The problem with fiction that attempts to disprove the existence of gods is that humans are obstinate creatures. Presenting any such proof to the public will only cause believers to change/add attributes and move their god(s) to a new location. Any story that has the public just accept the evidence, no matter how compelling, is too unbelievable.
You keep referring to “God” as if there is only one to disprove. Are you referring to all god-like deities, or a particular deity?
I thought of that, but the OP explicitly rejected stories in which “God died.”
This could also be George RR Martin’s excellent Song For Lya. In that story after the discovery of telepathy, a powerful group of telepaths probe the universe expecting to make contact with God. Instead, they find a vast and uncaring nothing. Several of the group kill themselves. As a result of the experiment, most telepaths are hard core atheists. Then, on a planet (this is from memory cause I accidentally gave away my copy to somebody I had meant to loan it to) with a primitive people with iron age technology, they find a religion that involves allowing yourself to be Joined with a parasitic fungus. SPOILER- The investigating telepaths discover that the fungus represents a telepathic union.
“We’ve got the only tower on their planet!”
“They’ve got the only god in our universe!”
Sounds like a premise ripe for exploration in fiction…Got any examples?
I’d be happy with a story in which an alien civilization disproves their own version of God. My assumption was that there would be more stories in which humans disproved the existence of human God(s), the human afterlife, etc. Finding out that we were seeded here by the Progenitors or uplifted by the Ooblek might destroy all existing human origin myths, but wouldn’t necessarily disprove the God of the aliens.
That sounds VERY familiar. VERY. But I don’t think George was writing 50 years ago.
However, it sounds so spot on I am questioning whether I did read it as a kid or as an adult.
Edit…just googled. Written in 1974. This is extremely likely it. Thanks!
I can’t remember anything else about the novel or story, or who the author was. But I remember reading something in which there had been studies done which proved, statistically, that houses of worship of all religions got struck by lightning just as often as similar secular buildings and as similar buildings of the other religions; and, according to the story, this caused everybody to stop believing in God.
I remember this one bit, probably, because I thought it so unlikely that any such study, or any number of such studies, would convince all believers.
ETA: I don’t think that was the main subject of the story; I think it was kind of an aside, or maybe just an explanation of why there weren’t any religious people in the society described in the story.
Did you read all the way to the end of the Gantz manga? You get all the answers in the last couple of chapters.
That story/those books don’t do anything towards disproving gods or an afterlife, per the OP. (Unblurred spoilers follow, because the books are good enough that I don’t want to discourage anyone from reading them by giving away important plot elements.)
SPOILER: The parasite simply does not allow the host to physically die (within limits). A nearly defunct religion in the far future (Catholicism) latches onto that phenomenon and calls it “resurrection” but it is just the parasite rebuilding the body as best it can, and that ability gets improved with human technology. By controlling the availability of parasites, the church has the power of (extended) life or death. IIRC some isolated planets still don’t have parasites and so live normal lives and die normal deaths. It is this new fake resurrection religion that is debunked and its power overthrown in the course of the two Endymion books.
Before the discovery of the parasites, I think the known linked human universe had very little religious activity or belief, which I think was just the result of millenia of lack of interest.
Not only didn’t I read to the end, I didn’t read the beginning or middle either. Could you summarize the ending please?
how about Catch 22 ?
“‘Don’t tell me God works in mysterious ways,’ Yossarian continued, hurtling on over her objection. ‘There’s nothing so mysterious about it. He’s not working at all. He’s playing. Or else He’s forgotten all about us. That’s the kind of God you people talk about - a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?’”
Oh, boy. The Gantz manga ran for a long time, and if you’re familiar only with the anime, the awful live-action films, or the totally awesome 2017 CGI film Gantz: O (which just covers the Tokyo team’s mission to Osaka - hence the ‘O’ in the title), you don’t even come close to the big picture.
Engineers in Germany created the entire Gantz system based on encoded instructions sent to Mankind by a race of god-like aliens. The whole “survival game” element of reviving the recently deceased and sending them out as teams of Gantz hunters using advanced technology to fight the periodic secret alien incursions are a completely human invention.
The real threat is yet to come: a large-scale invasion by a race of titanic aliens bent on taking the Earth for themselves. We’re just dumb little animals that make tasty finger-snacks to them.
Fortunately, part of the technology the god-aliens sent that we’ve been holding in reserve are massive armored fighting suits (like the jaegers from Pacific Rim - you can see the Osaka team’s all-time champion piloting one in Gantz: O). A desperate last-ditch assault on the titanic aliens’ mothership using the remaining fighting suits and the best Gantz hunters from around the world culminates in a narrow victory for Humanity.
After the war ends, the god-aliens call the Gantz hunters to their place or residence (it’s not clear if this is even a physical place, or some meta-physical side-dimension), and offer to answer any questions they may have. While this seems largely like exposition for the benefit of the readers, the god-aliens also explain that there is no “God” as such, and demonstrate that human lives and “souls” are easily reproduceable with the right technology; they do this by effortlessly regenerating and then destroying several characters from previous story arcs as their fellow hunters watch in horror.
While this leaves many of the western and European hunters in visible distress, it doesn’t seem to bother the Japanese hunters, who have always been the main heroes of the story. Everyone gets sent back to Earth to rebuild, and now that the alien threat has passed, the Gantz system stops functioning.
I remember a short aside in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in which an atheistic philosopher argues with God, himself, that he cannot exist due to his creation of the Babel Fish. This makes much more sense in the original Douglas Adams.
It also makes more sense in post 11.
I’m pretty sure I brought this up in another topic but I remember there was some novel where the plot was God/Heaven doesn’t exist, but the Devil/Hell actually exists, and all religions are basically a giant coping mechanism to prepare humans for a lifetime of suffering after you die and go straight to Hell.
An interesting premise for a story would be that there is a God, but he’s an alien who created humans as a “scary story” for his chosen alien race. Given how violent, frightening, and disgusting we can be, it would be a good idea.