Author’s Caveat: The following is highly opinionated. Consume at your own risk. All sentiments expressed in the following article should not be taken as a substitute for your own critical and logical thinking, and remember that anything can work if you can justify it. If you read works to reinforce and not challenge your viewpoints, fine. Turn back now.
Another small note—I’m going on a small hiatus (heck, I already have been), as Morally Ambiguous is making the query rounds and within ten days and eight queries, has garnered two requests for partials from agents. No, it’s not an offer of representation, but it’s a damn sight better than my last attempt considering the nature of the industry hoop-jumping, and I’m going to be a bit busy with everything. Someone else can play Devil’s Advocate for a little bit; it’s a fun game if you’ve got a thick hide.
Now let’s get on with the article proper. Some months ago, I got into a screaming match with a relative of a friend. The point of contention was the fact that a certain book (speculative fiction) didn’t adhere to the feminist ideals (tending to the extreme spectrum) she believed in, and hence she deemed the book was bad. Not that she didn’t like it—that would have been understandable, but that the book was badly-written, which to me is another barrel of monkeys altogether. Of course, I didn’t agree with that, the analogy in my mind being that of a professor failing a student in, say, computing because said student’s political beliefs didn’t match his or hers, and so said screaming match ensued.
The outcome of said screaming match isn’t really important, but what was important was that it got me thinking about how issues are presented in speculative fiction. I don’t know about you, but I don’t read fiction to be enlightened about the wonderful benefits of being a vegan, why members of group X are so much more enlightened than group Y, or why the author’s way of looking at the world is so highly superior to all the silly little Philistines squirming in the muck beneath his or her ivory tower with their silly little superstitions. Yes, it’s a free world and you’re entitled to your opinions. That’s why you have these strange things known as “pamphlets” or “articles”, where at least people know what they’re getting when they listen to your diatribe.
Much like this one, really.
But back to the point. I read fiction to be entertained, and I believe most other people do, too. Again, if your definition of “entertained” is “having your beliefs propped up to the detriment of everything else”, turn back—I won’t deny that there are one-trick-pony books specifically aimed at niche audiences which make members of a certain group snigger at caricatures of members of another group. But if it isn’t, read on.
It’s been said that one of the greatest powers of speculative fiction is its ability to hold up a mirror to the real world and safely explore Issues that, in another genre, would be too prickly to explore. (And sometimes not even then. When I was querying one of my previous stories, one agent liked it, but was worried about the symbolism of using black-scaled and gold-scaled critters in a ethnic conflict). An author can safely explore and discuss Issues within a created world that is Definitely Not Our World, happily sidestepping the problem of religious/ethnic/whatever groups getting all annoyed, because dwarves in long robes have absolutely nothing to do with religious fundamentalists in real life, and elves versus dwarves obviously isn’t a thinly-veiled euphemism for real-life racial conflicts. And that’s perfectly fine. It really is a bonus when in addition to having a good story, you can find a theme behind it that bolsters the story. Note the italics in the last bit of that sentence. Unless it’s a parody, a caricature or you have some other justification, it’s important to have the story and the Issues you’re discussing work together to create an entertaining picture for the reader.
But if you’re trying to seriously discuss an Issue, or even trying to convince readers to come to your side with the strength of your side of the argument, then I believe you have a duty, no, an obligation, to present both sides of the Issue in a fair and balanced manner, and then let the reader to decide for him or herself which way to lean. Part of this, of course, stems from the fact that people like me (and quite possibly like you, if you’re reading this article) don’t like to be told what to think, and if they realise they’re being manipulated by the author emotionally or mentally, tend to go the other way out of sheer contrariness. The other part, which is more important, is that when an Issue gets out of hand and trumps the story through the author using his or her writing as a soapbox, it tends to warp the latter in ways that quite often prove non-entertaining. The third, is that if an author is trying to hold up a mirror to real-life Issues, it doesn’t do justice to the point in hand to present a warped or oversimplified view of matters. Racial tensions aren’t as simple as “group X is bad, group Y are victims”. Religion isn’t as simple as “hurr hurr, those people who believe in an invisible man in the sky are dumb” or “hurr hurr, those people who deny the existence of God are angry people who can’t see his glory”. Environmental issues aren’t as simple as “evil capitalism rapes the planet”. Because, you know, people who hold opposing views from you aren’t necessarily stupid, ignorant or evil (which is more than I can say for some people). When this sort of stuff happens, it simply undermines the author’s position—that he or she can’t seriously discuss Issues fairly, or that his or her stand isn’t strong enough to be discussed without only showing the worst facets of the opposing viewpoint while showing only the best facets of his or her viewpoint.
Why, no, I don’t like Atlas Shrugged. How could you tell?
In any case, here we’ll be exploring two good examples of how Issues are managed and explored in the course of speculative fiction, and the same number of bad ones. Most of these will be from memory, so I won’t have exact quotes, but the points are still valid.
Firstly, we’ll be visiting Ursula K. LeGuin’s Changing Planes, a collection of short stories centred about the concept of different dimensions, each one exploring a different real-world theme. In one particular short story, Ms. LeGuin introduces us to a race of winged people who can fly magnificently, with the caveat that their wings may suddenly fail without explanation or warning, and that it is utterly impossible to predict when said failure might happen. (By the by, she does a magnificent job of extrapolating how the mere addition of flight and wings onto humans would change their physical, mental, spiritual and social worlds, but that’s sort of beside the point I’m trying to make here.) As a result, two groups of thought have emerged in said race: those who use their wings, and those who don’t. The former thinks of the latter as dull and boring, and the latter thinks of the former as being plain crazy to risk their lives in such a manner.
The Issue being discussed in the short story is whether one should live a vibrant and dangerous life, living on the edge, as one would put it, or whether one should live a stable, yet rather mundane life. Ms. LeGuin simply presents both sides of the argument, showing that there are merits and demerits to each point of view, and leaves it up to the reader as to whether they want to side with the flyers or non-flyers. She shows each side’s reasoning, doesn’t pooh-pooh any belief or turn them into caricatures and doesn’t try to force-feed her views to anyone.
This is how an Issue should be handled, if you’re trying to take it seriously. Let’s move on to another good example: George R. R. Martin’s Manna from Heaven, a short story from Tuf Voyaging, a collection of short stories about the titular character (Tuf), an eccentric merchant who gains control of a biosuperweapon starship and goes around the galaxy selling his genetic engineering services.
In the short story, Tuf is called back to a certain planet facing an overpopulation problem (due to the predominance of a religion that encourages completely uncontrolled procreation. And it seems to be everyone, so it‘s not a feminist issue.), said requester being the president of the planet. The planet’s neighbours have grown tired of its attempts to export its population problem, and are threatening war, so Tuf has been requested to genetically engineer a new, hyper productive food crop for the planet and its farming asteroids. He does just this, but secretly adds in another component to genetically engineered plant—ninety-nine percent of people who come into contact with the plant’s pollen will be forcibly sterilized.
The conflict arises when the president catches wind of the plant’s hidden property, and confronts Tuf about it. While she is in the controlled-procreation minority on her planet, the president refuses to arbitrarily take away her peoples’ reproductive rights, argues that a forced solution will change no one’s mindsets, and questions Tuf as to who he is to make such a decision for everyone. Tuf replies that thanks to his biosuperweapon, for all intents and purposes he is a god, that the people of the planet have had long enough to change their ways. Finally, he threatens to destroy the planet and its neighbours if his solution isn’t accepted.
The Issue here is clear: should a higher authority have the right to strip others of their rights, even if it is ostensibly for the greater good? The president of the planet has a valid point. Tuf has a valid point (in that the planet’s self-destructive behaviour has to be stopped). Even when the short story ends with the president knuckling under Tuf’s threats of eradication, the moral ambiguity of Tuf’s position is made clear to the reader; he isn’t given a free pass for having the “correct” views. Ultimately, the decision lies once again with the reader as to whether to side with Tuf, or the president.
This is how it should be done. This is how it should be explored. You’re free to rant on your soapbox, but don’t try to disguise it as entertaining fiction when it’s not, and you’re actively hurting not only your story, but your message as well. Go write a pamphlet.
For bad examples, we’ll be looking at two examples from opposing sides of the same Issue: religion. Firstly, we’ll be looking at Donita K. Paul’s Dragonknight, supposedly one of the better books in the Christian fantasy subgenre. Even when we keep in mind the fact that it’s Christian fantasy and supposed to promote Christian values, the book keeps on tripping over itself in its attempts to drop anvilicious messages on the reader’s head. Of course everyone who believes in Wulder (God) is pretty and wise and strong and clean and oh, can learn languages in an hour, and has amazing magic. Compare this to the unbelievers, who are all dirty, smelly, greedy and have no sense of duty, or even the local strawman atheist, who has no argument against the existence of gods besides “I say so!”
Let’s not mention the fact that the Wulder-worshippers are all hypocrites. And bigots. And their methods of debate involve shouting down dissenters, badmouthing people behind their backs and refusal to even listen to an opposing viewpoint. And the continued implications that not just atheists, but unbelievers are all egoistic, angry on the inside, stupid, misguided, that they know full well Go—I mean, Wulder’s glory and are just refusing to admit it, or are secretly servants of Pretender (Satan). And that the strawman atheist’s conversion had jack squat to do with the truth and meaning within Wulder’s teachings, but a poorly-placed bet he didn’t even mean at the time. Characters are objectively rewarded for having the “correct” views, and punished by the author for having the “wrong” ones.
For those who’ve read the book, a greater discussion on how Dragonknight portrays Christians and Christianity in a negative fashion in its zeal to weight the Issue can be found here.
I don’t claim to be able to read people’s minds, but I’m quite sure that the purpose of Christian fantasy is not only to entertain Christian readers, but also reinforce Christian teachings and values as well as help introduce or clarify said teachings and values to non-Christians, not flatly contradict them. Even if you were using your book as a soapbox, when one’s methods of dealing with Issues starts to contradict and destroy the message you’re trying to get across, something’s very rotten in the state of Denmark.
Compare this to Hezekiah, whom we’ve taken a quick look at in the prologue of Bitterwood. He’s an amalgamation and caricature of the worst of Christian nutters, and struck me as incredibly cheesy right from the start. His reaction to Bitterwood’s panic that Recanna might be dead later in the book is simply “oh well, all the better, one less distraction from God’s work”. Have you seen any Christian behaving like that? For that matter, have you seen any atheist behave like what was described above in Dragonknight? Yes, there are the Fred Phelpses of our world, but most sane Christians don’t even want to be associated with that sort of person, and I’d like to believe the same goes for other stances around Issues.
If we look at the Issue alone, it really begs the question: How strong can your argument be if you have to reduce your opponents to idiots and caricatures? How can I trust you to take an Issue seriously when you apparently can’t believe that anyone on the other side of the fence might have something of a brain? What does it reflect on people from your belief group when you demonise your opponents?
Then there’s all kinds of spillover, like the antagonist competency clause, idiotic antagonists, the plot and characters being twisted and contrived to the point of absurdity just to support the author’s stance on the Issue, and all sorts of toxic repugnance that I won’t even begin to go into. Why should character A be rewarded or punished by the author purely for his or her stances on an Issue?
I can understand if you’re trying to appeal to an audience by trying to reinforce their beliefs (although it probably won’t work on moderates). I can understand if you’re going for humour value in a parody or satire. If you can make them work without being non-entertaining, all the more power to you. But don’t try to disguise your little ramble as a fair and balanced viewpoint or god forbid, an argument for your side, because you’ll just be chopping yourself down that way.
But it is possible to be completely impartial, for an author to divest his or her beliefs from his or her works? Perhaps not, because at some level (conscious or otherwise) what we write is influenced by what we believe in. Still, to take the issue of religion, there’s no reason why a good atheist author shouldn’t be able to write a godless world or one where they are daily aspects of life without polarising them, or authoritatively praising/punishing one or the other in the narrative. The same goes for authors who adhere to theistic beliefs (I’m not going to use religion, since religion doesn’t necessarily need to have a god). The good examples I’ve given have shown that clearly enough.
Even then, it’s perfectly possible for an author’s beliefs and experiences to creep into his or her story, and still not utterly ruin it. In Steven Brust’s Teckla and Phoenix, the main character’s (Vladimir Taltos) drifting away, and eventual separation from his wife, Cawti, was supposedly influenced by Mr. Brust’s real-life breakup with his wife at the time, who (I’m not sure about this second part. Correct me if I’m wrong) may or may not have been involved in political activism the same way Cawti eventually gets caught up in in the novels and eventually drives them apart. There’re no contrivances—Taltos and Cawti married after a whirlwind romance, and skipped the whole “getting to know you” thing, so it wasn’t really surprising when their marriage failed. Later, Taltos visits the revolutionaries Cawti’s joined various times, and learns something about their philosophy about overthrowing the Dragaeran Empire, which although magically guarantees civilisation, oppresses the lower classes. As an Easterner himself, he agrees they have a point, but still disagrees with their methods, which usually get large numbers of people pointlessly slaughtered) and most of their goals (which could be, from a certain point of view, seen as terrorism). Neither Cawti not the revolutionaries aren’t depicted as stupid, misguided or evil just because they hold different views from (presumably) the author. Most importantly, when I read the books the prose is structured in such a way that Taltos’ stances on the Issues discussed are conceivably his and not the author using him as a mouthpiece—if I hadn’t looked up Steven Brusts’ biography on the internet I wouldn’t have any leads to guess about said influences.
That’s about it.
Steph on 16 May 2009, 09:50 said:
Oh, about a year ago I read a book (the name escapes me, but I can check it out if you want. Just email me) that had strawman creationist Christians being proved wrong by evolutionist Christians. Odd basis for a book, you would say.
And you would be right. What was even more ludicrous was that the creationist Christians were not portrayed as very Christian-thinking, and the issue of creation science was never discussed. No, I’m not going to get into a discussion about whether it’s true or false, I’m just going to say that this annoyed me. Because it’s a diatribe and I can :P.
What I really REALLY hated was the total lack of story. It was like the author thought that her ‘issue’ and a mysterious event in her character’s life would be enough to write a book.
It didn’t even get to the stage where the author’s like: “Oh noes! A plot!” It didn’t even make it halfway there.
That is, indeed, why articles and pamphlets survive. Props to you, lccorp2.
Wow, I’ve had a whole comment here, and I’ve basically said nothing new.
Spanman on 16 May 2009, 10:49 said:
Yesss. I love this article, lccorp. If it were any less well-written I would say it’s too long, but I was pretty fascinated the whole way through, so yeah, props to you. I love how at least half of everything I read on Impish Idea is relevant to what I’m writing now. Hurrah, help. _
OverlordDan on 16 May 2009, 11:24 said:
Great article, as always. I hate when people use a character as a mouthpiece.
Good luck on MA!
Proserpina FC on 16 May 2009, 14:19 said:
“If we look at the Issue alone, it really begs the question: How strong can your argument be if you have to reduce your opponents to idiots and caricatures?”
Oh, quite the temptation, but I pledge to never fall for it! What’s worse is when an author is so blinded by their own bias that they can’t see that the Pro-side character and Con-side character are doing the same thing.
I have a friend who’s writing about a gruff young Irish man coming to America in the middle of the famine. He’s terribly conservative, as in, he only cares about his own people, and he’s only in America to settle in his father and then head back to bite the British in the ass.
Now, my friend is “liberal and open-minded”, yet he’s writing this guy as worse than the “rednecks” he dislikes. But he sees it as Irish pride. “Yeah,” I say to him, “That’s what those rednecks are saying about themselves.”
His face kinda went blank after that.
swenson on 16 May 2009, 14:25 said:
Yeah, another good article. And it’s got a good point- authors are free to have their own views, of course, and I’m free to choose to read (or not read) their works. But that doesn’t mean they have to shove their beliefs down readers’ throats at the slightest inclination for no reason whatsoever, especially at the expense of a plot, characters, and good writing.
Of course, some books can balance an author’s view on an Issue and still be a good book. For example, the Chronicles of Narnia. They’re Christian allegories, of course, and fairly obviously so. But that’s all just part of the world; Lewis doesn’t abruptly break into the story to go “OH, AND ASLAN IS AWESOME, WORSHIP HIM.” There might be that in there somewhere, but at least it’s… subtle, you know? It’s a great story with great characters and great writing, and the fact that it clearly is pro-Christianity doesn’t hurt it.
SubStandardDeviation on 16 May 2009, 22:03 said:
I love Le Guin’s “The Fliers of Gy” for precisely the reasons you stated.
lccorp2 on 17 May 2009, 00:27 said:
Was that it? It’s been a while since I read “Changing Planes”, yet that story always stuck with me, as did the one about the holiday plane.
Asahel on 17 May 2009, 02:41 said:
I, too, once encountered an SF story that annoyed me to no end. I forget the title, but it involved a capitalist merchant setting up trade on a planet of “Weskerians.” (The description reminds me of Murlocs, but they’re also purported to be very logical. So, Vulcan Murlocs.) He gets kind of annoyed when a Christian missionary shows up trying to convert the Weskerians. In the end, the Weskerians decide they must test the system by seeking out a miracle. What do they do? Oh, they just crucify the missionary and wait for him to be raised from the dead. It was so full of failure:
1) Did they skip over the verse that says not to test the Lord? It’s in both the Old and New Testaments. Even if they were only taught the Gospels, it’s in there!
2) Why pick crucifixion? (I know, I know, comeuppance, but I mean storywise.) It breaks the command not to murder. Shouldn’t they ask to missionary to turn water into wine or heal the sick or something else that won’t break a religious command just in case the religion turns out to be correct?
3) Plus, they were all upset over being told that the missionary wouldn’t res. What happened to thinking logically? Logic would seem to imply, “The test failed; therefore, we don’t need to worry about this religion.”
I liked your article, though, and I completely agree. It’s not fair to have an argument in your story without presenting both sides of the issue. I’m working on a story right now that involves a group of people sort of thrown together by the circumstances. One is a very devout worshipper of my stand-in religion for Judeo-Christianity, while another is an atheist. Needless to say the two don’t get along very well. When the two argue, as they do from time to time, I actually give the atheist the better arguments. I feel this makes sense since the atheist is a more mature woman and a scientist while the devout girl is a teenager and not quite as intelligent (she’s smart, but not compared to someone that educated). I also feel that the atheist ought to have the better arguments since the existence of my stand-in for God is validated by the reality of the world the story takes place in.
Relayer on 17 May 2009, 15:09 said:
The atheist is also supported by the fact that, IRL, god does not exist
Whisper on 17 May 2009, 20:23 said:
I’ll let you in on a little secret lad. By singling him out and telling him he is drawing attention, you are giving him attention.
Jeni on 19 May 2009, 07:01 said:
swenson, that’s precisely why I love Narnia. Lewis creates a wonderful world without imposing his beliefs. Sure, they’re obvious, but he’s not telling the reader what to believe. Like in The Last Battle, not all of the group of rogue dwarves ended up on the wrong side of judgment. Lewis made it perfectly clear that you don’t have to be Christian to be a good person.
lccorp2, good article. Thanks. :)
I think this is why I don’t get why people get so annoyed by Pullman’s HMD. Yes, he makes it obvious which side of the debate he errs on, but it’s all part of a good story that is well written (I was never fond of TSK, hence, just well). But I never found his writing as a soapbox for an overly obnoxious view of Religious People.
Maybe that’s just me, though.
Biscuitnapper on 25 May 2009, 08:41 said:
No Jeni, it’s not just you. The issues behind god’s non/existence and the evil of institutional religion are treated separately (as they should be) and in a way natural to the world he created and the story he was telling.
Mind you, it was sort-of a fanfiction of Paradise Lost, so the sort of ‘issue’ writing/debating as lccorp2 describes didn’t really have space to crop up.
Danielle on 25 May 2009, 13:15 said:
Hey…loved the article. One of the things that made me put Eldest down halfway through was the conversation between Arya and the dwarf priest where the priest was shown as the bulgy-eyed fanatic with few facts and Arya was the level-headed agnostic, pointing out the flaws in his religion in a “pleasant and polite voice.” Not only did his using Arya as a mouthpiece for his views make me hate her character even more, but I have gone to church every Sunday since I was born and can’t recall ever seeing a single religious person behave the way that dwarven priest did. I’ve debated people of different religions and spiritual beliefs, and not one of them reacted in a wide-eyed, fanatical way. They were all very level-headed and polite—as I try to be when debating people who believe differently than I do.
First rule of debating religion: Be polite. Any self-respecting debater knows this.
lccorp2 on 25 May 2009, 20:09 said:
@Danielle: When that sort of character comes up, it’s very, very hard not to get the impression that that’s the way the author believes people of group X to be like. And given that, it’s very, very hard to believe the author is being impartial, or serious at all.
The conga line of Christian-bashing in the genre does not impress me.
Danielle on 26 May 2009, 12:08 said:
@ lccorp2: Amen! As a Christian, not only do I find all the Christian-bashing in fantasy offensive…but has anyone else noticed that most Christian-bashing authors use arguments that wouldn’t stand in a high school debate tournament? Not that high school debate is easy—my brother is a debater and from what he’s told me, it’s quite challenging—but it seems like all of these atheist/agnostic writers are pulling out all of their crappy arguments against religion and using them in a world where, for reasons mostly connected to a widespread lack of education, they can actually hold some water. Seriously, my twelve-year-old sister can come up with a way to counter “Well, you’ve never SEEN a god, have you? If you haven’t seen a deity, then there must be no such thing.”
Seriously, offending people is NOT the way to convert them.
SlyShy on 26 May 2009, 13:08 said:
Well, I’m curious. What is it?
Danielle on 26 May 2009, 14:40 said:
Something like “Well, I’ve never seen your brain before. I guess that proves you don’t have one.” It usually catches people off-guard, especially coming from a twelve-year-old….
Puppet on 26 May 2009, 15:16 said:
Hey Danielle, I haven’t seen your brain, guess it doesn’t exist.
Plus that’s a terrible argument on your side, because religion has been lasting for hundreds of years and yet nobody has proved that god exists, while if you just take a X-ray you’ll see that yes, (gasp) people have brains. Also if you use that in a conversation it wouldn’t work at all, seeing how you need the brain to talk to the person in the first place.
swenson on 26 May 2009, 15:30 said:
Huh, I was expecting the wind argument… it basically counters the “you can’t see God so he doesn’t exist” with “You can’t see the wind, but it still exists.” Which is a good point- saying the wind is invisible but still existent doesn’t prove God exists, but it does prove wrong the very stupid argument of “Oh, well, I’ve never physically seen God so therefore he cannot possibly exist” that some people actually try to use.
Danielle on 26 May 2009, 15:37 said:
It’s meant to be sarcastic, not a deep theological argument. It’s also meant to open the door to make deep theological arguments, like these…
1. Every culture in every time period has, at one point or another, believed in a god or gods. If every single culture across history and across the map has agreed that there is some sort of higher power out there, then there must be something out there.
2. Morality exists, therefore, a moral god must exist. Admit it: A man who kills his next-door neighbor, steals his possessions and rapes his wife has just helped himself out a great deal. He has one less rival, twice as many possessions, and his gene pool has just expanded, giving him the chance to have twice (or perhaps three times) as many offspring as before. But only the most twisted human being would tell you that the above scenario is morally acceptable. If there is no god, wouldn’t more people do what I just described above? The existence of a moral code that is roughly the same in every culture points to the existence of a moral creator.
3. Nature is so vastly complex that it points to a complex god. Take cells, for example. Didn’t Charles Darwin say that if a creature could be found that got infinitely more complex the more it was broken down, his theory would crumble? Well, all animals—complex creatures—are composed of cells. Cells are composed of incredibly complex systems that interact with each other and allow a cell to perform its function. If Charles Darwin pictured a cell as a mud hut, what we know of cells now has made them more like sports cars.
Like I said before, the hypothetical argument wasn’t an argument in and of itself; it was a sarcastic way to bring in more sophisticated arguments.
And yes, the wind metaphor could be used as well—it would probably be a better one—but I chose the brain metaphor because I thought it was funnier.
Now, Puppet, you have my arguments. We can either continue this debate and clutter up the comments area with endless arguments and counter-arguments, or we can get back to the lighthearted jokiness that I was trying to insert with the brain metaphor. Be offended or not. It’s your choice.
lccorp2 on 26 May 2009, 15:59 said:
Soapbox time.
There is a reason I’m an agnostic.
Nonexistence of evidence does not equal evidence of nonexistence. Yes, no one’s managed to conclusively prove a higher power exists. Similarly, no one’s managed to conclusively disprove that a higher power exists. This happy little fact means that I relegate Atheism to the same mental shelf as any other religion, since they’re taking it as an issue of faith that higher powers do not exist.
And technically, it is a religion. I’ve only done introductory sociology modules, but going by Durkheim’s definition, you technically only need the following to have a religion:
1. A set of symbols. (Basically, anything from famous atheists to ideas of utopias where people have discarded such silly superstitions, etc, etc)
2. A number of practices. (Denying the existence of gods)
3. A group of followers. (Self-explanatory)
Considering the rather wide definition, you don’t need gods to have a religion. Scientology doesn’t have gods, it’s replaced them with aliens. Communism tried to replace gods with either the state, or charismatic figures such as Mao or Stalin. People who fanatically follow certain musicians might be considered to be following a religion, as would be environmentalist extremists. So long as people desire collective effervescence, religion will continue to persist in some form.
If people don’t want to believe in a big man in the sky, that’s fine by me—I’m not quite convinced there’s one there, either. But to wave their psuedoreligion in my face and declare how superior they are to us silly philistines for having shed those silly superstitions—it’s the same case as ethical vegans, who make me want to kick them in the face.
Pterry makes it clear in Small Gods that the problem with religion isn’t with the idea itself, it’s with the followers, and I agree with him on this one. The secular world has been just as bad as the religious one in doing dumb shit, sometimes even worse, and so long as some people try to control others the problem will never go away.
@Danielle: The complexity argument has been refuted in an amusing manner by Pterry in his “Science of Discworld”, which has an extensive bibliography. I don’t buy the complexity argument.
Not buying moral code argument, either. Do a little reading up on Symbolic Interactionism and the various theories of deviance and crime, and it soon becomes clear that there is no truly universal moral code, that even today, with the prevalence of western morals around the globe, people still find ways to interpret them creatively.
Read up Durkheim on religion as to alternative theories as to the widespread prevalence of religion.
I’m done for the night.
Danielle on 26 May 2009, 16:00 said:
Just an add-on to my previous argument…
What the brain metaphor does that the wind metaphor does not is this: If you look closer, you will see my brain. All it takes is the right equipment. The same is true of God. At first glance, it may look like he isn’t there. But if you look closer—if you’re really want to see him—you can find him. The evidence of his existence is everywhere.
THAT is what I really meant. Sorry, sometimes my mouth gets ahead of my brain (hahaha).
Danielle on 26 May 2009, 16:12 said:
One more for now.
@ lccorp2: Yes, people interpret the moral code creatively. That’s because we are inherently sinful beings and are always looking for loopholes—which we find in abundance. But just look at ancient laws. Murder was universally condemned except for in special circumstances. Lying was a crime. Stealing was, in many cases, punishable by death. They are still crimes today because deep down, people know that stealing, lying and killing are wrong.
If you’re an agnostic, that’s fine with me. I won’t try to convert you if you don’t want to be converted. All I’m trying to do is tell you why I believe what I believe. So sorry if I get a little…passionate (replace passionate with rude if you want to. I’ve heard it before, trust me:)).
Anonymous45 on 28 May 2009, 16:54 said:
Morals don’t necessarily have to be divinely given, they might also be a mechanizm developed in social animals to prevent behaviour that can cause the group to fall apart, because some animals, like humans, stand very little chance fighting off a lion solo.
Leah on 23 June 2009, 10:33 said:
I think sometimes it’s hard to help an Issue from entering your work. Your characters are more likely to believe as you do in some manner, so an opinion of yours will be imbued in them. From there, it’s likely at least a sentence might come up with an issue. If it’s mild and short with a natural transition, then that’d, I assume, acceptable. To me it would be anyway.
Actually, cheaters are much frowned upon in animal (I’m specifically thinking of primate) societies because without it, the system of reciprocity would collapse. Doing something for another is an investment of time and/or resources, so if one was cheated, s/he would quickly let the group know to avoid wastes of such in future. The cheater would then be exiled from the group, decreasing its chance of survival, probably fatally.
I may like to write, but I majored in Biology ;)
Tim on 20 June 2012, 21:36 said:
The minor issue that these gods have little or nothing in common is a problem with the idea that they represent a single real thing. Nevermind there are belief systems entirely without anthropomorphised gods.
No, actually. You see, at best this scenario can only play out if there is a very high ratio of industrious people to murdering opportunists, otherwise the murdering opportunists will very rapidly find themselves with nobody left to steal from. Nature is never going to result in the vast majority of a communal species being opportunistic social parasites, which means the ones there are will mostly be held in check by the far greater numbers of people willing to work for what they have.
In fact this can even happen backwards. Things like the crusades happened because people believed God had told them to murder their neighbours, loot their homes and rape their wives and they had no humanistic moral code that told them that harming their neighbour is wrong because it is harming their neighbour.
This argument is pretexted on the idea that the simplest cell that can exist is a modern cell, which is as ridiculous as saying man could never invent the wheel because you can’t see how a caveman could build a sports car. Modern cells are as advanced and specialised as any other organism.
Besides, complexity doesn’t imply intelligence. Heating water makes complex convection currents in it, that doesn’t mean the heater is an omnipotent being.
Religion cannot be arrived at by logic. The requirement for faith is what makes it a religion in the first place.
Asahel on 20 June 2012, 23:03 said:
And yet when you read this reply you will probably assume (absent any physical evidence and despite it containing far less complexity than even the simplest possible living thing) that there is an intelligence behind it.
Fireshark on 20 June 2012, 23:21 said:
I think most of those people were just doing what they were told (after all, most religious people today don’t randomly decide that God told them to kill someone). If we separate the human authority figures from a religion, it usually comes off looking a lot nicer in my opinion. And back then, Catholicism was much more authoritarian than today—also, most people never even had a chance to read the scriptures that they were supposed to believe in.
Perhaps not, but only if you could say the same of philosophy. While some elements of religion may be rather illogical, I think the most important thing about a religion is its underlying outlook, which could conceivably be reached by logic. In my book, the important parts of Christianity are:
-Humans are bad by nature.
-All people fall short of what they could conceivably be.
-People need some kind of salvation.
-People should love one another.
-People should devote themselves to a higher power (in this case, God).
Now I’m not religious at all, but I agree with pretty much all of those things, and I don’t think they require faith so much as thought.
Tim on 21 June 2012, 03:59 said:
There’s two flaws in that; that I’ll assume it’s the result of intelligence because it is complex (spambots can make complex posts just fine, not so much ones that make any sense) and that I don’t have physical evidence. My evidence is:
1. A human exists (direct observation of self)
2. A human can make posts on the internet (direct observation of self)
3. Other humans exist (direct observation)
4. Other humans can make posts on the internet (direct observation)
5. Your post is a post on the internet (direct observation)
While you could actually be a spambot culling a post from another forum to paste it, the degree of relevance, timing and lack of usual spambot behaviour (probes say hi or I hope to contribute, actual bots would post a link) means it is not a reasonable conclusion to make. Since I know humans can make posts like yours and I know of nothing else that can make posts like yours, it is reasonable to surmise that you are a human. Since humans are mostly intelligent and the ones that aren’t have great difficulty speaking coherently, it is likely your post is therefore the result of an intelligent being.
An argument more in line with ID claims would be that while I am aware that humans exist, I do not have proof of your specific existence or typing of this post, therefore you must be an advanced AI which lives in my computer, even though I have no evidence that such an AI is either possible or exists anywhere on my computer (but it’s advanced enough that I couldn’t find it if I wanted to, you see, and it only makes the posts I can’t explain). Complexity alone is not proof of intelligence; if it were, you would have to accept that putting water into the freezer and observing that it becomes a complex, ordered crystal lattice structure means that God climbed into your freezer and made it so.
This is quite apart from the idea that God would make a system that couldn’t run without Him constantly propping it up and fiddling with it. Who’s the more masterful clockmaker, the one who makes a mechanism that once set in motion runs forever without Him so much as lifting a finger, or the one who makes a clock that constantly shits itself and dies without endless tinkering and adjusting that’s obvious to an observer?
It’s actually easily explained as a basic behaviour of a group of communal creatures; the same reflex that makes us want to defend our families and familial units can be manipulated to make us turn on groups we are convinced are a threat to a pseudo-family unit such as a religion or a state. It’s why states tend to present themselves to the individual as a mother or father figure*, values like liberty and freedom as women who require males to fight for their protection, why racists love to talk about immigrants “taking our jobs” as if they’re literally stealing from us, and why state press tends to depict a nation’s enemies as monstrous “others” who are less than human (see the common caractures of enemy nations as repulsive creatures like rats, apes, spiders etc during the wars).
If you’ve mentally turned people into threats to your extended family, doing horrible things to them comes a lot easier. The fact that religion often renders the faithless as enemies of the faithful finds its extreme in the “convert or die” mentality. The fact that communism also does this explains its equally staggering ability to make people do incredibly horrible things.
All this is the same part of human nature that makes you remember to lock your door before you go out and make sure your children don’t wander out of sight when they’re small.
*it helps that humans can’t percieve groups of more than 150 or so as seperate people, so we turn them into symbols, stereotypes or objects; you can’t imagine the entire United States, so stern old Uncle Sam becomes the symbol. You can’t imagine the entire Army, so you’re told to think of them as your brothers, and you all dress in a uniform to make that identification easier. You can’t imagine all the enemy, so they become the hideous face on the poster. Etc. Stalin’s statement that one death is a tragedy but a million is a statistic is literally true because you physically cannot conceive of a million people as individuals.
Well, no. The thing that differentiates religious belief from simple observation is a requirement for faith in something which is not apparent. To cover your points:
This is a broad generalisation that requires we accept (without evidence) that an outside authority exists which is not bad by nature so that the observation can actually be made.
Same as point 1: since there is no direct evidence that the state of divine grace before the fall ever actually existed, we have to simply believe it is so.
This assumes that there is some kind of salvation and something we need to be saved from. One can’t argue this is a universal human belief since plenty of faith systems do not include any conception of original sin or salvation. Indeed, quite a lot of liberal Christians aren’t fond of the idea of a literal fall since the concept of punishing descendants for the sins of their ancestors is no longer held to represent justice.
True, but does not require any of the other premises.
Assumes that such a power actually exists and that dedicating themselves to it is productive, neither of which there is evidence for.
This is the thing; religion is not logical, because it requires one accept things one cannot prove with non-subjective evidence. This does not mean it is wrong, just that the defining feature of any religion is you have to have faith. Even the Bible itself will tell you that, Hebrews 11:1
or to quote the NIV (which for once isn’t terrible)
TakuGifian on 21 June 2012, 04:42 said:
Speaking from a non-religious perspective, even atheistically this can only ever be assumed. Rene Descartes famously said “I think, therefore I am” as a counter to the philosophical assertion that one cannot directly observe the sentience of another, and further that one cannot assume that anything outside of one’s own mind can be said to have existence beyond one’s own subjective experience of them. (see: The Matrix, Inception, Alice in Wonderland, etc.)
:P
That said, I think it is impossible to argue for or against something that is outside of our observable universe, e.g. a creator-God or administrator-God, as such a being would be unaffected by the universe and therefore leave no measurable trace within it. It may be worth considering for a moment that fanatical atheism is just as illogical as fanatical theism.
For the record, my post applies to all involved, not just Tim. Arguments both for and against tend to beg the question, because there is often no choice but to make certain assumptions for or against observable nonevidence. It’s a little like the Higgs Field theory (or the quantum ‘probability wavefunction’ theory), as there is no observable evidence to support it except for some elegant mathematics which, as Einstein proved, can be manipulated to produce particular desired theoretical results.
Tim on 21 June 2012, 04:59 said:
Yeah, but that’s solipsism (the idea that you are asleep and the rest of the world your dream), which is philosophy for wankers. If I assume my senses are even remotely trustworthy (and if I assume they aren’t, there’s no point debating the question since there’s no reason to believe that exists either) then I have observed other humans.
Well, one cannot prove God does not exist without being able to observe everything to show he is not there (and if you can do that you missed the part where you’re god), merely that arguments requiring an interventionist God either do not stand up to scrutiny or can be the result of natural causes which can be shown to exist. Since the idea of science is to produce models which produce useful predictions, it can’t posit a force which cannot be falsified and has no predictable qualities (since such an entity in a scientific theory is like a mathematical equation including “?” which is an unknown series of operations which results in the right answer; ie, just another way to say you don’t know the answer) and so any theory which requires an appeal to divinity is by nature not science, but science doesn’t claim this means there isn’t one.
Intelligent Design posits a “God of the Gaps” where you just slap the label “God” on anything you can’t currently explain on the basis it looks complicated. Not only does this result in a pathetic god who gets smaller as knowledge increases, it also requires a belief in one’s own omniscience to declare anything that you cannot personally figure out must be impossible to explain.
Asahel on 21 June 2012, 08:51 said:
Why does God have to climb into my freezer to make water freeze? Seems it would require a lot less attention just to set up and arrange the physical laws so that all water everywhere would form lattices when freezing.
Tim on 21 June 2012, 09:08 said:
Well yeah, then you accept that physical laws can cause complexity without the laws themselves being intelligent. Which is no different to complex creatures coming about via evolution; no scientist would say there’s any proof that God didn’t create the universe and lay down it’s laws, just that the laws themselves seem to function without the need for external intervention. Complexity in itself doesn’t directly imply a creator.
Besides, the Bible is pretty clear He wants you to come to Him through faith in divine revelation, not by spotting some really obvious “God was here” He left lying around.
Asahel on 21 June 2012, 09:56 said:
Either that or because the physical laws lead to complexity there must have been some intelligence in the way they’re ordered.
You are aware that there are several mathematical orders of magnitude’s difference between the complexity of, say, snowflakes and sand dunes and the complexity of, say, even the least complex living thing possible? The reason I ask is because you seem to equate the two.
To me, it’s like looking at a code of 123412341234 over and over and looking at a code that doesn’t start to fully repeat itself until the thousandth digit and saying, “Yep, that’s pretty much the same.”
Yes and no. I’ll have to leave it at that for right now. Baby just woke up.
Fireshark on 21 June 2012, 10:10 said:
Quoted for truth.
Also quoted for truth.
On the topic of the laws of physics, I do believe that they might somehow have been created (after all, laws don’t appear out of nowhere, and they certainly don’t evolve). I don’t know if there’s any intelligence behind existence, but it frankly amazes me that space, time, energy, motion, and all the subatomic particles exist. If the universe can arrange itself in such a complex manner, I certainly wouldn’t discount the notion of a God to set it up. I don’t personally believe in a personal God, but there’s no reason not to; it’s something that is taken on faith.
And Tim, I think you took my statements earlier too literally. I think they are philosophical. Many people debate human nature; there is no objective measure but we still do.
These statements weren’t related. I’m sorry if I arranged them in a way that made them look like they were. Also, there’s no real reason that people should love one another; at the end of the day existence is rather pointless by nature. I think a statement like that is philosophical. Mere tolerance would keep the species alive just as well.
There are a lot of higher powers, Tim. The states you mentioned earlier, or humanity as a whole, or pretty much anything greater than oneself. People who don’t work for any greater good or higher power or noble cause or whatever seem rather directionless to me. And people who devote themselves to a God, while they can be misguided, actually do things quite often and seem highly motivated.
Tim on 26 June 2012, 18:39 said:
The most logical inference (ie the one which doesn’t require something to be there which we can’t see and know nothing about save through subjective revelation) is that the current complex systems were created by simpler systems. If a simple rule can create a complex result (which we know to be true; for example, about 20 lines of computer code will create the infinitely complex Mandelbrot Set) and complex results do not in themselves imply creation (as can be seen with crystals), then there is no actual need to assign a divine cause. Now whether you want to do it is another matter entirely, but it’s not the most logical route.
Now, we do know evolution happens; we’ve used it ourselves for thousands of years, introducing deliberate selective pressures to produce, say, bigger meat yields from farm animals and the hundreds of breeds of dog which often barely resemble the grey wolves they’re ultimately descended from. We’ve seen bacteria evolve to digest material which exists purely because of human action (eg vulcanised rubber tyres), and we’ve seen speciation occur. Since we know of nothing which limits the degree to which an organism can change, anything else comes down to “it’s hard to imagine how this could happen,” which is hardly a good reason to say it can’t.
We also know there’s a lot of un intelligence in the design of living creatures; for example, land animals can choke to death because they use the same tube for eating and breathing. In evolutionary terms this is because we’re descended from the Devonian lungfish, a creature which breathed by swallowing air in gulps, but it makes no sense for us to be deliberately designed that way.
Yes, but are you aware the most complex molecules (viruses) are more complex and specialised than the least complex lifeforms? If greater complexity can come from lesser complexity without divine cause and we know of nothing which limits the amount of complexity that can be so generated, then it’s simply a case of complexity multiplying a large number of times.
Besides, this touches on a common problem with creationism in that it makes creationist assumptions of evolution; of course it wouldn’t make any sense to assume the first form of life was as complex as the simplest form that exists now, because evolution says the simplest form of life that exists now has still undergone millions of years of evolution. It’s like imagining the first car must have been a bleeding-edge Formula One car and taking this as proof that the first automobile must have been made by God since no man could design all of the systems it relies on at the same time and, say wheels which depend on automatic traction control are useless if you haven’t invented automatic traction control.
————————————————-
What you’re touching on there is called the “First Cause” argument; if you assume everything that exists requires a cause and the universe exists, then the universe requires a cause. The problem with this is that the only solutions to it involve a logical fallacy called “special pleading” since you must argue at least one thing exists which does not require a cause (and therefore that one premise of the argument itself is wrong) in order to solve it. The most direct answer (which only uses observable terms) is that the universe is its own cause or always existed.
Like I said, that doesn’t actually mean this is true (or even that I believe it, as you might guess from my familiarity with the Bible and capitalising “He” for God and such), but it is the answer which requires the least number of additional terms.
Well, depends what you mean by love, really. One could argue, for example, that it is not justified to believe others capable of doing things that you yourself are not prepared to do, and so by showing kindness you justify expecting others to show kindness to you. Or simply that showing others kindness makes you feel like a good person and so should be done simply because of its effect on your own wellbeing.
Granted, such reasons are mostly based around self-interest, but I’m not saying these are good reasons, merely that they justify the acts in question by showing a definate gain from them.
I think you mean “higher purpose” rather than “higher power” there, then. I don’t think you’d ever naturally refer to, say, your family or your country as a higher “power” than yourself. You certainly wouldn’t say an ant or a bee serves a higher power, I wouldn’t think.
Really the reason that the Abrahamic religions and communism are both such common causes of horrible things happening is that both are dualistic; in the former if you’re not good you’re evil, and in the latter if you’re not with the Party you’re an enemy of the people. Historically this has made finding a middle ground of tolerance difficult (though not impossible) for both.
Taku on 26 June 2012, 22:27 said:
Actually, according to the most recent mathematically and experiementally supported theories, the universe can only increase in entropy. That is, an ordered system can only produce a system that is slightly less ordered, not more. Dog breedes become inbred and develop breathing or heart defects, eggs splatter but don’t unsplatter, iron rusts but doesn’t un-rust. According to the maths, the earliest stages after the bang must by necessity have had extraordinarily low entropy, owing to the density and configuration of spacetime in that moment (we’re talking 10 -35 seconds atb, or something like that: In decimal terms, something approaching 0.000000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds). Since the bang, entropy has been steadily rising, e.g. the amount of total disorder has been increasing.
Alas, I digress. Science is both fun and distracting. What thuis means for the arument for or against a creator-god is that the mathematics behind the origins of the universe, biological evolution and the laws of physics — be they classical, relative, or quantum — are so far advanced in modern science that we no longer need to fall back to a creator-god to explain the universe, or an administrator-god to maintain it. Scientists have mathemetically mapped the evolution of the universe all the way back to 10 -35 seconds after the ‘bang’ event, seen hundreds of lightyears away into the distant cosmological past, and looked deeply enough within our world to be able to pick out individual photons of light and trace their position (but, due to quantum uncertainty, not their velocity or spin, or vice-versa). Creator-gods at this point are just old-fashioned.
On a similar note, when you look at the cosmological scale, the complexity of a snowflake (and the likelihood of its formation) and the complexity of any kind of lifeform (and again, its likelihood of formation) are practically identical? As in, the difference between the two objects is so small as to be negligible. The issue here is that in our ‘middle-world’ (if I may use Richard Dawkins’ term) perspective, the difference is quite striking. But on the cosmological scale of a snowflake’s chance within the universe as a whole, they are pretty much on par (vanishingly small, but still pretty much equal).
I think the bigger issue is that humanity as a species is instinctively nand psychologically hardwired to think in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Groups of above 50 or so (?) people immediately become a group entity in our minds, rather than individuals. Hence the ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality. It’s not unique to particular religions or politic/economic parties. In fact, calling them so is a symptom of the same group-mentality instinct.
Tim on 27 June 2012, 00:06 said:
There’s several things wrong with that:
1. Complexity is not the opposite of entropy. In fact, a complex system has more tendency towards disorder than a less complex system. For example, a complex statue will never last as long as the block of stone it was carved from would have.
2. A living organism is not a closed system, so the second law of thermodynamics does not apply on that scale.
3. We know that the creation of complexity is possible because we can make complex objects from simple ones without violating fundamental physical laws in the process.
4. You yourself were once a single cell. You disprove your own argument by existing.
It’s 150, and explicit dualism doesn’t help matters. There aren’t nearly as many horrible historical skeletons in the closet of non-dualistic belief structures, though everyone certainly has some.
Fireshark on 27 June 2012, 02:26 said:
I think we’ve derailed this thread a bit much.
Asahel on 27 June 2012, 23:06 said:
Yeah, that’s why I stopped posting. I have much more to say, but it’s not having any effect, so I don’t see the point. Oh well, as long as it’s still true that matter and energy can’t spontaneously come into existence, I know exactly what I’ll believe.
On the plus side, if scientists ever do figure out how to spontaneously generate matter and energy, we’ll all be too wealthy to care that there’s no God!