Posted February 22 2008
God Bless Atheists, or, How to Find Faith in Colorful Moving Pictures
Many television shows seem to have a heavy religious component. Nowhere is this more evident than in the recent slew of science fiction that has invaded the airwaves over the past few years. If you pull reality television and unscripted television off the list (translate: game shows with bugs and game shows with bald men, whether dancing or still), a far larger proportion will fall under the formerly nerds-only category of comic-book-y or Star Wars-y than would have been considered normal in the past.
Science fiction seems an odd choice for major religious focus. After all, the past century’s most influential sci-fi writer, Isaac Asimov, rarely dealt with religion or religious themes, and when he did, it was invariably negative. However, Asimov was an avowed atheist who considered religion inherently ridiculous, and his influence on sci-fi notwithstanding, nowhere is God more relevant than in the discussions of the past’s influence on the future or technology’s ability to dehumanize us.
The influence of shows like Heroes, for example, show us the wonderful and terrible possibilities of enormous personal power. How many of us follow the rules, be they religious or social, because we feel we cannot be above them? That we are too insignificant to buck such powerful forces as society itself? Instead, we see that people who have such power, who could make their own rules, suffer in microcosm the very same difficulties the rest of us must conquer. No matter how much power we acquire, there seems to be some outside factor that can lay us low.
House remains one of my favorite shows, despite the anti-religious rantings of its ultra-rationalist, eponymous, antagonizing protagonist, Dr. Gregory House. He seems to consider religion a disease we would all be better off without, even going so far in a recent episode as to diagnose a return to religiosity (Chozer Be-t’shuva) by a Chassidic woman as evidence of neurological problems. Can we possibly find sympathy for a character who so deeply despises what dominates many of our days?
Perhaps we could respond to many super-rationalists with the understanding that many of these characters are using atheism or power or influence over others as their own form of religion. While they scoff and mock those who relate to a higher being as a personal redeemer, they place their absolute faith in the idea that science or the power of the human mind will one day provide the answers. Their faith, in fact, is far more absolute than most religious people’s. While the homo religiosus (as Rabbi Dr. Joseph Soloveitchik referred to the species) has faith that God has already provided the answers, the atheist or the power-hungry must have faith that they will one day arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. They must have faith that processes not yet capable of giving them fulfillment will eventually rise to the task.
While the point I am trying to make is a little disjointed, it has come through in a myriad of ways. The thankfully-ended Writer’s Guild strike has made me look more poignantly at the forces that shape entertainment in general, and the ideas we let influence our homes in particular. The more I consider it, the more I realize that no one, no matter how superior they think they are, can exist without some sort of faith. Even if it is only faith in their ability to overcome problems they have not yet seen, it is a faith in the invisible, in the ineffable.
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Dr. Twerski responded to atheists in his book on the “Twelve Steps” program for overcoming addiction who claimed that the program required a belief in God (and therefore not relevant to them). He said that the program does not require you to believe in God, but it does require that you believe that you are not God.
A small amount of humility is required even of Dr. House. (For scrubs watchers, consider that Dr. Cox has admitted he was wrong and apologized a few times.)