Fantasy Killed the Atheist Star

Paul (the liar in 6 Degrees of Separation, not Paul, the Saint) said it very well:

"Why has imagination become a synonym for style?"

(scroll down in link for full quote. It's worth a look and listen.)

"Imagination as style" is the last refuge of the atheist author of fantasy. The late, great H.P. Lovecraft was a devout atheist, and to prove his worldview to himself, wrote of fantastical cosmic horrors that he openly admitted were fabrications, great eldritch and indescribable creatures signifying both nothing and nothingness. He wrote these wonderful stories, these brilliant illustrations of vivid loneliness, as something of an escape from what he "knew" to be true.

The fascinating thing is that he must, as all atheists admitedly must do, co-opt the symbology of faith in order to express a faithless worldview.

To the religious, otherworldly beings are no stylish, "imaginative" conceit expressing a separate, but deeper materialistic reality. Christians, in particular, believe in the historicity of angels, of miracles, of a Creator who makes himself plainly and tangibly known to his creation. Elves, or space monkeys, or even the mocking "Flying Spaghetti Monster" of the Pastafarian can be natural extensions of our Creator-given imaginations. They can express spiritual truths in new ways.

The spiritual truth of the atheist is that there is no spirt and no truth but proxy truth. How can one express that fantastically? How can one express the joy of living the zero-sum life without resorting to (or simply parodying) spiritual symbols?

The best bet of the atheist writer is to work at building a great artificial proxy, of course. Lovecraft does it best. His stories simply take for granted that cosmic and plasmic beings from "way out there" and "eternity past" occasionally intersect with the insignificant mud puddle we call earth, and upon which we, like ants, crawl out a meaningless existence. Humans go mad when they encounter the atheistic "truth": that an alien cosmos is vast and destructive, and doesn't notice us in the least.

A great proxy, to be sure, but upon what does it rest? Trust me, it isn't floating in ether, but it tries. Lovecraft's created world exists in one in which the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics does not exist. I wish I could have asked Lovecraft one question during his lifetime:

If we came from a sort of magic soup and Cthulhu came from a sort of cosmic soup, then what made the soup? And what made the what?

In any case, the only reason I bring this up is because there is some hubbub about the forthcoming The Golden Compass movie. Apparently, it is based on a series of atheistic children's books, wherein the heroic protagonists kill God.

For the sake of the quality of the literature, Lovecraft carefully buried his theological chinks under complex and wondrous prose. His story, ultimately, is more important than advancing an agenda. But The Golden Compass sounds like its own arc is doomed to collapse.

What sort of atheist sets out to kill God? Doesn't the author know that God isn't a real thing? What do the little murderers target next, Santa Claus?

See, I've got a heart for this sort of pretzel logic. I was a devout atheist, and I dedicated myself to struggling with God. Does that make any sense, logically? I couldn't see it at the time, but it certainly made sense to me at the spiritual level, a level whose existence that I would have denied at the time!

"There's no God, but if there is, I'm going to sock him in the jaw," was sort of my motto. I know now that it makes about as much sense as me saying now, "There's a God, but if there isn't, I'm going to sock an atheist in the jaw." My first error seems to be the one that the author of The Golden Compass is repeating.

Ultimately, atheist writers who attempt to express their worldview through fiction, especially fantastic fiction, end up sounding like quasi-religious fence sitters.

Creating a monster that you don't think your readers should believe in isn't a simple self-defeating purpose.

It's a rout.