The Atheist Blogger

The Amiable Atheist commented on an article in the English newspaper The Sunday Times entitled “Alzheimer’s leads atheist Terry Pratchett to appreciate God” where the 60 year old author claims that he may have found god after years of atheism.

He is quoted as saying:

I’m certainly not a man of faith, but as I was rushing down the stairs one day . . . it was very strange. And I say this reluctantly, because I am trying to deal with this situation in as hardheaded a way as I can. I suddenly knew that everything was okay, that what I was doing was right, and I didn’t know why.

…

It was a thought that all the right things are happening in the circumstances; and I thought, ‘Well, that’s all right then.’

Brushing everything aside, what exactly is he saying? That one day he was doing a perfectly ordinary thing, and realised that everything was fine? Is that god? Really? If so, I’ve been a believer pretty much my entire life then. Not a day goes by where I don’t think “Is this really what I want to do with my life?”, and the answer I always come to is “yes”. Whether I am considering my career, education, social life, and even the “atheist community”, I work something out through rational thought.

I fail to see how a sudden feeling that everything was okay defines god? When I donate to charity, I get the feeling I am doing something right, not because I believe I am pleasing a god, but because I am helping my fellow man. It seems Mr. Pratchett has discovered the wonders of humanism, not any form of “god”.

As for the right things happening in the circumstances, is he talking on a personal level here, because I fail to see how this applies to the rest of the world, where decisions are currently electing an evil dictator in Zimbabwe, and many more people are killed on the streets of Iraq. Even if it is on a personal level, how can he reason that out? He is suffering from a mental illness that will slowly destroy his memory. Hardly the “right” thing to happen to an author of all people.

In a slightly more rational moment, Pratchett said:

It is just possible that once you have got past all the gods that we have created with big beards and many human traits, just beyond all that, on the other side of physics, there just may be the ordered structure from which everything flows.

That is both a kind of philosophy and totally useless – it doesn’t take you anywhere. But it fills a hole.

So at least he is admitting that the “god” he might have found is completely ridiculous. It isn’t a theist god but a deist god, something completely outside our universe and undetectable. Yes it fills a hole, but that doesn’t make it any more truthful. For many years people believed the Sun orbits the Earth because that’s the logical explanation from basic observations and it fitted the hole, but it’s completely false.

I’m not saying Pratchett is wrong for thinking there might be a deist god out there, and if he likes the fact that it fills certain gaps in our knowledge then that’s fine as well. I just don’t think there is any reason to believe in something like that without evidence for it. If anything, he’s stuck halfway between atheism and deism, wanting to believe that there is something beyond our universe, but reasoning that such belief is borderline absurd given the circumstances.

It’s a tricky one to call in his situation, but at least he hasn’t started claiming he is the Messiah or anything like a few people would in his situation…

Update: It appears as though the media might be at fault here. According to the Daily Mail (eurgh), Terry Pratchett has denied he has “found God”. Of course the Daily Mail being who they are ignored what he said and the title is “I create gods all the time - now I think one might exist” which bares no resemblence to anything he says in the article…ah well.

The Council for Secular Humanism were the first secular organisation to ask for the resignation of Monique Davis, the Illinois Representative who shouted at atheist activist Rob Sherman whilst he was giving his testimony to oppose a $1 million tax-payer donation proposed by the Governor to a Baptist Church.

The confrontation went thus:

Davis: [. . .] I’m trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois. This is the Land of Lincoln. This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children.… What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous–

Sherman: What’s dangerous, ma’am?

Davis: It’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! [. . .] I am fed up! Get out of that seat!

Amid a large backlash from the blogging community, and the media (with Keith Olbermann declaring her the “Worst Person in the World”), the Council for Secular Humanism had the following press release:

Read the rest of this entry »