Humanist fantasy

[sqbr]

Woo atheist fandom! This is the perfect place to post some thinky thought I've been having, yay ^_^

Something I've been thinking about with all this discussion of religion in fandom/fantasy etc is that what I often prefer reading about isn't so much atheism as humanism, even though I'm a flat-out materialist atheist myself I find stories where supernatural/godlike beings exist and it's shown to be better not to worship them a more satisfying antidote to all the "We should put our faith in The Powers Of Good" fantasy than stories where there's simply no supernatural element at all(*). The downside of this sort of fiction coming from a Christian background is that either it's set in a pseudo Christian setting (thus perpetuating the Christian centeredness of religious thinking) or it brings up some underrepresented religious tradition only to tear it down again.

I haven't seen a lot of fanworks set in supernatural settings poking at these sorts of assumptions, but I'd be very curious to read some. Would I be right in thinking they'd be outside the purview of this comm though? Unless the "gods" turn out not to be gods after all (aliens, magical spirits etc) Afaict asking about them is ok, though, since I'm an atheist asking it for atheist reasons :D

I'm still working my way through season 4 of Supernatural, but I'm really hoping someone has written some fanfic which highlights all the good reasons not to put your faith in the God of that show. And of course there's StarGate, though that can be problematic with the way it specifically targets gods from outside the culture of it's writers/watchers (I never got to the later seasons and their pseudo!Christians). Final Fantasy X, Babylon 5, and the His Dark Materials Trilogy are all good examples of humanist sf/fantasy along these lines. Dragon Age: Origins is deliberately ambiguous about the difference between Gods, myths, and powerful spirits/demons (with different groups interpreting the same figures in different ways) which give a lot of scope in fic.

There's also "Gods exist but are constructions of the human mind" cosmologies like the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett and much of Neil Gaiman's work. These can make for really interesting crossovers with pretty much any other supernatural setting.

And now to ponder which of my humanist speculative fiction fanworks are atheist enough to post here :D

(*)Although of course it can be taken too far into didactic evangelism, which I tend to find off putting. "His Dark Materials" crossed that line for me a bit.

Comments

[yvi]

Oh, that sounds very interesting. I often wondered about Stargate, specifically. That the idea of questioning religion on Earth never came up in a show where it's canon that ancient deities were all just an alien race pretending to be Gods is mind-boggling to me... I know why the producers wouldn't go there, but it still makes no sense to me.

[sqbr]

Yeah, it was a pretty obvious elephant in the room!

[allchildren]

This more or less happened on Xena. (Obviously, spoilers follow. Although I haven't seen the last ten episodes...) Throughout the series, which is set in Ancient Greece, Xena and Gabrielle constantly reassert that they don't worship any gods or think anybody should, but believe in the works people do. This is influenced by the fact that they actually know and have relationships with many gods (of multiple pantheons - let's not go into the horrors that happen in India), so they know firsthand those gods' many flaws. And um, then there's that whole storyline where Xena goes to war with the gods and most of them die. Which is interesting, but also happens as a way to pave way for the "God of Eli" aka Yahweh. It is quite discomfiting to watch that God be treated as the good and beneficient antidote to the chaos of the Greek pantheon -- but then some doubt as to his goodness is introduced and Xena maintains her "acknowledge all, worship none" stance. I think the real moral of the story is "don't try to make theological sense of XWP" but I did enjoy her longtime reliance on humanity.

[sqbr]

Yes, I've only seen season 1 of Xena but have been mostly enjoying the attitude to the gods (but have learned not to try to make too much theological sense of it :D).