Atheist Fiction

What is art? What is beauty?

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marjoram_blues
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Atheist Fiction

Post by marjoram_blues »

Aesthetic approaches to 'problem' of god's non-existence - creating own meaning in an indifferent universe.

Authors, novels, plays, poetry, programmes, characters...cartoons...
Any sweet or sour suggestions; shocks, surprises ?

I like this by Emily Dickinson:

In the name of the Bee -
And of the Butterfly -
And of the Breeze - Amen !
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SpheresOfBalance
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Re: Atheist Fiction

Post by SpheresOfBalance »

marjoram_blues wrote: Wed Sep 20, 2017 9:05 pm Aesthetic approaches to 'problem' of god's non-existence - creating own meaning in an indifferent universe.

Authors, novels, plays, poetry, programmes, characters...cartoons...
Any sweet or sour suggestions; shocks, surprises ?

I like this by Emily Dickinson:

In the name of the Bee -
And of the Butterfly -
And of the Breeze - Amen !
Well I'm an agnostic, so...

...who could necessarily 'know?'

I do love the bee, butterfly and breeze, though!
marjoram_blues
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Re: Atheist Fiction

Post by marjoram_blues »

SpheresOfBalance wrote: Wed Sep 20, 2017 9:22 pm
marjoram_blues wrote: Wed Sep 20, 2017 9:05 pm Aesthetic approaches to 'problem' of god's non-existence - creating own meaning in an indifferent universe.

Authors, novels, plays, poetry, programmes, characters...cartoons...
Any sweet or sour suggestions; shocks, surprises ?

I like this by Emily Dickinson:

In the name of the Bee -
And of the Butterfly -
And of the Breeze - Amen !
Well I'm an agnostic, so...

...who could necessarily 'know?'

I do love the bee, butterfly and breeze, though!
Ah, the poet - who doesn't know it - returns :)
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SpheresOfBalance
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Location: On a Star Dust Metamorphosis

Re: Atheist Fiction

Post by SpheresOfBalance »

marjoram_blues wrote: Wed Sep 20, 2017 9:24 pm
SpheresOfBalance wrote: Wed Sep 20, 2017 9:22 pm
marjoram_blues wrote: Wed Sep 20, 2017 9:05 pm Aesthetic approaches to 'problem' of god's non-existence - creating own meaning in an indifferent universe.

Authors, novels, plays, poetry, programmes, characters...cartoons...
Any sweet or sour suggestions; shocks, surprises ?

I like this by Emily Dickinson:

In the name of the Bee -
And of the Butterfly -
And of the Breeze - Amen !
Well I'm an agnostic, so...

...who could necessarily 'know?'

I do love the bee, butterfly and breeze, though!
Ah, the poet - who doesn't know it - returns :)
Well at least for those, such as you, I hope it's true.

Though I'm definitely a work in progress, Miss blues. ;-)
marjoram_blues
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Re: Atheist Fiction

Post by marjoram_blues »

Any kind of aesthetic/artistic examples re atheist fiction, no matter your own view.

I have a cartoon:

Evangelist offering literature to passer-by: ' The Bible will change your life, Sir'.

Response by Cheerful Chappie: 'Oh, it HAS! It made me an atheist'.
marjoram_blues
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Re: Atheist Fiction

Post by marjoram_blues »

Sherlock Holmes ?
Arthur Conan Doyle - Irish Catholic background; then educated at Jesuit school. Later rejected the Catholic faith and became agnostic. And then became a spiritualist mystic. Off and on a Freemason. Wow, he believed that spiritualism was a New Revelation sent by God to bring solace to the bereaved. He wrote books on Spiritualism. He was duped by the Cottingley Fairies photographs.
How did this nutty person give birth to dear Sherlock?
Perhaps clues and hoaxes were his thing...creating his own meaning...ikigai.
marjoram_blues
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Re: Atheist Fiction

Post by marjoram_blues »

Temperance 'Bones' Brennan -
Kathy Reich's creation is an atheist. But does this reflect her own views? Reich also created Booth, a devout Roman Catholic. Reich was brought up as Catholic, but did her work as forensic scientist change her to a non-believer. Would dissecting a murdered dead body do that to you...
Hmmm, what about NCIS and Ducky. Donald Mallard, played by David McCallum.
Gibbs was asked what Ducky looked like when he was younger. Ilya Kuryakin.
I remember him well. But don't know religious inclination. Would it have been career death to come out as an atheist? A bit like having to pretend to be straight when gay.
Rock Hudson.
marjoram_blues
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Re: Atheist Fiction

Post by marjoram_blues »

What happens when you lose your Ikigai ?
Do you need to get creative; go search for it in an established group; dig deep in entangled thought streams? Dream in fiction ?

If you have changed ?for the better, do you feel the need to spread the word. Even if hidden in coded stories? We don't all need to be blatant about any strong position held and obsess about any opposition, do we?

When reading fiction, most are not even aware of religious beliefs, non-belief, of the authors.
And most times it doesn't even matter.
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Greta
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Re: Atheist Fiction

Post by Greta »

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
The Babel fish is small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received, not from its own carrier, but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them.

The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that something so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing.' 'But, says Man, the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.' 'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and vanishes in a puff of logic. 'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the theme of his best-selling book, Well That About Wraps It Up For God.
marjoram_blues
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Re: Atheist Fiction

Post by marjoram_blues »

Great choice, Greta 8)
Douglas Adams apparently described himself as a radical atheist so as to make sure people wouldn't ask if meant agnostic.
His interest in religion was because of its effect on humans. What a guy !
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Re: Atheist Fiction

Post by marjoram_blues »

David Gilmour of Pink Floyd.
Gilmour an atheist. 'This earthly heaven is enough for me' - ' I need no blessings but I'm counting mine' from 'This Heaven'.
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Greta
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Re: Atheist Fiction

Post by Greta »

Marj, David Gilmour is one of my favourite humans in music :) I expect Roger Waters and co felt similarly to DG, given the band's lyrics and style.

Yes, Douglas Adams was a fierce humanist and environmentalist. Terry Pratchett was of a similar ilk, and his "Small Gods" captures many dynamics of religious belief. Some witty and perceptive quotes from the novel: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1 ... small-gods
Dubious
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Re: Atheist Fiction

Post by Dubious »

As a neo-Nietzsche neophyte, I proclaim that Babel Fish is dead replaced by the Google God as an advanced digital hologram of what used to be.
marjoram_blues
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Re: Atheist Fiction

Post by marjoram_blues »

Greta wrote: Sat Sep 23, 2017 12:00 am Marj, David Gilmour is one of my favourite humans in music :) I expect Roger Waters and co felt similarly to DG, given the band's lyrics and style.

Yes, Douglas Adams was a fierce humanist and environmentalist. Terry Pratchett was of a similar ilk, and his "Small Gods" captures many dynamics of religious belief. Some witty and perceptive quotes from the novel: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1 ... small-gods
Thanks Greta - I was hoping for this kind of positive contribution and a bit of inspiration, and here you are with all your you-ness. Passing on the creative side of your life experience.
Last edited by marjoram_blues on Sat Sep 23, 2017 10:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
marjoram_blues
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Re: Atheist Fiction

Post by marjoram_blues »

Dubious wrote: Sat Sep 23, 2017 1:22 am As a neo-Nietzsche neophyte, I proclaim that Babel Fish is dead replaced by the Google God as an advanced digital hologram of what used to be.
I'm tempted to paste this into Google Translate but haven't decided what language I need to understand it in...
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