I don’t think that’s quite it, though. As per the OP, NotLucy can instead phrase it as “This guy exists, but I don’t think he’s God”, which is pretty much what Jews and Muslims – and, yes, atheists – have no trouble saying about Jesus.
This.
Also, NotLucy may be defining God, capitalized, to mean “a vastly powerful immortal being who is sovereign over the world and whose moral standards are worthy of respect and emulation.” Since she doesn’t so much respect Aslan, and since she may well grant that Aslan is sovereign, it would seem to follow that she holds that no God exists. Just beings with super-powers.
The ancient Greeks may have worshipped their gods, but they did not believe that they were omnipotent, infallible or morally perfect - at least if they believed their own mythology. Does that mean that the Greeks were all atheists?
Not all gods are omnipotent. I’m also a bit out of date on Thor - let me say that if I still had the last issue I read when I was a kid, I’d be a rich man today.
Fair enough, but (a) Pym’s robot dropped him back in '81, which is also the year when Rogue dropped him, which was my first introduction to the big guy back when I was a kid; and (b) Thor putting up a decent fight against, but not being able to match, the Hulk – man, Marvel comics don’t really go back much further than that.
In more recent years, of course, readers finally got the long-anticipated inter-company fight between Thor and Superman – and even folks who haven’t picked up a comic in decades can probably guess the ending on that one: remember Ali-Frazier? It was, uh, the opposite of that.
Which brings me back to the OP, I guess: is Superman a god? Why or why not?
The problem is, no one in Narnia believes in gods, because they don’t use that term. So either everyone’s an atheist, or we have to find the closest equivalent. I’m pretty sure we’d all agree it’s the Emperor-Over-the-Sea. She is stated to believe in that entity. Since there’s no requirement for a god to be the Creator or anything else, there should be no such requirement for the Emperor.
Thus, NotLucy is definitely not an atheist.
I don’t think she qualifies. Since magic is a fact of existence in Narnia, it’s doesn’t make any sense not to acknowledge it. Shes more akin to creationist biblical literalist in this world I think.
The OP says that NotLucy believes in magic. (Well, “it’s not that she doesn’t believe in magic”.) What she’s not sure about is whether Aslan really created the world, and she wouldn’t have much respect for him either way.
If NotLucy believes that Aslan exists but is not a god (and she doesn’t believe in any other god) then she’s an atheist. If she’s not sure, she’s an agnostic. But if she believes he’s a god but doesn’t respect/worship him then I’d agree with the others here who’ve said that’s not exactly atheism. Dystheism is probably the best term, as it means that one believes in the existence of (a) god but does not believe that this god is good. Antitheism and misotheism would also work, although both suggest that NotLucy hates Aslan which seems stronger than the feelings described in the OP.
I can think of a couple of fairly well-known fictional fantasy characters who have similar beliefs. Xena interacted with gods on a regular basis, but she didn’t worship any of them and didn’t even like most of them. And I think it was in Carpe Jugulum that one of Terry Pratchett’s witches (probably Granny, but it may have been Nanny) said that although the gods clearly existed that was no reason to go around believing in them. IIRC it’s been suggested that the Discworld wizards feel much the same way – they know the gods are real, but they prefer not to have anything to do with them.
Xena was on my mind when she wrote the OP, though she wasn’t quite what you suggest. She kind of liked Aphrodite, and was certainly hot for Ares, but she didn’t trust either; and she lit a candle in the temple of the Fates on the anniversary of her little brother’s death.
Hercules & Iolaus from the same universe certainly didn’t think much of the gods, though Herc virtually was one. When Olympus was about to be destroyed and all the full gods killed, Iolaus thought they should probably let it happen, and Herc seemed to agree in theory; in practice, they only intervened because earth would be destroyed as well. Iolaus was certainly a misotheist.
Skald, what, you misjudge your dosages this morning? I’m trying to understand.
NotLucy “doesn’t think that either is worthy of worship or truly deserving of the name God; she suspects that nobody is.” The closest you can get this to atheism is that her suspicion might lead her further down the road toward it. I think an atheist would have to believe that nobody could deserve to be called by the name God.
There is another kind of hair to be split here. If magic is objectively real, then unless it is somehow permanently partitioned away from people, you would have to think people behaving magically was possible. If the world supports the potential of people to behave magically, then atheism requires gerrymandering some kind of definitional boundary between magical people and gods, and believing in the absolute nature of such a boundary.
I can understand a world view in which nothing above nature is real, so there is no magic and no god. I can also imagine a world view in which any kind of supernatural thing is plausible (though I can’t understand it). But world views in which these things are both somewhat true don’t seem well defined.
Monotheistic belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, omni-benevolent creator-of-the-universe god is only one way to be theistic. As others have pointed out, there are plenty of religions which have been polytheistic, and where the gods worshiped (or at least, paid tribute) are not particularly morally admirable. Worship has been more a matter of propitiation than of adoration. Big T has the right of it; no one in Narnia refers to “god,” so it’s impossible to know if NotLucy believes in Aslan as god, because the concept doesn’t seem to exist in Narnia. NotLucy believes in the empirically evident fact of magic, and in Aslan’s powerful ability to do it.
There really isn’t any parallel here in Mundania, because there is no evidence of magic and there very definitely is the concept of god or gods. The closest equivalent would be the person who says “I don’t know whether or not there is a god, but if there is, he’s not worthy of worship because he lets/makes innocent little kids die in horrible ways.” This is the inevitable result of postulating an omnipotent, omniscient, omni-benevolent creator-of-the-universe god. If that were all there was, I suspect this dissonance would have caused religion to die out altogether centuries ago. But here in Mundania, religion is heavily tied to both power and wealth, not to mention self-image (I, as a believer in X, am superior to you, a non-believer). Not so much in Narnia.
At the end of the day, you can’t call someone either a theist or an atheist when they exist in a society that lacks the concept of god(s).