Hollywood Atheist: Difference between revisions
→Literature
m (→Literature) |
|||
Line 102:
== Literature ==
* Of the two major atheist characters in [[Dan Brown]]'s ''[[Angels & Demons]]'' (a book exploring the concept of conflict between science and religion), one is a bitter, resentful scientist who became crippled as a result of his religious fanatic parents denying him treatment that could have prevented it, who [[Measuring the Marigolds|has no sense of wonder regarding nature]]
* Subverted in ''[[The Stormlight Archive|The Way of Kings]]''. POV character Shallan expects Jasnah, a famous atheist scholar she's seeking out an apprenticeship under, will be this, but while Jasnah's a bit of an [[Insufferable Genius]], she turns out to be overall a likable, charismatic person and one of the smartest people in the novel. {{spoiler|At the end of the book, it's revealed that the setting ''does'', in fact, have a god... but [[God Is Dead|he's dead]].}}
* ''[[The Da Vinci Code]]'' inverts the above in that {{spoiler|the [[Big Bad]] is really an atheist who is manipulating a [[Knight Templar]], although [[The Movie]] removes the sympathetic aspect and makes the religious antagonists part of an [[Ancient Conspiracy]]}}.
Line 109:
** Victor's lack of morals are also based after his own arrogance and belief that he is the pinacle of human potential.
** Interestingly Dean Koontz himself was at one point in his life an atheist and wrote a few sci-fi stories dealing with characters attempting to find and kill a God, who is [[God Is Evil|evil]].
* The Misfit, from Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find
** Another one of her stories, "The Lame Shall Enter First" features a more positive, humanistic atheist faced with a clove-footed character who claims to be a Satanist. The Satanist comes across as the wiser of the two: at least he knows how the battle lines are drawn.
** Another (kind of) positive portrayal of an atheist (sort of) is the title character from ''Parker's Back'', although he's more of agnostic - being vaguely spiritual but not believing in gods and basically treating tattoos as his religion. He's married to a shrewish hateful Christian woman who hates things that aren't Christian and if she hates something it isn't Christian. Also, she falls into heresy. It isn't clear if it is Arianism—denying that Jesus is fully God—or Docetism—denying that He is fully human, but it is one or the other.
Line 119:
* The dwarfs in [[The Chronicles of Narnia]] by [[C. S. Lewis|CS Lewis]] stand in for atheists (and possibly Communists). Trumpkin, one of the "good" red dwarfs, helps the good guys in ''Prince Caspian'' but denies the existence of Aslan, even when Aslan is standing in front of him (which is how some Christians view atheists) until Aslan roars in his face. The "bad" black dwarfs in ''The Last Battle'', meanwhile, reject Aslan and are doomed to wallow in their own mortality. Real subtle.
** Lewis's fiction for adults is actually a bit more subtle than that; there are quite a few examples of this type, but then there's at least one of the [[True Companions]] who remains a defiant atheist to the end.
* Mackenzie Calhoun from ''[[Star Trek: New Frontier]]'', who lost his faith in the Xenexian gods after a woman he loved was particularly brutally murdered.
* In ''[[The Divine Comedy]]'', the first sinners whom Dante encounters in the first layers of Hell are the souls of mortal atheists who truly believed nothing; these are considered worse than pagans like Virgil, as at least they had faith in some sort of higher power. These souls continually chase after a black banner while constantly being stung by wasps,
== Live Action TV ==
| |||