Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Every once in a while, someone will write a story wherein faith in deities
> is justified. I like those stories. I've found very few. Most are like the
> commedians who make fun of atheists, most of whom seem to just state
> "They're atheists" in some way, then laugh, as in "can you believe he said
> he didn't believe in god? WTF?"
>
> The stories I *dis*like are where the deity is just shown to be someone
> playing at being a deity, or
>
> I've found a few novels where the handling of deities was well done.
>
> "Calculating God" - Robert Sawyer. (My favorite such, and best written methinks)
>
> "Wunderland Gambit" - Jack Chaucer. (Stupid, stupid series of novels about a
> group of people who get thrown into parallel or virtual universes, one of
> which contains an actual functioning deity. Each individual world was
> interesting, but the overall premise was stupid.)
>
> "The Prophesy" - starring C. Walkens. Lots of fun.
>
> Some book which is vaguely cyberpunk plus greek gods which was stupid for
> anyone who knew how computers work. (Demons in place of firewalls, logging
> into Olympusnet, dumb stuff like that, but actual deities.)
>
> There were one or two others I'd thought of that kind of fit the mold, but
> apparently not well enough to remember exactly what they were.
>
> Any others that people can suggest? That are good? That don't treat deities
> as "sufficiently advanced technology" or "aliens that appeared long ago"?
> That contain actual deities rather than just faith therein? (Actually, just
> faith therein where the faithful are ultimately justified would do. :-)
>
> I bring this up, because I recently read a short story wherein someone on a
> SF world participated in a ritual that reinforced his faith in the local
> deity to the point of unshakableness. It was handled wonderfully, with the
> faith bringing the kind of inner peace one would expect even in the face of
> others doubting. But then the protagonist finds his faith not to be
> justified but rather a scientific result during his further studies in
> science, and he then goes to try to convince others that they're high rather
> than enlightened, which for me spoiled the story. A world where the
> appropriate ritual reveals the actual deity is much more interesting than
> one in which the appropriate ritual reveals a biochemical high that feels
> like faith, methinks.
>
> --
>    Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
>    Understanding the structure of the universe
>     via religion is like understanding the
>      structure of computers via Tron.

Have you read American Gods by Neil Gaiman?  I really liked it.  It is basically
about how the various gods are real, and the more people believe in them, the
stronger they are.  The problem, of course, is that living in the United States
in the present, the old gods find their power... a bit less than they'd prefer.
I saw your other post about big mysteries, and this has a few of them.  Overall
a very nice read, although some things may be more enjoyable if you have a
familiarity with mythology (or a willingness to put it down and look something
up).  You don't have to, but a lot of the things will make more sense.

-Reactor

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