Harry Potter and the Obtuse Atheist

Christopher Hitchens, never missing an opportunity:

Most interesting of all, perhaps, and as noted by Orwell, “religion is also taboo.” The schoolchildren appear to know nothing of Christianity; in this latest novel Harry and even Hermione are ignorant of two well-known biblical verses encountered in a churchyard. That the main characters nonetheless have a strong moral code and a solid ethical commitment will be a mystery to some — like his holiness the pope and other clerical authorities who have denounced the series — while seeming unexceptionable to many others. As Hermione phrases it, sounding convincingly Kantian or even Russellian about something called the Resurrection Stone:

“How can I possibly prove it doesn’t exist? Do you expect me to get hold of — of all the pebbles in the world and test them? I mean, you could claim that anything’s real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody’s proved it doesn’t exist.”

It's true that the Potter novels aren't an explicitly Christian fantasy in the same sense as the Narnia books (although Christian themes and motifs abound in Rowling's universe); what they assuredly are, though, is a series in which the central moral difference between the protagonist and the villain revolves around each's attitude toward his own mortality, and each's faith (or lack thereof) in the soul's survival after death. If Hitchens wishes to take this as an endorsement of atheistic materialism, by all means.

There is, of course, no organized religion to speak of in Lewis's land of Narnia either, and none of the Pevensie children seem to have received any religious education in their native England. (Which explains why none of them ever burst out: "By Jove, we seem to have wandered into the middle of a Christian allegory!") This was precisely the point: By purging his saga of explicit religiosity, Lewis famously remarked, he hoped to make his religious themes "appear in their real potency," and "steal past those watchful dragons" who rob the Christian message of its novelty and power. Whether Rowling had something similar in mind in her religiously-inflected saga I have no idea, but at the very least it's worth noting that the Resurrection Stone does in fact exist, Hermione's Hitchens-esque objections notwithstanding.

Comments

Regardless, his article is uncharacteristically enjoyable...

jenny

Posted by jenny | August 12, 2007 11:01 PM

the nail looks different depending on the hammer you wield. to the theist extant morality is the shadow of god's law. to the atheist morality without explicit theism illustrates god's irrelevance.

i wish everyone would just enjoy stories though. i'm an atheist, but i dislike fantasy where the religion is attenuated because i enjoy verisimilitude in my speculative fiction. humans, especially humans in faux-medieval environments, should have elaborated religions.

Posted by razib | August 13, 2007 12:00 AM

I don't understand this post. Hitchens isn't suggesting that the Harry Potter series implicitly endorses atheistic materialism. Hitchens is saying that explicit religious writing is not typically found in the particular subset of literature that Harry Potter falls into, not making some comment about Rowling's authorial intentions. He might have said the same thing about Narnia, knowing full well what CS Lewis's religious attitudes were. He does make fun of the Pope, but if the Pope really did denounce the Harry Potter series, the Pope has earned the derision.

Posted by Gordon Lightfoot | August 13, 2007 6:56 AM

You're stealing a base here. In the universe of Harry Potter, we have prima facia evidence that the soul exists after death. Among other things, you have fully self-aware ghosts floating around Hogwarts. Furthermore, it is clear that the souls obey some sort of quasi-deterministic set of rules, even if Rowling is a bit vague about what exactly those rules are. Even more importantly, these rules are accessible to and manipulatable by human reason--the young Tom Riddle is able to ask Professor Slughorn about Horcruxes.

Thus, in the land of Harry Potter, the presence of souls can not be taken as mitigating against atheistic materialism--souls do not pose a difficulty to materialism unless they are transcendent. The fact that a professor is able to confidently answer technical questions about the handling and exploitation of souls much as he would answer questions about chemistry indicates that by virtue of magic, souls are an essentially mundane component of wizardly existence. There is no consistent way to distinguish a wizards soul from say, his liver. Voldemort was just conducting an especially drastic soul-ectomy in making his Horcruxes.

Of course, this makes Rowling's story a little goofy, as it is not clear why Voldemort would be terrified by death when he has reliable, justified knowledge that the soul endures beyond the veil. Likewise, Harry's willingness to sacrifice himself becomes a little less heroic when he can be confident that he will continue to exist in one form or another(reunited with his parents and Sirius, no less!). Of course, Rowling is by no means alone in this particularly piece of chicanery, so I suppose she isn't really to blame.

Posted by Glenn | August 13, 2007 8:37 AM

"none of the Pevensie children seem to have received any religious education in their native England"

In, I think the final book, Lucy Pevensie makes the quote 'I know a man who died on a hill'. Clearly, Lewis was having his character refer to the Jesus story. It was quite awkward, and out of context, almost as if it was added as an afterthought.

Knowing that Lewis was a well known Christian apologist, this statement made all the prior Christian imagery in Narnia (the lion giving his life for Edward and being ressurected) seemed forced and thinly veiled. But still a good read.

Posted by Bruce in Orlando | August 13, 2007 9:53 AM

I disagree, Glenn. Yes, there are ghosts running around Hogwarts, but the essential separation between Voldemort and Dumbledore/Harry is whether there is something *else*, some unknowable undiscovered country. The ghosts are hanging around specifically *because*, like Voldemort, they are unwilling to depart this life. Harry, Dumbledore and Sirius are different because they have faith that there is something else. (Harry, in a particularly religious vein, has faith in an afterlife mostly because (1) he is desperate to believe that he will one day be reunited with his lost loved ones and (2) an authority figure, Dumbledore, told him so.)

Posted by J Mann | August 13, 2007 11:16 AM

Glenn makes some very good points. It's also worth noting that while Hermione is a lovely character, her hard-headed empiricism is frequently portrayed as a limitation, rather than as a strength, during the last three books of the series.

Rowling, for better or worse, has clearly infused the Harry Potter series with thematic content and a moral framework that are explicitly Christian. She does, however, make the "salvation" (for lack of a better word) of the characters' souls depend upon their choices in life, rather than via religious faith in the strictest sense.

Hitchens, as usual, is groping around in the darkness when he attempts to discuss religious matters. But I think the point he's groping for is one worth discussing. In the HP books, as well as in much of the science fiction and fantasy-inflected mythos of our popular culture, the good people are the ones who make what Christians would consider to be morally admirable choices in their lives; the people who take the Sermon on the Mount as a rough guide to right and wrong. But they don't need an almighty Church or a personal lord and savior to show them the way.

So why, exactly, should anyone else?

There's something distinctively unitarian about most of our contemporary mythic tales, which arrive at Christian moral lessons through agnostic media. And I think that's a positive development as our culture tries to establish a moral center between the twin poles of primitive dogma and soulless materialism.

Posted by Random Passerby | August 13, 2007 11:33 AM

The silliest line in the article has to be this one:
"The ban on sexual matters is also observed fairly pedantically, though as time has elapsed Rowling has probably acquired male readers who find themselves having vaguely impure thoughts about Hermione Granger."

In fact one way in which the HP series outstrips Narnia is you watch the kids grow up in a healthy sexual way and learn to navigate these waters. Ron and Lavender, Hermione and Krum, Ron and Hermione, Harry and Cho, Harry and Ginny. Ginny letting Harry know with a kiss where he was really wanted. (And for the adults JKR's sly wink when Ron explains to Harry that girls are impressed by more than wandwork.)

All these strike me as very healthy adolescent sexual development. "Ban on sexual matters." Get a grip.

Posted by Chris J | August 13, 2007 12:44 PM

"It's also worth noting that while Hermione is a lovely character, her hard-headed empiricism is frequently portrayed as a limitation, rather than as a strength, during the last three books of the series."

Well, the sticky wicket is that, in the context of a magical universe, her hard-headed empiricism isn't actually all that empirical. She is, in many cases, ignoring what is actually in front of her, simply because it is a bit too magical. If pigs actually did have wings, then "when pigs fly" wouldn't be a quip of derision.

Posted by Glenn | August 13, 2007 1:17 PM

Rowling said explicitly that she felt the basic sacrifice/protection scheme is inspired by her Christianity, so that's a pretty solid answer right there.

Whether anyone else needs to read those values, which are larger than Christianity, as explicitly Christian, is another matter. In the end, Harry wants to protect his friends, and life after death (which is something of a reality in the wizarding world) is not explicitly religious itself. It doesn't have much to do with faith in the irrational or unsupported, let alone in some superbeing's bizarre and incomprehensible plots (no superbeing is ever mentioned): it has to do with Harry knowing what needs to be done to defeat evil and do the right thing.

And in fact, the matter of death is one of those things I think is sort of weak about the book. It just can't decide what the deal is. A huge and very emotionally powerful deal is made in the 5th book about the finality of death: that Harry cannot talk to Sirius, that holding out for ghosts and portraits is to put ones hopes in false echos that are almost caricatures of real life and avoidances of death. The third book does this as well: Harry's realization that he is seeing himself as his father is one of the most moving scenes in children's literature and surely one of the most emotionally justified uses of time travel in a novel.

And yet, in book 7, when supposedly "REAL" dead people show up, they are blandly no different than ghosts and portraits: despite the supposed important technical differences between Harry's parents in Book 4 and 7, can anyone really explain how they are different? If ghosts are "ultimately" fake, and yet can be so real that they are just like the "actual" people, why wouldn't Harry's parents or Sirius just ghost around purely to help and comfort Harry? It seems like they could have done a lot of good!

Worse, at the very end, Harry sits and has a discussion with Dumbledore's picture that has no realization at all that this isn't really Dumbledore. So wait, what's the big deal again?

Likewise, the issue is ultimately ambiguous in any case. IS there really life after death? The book might seem to resolve the issue, but not really: the resurrection stone is presented as unnatural: we're not sure if these spirits have been pulled out of any afterlife, or just nothingness. Dumbledore at King's Cross is both real AND yet all in Harry's head. Do people really live "on" in a Christian sci-fi sense, or do they live on in the thoughts and hopes and love of the living? Harry's scene at his parents grave about their unfeeling bones makes little sense in a magical world where they are supposedly alive in an afterlife.

Posted by plunge | August 13, 2007 2:18 PM

I was under the impression that Hermione knew very well what the Christian messages were and explained them to Harry, who did not. So I think Hitchens is just wrong. Moreover, Christmas is a huge deal in Harry's world. You would think it would all be Halloween.

Finally, I think it kind of nice that the Dursley's aren't Church goers because it certainly seems that in most modern fiction would they ever be!

Posted by jjv | August 13, 2007 5:15 PM

Re: it is not clear why Voldemort would be terrified by death when he has reliable, justified knowledge that the soul endures beyond the veil.

See the dead Achilles' answer to Odysseus when the latter visits him in Hades: "I would rather be a thrall in life than a prince among the dead." Even if you have solid knowledge that death isn't extinction that still does not make death unfearful, or a desirable as life.

Posted by JonF | August 13, 2007 6:45 PM

For all of Ross' criticism of "obtuse atheists" I've never seen him actually defend theism. (This could be my own fault.) I find it strange that one has to defend policy decisions but not (literally) larger than life truth claims. Can someone direct me to Ross' surely amazing defense of his Catholicism/theism, or can someone join me in asking him to actually sketch a defense of his worldview as Hitchens has done (however fallacious or wrong his was).

Posted by Devin Carpenter | August 13, 2007 6:56 PM

Ross,

It's pretty clear to me that the series implies a theistic universe of some kind, but I'm not sure that it's explicitly Christian. While the themes of sacrifice and protection, living beyond death, etc. fit very well within a Christian framework, and while the series obviously assumes the reality of the supernatural, it seems to me that there isn't the sense of God's omnipotence, and the ultimate futility of evil, that you find in a lot of more explicitly Christian fiction. Evil is presented as a very powerful reality, seemingly as strong and as woven into the fabric of the universe as Good, and the struggle between them is painted almost as eternal. The laws of magic allow love and sacrifice to protect others, but they also the formation of the Horcruxes. Compare the end of the series where Harry and his friends just barely manage to defeat Voldemort, it seems much more of a 'close thing' than, for example, the end of 'That Hideous Strength' by C.S. Lewis, in which the planetary angels show up in the nick of time, destroy the villains, and save the day. I got the sense much more of a dualistic, Zoroastrian-esque universe than of the one depicted by orthodox Christian theology....perhaps I'm just a dualist at heart.

Mr. Carpenter,

One can't be convinced of the truth of a religion (any religion) all at one go, and I don't think anyone is particularly trying to convert anyone else, certainly I'm not. Furthermore, there are parts of any religion that are accessible only through mystical experience, revelation, faith, etc. But if you do want reasoned argument though, what about starting with the Cosmological Proof for the existence of God? I've never seen a good refutation of it.

Posted by Hector Dauphin-Gloire | August 13, 2007 8:16 PM

Woody Allen worked his own "never missing an opportunity" to joke about belief in an afterlife, and Catholicism (which seems to preoccupy him a bit) in the same Sunday Times, in his tribute to Bergman: "

"I have joked about art being the intellectual’s Catholicism, that is, a wishful belief in an afterlife. Better than to live on in the hearts and minds of the public is to live on in one’s apartment, is how I put it."

Posted by M.A. Peel | August 13, 2007 8:45 PM

"See the dead Achilles' answer to Odysseus when the latter visits him in Hades: "I would rather be a thrall in life than a prince among the dead." Even if you have solid knowledge that death isn't extinction that still does not make death unfearful, or a desirable as life."

Yeah, I thought of that, and it has a ring of plausibility, given that the ghosts are "pale shadows" and all that. But ultimately it doesn't work--the whole point of Achille's injunction is that, to put it crudely, death fucking sucks. If that is true, it isn't reasonable to valorize Harry for embracing death, nor condemn Voldemort for seeking to avoid it(whatever we may think about his methods in pursuit of that end). No, fear of the fundamental mystery of death is Voldemort's prime mover, not a simple quasi-empirical belief about the quality of (un)life in the hereafter.

A possible just-so story could be that Voldemort's youthful misdeeds put himself in a state of unredeemable mortal sin, and he reasoned that, given that he is past salvation anyway, pretty much any crime was worth committing if it allowed him to avoid paying the piper.

Posted by Glenn | August 13, 2007 11:59 PM

Mr. Carpenter,

One can't be convinced of the truth of a religion (any religion) all at one go, and I don't think anyone is particularly trying to convert anyone else, certainly I'm not. Furthermore, there are parts of any religion that are accessible only through mystical experience, revelation, faith, etc. But if you do want reasoned argument though, what about starting with the Cosmological Proof for the existence of God? I've never seen a good refutation of it.

There really isn't anything to refute here, exactly. The "Cosmological Proof" doesn't prove anything about God-all it suggests is that, given what we understand about causality, something had to happen first to give rise to the universe. What that something is is completely up for grabs. And it isn't clear, actually, that this is necessarily the case-there is a lot that we simply don't understand about the cosmic order, and the nature of time is one of those things.

But, assuming it's the case, I would suggest that using an omnipotent, omniscient force as an explanation for the causal origins of the universe has it's own problems. The same principle when used to explain the universe, you might then feel compelled to use to explain something even more improbable-the origins of an omniscient, omnipotent being. The idea that a fully formed deity with all its parts working would spring from the Cosmos spontaneously seems a lot less plausible than the idea of a giant, chaotic mass of expanding energy. You would only come up with a god concept to fill this role if you already believed in a god for some other reason-like because your parents took you to sunday school when you were a kid.

Posted by Gordon Lightfoot | August 14, 2007 2:40 AM

"Moreover, Christmas is a huge deal in Harry's world."

I dunno how huge a deal it is, but certainly Christ isn't a huge part of their Christmas which is sort of the point. There's no hint of a concept of original sin in series, much less a need for redemption via elaborate blood sacrifice: Harry doesn't die to redeem his friends because they are sinful, put to defeat evil. A constant theme throughout the books is that people aren't all evil or good: they are human, and that's ok.

Christmas is, as far as anyone can tell, almost entirely the same kind that secular families celebrate. And thinking that Halloween should be a big deal sort of smacks of the "WITCHES!" hysteria we get out of the American midwest.

Posted by plunge | August 14, 2007 10:45 AM

Hector: "But if you do want reasoned argument though, what about starting with the Cosmological Proof for the existence of God? I've never seen a good refutation of it."

And I've never seen a convincing presentation of it as a serious argument. Remember, a refutation of the argument only requires even one reason why it is not compelling or convincing, and Gordon has already laid out several general problems. To summarize some of the key elements:

1. Our knowledge of causality is something we assume (ultimately without warrant as Hume pointed out!) because of how things behave within the universe: we have no idea whether it should apply to the universe itself. Arguing that we MUST do so is a category error (i.e. like applying the rules of baseball to the process of determining the rules of baseball) We really have no idea at all, and may never, as to the nature and constraints and possibilities of "a universe."
2. The premise of required causality is either the strong form (i.e., truly "everything" must have a cause) or useless. If it is the strong form, then it applies to any cause of the universe just as well, causing the endless cycle problem. If it is weakened, however, then there ceases to be any reason to insist that the universe in particular must have a cause. If there are to be any exceptions allowed, then the universe cannot be stricken from the list of possible exceptions. That's in part because:
3. Any observation of the universe we could ever have of its "beginning" can only be of the universe "as we know it" especially given the problem of talking about the "start" of time: a true uncaused beginning could always be lurking behind whatever we can see. This problem is more fundamental than scientific observation
4. Even if we can conceptually separate the universe from a preceding cause of it, the claim that this cause is a God is uncompelling. We have no idea at all what anything "outside" a universe would be like. Arguing that it is by nature spiritual (or worse "supernatural") is an exercise in equivocation, not logic (conflating different meanings of those words to reach a more constrained than justified conclusion), let alone arguing that it has opinions and intellect and so on.

In short, the Cos argument is remarkably uncompelling. In many forms, it's actually so laughable as to have a conclusion that refutes its own central premise! Attempts to solve this problem all end up fatally weakening that premise in some way that means that its application to the universe is doubtful and unnecessary.

Posted by plunge | August 14, 2007 11:03 AM

Dauphin,

If one has never seen a good refutation of the cosmological argument, one hasn't studied elementary philosophy.

Posted by Devin Carpenter | August 14, 2007 12:44 PM

Ross,

I won't hold my breath for you to defend your own truth claims, something that is integral to all of your value judgments and philosophical standings.

Theists love to criticize atheists without ever defending their own side. Until you do that, sir, I don't think anyone should take you seriously.

Posted by Devin Carpenter | August 14, 2007 12:46 PM

Messrs. Carpenter, Lightfoot, and Plunge,

Do you have any other examples where the law of causality fails to hold for physical systems?
The universe, at its origin, was a ultra-compact unit of matter and energy, hence it seems reasonable to treat it as a single physical entity, and therefore thought demands that it have a cause. On the contrary, God, being non-physical and therefore not subject to physical laws, is not subject to causality either. Similarly, it makes sense to demand that anything that has a discrete beginning must have a cause, since that is a property of all things that we observe in the physical universe. On the other hand, God has existed eternally, therefore He does not necessitate a cause.

Of course, this argument would fall down if it were proven that the universe was in fact eternal. (In which case there would be other arguments waiting in the wings to prove the existence of God). Happily though, we know today that the universe is not eternal, that it had a discrete beginning, and therefore this provides strong reason to believe that it must have had a cause.

Let me ask you a related question: The whole edifice of mathematics and physics, and the physical reality and self-consistency of our universe, depends on the existence of complex numbers. If complex numbers don't really exist, and are just figments of our imagination, then the equations that describe real things in the physical world fall apart. Yet, complex numbers do not directly correspond to anything in the material world, nor can our intelligences fully comprehend what they are. Where then did complex numbers exist before mathematicians discovered them. Does this not compel the conclusion that they existed in some kind of realm of ideas within a higher, superhuman mind. (Which we could call God). It is not for nothing that the mathematician Euler used the fact of complex numbers to argue for the existence of God.

And I haven't even gotten to the Ontological argument, the argument from personal observation, the argument from mystical experience, Wallace's argument about the human soul, the argument from a moral sense, etc.

Posted by Hector Dauphin-Gloire | August 14, 2007 2:26 PM

Hector, again, you are irrationally mixing science and philosophy willy-nilly: trying to note that we observe the universe to extrapolate back into a singularity is not, philosophically anything like evidence that it had a causal created beginning (in fact, there are plenty of known problems with that idea). It is, as I pointed out, at best, an observation of the start of the universe "as we know it." (Of course, it's also worth noting that at the level of a singularity, quantum effects make talking about "causality" rather dicey to begin with: that IS the area in which causality begins to look as troubled scientifically as I already explained that it is philosophically.)

We don't know what the early universe was like, let alone whether it began, let alone how. Claiming that we know that the universe had a discrete beginning scientifically is simply falsehood, and yet again you miss the difference between science and philosophy. You can't play with "anything I make up goes" rules for God and then treat the universe as if its many many unknowns cannot get the same treatment.

And of course none of that says anything about the purported cause of the universe, which again has no necessary force to anything anyone would call God, unless of course you engage in equivocation, as I noted.

It isn't very interesting to raise a bunch of points and then have someone smirkingly ignore them all.

"Where then did complex numbers exist before mathematicians discovered them."

You have a real problem confusing different conceptual ideas all into one. Complex numbers are concepts. They don't "exist" like, say, a planet. No magical realms are required to "hold" them in "preparation" for anyone someday understanding them anymore than the there is a magical realm where imaginary friends live until children dream them up.

"And I haven't even gotten to the Ontological argument, the argument from personal observation, the argument from mystical experience, Wallace's argument about the human soul, the argument from a moral sense, etc."

All just as much exercises in sloppy sophistry as these others.

Posted by plunge | August 14, 2007 6:58 PM

Messrs. Plunge and Lightfoot,

I was brought up in an atheist househould, actually, and didn't become religious till my late teens.

I would disagree with you about the existence of complex numbers, and other mathematical abstractions. I think that either they exist or they don't, and they clearly do, as we can see from the fact that we can make true statements about them. Furthermore, you can solve equations to arrive at real answers about real objects, that as part of the solution, assume the existence of complex numbers. (To take a simple example, motion of a very damped pendulum). If these numbers don't absolutely 'exist', then the equations don't work, even though we can see by observation that they do....I guess that I simply don't have the same sense of what's plausible and implausible as you do. It seems more plausible to me that the rationality and order that we see in the cosmos comes about as the result of an overarching Mind. It also seems more plausible to me that ideas and abstractions have a real existence in the sense of Platonic forms. You're right, this is not any particular vision of God. I have other reasons for believeing in the particular God I believe in.

Posted by Hector Dauphin-Gloire | August 14, 2007 9:05 PM

"I would disagree with you about the existence of complex numbers, and other mathematical abstractions. I think that either they exist or they don't, and they clearly do, as we can see from the fact that we can make true statements about them"

This makes about as much sense as saying that "justice" must either be the color blue or some other color. Complex numbers are concepts, not objects. Talking about them existing is sort of incoherent, frankly, and whether the equations work has nothing at all to do with whether there is some fantastical realm where the square root of (6+4i) frolics in the fields with (4 - 2i).

"It seems more plausible to me that the rationality and order that we see in the cosmos comes about as the result of an overarching Mind."

This is just an arbitrary and ultimately circular assumption though: and minds certainly seem to be even more demanding of explanation of their existence than even just "some order" (and remember, we just know the one universe: we have NO IDEA whether the amount of order or rationality in this universe is incredibly copious, pedestrian, or incredibly scarce). If your answer is just that, poof, some vast mind "just exists" then that isn't a particularly exciting explanation, especially after all the bluster about how important an assumption it is. I guess any state of anything might as well "just exist" as well.

If you want to play the game of possibility with no rules, you can't object when someone points out all the infinite other equally possible alternatives. Your pet explanations can't play a different games than my counter-examples.

Posted by plunge | August 14, 2007 9:59 PM