Can a Humanist Write Fantasy in Good Conscience?



The Goddess Durga

The Highest-Mother-Who-Has-No-Name
with her star nurseries

      















When I first started this self-publishing effort, I happened to make the acquaintance of an indie author who was a convinced atheist.  This writer abjured fantasy in all forms because of the underlying premise of magic, which assumes a spiritual foundation not grounded in science.  This writer would read science fiction, but  only if it omitted all non-material assumptions.  Since then, I've encountered other atheists who seem to feel the same way.  The most convinced atheist is a fullblown materialist and simply can't allow for anything unexplainable by science.

        Those of you who may have followed this blog since its early days will remember that I'm a humanist. Humanists are by definition supposed to be atheists, but I reject that appellation because my view is more that of the agnostic -- I reject the notion that it's possible to know anything about god or gods, but I leave the possibility open that something beyond the explanatory ability of science might exist.  

       So how does one define belief?  I define it as conviction without proof.  A convinced religionist "believes" that he/she knows the truth, but the fact is that there is no way to prove if that person is right.  A convinced atheist "believes" there is nothing spiritual anywhere, but he/she has no proof, either.  That's why I reject dogmatism (of either the religious or the atheistic variety) and view it as the source of countable wars and evil acts committed against the best principles of right behavior (what I call the Right Way) that are embedded (along with the capacity for evil) in the human consciousness.

       I see humanity as having the capacity to fix things on their own without the intervention of gods, and that is what I mean by humanist. However, while many humanists are atheists, I call myself a spiritual humanist.  I simply state that you cannot know the truth about what might be beyond the ken of science.  Therefore, I have no problem with belief in itself.  My problem is  with those who believe so strongly in their rectitude that they want to force their belief on the whole world,  either through conversion (under corecion if necessary) or by  eliminating those damned recalcitrant sinners, individually or through warfare.

       Consequently, I can enjoy fantasy -- stories with spiritual or magic elements in them -- and I can write such stories.  (And I want to add parenthetically that I realize not all atheists reject fantasy; some simply accept the role of the imagination in human endeavors, suspend disbelief, and enjoy themselves.)  All of my books include some spiritual elements.  I can write in The Termite Queen about a future history of Earth that has rejected religion and lives by the humanist Mythmaker principles, but in the same book I can write about a termite planet that has Seers who are in touch with a Mother Goddess who lives among the stars.  And I can conclude that book with references to Christianity, which I think not everybody who has read the book has recognized.  Kwi'ga'ga'tei the Seer takes the sins of the universe on herself (TheWound That Will Not Heal) and atones for them.  The myths of all religions can be adapted for many purposes.

       Similarly, in the series The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head, I retell (among other epics) the Song of Roland.  When I was rereading it in preparation for adapting it, I was struck by how in medieval times both the Christians and the Saracens called each other infidel and how we're still fighting that useless war today -- a war over disparate "truths" neither of which can ever be proven.  So I made the Marcher Shshi and the People of the Cave to be at war with each other over the "truth" of whether the Highest Mother lives in the sky or in the ground.  In the beginning Di'fa'kro'mi the Remembrancer is rather shocked, because he has never encountered any form of worship other than of the Sky Mother, but as time passes, he comes to realize that it doesn't matter which way you perceive the Goddess -- what matters is the way you behave toward your fellow "humans" and how you honor the principle for which the Goddess stands -- in a termite context, the rare and beautiful procreative principle.  I think all this is quite pertinent to our own sad times. 

       My WIP The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars is much more a work of literary science fiction than it is a fantasy and it explores the nature of the humanist future of Earth more fully than I had space to do in The Termite Queen.  But even in MWFB there are elements of fantasy.  We see how religion has evolved into remnant communities that are sanctioned by EarthGov as long as they keep their worship private and don't proselytize.  In some cases Enclaves are chartered by EarthGov, in which communities of religionist believers can operate openly, again as long as they remain within the Enclave boundaries and keep the rules established in their charters. 
       However, I also investigate what might exist in the unexplored reaches of space.  Could there be something unexplainable out there, something that might not want us entering its domain?  Or is the entity only a figment of a disturbed mind?  This is mostly developed much later in the book, but I do have one reader of my unfinished opus who really likes the book but who, as an atheist, has complained that he would perfer I stuck to the scientific, no matter how fanciful my science is, and omit anything spiritual.  Well, I can't do that.  The concept of the spiritual is deeply embedded in the psychology of the intelligent being, and much of the wonder that exists in our lives comes from things we can't explain. 

       I constructed my future history around a group of 20 ethical precepts called the Mythmaker Precepts.  You can read my earlier posts on the topic here under the label Mythmakers in the sidebar, but it's best to start with the first one, Who Are the Mythmakers and Why Do They Matter? and then proceed through the series. The instinctive impulse toward belief  is embodied in the myths that humans devised to explain the world in a time less versed in scientific methodology.  I see fantasy as modern myth (I've stated elsewhere that most significant fiction has an element of fantasy within it [see Defining Fantasy according to TermiteWriter]).  Those myths become metaphors for important moral and ethical considerations; they clothe the deepest insights of modern man in wonder and give those insights a psychological and emotional foundation.  They can teach us and move us and appeal to our deepest selves.

Virgin Mary, Folk Art, Peru
19th century
http://www.arttoartpalettejournal.com/2011/04/exhibit-is-a-us-first/