Terry Pratchet finds religion

[Marmora Man]

Terry Pratchet was, until recently, a confirmed atheist. He is now diagnosed with early onset Alzeimhers. He announced last week that he has since had a spiritual experience and now believes there is a "higher being".

Has he swapped one religion for another or has he given up on rationalism for superstition?

[mockney piers]

Or is a spiritual experience the result of a chemical imbalance (it sure was for me on lysergic acid diethylamide).

Or, as the old expression goes, there are no atheists in foxholes.

[Michael Palaeologus]

My Father had a similar experience. A lifetime aetheist who found God as death approached.

Whatever it takes to get through it I guess.

[david_carnell]

Marmora Man Wrote:

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> Terry Pratchet was, until recently, a confirmed

> atheist. He is now diagnosed with early onset

> Alzeimhers. He announced last week that he has

> since had a spiritual experience and now believes

> there is a "higher being".

>

> Has he swapped one religion for another or has he

> given up on rationalism for superstition?

Atheism is not a religion. It is the absence of belief in a deity not a form of belief.

As for Pratchett, mental illness will do funny things to an old man presented with his own mortality.

[Brendan]

I find that people who are fundamental atheists often use atheism itself to give meaning to their lives. The jump from finding meaning in an ideology to finding it in a god is not a very big one.

Although I doubt someone as erudite as Terry Pratchett would have been using atheism as a crutch. Or that he is running headlong into the arms of that preconceived concept, religion that people somehow can?t separate from human spirituality.

Similarly my pops, after growing up in a Calvinist household and spending most of his adult life as an atheist, converted to Catholicism after retirement. Although I think it had more to do with keeping my mum quiet than anything else.

[Brendan]

Anyway to quote (not accurately mind) the man, ?Just because gods exist doesn?t mean you should go around believing in them.?

[Mark]

I think as you approach your dying days that Pascal's wager may play on uncertainties in fragile minds but that's not the case here. To quote Terry Pratchett from 4 days ago

"There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist. "

[mockney piers]

Indeed Brendan, true spirituality comes from a genuine search for meaning, not in a rote obedience to a bunch of written tenets and rules, that's just subservience and a means to absolve oneself of the need to question.

Questioning things is hard, no matter whether it's religion, leaders, peers or generally accepted truths.

[SeanMacGabhann]

Which is why one can't actually be a fundamental atheist. I don't believe that, orbiting the earth is a 10 foot tall bovril tin, which has the power of speech. The fact that I don't believe this, doesn't make me a fundamentalist anything. It just means I have a hold on my mental faculties...

[mockney piers]

Ha ha, brilliant Mark, he seems to have kept his sense of humour anyway.

[Brendan]

SeanMacGabhann Wrote:

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> Which is why one can't actually be a fundamental

> atheist.

Yes you can. Maybe not semantically but I know plenty of people who use atheism as a kind of moral reference point in the same way others use religion or political affiliation.

[david_carnell]

How can atheism have morality? I mean, plenty of atheists are morally good people, but without a codified belief system I'm not sure how these people you know can use it as such.

You can be fundamentally sure that god does not exist but that doesn't mean you act in a morally opposite way to those of religious persuasion.

[SeanMacGabhann]

Not sure I follow Brendan. I know people who say "Because of my belief in the free-market etc etc we should..." or "because I believe the free-market need to be managed etc etc we need to..." or "I believe Jesus/Allah/whoever would want me/us to...."

But I've not heard "my atheist belief dictates that we should...."

Saying something doesn't exist doesn't mean it doesn't. But until it's shown to exist, then, as with my bovril tin, not believing it is surely the only sensible choice. But not believing in it doesn't inform any moral opinions

[Keef]

SeanMacGabhann Wrote:

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> Not sure I follow Brendan.

Really? I was planning to follow him to the ends of the earth once my mental agility lessens.

[mockney piers]

Follow the Gourd!!!

No, follow the shoe!

[SeanMacGabhann]

you see the kind of misundertsanding that can arise from a misplaced or missing comma????

Thankfully none of the good books are likely to have suffered such a fate. *cough*

[Brendan]

As I said, semantically, it is the non-belief in the existence of god/s. With you there.

In practice it is often used as an ideological structure that gives people just as comfortable a set of parameters to the universe they inhabit* as a religion does.

And Bovril doesn?t come in tins.

*Albeit vastly more logical.

[Brendan]

Ah. So I must have left that missing flip-flop in the CPT.

[citizenED]

Finding God towards the end of life is not uncommon as several have testified on here. To make sense of your increasingly large and confusing history as you drift to meet your maker? Tie up the loose ends. Pass responsibility to something/someone else so you can spend time in peace watching the cricket, tennis, golf or taking day trips to Eastbourne or simply so as not to have to have that particular battle with your peers over the tea and cake.

[david_carnell]

Brendan Wrote:

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> As I said, semantically, it is the non-belief in

> the existence of god/s. With you there.

>

> In practice it is often used as an ideological

> structure that gives people just as comfortable a

> set of parameters to the universe they inhabit* as

> a religion does.

Do you mean the laws of science? I'm not sure they've ever made me feel comfortable (in fact some bits of science scare the bejesus out of me, if you pardon the pun) and I can't help but live by them - one just does.

> And Bovril doesn?t come in tins.

http://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/2/1/8/2/2/9/webimg/130020300_tp.jpg

Next you'll be claiming MAry was a virgin! ;-)

[SeanMacGabhann]

I can't hear that tin talk. And I can't see it orbiting the earth

[Brendan]

I?m looking far beyond the, laws of science vs. religion, nonsense. It?s about as helpful as the concept of left and right wing are to politics.

I am talking about a person?s personal approach to the world. In practice atheism is a standpoint. All standpoints bring with them prejudice. Prejudice effects how you experience reality.

Incidentally I?ve just done a bit of googleing and I can?t find any real evidence that there is not a tin of Bovril orbiting the earth. Although if there is it is more likely to be a tin of Bovril bouillon cubes rather than the hearty, meaty paste that goes so well on warm toast.

[david_carnell]

Hmmm, well I'm not sure I'd describe the debate between science and religion as nonsense or unhelpful but I'll let it slide for now.

Indeed atheism is a standpoint.

"It brings prejudice" - well I suppose it dismisses vast swathes of belief systems belonging to billions of people. I guess it's down to the individual atheist as to whether they pre-judge these people as barmy or naive or deluded.

I disagree that being an atheist effects how I experience reality unless you mean that some people would blame a tornado on the wrath of God whereas I'd think it was a freak weather system. My reality is the same as someone of devout faith.

[Brendan]

You?re missing me a bit David.

I didn't mean prejudice towards people but rather a certain way of interpreting information because of what you already accept as true or not.

The science religion debate holds value on a sociological level. They are two conflicting human constructs, ways of interpreting information basically. We all know which one makes more sense but that is not the point I was getting at. I?m trying to move away from that debate and all the preconceptions it brings. I think it is limiting. And I?m not doing so in order to lend credence to either side.

I?m thinking more on a human level and about what exists and what doesn?t according to what we can experience. Is the experience of something a prerequisite to its existence or do many other things exist that we cannot experience, or just can?t experience yet because we haven?t got the right filters switched on in that big receiver that is the human brain*? If so there could be something out there that makes science seem as ludicrous as religion.

*or spirit even? (given perhaps that the spirit is what happens when the sum of all the human parts is greater than the whole. If indeed they are, that is.)

[mockney piers]

As usual both sides have it.

Atheism is indeed a denial of one god, you need to be a polyatheist to deny them all.

It can be as much a stance as a lack of one. Catholics have a word for those of the latter, which is practical atheism, the former I guess is of the Dawkins variety.

What Brendan is referring to is strictly speaking a political debate and one that is very big in the States and makes for fascinating viewing. There is something akin to fundamentalist atheism going on over there, though perhaps a new label needs to be created for that political brand of atheism.

It's more than just the separation of faith and State, something that's bubbling up here and much more critically in Turkey right now. It's something akin to an identity crisis of what and who the nation represents, hence why tempers are so high over there.

Personally I love the approach of my US/Croat friend when I was with him at a Catholic wedding in N Wales last Friday.

his Catholicism is very strong in him, a huge part of his identity and a great source of comfort, though he doesn't really hold with all that walking on water, resurrection and eternal life nonsense.

This is very much what I find on the continent and why it doesn't figure so much over there...well except in good old rationalist France, but France is always its own damn thing isn't it.