Cononically nonthesist characters?

[yvi]

What canonically atheist/agnostic characters do you know that live in a world with religion? I am trying to compile a list.

Anime/Manga:
Edward Elric, Fullmetal Alchemist

Movies:
Eleanor Ann Arroway, Contact

TV series:
William Adama, Battlestar Galactica
Temperance Brennan, Bones
Dexter Morgan, Dexter
Britta Perry, Community
Jeff Winger, Community
Malcolm Reynolds, Firefly
River Tam, Firefly
Cristina Yang, Grey's Anatomy
Allison Cameron, House
Gregory House, House
Don Draper, Mad Men
Perry Cox, Scrubs
Keiko O'Brian, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Kathryn Janeway, Star Trek: Voyager
Seven of Nine, Star Trek: Voyager
Sarah Connor, The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Aaron Tyler, Wonderfalls

Comments

[pale_moonlite]

Gregory House, Bill Adama, and that's all I can think of at the moment. Isn't that a shame?

[yvi]

Thank you!

Hey, I could also only think of two (maybe three) characters :)

[yvi]

Ellie Arroway from Contact

[allchildren]

definitely:

Aaron Tyler, Wonderfalls
Mal Reynolds, Firefly
Cristina Yang, Grey's Anatomy
Britta Perry, Community
Jeff Winger, Community (agnostic)
Lee Adama, Battlestar Galactica
Dexter Morgan, Dexter

heavily implied:

Don Draper, Mad Men
Sarah Connor, TSCC
...Josh Lyman?, The West Wing

And many more to wonder about.

[yvi]

Thanks!

I'll take the definite ones for the moment, as I have no idea how implied the others are (the only show of those I have watches is West Wing and only up to season 2 so far). I'd really like to go with 'out' characters at first.

[allchildren]

They're only implied (well, Sarah and Don. Josh is more of a guess.) insofar as they don't actually use the a-word as far as I can recall. Sarah states that faith isn't part of her programming and Don is a nihilist who refers to the "indifference of the universe." They're both pretty out about their faithlessness.

[yvi]

Ah, okay, cool. That's clearer, then :) I'll put them both up and see whether anyone else weighs in on Josh, okay? So far in TWW, I am more seeing secularism and a certain contempt for organized religion in him.

[allchildren]

Yeah, to me he just screams "agnostic Jew" -- coming from a family of them myself. To be fair, not exactly unique in the world of Sorkin.

[yvi]

I love this show dearly for its secularism. Sure, there's the occasional eye-rolling response I have (I am not sure they would have done the same with non-Christians in "Shibboleth", for example), but they handle secularism so well so far :)

[yvi]

Perry Cox, Scrubs

[gamera]

From the anime/manga side, there's Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist.

[pensnest]

Temperance Brennan, in Bones

I'm not sure Mal Reynolds really qualifies as an atheist, though - he's too angry at God to be a non-believer.

[yvi]

Oh, finally someone who agrees with me on Mal! I also completely read him as someone who thinks there is a God who is a complete asshole, and wants nothing to do with God, instead of not believing in one.

[softestbullet]

Me three!

River Tam, however, is totally atheist.

[allchildren]

I would agree with both of the above. (But since Mal makes a big deal out of it I have to let him self-define. Uh, fictionally.)

[softestbullet]

Aw, that's how I feel about Willow and her lesbianism. (It would be cool if she were bisexual! But she clearly does not identify that way.) *thumbs up* But does he, really? All I remember is a lot of "God's not welcome here" and "No, I'm not gonna pray" and "STFU about God!" He definitely wouldn't call himself a Christian, but, I dunno.

[onceamy]

I have canonical atheists in my RPF fandoms.

I think Greg House can be considered to be an atheist.

[sqbr]

Games:
Dragon Age: Origins: Morrigan (though it's possible she only disbelieves in the nice gods :)) and the Qunari and Dwarf societies.

*thinks "There must be a list for this"*

There is! :)

[softestbullet]

Voyager, Kathryn Janeway and Seven of Nine. From TNG and DS9, umm, Keiko O'Brian, for sure, and probably lots of others.

[finch]

http://www.adherents.com/lit/comics/comic_book_religion.html#At lists a handful of comic book characters:

[hopefulnebula]

Watching House reruns, and Allison Cameron's a canonical atheist as well.

[lilacsigil]

Oddly enough, Dean Winchester on Supernatural, at least until near the end of Season 3.

[orbitaldiamonds]

Dr. Becker from Becker also. :)

[gavagai]

In the Star Trek questionably-canon expanded universe books, Ro Laren is an atheist/agnostic (rare and stigmatised among Bajorans) if that counts. Among the human characters of Trek a sort of undiscussed atheism/agnosticism is the norm, and IIRC they are normally reasonably good about avoiding cultural Christianity?

Michael Garibaldi from Babylon 5. (IIRC maintains some Catholic identity but definitely not religious)

Nick Angel from Hot Fuzz. ("I'm open to the concept of religion, I'm just not convinced by it")

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictitious_atheists_and_agnostics !

ETA: A few more here and here.

I'm not sure if they're fandom-y enough, but most of Christopher Brookmyre (Scottish humourous crime writer)'s protags are atheist, notably Angelique de Xavia and Jack Parlabane.

Ooh, Mohinder Suresh in Heroes, though I stopped watching so around s2 so don't know if anything changed there!

ETA2: Sorry to spam your inbox, but oh, Dorfl from Discworld! <3

[alexseanchai]

Dean Winchester, Supernatural, until sometime in season four. Which is damned odd considering 1x11 and 3x08 both involve Dean killing gods, but he doesn't get a clue that Supernaturalverse is theistic until he's spent some time interacting with angels who insist that the Christian god is real.

Are we counting people who insist that there used to be a god but no longer is? Because Raphael and Uriel and probably a bunch more angels I can't think of offhand are all certain that Supernaturalverse only ever had one god, the Christian one, who died a while back. Which might even be true. Rather depends on whether the S5 finale had God in it (the writers are being awfully coy) and whether Joshua knew and/or was telling the truth in 5x16.

(Supernatural has some fascinating theology. Among other things, though Christmas is a thing and so are Catholicism and several flavors of Protestantism, Christianity doesn't seem to have a Christ. Unless Joshua is Christ, but the only thing that theory's got going is Joshua's name and that he's got the most plausible claim going for having actually communicated with God sometime in the past uncounted timespan.)