Atheist Fiction
I love to read! Especially all the great atheist non-fiction. But occasionally I like to take a break and read some good fiction. Are there any good fiction books where the main character or theme is clearly non religious. I’ve found John Updike so far but there’s got to be more!
Posted: August 14th 2009
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It’s taken a while for anyone to attack this question because there really isn’t a lot out there in terms of what you’re looking for in fiction. I’ll offer what I know.
- Robert Langdon, protagonist of The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons by Dan Brown, is an atheist with a great academic interest in religion.
- Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, though set in a fantasy world where gods plainly exist, still manage to be tremendously critical of religion and encouraging of freethought. The best example is Small Gods.
- The His Dark Materials series by Phillip Pullman actually posits that the Book of Genesis is true to some extent, but having done so proceeds to pull down the entire edifice of Judeo-Christian mythology over the course of the first three books until God is made powerless and the afterlife itself is changed. (The first book Northern Lights was filmed as The Golden Compass, but most of the explicity religious stuff wasn’t included.)
Posted: August 20th 2009