| Feb. 7th, 2008 @ 10:35 am Follow-ups: Pullman |
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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). |
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