Thanks so much for linking to this. I love Chesterton’s stories. Profoundly rational and genuinely religious, with no tolerance for the superstitions that some people mistake for religion and/or spirituality.
Much as I like Connie Willis, I think her courage failed in this book, and I found it quite disappointing.
Since the thread began I’ve been trying to decide whether it’s worth mentioning Chesterton’s novel The Ball and the Cross, which centers around a conflict between a “devout but naive Roman Catholic” and a “devout but naive atheist”* which is, in a sense, an allegorization of a debate Chesterton himself had with an atheist journalist. Although Chesterton is represented by the Catholic, he presents the atheist character in a fairly positive light, and has him say of himself and his rival:
*These are the words of Martin Gardner in his introduction to the Dover edition of the book, which introduction I highly recommend to anyone who’s interested.
It’s Sunday, and Sunday has a U in it, so by Rhymer Rules I am allowed to snort derisively whenever Star Trek comes up.
I’m not saying I will; just that I may.
Given Lazarus’s professed agnosticism about the afterlife (see an early chapter of Time Enough for Love), I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a similar opinion about the existence of the deity. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he’s an apatheist, though.
Vladimir Nabokov stated that “there are at least three themes which are utterly taboo as far as most American publishers are concerned. The two others [aside from that of Lolita] are: a Negro-White marriage which is a complete and glorious success resulting in lots of children and grandchildren; and the total atheist who lives a happy and useful life, and dies in his sleep at the age of 106.”
I can’t really say whether this fits the OP’s criteria of “positive light”, because it about the “right” to commit suicide. Nevertheless, I suggest “The Sunset Limited”, first a stage play and later adapted as a movie on HBO.
Basically, a an evangelical Christian has just prevented an atheist from committing suicide before the opening scene, and the entire play is the two of them sitting around arguing the meaning of life and death. IIRC it ends with the atheist leaving the stage (presumably go have another try at suicide) and the Christian not having any arguments left to dissuade him. Given American TV, it’s arguable that this outcome is an absolute triumph for atheism.
I truly recommend it. The film has Samuel Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones as the lead (and only) characters.
How about Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series where religion simply isn’t present?
I would have liked it better if
Joanna had been right about what happens after death
but apart from that (which is a pretty big “that”), I think it’s good. Regarding the OP’s question, there’s quite a lot about the difference between serious research and wishful thinking (one of the other characters is a NDE “researcher” who *tells *his interview subjects what to remember, and just knows that the NDEs show people a foretaste of Heaven).
The sequel to this Children of God is wonderful, too.
Another of her books,* A Thread of Grace*, is one of my all-time favorites-- it deals with Jews escaping from Italy during WWII. There are some quite good, complex characters who are not people of faith. The book abounds with moral dilemmas.
I read the HDM works looking for the atheist take, but it left me annoyed. We’re presented with angels and God and such as real beings. That hardly seems atheist to me, even if he rejects their merit for worship. And the main character against God and his Archangels is, in fact, just as evil. So no win there.
Yes, the book has something about encoding a message deep in the digits of pi. The movie didn’t have that part, left the encoding message in pi to be plausibly explained by the rich guy. Ellie remained atheist, the essence of the question was on whether there were aliens out there or not. There was the tantalizing bit of blank video tape that corresponded to exactly the amount of time she claimed she experienced vs. the amount of time for the drop.
I feel Christmas is a very secularized traditional holiday in Britain, and thus for the wizards.
The Hollywood perspective goes beyond a transient event that gets one thinking to the curmudgeonly disbeliever who is just angry at God. Like the Hollywood skeptic who refuses to believe, only to be shown the truth when the ghosts/monsters/psychic turns out to be real.
One could make the case for Sherlock Holmes, until you get to the requirement
ACD is silent on the matter. On the one hand, Holmes does cite/paraphrase the Bible on occassion, but he also does the same for Shakespeare. One could argue he’s using the Bible as a common literature reference rather than any source of his own beliefs. Conversely, Holmes is so anti-supernatural and so strongly rational and deductive that is difficult to imagine he could be anything but atheist/agnostic.
In fact, you see this roll over into Hollywood characters based on Holmes. Look at House and Bones, for two examples, where the “atheist” is an important part of the characterization. But in both cases it is used as an example of how weird each one is. It’s another point on how far off the normal spectrum they stand.
I don’t know about Holmes being atheist. In The Hound of the Baskervilles, he does raise the possibility that the Hound is genuinely a supernatural entity, and says that he’s completely unqualified to deal with it if so. But since he can’t do anything about it if it really is supernatural, the only course available to him is to assume that it’s not.
I don’t think this is a fair conclusion at all. Atheism, agnosticism, deism, and at least certain forms of theism are all perfectly compatible with the attitude that there must be a Perfectly Rational Explanation to what appears to be the supernatural or paranormal.
Several of G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories, including the one ITR Champion linked to earlier in this thread, center on Father Brown finding a rational, natural explanations for what appear to be impossible or supernatural events. From another one of the stories (“The Dagger With Wings”):
[QUOTE=G. K. Chesterton]
[a character named Aylmer to Father Brown:] 'Besides, you have no business to be an unbeliever. You ought to stand for all the things these stupid people call superstitions. Come now, don’t you think there’s a lot in those old wives’ tales about luck and charms and so on, silver bullets included? What do you say about them as a Catholic?’
‘I say I’m an agnostic,’ replied Father Brown, smiling.
‘Nonsense,’ said Aylmer impatiently. ‘It’s your business to believe things.’
‘Well, I do believe some things, of course,’ conceded Father Brown; ‘and therefore, of course, I don’t believe other things.’
[/QUOTE]
**Alessan **already mentioned Terry Pratchett’s *Discworld *books, although not for the same reasons that I wanted to. In the *Discworld *setting it’s objectively true that various gods exist, and that the Disc and the rest of the universe were created by intelligent (although not particularly awe-inspiring and possibly not divine) beings. However, few of the major characters in the series are religious and several important, intelligent “good guy” characters are open about considering religion and the gods at best a waste of time. I can’t remember the exact quote, but one of the witches (either Granny or Nanny) even says that while gods may exist there’s no reason to go around believing in them, it only encourages them. This is literally true, as the gods of the Disc derive their power from belief.
I just watched The Sunset Limited a couple of nights ago and can’t agree it portrays non-belief in a positive light. The atheist in question is entirely self centered, he values only his own satisfaction with culture and art and when he loses that he wants to commit suicide. He mocks Black’s efforts to help the people around him in the ghetto, seeing no value in humanitarian efforts at all.
I’m an atheist but I admired and respected Black’s character and found White to be pretty weak and vacuous.
My partner and I celebrate Christmas, though we’re both atheists, and not even raised as Christians.