfying. One of the attractions of stories based in religious myth is that they're often emotionally very satisfying - even if they're not so satisfying intellectually.

With the critique I got with my story, the fantasists wanted to see the MC become a revolutionary Rambo sort of character and overthrow the dominant regime, which they saw as 'evil'. The religious idealists wanted the character to gain some comfort from the religion of the day. I just wanted the character to deal with the pragmatics of the situation, and realise that pragma, persistence and compassion can offer a satisfactory path though not a stellar one or an easy one.

benbradley · Jun 16, 2008

William Haskins said:
i would think that there's a lot of talk about atheistic writing, only it's not conspicuous because it's simply writing about reality.

atheism need not be explicit.

Are you not talking about secular writing, in which the beliefs of the characters/subjects, specifically whether or not they believe in God, never comes up?

Isn't it true that unless specified explicitly (or at least hinted at), a reader will see characters as having the same beliefs (and any other characteristics not specified) as the reader? So only an atheist reader would see characters in secular writing as atheistic.

Ruv Draba · Jun 16, 2008

Shweta said:
I think Ruv's asking something a bit more specific than your interpretation -- about writing that grapples with spiritual issues from a viewpoint that isn't yay-god(s).

Indeed. A murder mystery may have no religion in it (or may show religion to be corrupt) but that doesn't necessarily make it a spiritual story.

What I'm interested in are stories dealing with morality, purpose, belonging, compassion from some basis outside religious ideology. I'm especially interested in stories involving dissent with the ideology of one's own culture - just because that's a very common atheistic experience.

The MC of my story had no ideological objection to the existence of God. He simply couldn't see that God was any use to him -- God offered him nothing practical to stop two cultures from hating him. However the Church offered him a place to live outside the rules that marginalised him, so he used that in a fairly cynical and pragmatic fashion. The Church for their part didn't much care as long as he obeyed the forms and behaved himself.

Ruv Draba · Jun 16, 2008

Shweta said:
Part of what interests me about this is -- it's a world where magic is very real indeed. When that's the case, how do characters deal with religious doubt and scientific thinking?

I'm interested in that too! Just because there's magic, does it mean one needs to be superstitious? Conversely, if scientific thinking works on average but fails badly at the margins, how would people adapt to that? Would it make them more cynical? More idealistic? More judgemental or more perceptual? Do they become more concerned with physicality or symbolism? Do they become more risk-averse or more adventurous? If there are literal godlike sentiences do we go for genuine appeasement and supplication, or do we go for negotiation, seduction and coercion?

Ruv Draba · Jun 16, 2008

benbradley said:
Iinteresting question - I've got a memoir in me that includes a few years of believing in God, and then having that belief fade away, falling apart like a house of cards or dissipating like a cloud turning into water vapor (I thought both similies around the time my loss of faith was happening). <Insert short explanation that turns into 100,000 words of memoir here>

What would you see as the key tensions in that story, BenB? Moral tensions? Relationship tensions? Existential tensions?

I've also had ideas for including theism and atheism in fiction, but I don't think I have enough experience as a writer to write that sort of thing well (but I know I shouldn't let that stop me, and I've got at least one "trunk novel" in me). I just know I'd be too lecturing if I wrote more than a passing reference to spiritual/religious beliefs or a lack thereof.

I think it's relatively easy to write atheistic opinion pieces. (As evidence, take a look at recent discussions). I think that it's harder to write spiritual fiction from an atheistic perspective without it becoming a polemic on religion, an anthem to materialism, or a paean to the supremacy of science.

Ian McEwan often achieves it, I think, by focusing on the psychology of the unthinkable. He constantly puts people in macabre but realistic situations then just watches them unflinchingly as they react. Along the way they sometimes pick up some morality - or at least display something of the moral tensions in their circumstance. By using macabre situations he's able to take his characters outside the place where the usual social conventions and platitudes work -- which I feel, unmasks their spiritual identities.

While I wasn't consciously trying to emulate McEwan with my between-cultures story, I realise now that I used a similar sort of starting situation... Hrm...

benbradley · Jun 16, 2008

Ruv Draba said:
What would you see as the key tensions in that story, BenB? Moral tensions? Relationship tensions? Existential tensions?

Good question - I think it would be mostly existential. The moral stuff (seeing "upstanding" people do hugely hypocritical and immoral things) and relationship stuff (slowly learning as an adult many things about people and their common interactions I should have learned as a child and teen) are there, but I guess existential would best describe my more important epiphanies, and of learning about myself and about life in general.

Ruv Draba said:
I think it's relatively easy to write atheistic opinion pieces. (As evidence, take a look at recent discussions). I think that it's harder to write spiritual fiction from an atheistic perspective without it becoming a polemic on religion, an anthem to materialism, or a paean to the supremacy of science.

I can see what you're saying here... but to a slightly differen topic, the word "anthem" rings a bell (as an Ayn Rand title) - I've read the first 50 pages or so of "Atlas Shrugged" and it gives me hope - that I don't have to be a "great writer" to get published and become popular! I can already feel the lecturing tone, and I haven't even got to the "big lecture" yet.

benbradley · Jun 16, 2008

Ruv Draba said:
I'm interested in that too! Just because there's magic, does it mean one needs to be superstitious? Conversely, if scientific thinking works on average but fails badly at the margins, how would people adapt to that? Would it make them more cynical? More idealistic? More judgemental or more perceptual? Do they become more concerned with physicality or symbolism? Do they become more risk-averse or more adventurous?

This seems to me to be closer to the genre of fantasy than to spiritually-related writing, but is still interesting.

Ruv Draba said:
If there are literal godlike sentiences do we go for genuine appeasement and supplication, or do we go for negotiation, seduction and coercion?

I think it depends on our knowledge of them, or at least how much knowledge we have in general. More ignorant people would go for genuine appeasement, but science-minded people will lean towards trying to understand, even with no clue available of how a deity's "godlike powers" work. I couldn't help but have Clarke's Law (perhaps it's Clarke's Cliche' by now) that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguisable from magic" in mind, and to use whatever tools we could in an attempt to fathom and control this entity, such as psychology and fake appeasement.

Ruv Draba · Jun 17, 2008

benbradley said:
This seems to me to be closer to the genre of fantasy than to spiritually-related writing, but is still interesting.

Fantasy has a long tradition of being a vehicle for spiritual myth. Indeed, you could argue that most religious myth contains tracts of fantasy. What's perhaps less obvious is whether there's a place for fantasy in atheist spirituality.

Certainly, Ursula Le Guin seems to think so. She identifies as an atheist but has been happy to write about gods, and in her Earthsea series, wrote from a Taoist perspective. She's certainly written a lot of spiritual fiction.

It's important to realise that fiction (especially fantasy) is not always meant to be taken literally. It's often interpreted figuratively. While those figures can be representative of theist belief (as in CS Lewis' Narnia stories, for instance), they can also represent non-theist thought -- as is often in Le Guin's writing.

I suppose that in talking this through I'm helping to answer my own question: how do you write spiritual fiction from an atheist perspective without it being something trite. McEwan offers one approach; Le Guin offers another.

Shweta · Jun 17, 2008

Ruv Draba said:
I'm interested in that too! Just because there's magic, does it mean one needs to be superstitious?

If it's magic-as-technology, surely not. But that's a bit of an easy problem, so it doesn't interest me as much.

In my case, the magic is deeply shamanic. Where does that take scientific thought, when the shamans are the scientists?

Conversely, if scientific thinking works on average but fails badly at the margins, how would people adapt to that?

In my case, it just means that the scientific interpretation is way complicated, and currently beyond my characters, and they are confused

This is one minor thread in this novel, which might become a major thread in a follow-up if I write a follow-up and make the scientific-minded character a MC.

Ruv Draba said:
Fantasy has a long tradition of being a vehicle for spiritual myth. Indeed, you could argue that most religious myth contains tracts of fantasy.

I'd argue more that most religious myth is inherently fantastical, and that fantastical storytelling has always been culturally important.

But I'm just really tired of religions being "right" in fiction. That's an easy out. I don't think any religion, or any other structured belief form we've got, is "right". We just have some things less wrong than others.

I think the point that religion is emotionally satisfying is an important one. Emotional "truth" is at least as important to us embodied human critters as intellectual sense is. Probably more. So it matters a whole lot whether one can make an atheist spirituality emotionally satisfying.

What's perhaps less obvious is whether there's a place for fantasy in atheist spirituality.

I very much hope there is, because the fabulist/fantastical tendency is a marvel of human cognition.

I do wonder to what extent Le Guin's atheism is actually areligiousness. Certainly she plays a lot with Taoist/Zen/Buddhist ideas, several different Native American ideas, and Jungian philosophy (Which qualifies much better as mysticism than science).

So... er... if that's atheist spirituality, I'm an atheist. And I'm an unashamed mystic.

It's important to realise that fiction (especially fantasy) is not always meant to be taken literally. It's often interpreted figuratively.

Yeah. I'd call... some fantastical writing, at least... a literalization of figurative thought.

But it can also be as much a what-if as science fiction, and I think we've hit on three variants of atheist spirituality in fiction now.

1) What-if {there's definitely no god/the gods are really aliens/gods are really made up by priesthoods/etc}?
2) fictional writing, not necessarily about religion in any way, but with an undercurrent of atheist morality.
3) writing that deals with the sense of who we are, possibly in a metaphorical/dream-logic/fantastic way, without falling back on "something greater than us".

I feel like where I fit into this is mostly 3, a bit of 1, and something else again, cause I am touching on (and hopefully subverting) the fantasy trope of warring pantheons.

Off topic, what exactly does it say of me that I'm the "Other" person who's most comfortable in the "Pagan" and "Non-theistic" subforums?

zornhau · Jun 17, 2008

I'm writing a big fat heroic fantasy tale.

Ruv Draba said:
I suppose that in talking this through I'm helping to answer my own question: how do you write spiritual fiction from an atheist perspective without it being something trite.

For me, writing fantasy, it's the attitude to the gods, rather than whether they are present.

My gods are just big powerful players in whatever game is afoot. If they were to serve up a mystical experience - well, I suspect I would treat it like a drug trip. Any monotheistic gods that turn up... well, in my universe they are simply fraudsters.

How is this atheist?

Without the mystical undefinable label of being Absolute Good, gods are logically indistinguisable from other powerful entities.

Shweta · Jun 17, 2008

zornhau said:
How is this atheist?

Without the mystical undefinable label of being Absolute Good, gods are logically indistinguisable from other powerful entities.

I beg to differ. I'd say that gods are the powerful entities a group/culture/individual happens to worship.

Now, that's not an objective definition. But it's a logically consistent one. I do agree that, objectively, if you don't happen to believe in a monotheistic setup, gods are just big spiritual critters. But I think it's worth taking culture and construal into account.

William Haskins · Jun 17, 2008

Shweta said:
Agreed, but is that spiritual in particular? I think Ruv's asking something a bit more specific than your interpretation -- about writing that grapples with spiritual issues from a viewpoint that isn't yay-god(s).

in my view, a godless universe is devoid of "spiritual issues".

Sarpedon · Jun 17, 2008

Well, I'm attempting a fantasy. Its not specifically atheistic, however, and it exists in your standard fantasy polytheistic world...except with a difference. There's no prophesies (well, no real ones), no priestly magic, no miracles or divine intervention. In fact, its much like the real world, in that most people are religious, but there's no demonstrable grounding to their faith. There is magic and a certain amount of supernatural stuff in the world, but whether that has anything to do with a 'higher power' is unclear.

The protag is a skeptic, but not in a 'hit you over the head' kind of way. He just goes about his business without having much to do with the religious life.

I also do a little bit of a science current events blog at an atheist site, nothing special though. Frankly, I'm not sure how long thats going to last, we don't get much traffic there.

veinglory · Jun 17, 2008

I think most high fantasy simply defaults to creating theistic world like ours or like we think existed in the past. This displays a certain lack of imagination.

I have, for example, had people say there must be gods in a fantasy books in order for there to be magic. I don;t see it. Magic is something the author invents, it can work by any mechanism, or even no specific explained mechanism. We could create societies that don't fill the knowledge gap with a deity

JimmyB27 · Jun 17, 2008

Shweta said:
I do wonder to what extent Le Guin's atheism is actually areligiousness.

What is the difference?

My current WiP is a fantasy too. The MC is an atheist who is believed by many to be the Messiah of the major world religion.
This really annoys him.
It annoys him even more when the girl he falls for refuses to have a relationship with him because she is a priest and the very thought of hooking up with the saviour horrifies her.

Ruv Draba · Jun 17, 2008

zornhau said:
Without the mystical undefinable label of being Absolute Good, gods are logically indistinguisable from other powerful entities.

I concur. In my view, what makes powerful creatures function as gods (whether they are creators of existence or not, whether their powers are seen as natural or supernatural), is whether we give them supreme moral authority over our lives.

It's interesting to look at Le Guin's Earthsea stories for this distinction. Some characters see some ancient, powerful and largely dormant creatures as gods, while the main character sees them simply as powerful beings. The sole difference is that their worshippers gave them supreme moral authority while the main character saw them simply as beings with whom he shared the world, and with no moral authority over him. There's a bit of moral development around this distinction in the second or third book as I recall.

Ruv Draba · Jun 17, 2008

William Haskins said:
in my view, a godless universe is devoid of "spiritual issues".

I think that a lot of atheists would agree with you, but there are two ways in which I don't agree:

1) You could have a universe of spirits without gods. (I don't claim that there is such a universe, but it's still an exception)

2) If you consider spiritual issues to encompass morality, belonging, purpose, relationships and community responsibility as I do but not necessarily encompassing the supernatural, then any time you have morality, community and meaning you have spiritual issues - regardless of the world in which they exist. I know that some atheists are very uncomfortable with this viewpoint (as indeed are some theists), but I still hold to it. It's in this sense that I've been writing about the works of Le Guin and McEwan in this thread.

I acknowledge that there are some atheists who don't believe in morality or purpose, who see community as just an aggregation of individual choices and all relationships as just a set of transactions. I would acknowledge that in such a view, 'spirituality' is meaningless. But that's a rather bleak view to my mind, and not one that I hold myself.

The issue then may simply be one of definition of 'spirituality'.

veinglory · Jun 17, 2008

I quite agree with the above. For a start spiritual beings need not be gods, and also a lot of things are co-opted as spirirtual issues that apply just as much to materialist (e.g. no literal belief in intangibles like the soul) people and cultures experience as well.

Non-theistic Spiritual Writing - what are you writing?

volitare nequeo

gone

...

poet

It's a doggy dog world

gone

It's a doggy dog world

It's a doggy dog world

It's a doggy dog world

gone

Swordsman

gone

poet

volitare nequeo

Hoopy frood

volitare nequeo