Mike Davis

Lovecraftian themes and Atheism

Let me start this by saying that I don’t want any religious arguments here, this isn’t a religious blog.  Discussing things in a civil manner, however, is a good thing.  Let me also say that I am an atheist — but I feel that people have the right to believe whatever they want to believe, as long as it does not infringe upon the freedoms of others.

OK, disclaimer done.

I noticed an interesting question today at Yahoo! Answers:

As an Atheist, I’ve always wondered how this might be relevant to our modern society and perhaps attempts to “turn back the clock.” I’ll stat with a quote from Call of Cthulhu:

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

Given the fact that Call of Cthulhu contains enough elements (and was acknowledged as such by Lovecraft, who was an atheist) to serve as a representation of being confronted with the psychological implications of our ultimate importance to the universe in the face of Atheism, I have recently begun to wonder if the current trends toward fundamentalism in religion worldwide is actually a reactionary movement to learning things about our universe that make us feel insignificant, powerless, and ultimately unimportant.

You can read the question (and answers) here.

I, too, see a correlation between Lovecraft’s fiction and atheism.  Finding out that ancient gods used to rule the Earth, and that someday they will return, drives many characters insane in Lovecraftian fiction.  I can see how discovering that there is no god, no heaven, no one up there looking out for you, could do the same in real life.

My hypothesis is that Lovecraftian fiction tends to attract atheists and agnostics — at the very least, people with a very open mind and who tend more to be persuaded by evidence rather than “faith”.

Am I correct?  Let’s do an anonymous poll!  And, please, comment below with your thoughts.

If all of time since the big bang was a year, then humans would have only appeared in approximately the last 2 minutes before 11:59pm on December 31st.

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35 comments

  1. I was a Jew by Choice for 30 years of my adult life and became a Trinitarian averse Messianic after a mystical dream about Jesus. So that makes me an apikoros just like an atheist.
    It doesn’t make me identify with Christians. I mourn the loss to history of the Ebionites and Nazarenes. I read non Messianic Jewish scholarship on the Second Temple period and early Christianity.

    But I separate what I can know intellectually from what I feel spiritually. Intellectually, I see science as agnostic. I see both atheism and theisms (there’s not just one variety) as relying upon incomplete evidence, naturalism for atheists and anecdotal for theists.

    But I’ve always loved the Cthulhu Mythos as well as PKD’s Gnostic science fiction.
    After revisiting both “Evolution is True” and “The Blind Watchmaker” I had thought that’s somewhat Fortean, quite liminal and possibly mad.

    People in late antiquity were just as keen observers as we are. They simply had different axioms. Realizing that the world has no teleogy, no purpose, no goodness outside of what we choose, they imagined the world as a flawed creation of a Blind Craftsman copying a higher world. Possibly also mad and ignorant of the Pleroma, not yet corrected by Divine Sophia, the Blind Craftsman myth was adopted by heretical Christians, disaffected Hellenistic Jews and errant Neo-Pagans.

    And now it seems, by modern atheist scientists in a culture war against fundamentalists. So I conclude nature is the Demiurge. A mad darkness awaits and as a fan of Lovecraftian literature (though averse to his original racism), I embrace the madness of truths rejected by both science and conventional religion.

    How does Jesus fit in? Obviously he rescues from this world lacking teleogy. There is only a spiritual salvation beyond nature. But no need for a culture war. Everyone will be enlightened in the end, atheist and theist alike.

    Or else we will become “moon food” as John A Keel quipped. Whatever the answer to the Fermi Paradox. Go ahead and invite aliens to discover Earth. We who enjoy the Cthulhu Mythos are not afraid. We recognize that indifferent ancient entities beyond our ken may need a snack on their way (as in that great Night Stalker episode).

    Yes, my Baptist wife thinks I’m nuts, but at my advanced age, what’s not to like about being happily nutty?)

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    • Hope this ism’t staying into the realms of religious argument that you warned against here but I do have point out a huge difference between the various mythologies mentioned and the Cthulhu Mythos. Namely that Judaism, Christianity, Islam etc, whether they are true or not are purported by their adherents to be true, and claimed to provide a moral guidance as to how to live one”s life.

      The Cthulhu Mythos, by contrast, has never claimed either to be true OR to provide any kind of philosophical blueprint regarding how to conduct oneself. On the contrary the very people who invented it (Lovecraft, Derleth? et al) made it quite plain to anyone who asked that it WAS pure invention. And even it it were true it makes no attempt st providing comfort or moral strictures to its adherents.

      Thus I contend that it is not a religion or faith as the concept is generally understood, just a work of fiction to be enjoyed. I would hesitate to write fiction about established Faith’s or otherwise “play” with them, and to do so would be distrspectful to followers of such Faiths. Yet The Mythos is fair game in that regard

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  2. I’m Jewish and a mostly orthodox Christian besides (but not a fundamentalist). In my worst moments I think that perhaps John A Keel was right, that there is something out there inimical to humanity that is at best a trickster and at worst satanic. That phenomena like UFO’s and strange unnatural beasts don’t require investigation by astronomers, astrobiologists and engineers but by folklorists, psychologists and exorcists.

    Maybe that’s why I like Lovecraft and cosmic horror as entertainment?

    Christianity Today once compared the horror of Lovecraft as an atheist to Arthur Machen as a Christian. I like both. Cosmic horror attacks the senses more the usual slasher horror of a simply naturalistically murderous psychopath. It shows that we live in a universe guided by the Misanthropic Cosmological Principle (We live in a universe fined tuned to ensure that sentient observers arise to and to Really Have a Bad Day).

    I’m a Christian because I like Jesus’ life and teachings and am willing to suspend disbelief and accept that he rose from the dead and wipes away all tears in the olam haba (the world to come). I certainly don’t like institutional Christianity and since I’m Jewish enough for Hitler to have murdered (though my mother’s Scots Irish and I couldn’t make a minyan in an Orthodox shul); I often have a mild to moderate sense of dread, that something bad is just around the corner and that that maybe the naturalistic pseudo deities of the human sacrificing pagan religions are really out there just waiting to make a comeback.

    That’s when I listen to my “A Shoggoth on the Roof” cd and feel lifted up. Humanity may exist in a cold, barren universe (i.e. the rare earth hypothesis of Ward and Brownlee) but we’ll have knowledge and the best of religion and science to get us through the day.

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  3. I’m an existentialist. Broadly speaking (and simplifying greatly) it’s a philosophy that says that there is no ultimate plan or script for the universe, but that it just goes blindly on, and that there is nothing special about humankind. Therefore, your background, economic circumstances, ability, etc, really aren’t all that relevant. However, you are stuck here until you die, so rather than simply give way to depression, you should impose your own meaning on your life, by the choices you make.

    Now, the background to this belief – that the cosmos is uncaring and indifferent – fits HPL’s philosophy of life exactly. His letters are full of statements expounding this philosophy, and his stories – with their hyper-powerful tentacled deities and elder races – mirror this exactly.

    Lovecraft’s obsession with his race and background, of course, do not fit this ideas entirely. But the way he lived his life – by making a deliberate choice to avoid the commercial “rat race” and focus on his love for architecture, literature, antiquarian studies and astrology – put him very firmly among the ranks of the truly authentic.

    So I’m making the statement now – HPL was an existentialist.

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  5. No matter what each reader of HPL believes or embraces, the fact is that Lovecraft was an atheist. He didn’t accept the metaphysical at all. Not one whit. The thing that separates his horror fiction from that of everything that preceded it is that it was a concerted effort to place horror work firmly within the realm of science-fiction. Until HPL came along, no one had attempted it. This is what sets his pulp writing within the realm of high art.

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  6. You know, it’s funny: in my head, I’m an atheist, at least as far as there being a traditional, Bible-described God–or for that matter, an anybody-else-described Cosmic Force of Dread, or anything supernatural. (On the other hand, I don’t at all deny the possibility of the universe arising from somebody’s lab experiment or computer simulation, though I don’t assume it either.) Yet I still identify as Jewish, if mainly because of upbringing; and I’ll still reflexively “pray” when I’m in fear for someone’s life, despite assuming in my head that it’s all nonsense. (Which I suppose means HPL and I would have Had Words, had we met each other.)

    I’m also extremely sympathetic to Buddhism in general and Zen in particular, despite not buying reincarnation etc.

    I believe in a universe that’s essentially neutral–it’s uncaring (because non-conscious), but not actively malign any more than it’s actively benign. I see “evil” (and “good”) as arising solely out of human action, nothing external. (If there are aliens or eventual AI, they get grandfathered in under “human.”) The cosmos inspires wonder, not fear; *we* inspire fear, among other things. If the universe is doomed to eventual destruction, as I understand is the case, then the living and nonliving contents of that universe are equally victims.

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  7. So here’s the results of the poll, as of this morning:

    atheist: 44.52% (69 votes)
    agnostic: 26.45% (41 votes)
    deist: 5.81% (9 votes)
    religious: 15.48% (24 votes)
    other: 7.74% (12 votes)

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  9. I selected “other” because it’s pretty hard to explain what I believe our metaphysical situation without going into a lot of details. People who know me in other online places might know I am also a big fan of William Hope Hodgson, and an easy way to explain things is to make reference to that…I essentially believe that most “odd” and “weird” experiences are real, just not what people think they are. In other words, I don’t believe there is a god looking out for us or who is in charge…the universe displays no such consistency with a single psyche. However, I do believe in a much stranger universe where numerous psyches, including our own, seem to have a direct mode of interaction with reality.

    I believe the universe is a weird horror sort of place, essentially. It’s not a loving universe, and it’s not even neutral, because the one observation we can make is that entropy, and its agents in the abstract worlds of man-made social and political systems, are winning the game. The universe, essentially, is rigged against beings such as ourselves. The very fact that pain, death, and dissolution are the rule and built into our existences, not the exception, and the fact that might does win over right in our social interactions, that a billion people all trying to be kind and compassionate cannot make utopias, but a single sociopath can unmake or corrupt anything close to a utopia, should tell us that the metaphysical situation is not in our favor.

    This is a bad-guy universe, and not one where the rules built into the system (if it were “built” at all, rather than grown or simply fell into being through the nature of quantum vacuums, time, and mathematics) favor the entities within the system. If we look at it from a game theoretical or even game design point of view, real life would be a “broken” or “flawed” game, mathematically, in the sense that someone can have first move, always move according to a rule that maximizes prevalence while minimizing loss, and yet still “lose” horribly.

    I believe the psyche and cosmos (the mind and the universe it lives in) are more deeply and complexly connected than even the most avid fever-dreams of the new agers or German Idealists (or any other theology or science) couldn’t explain it. I believe, philosophically, that Idealism is essentially true, because otherwise abstract categories would not and could not exist as a part of metaphysical laws, but that this does not create a “rational” or “best of all possible worlds” scenario, because this Idealistic universe, made as it seems to be, of mind-stuff, seems to be an irrational mind, a corrupt ideal. Our interior world of thought and external world of perception are essentially one world, but with several scales of existence. We observe them all the time, but don’t account for it in our philosophy very well because fundamentally, our philosophy is about US, while the universe is NOT about about us.

    Consider the different physical scales of existence, from sub-atomic particle all the way up to galaxy; don’t they remind you of something? Why, these are layers of abstractions, categorical rules of interactions, entities defined by relational properties…in other words, mathematics and logic. The universe works the same way a mind reasons, from specifics to generalities, from instantiations of “rules” to generalizable rules. Our understanding of the world and logic has happened at the same time; once we stopped belaboring the point with Aristotelian Logic and recognized the identity of the core fundamentals of mathematics and logic, our logic “improved” and set the stage for the current scientific understanding of the universe.

    So I don’t believe in gods (in the traditional sense) or any singular psyche running the show, but I do believe that there are certain principles or rules “running the show” that are revealed through mathematics and logic. These give us the framework for a universe, and once the framework is there, the simple fact of “stuff”–that is, something existing at all, what we call matter/energy–then goes through certain transformations and has certain ways of interacting that are, at their root, still logical rules.

    The problem is, however, that it is a paraconsistent logic. If the universe is really, as some have said, the “Mind of God”, then that mind is deeply irrational, to the point of insanity. It allows contradictions without running afoul of the “Principle of Explosion”, which states that once one has premises “A” and “not-A” at the same time, anything is thus provable. However, like actual paraconsistent logics, the universe seems to isolate the places where contradictions occur, so that the “explosion” of logic doesn’t actually occur throughout the system as a whole. It isolates it at the quantum level, for example; it is quite possible for two contradicting quantum states to exist simultaneously, just like it is possible for such quantum information to be available to the entire system simulataneously (non-local quantum events, entanglement, and “Spooky Action At A Distance” are all examples of paraconsistency in the logic of reality). It also “hides” contradictions inside event horizons in the form of “singularities”, points where the mathematico-logical rules for that patch of the universe breaks down and the Principle Of Explosion “done exploded”.

    There is also the possibility that, in a sense, at the core of every fundamental particle of what we think of as “matter”–which is really just a more solid, static manifestation of energy, the “ability to do work”–is a singularity. This may be precisely what the quantum scale of existence reveals…a singularity which is being nicely “hidden” behind the event horizon of the confluence of forces which hold each particle–from the external point of view–in a semi-fixed state which prevents the paraconsistency from invading the rest of the universe.

    In fact, if you think deeply about the notion that all matter is really energy held, by various forces working in tandem, in a semi-static state, and that energy is “the ability to do work”, my argument for an idealistic universe is strengthened; what can it mean to say that the entire universe consists of varying arrangements of “the ability to do work”, if it does not mean that the entire universe is essentially a process, a great mill, where we pour in pure potential energy at one end, it is processed according to the rules of mathematico-logical interactions between possible energy-events (where the “ability to do work” becomes work), and out the other end comes reality? The “ability to do work” is the ability to cause changes of state, sure, but it is a vast abstraction; what exactly is the work being done by, or upon? If every object is merely a particular arrangement of energy, and energy is “the ability to do work”, that means every object in the universe is merely various manifestations of change without any final object or subject enacting the change or having the change enacted upon it.

    If “physicalism” as people normally mean it were true, then at the core of each entity would be a “substance” which is defined through its properties. But there is no base substance; instead there is just more of the same “ability to do work” going through changes of state based upon mathematico-logical rules. In a sense, there is no “matter” in the sense that most people think…there is just “work being done”–that is, changes in state–and more “work being done”. And “work being done” is a concept, not a thing, not a substance.

    Of course, any monistic metaphysics will look the same from inside of it; whether we and the universe around us are constituted of “matter-stuff” or “mind-stuff”, it will look the same so long as everything that is “real” is real in the same way. So long as dualism is not true, then we can’t actually tell the difference between physicalism and idealism. But one fact that gives us a clue to actual state of the universe is that we can use mathematics and logic to make predictions; we can do this through induction (inference based on past experience), deduction (inference based upon transformations of known premises according to mathematico-logical rules), and abduction (inference that attempts to either reason to the best possible explanation for a given state of affairs or reason to the best possible assumptions/axioms to explain a given conclusion)…and the predictions hold true.

    Let’s go through that in a different way to explain what I mean: there is no physicalist explanation for why reason, an evolved characteristic of brains, should be consistent with the actual universe. Rules of logic don’t NEED to apply to the world, and under the normal physicalist assumptions, the fact that they, in fact, do so correspond shows that there is a parallel between the way that minds function and the way the universe functions. If reason were merely the result of evolution, it would merely lead us away from danger and towards reproduction, and it doesn’t need to actually model the real universe to do that. We could explain to ourselves WHY we are running from the tiger or trying to bed the coed in any number of ways that did not, actually, correspond to the workings of the universe at all (we could, for example, believe that the goal of life was to be eaten by only the best tiger, and thus run away because a given tiger wasn’t up to our standards). So long as we do, in fact, run away, evolution doesn’t care why we do it.

    But in an idealistic universe, our ability to use mathematico-logical reason to accomplish real-world goals and make predictions that come true, the very fact that we can use logic and mathematics to crunch the numbers we get from empirical observation and make a prediction that comes true using an entirely mental construction, makes perfect sense. It’s what we would expect, actually, and what is a miracle, an incredible coincidence between the functions of our mind and the functions of nature, according to physicalism, becomes the only possible situation according to idealism. The fact that a completely mathematical model can be used to predict the existence of new elements or the atomic weight of elements in the Periodic Table, for example, is a clear demonstration of this fact. We did not weigh all the elements (including ones that didn’t exist yet) and put them into order empirically. Rather, from a few pieces of empirical data about a few elements and compounds, a mathematico-logical rule was deduced, and when we tested that rule, it accurately predicted where everything in the table would end up. We can even predict what new elements could be synthesized or should exist out there, and because of this we have a model for chemistry that is like a map: it shows us what we should find and we do, in fact, find it, and it all comes from a mathematical rule. The very fact that chemistry works shows that the universe follows the rules of math and logic, yet math and logic are a kind of technology that we created, bit by bit over the years.

    Where do logical and mathematical “laws” exist, really? In minds, of course; where they come from physical experience they derive from the most general conceptions handed to us…numeracy, spatiality, temporality, etc., but we then put these abstractions to work and through various transformations…and reality agrees with the results.

    Now, consider the way nations, laws, legal contracts, land deeds, etc. exist. They are also mental constructions, abstractions…but we can change those as we like them, defining the rights and rules as we like. Interest, whether on loans or savings, is a typical example: through a conceptual construct, we make 1=1.12 (or whatever). But we can only go so far with this, and our current economic problems as a world and nation show that even through economics, wealth, society, interest, government, usury, credit, etc are all artificial constructs we made up, we can’t just make them do whatever we want…because the universe is following a set of different, but still just as much mental, rules than we made up. If math were really simply something we made up, rather than a sort of reality or landscape that we discovered through exploring mentally, any economic system we all agreed upon would work exactly how we decide it should…but it doesn’t.

    The reason I have argued this so strongly and at such length is that we currently have a set of biases built into our collective metaphysics that is either physicalist (if you’re an atheist) or dualist (if you’re religious in the traditional sense). I have found, through years of supporting a very, very unpopular position in philosophy, that I can’t just say “assume idealism is true” and have people’s thinking switch gears properly…they can say that, but to them that means existence must be “all in our heads”, like a hallucination or delusion, when that is not the case at all. A thoroughgoing idealism is something you have to argue for and explain completely before moving on to what this idealism then implies about claims involving religion or “spirituality”. The result of my argument is essentially this: the universe is not “matter” in any classical sense of physical “stuff”; instead it is a particular arrangement of energy, the “ability to do work” or cause changes in states of affairs, and the arrangements of everything, from the boson to the mind, happen according to rules that are fundamentally mathematico-logical. Thus, reality is not “stuff” at all; it is information being processed according to rules.

    Once one accepts this, then the rest of my beliefs regarding things like “non-physical entities” and other things that people normally would think of as being “supernatural” (there is no such thing; nature is that which exists, thus anything that we discover to exist is a part of nature) becomes much clearer. Since everything is “non-physical” according to my thinking, the issues of souls, ghosts, the manipulation of mind and reality called “magick”, and non-physical intelligences and species of entity just don’t cause a problem. Modern science agrees with me, for the most part, but most of us ignore or don’t know what it’s saying, or still interpret what the Standard Model is saying according to physicalist rules. But it’s been a long time since Newton and his clockwork universe of billiard balls hitting each other, and what modern science says is that, essentially, we ourselves are non-physical intelligences. We are merely a particular arrangement of energetic potentialities and processes; that is what existence, life, and mind all are. Thus the idea of other such arrangements that don’t look like biological life at all, or are so sparsely arranged as to be normally imperceptible to our senses, is perfectly reasonable.

    So what I believe is that, as William Hope Hodgson wrote about directly and HPL hinted at through his notions of “other sorts of matter” such as the composition of Cthulhu, we live in an expanded ecosystem that includes entities that have, from time to time, interacted with some of us and which may appear to be “supernatural”, but in reality they are perfectly natural. I believe that the “soul” is simply the energetic body-mind entity we commonly observe, and that it may well take on other arrangements after death, which is really just a rearrangement of certain energetic conditions according to mathematico-logical rules. I believe that, just like in the rest of nature, all of these entities are predatory upon others, because entropy requires it; no energetic arrangement can maintain its arrangement indefinitely without some energy being lost continuously to entropy. Of course, this predation may take many different forms, and some forms or stages of existence may forgo much of it, such as the stages of various insect and sea life that don’t eat, using energy derived from yolk reserves to live.

    I also believe that the features of the universe are similarly expanded…that there are sparser or exotic forms of existing, and that rules we have yet to discover govern their existence. There may well be life everywhere, at all scales, in the cores of stars and the vacuum of space, that we simply can’t perceive for various reasons. Science agrees with me upon this, with terms like “exotic matter” and “dark matter” being used to designate portions of the universe with which we don’t normally interact.

    So there may be ghosts/souls, reincarnation (there is some interesting evidence for it, such as small children “remembering” accurate details of the life of a person far away with no connection to explain it, or being able to speak the languages of their “previous incarnation”), even “evil spirits” (in the sense of dangerous or inimical to us) and “good spirits” (in the sense of exotic forms of existing life that are friendly). These various forms of existence may have different abilities and senses, which again, may appear to be “supernatural”, but are not.

    So there may be immensely powerful, exotic forms of life that for all intents and purposes may be considered “gods”, at least as compared to us, but I can’t look at the universe and see anything that might be “God”–or even gods in the classical sense–as religion conceives of it. The mystics of every religion may have been honest, as far as that goes; they may well have perceived and interacted with exotic, sparse arrangements of energy that were intelligent. But just because something is more powerful than we are, or very different, doesn’t make it the ultimate god of existence, creator and ruler…even if it says so.

    I believe, for example, that it is quite possible that Abraham, Moses, Mohammed, and maybe even Joseph Smith really did interact with really real entities who communicated the words and ideas each of these people claim they did. But I believe that they were lied to, or misunderstood, the nature of the beings they were interacting with, and were essentially just interacting with a kind of person, just a very different kind. I don’t know to what degree the religions of the world represent the results of these deceptions, but I think that it may be the case that a certain sort of energetic parasite may gain its sustenance from the various behaviors which we classify as “worship” and “belief”. Otherwise, other than simple pranksterism, there is no way to explain many so-called religious experiences, both positive and negative…if religions are the results of real interactions with real entities, those real entities must have some motivation for the particular interactions and forms they have undertaken. A lot of religious behavior is very counter-intuitional and downright opposite to what is good for humans, yet it is also remarkably uniform in its basic behaviors, from building temples/holy sites (why would an immaterial being like God need a house?) to burning incense, despite vast temporal and physical distances between the different religious groups. Possibly, some or all of these interactions may have been accidents, and these sorts of entities care about us about as much as we care about ants and electromagnetic fields, but the remarkable consistency in what religion produces as behaviors leads me to believe otherwise.

    I’m sorry this has turned out so long, but it was the only way to really explain myself. I do believe that part of why humanity seems to be going collectively insane is exactly what the original question implies: Lovecraft was right.

    I am in the process of writing a connected anthology called “The Strange Case Files of Dr. Richard Stark”, where the basic thesis is that, thanks to our technology leading to more and more recording of events, our attempts to correlate our reality–to put everything we have learned and are recording together, essentially–reveals the “supernatural” realities we have been living side by side with throughout history. This is a real occurrence…thanks to our surveillance states and their evolving technology, we are approaching the point where everything, everywhere, at every scale our technology can give us access to, will be recorded and reconciled, put together to build a “big picture” of reality…and what we are discovering disquiets us more and more. We just aren’t prepared to deal with reality as a whole…and the attempt to do so is driving us, as a species, directly and indirectly, insane.

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    • I would LOVE to sit down and talk at length with you about this! I’m making a friend request on FB to you in just a moment, because it is these sorts of thoughts I enjoy discussing 🙂

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  10. I agree with Christopher Slatsky. I think the Cthulhu Mythos and Lovecraftianism in general has a sense of religious awe about it, so one needn’t be only an atheist to enjoy it. If anything, it gives the feeling of the ‘numinous’ ‘mysterious’ ‘sublime’ and ‘awesome’ like religion does at times, except without one actually believing in it. I actually thought of writing a story once, set in the future, where Lovecraft’s writings are actually holy texts and people take the Cthulhu Mythos seriously. They’re venerated because they’re old and no one can travel back in time to ‘disprove’ them anymore. It’s even spawned different sects. Like Ramsey Cambellism or Derlethianism.I’ve always had a nagging suspicion, not to say if something is real or not, I’m more of an agnostic, that that’s how a lot of beliefs and religions got started. And no, I don’t believe the Mythos is real. lol Hasn’t anyone else noticed how Lovecraftianism has spread through short stories, or texts, almost parallel to how followers of a new religion spread their messages. Except Lovecraftians do it for fun and to achieve that feeling of ‘the numinous’ as a test to their writing abilities…and for entertainment and to explore other themes, as fiction. I do believe I read somewhere that some people do take the Mythos as real. Or maybe my love of religious history has gotten the best of me and I’m seeing things that aren’t there. lol

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    • Write this! Don’t take too long either, you never know when we will be soon be nothing more than garbage on Cthulhus dental floss.

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  11. I’ve never thought of Atheism in Lovecraft myself, but I suppose I can see it. Though, really, it always seemed that Lovecraft was all about “the things man was not meant to know,” which, to me applied to all areas. He seems to be saying that we shouldn’t know too much about science or art or religion or anything. Frankly, what always struck me about Lovecraft was that he seemed very anti-academics, as it’s learned people wanted knowledge that always end up causing trouble in his stories. Lovecraft always seemed to be saying to me, “look what happens when you search? Only bad things. Be happy with what you know and don’t look too deep.”

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  12. Life-long Atheist here; and I have never tried to “convert” anyone to my scientific cosmic minded way of thinking. And my preference for discussing food, literature, entertainment, and fun in the work-place, and my lack of animosity toward any races, genders, or sexual-orientations, instead of getting into religious and political discussions and debates, has always labeled me as an eccentric.
    And it still surprises me when people with very strong religious beliefs are into H. P. Lovecraft’s fiction and non-fiction; even though I’m aware of many who fit into this category.
    On the silly side, when people see how large I am (Being twice the man I used to be, is not always a good thing!) I actually enjoy pointing out that on the Universal of Cosmic level of existence, I’m really petite!

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  14. Very cool discussion! Okay, I call myself a Dianic Witch, and honor the Feminine in Divinity, but in many ways, also see that the Divine is in all us. I call myself a Goddess worshipper, but to me, Goddess violently dislikes worship, so it is better to honor Her by being a guardian for the planet and honoring myself. *shrug* Philosophically, I see the wonders of nature and figure someone, somewhere made all this, but I don’t think we, as humans, can wrap our minds around how it was done just yet, although I also think we will, someday, understand, and that we are developing to that stage now. I also feel that, whomever is responsible for this world, She’s long since abandoned us as hopeless 🙂 Both Darren and Rob have expressed ideas that closely mesh with my own rambling thoughts on this.

    As an aside: Mike, I hope you are continuing to feel better and that life is smoothing out for you a bit.

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  15. Let me start this by saying that I’m one of the few that voted “other”. I’m more of a spiritual person that believes that there’s something that could be described as an energy out there. Not an intelligent energy, but something that connects all of us to, let’s say, other levels of existence.

    Does Lovecraft fascinate atheists more than “religious” people? He certainly does, because the mindset of an atheist leaves you/them with a sense of “what if”, while most religious readers are already living in a mindset that defines what is possible and what is not.
    I’m sure that those with a defined set of views still feel that sense of madness, but the wonder may be lessened.

    Do HPL and Christianity go together in the way that Derleth tried to implement? For me, they don’t … But I think that the idea of Good Vs. Evil worked quite well for certain writers (Brian Lumley) and some novels (Nightmare’s Disciple).

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  16. I believe in a superior form of intelligence underlying then entire universe, but then I see it as 1 very large organism and everything within (such as our species and all others) as “cells” so-to-speak. My conception of “God” is much closer to theoretical physics than any organized religion I have run across.

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    • That makes a lot of sense, especially if you consider that our cells and our solar system are incredibly similar – so the solar system is basically a cell in a much-larger organism.

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      • Yes, exactly! I’m Pagan also, although this conception isn’t often talked about by many pagans online because it doesn’t fit within their “god/goddess” dynamic easily…

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  17. The only thing I miss as a result of rejecting superstition in favor of rationality is that I can no longer hope that Cthulhu would actually rise from the deep, and devour humanity. As a rationalist, sadly, I recognize that our demise will be our species drowning in our own waste.

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  18. Hi Mike, good post about the themes in Lovecraft’s work. I will say that I am a protestant christian, having said it dose not mean I can not enjoy a well written story. The themes in Lovecraft’s work show that when we are faced with situation that defies our nice little pet concepts will make us change our concepts or go mad.
    When we, like the characters in the stories, are faced with the truth that shake every thing we thought we knew or understood about the universe we have two choices one accept it and deal with it or just go living in out our little world of make believe and hope that we are never challenged again.

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  19. I’m a ‘I think there’s something, but I have no idea what or how or why, or what kind of functioning they do.’ Some days I take comfort in the idea of a divine being, other days not so much.

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  20. Atheism is a primary connection between the Cthulhu mythos and my Wister Town/Pazuzu Trilogy stories – well that and monsters and alien gods. It got me writing. Back in the Nineties, I had been reviewing my sketchbooks and asked myself “Why don’t I feel drawing and painting my creatures brings them to life.” Tangential as my mind, I answered “If there was a God, these things couldn’t possibly exist.” I then had my story – an agnostic story, but that was the genuine beginning. Seriously, I started writing upon the death of God.

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  21. While I am an atheist (specifically a “strong atheist”) I’m not sure that non-theism and Lovecraftian horror go hand in hand. In my humble opinion the weird tale is one where the inexplicable intrudes into one’s well established beliefs whether theistic or not- a subtle (or not so subtle) frisson, a misalignment of established physical laws would make this non-believer shudder. Rudolf Otto explained the idea best when he introduced the idea of the numinous and then broke it down into two components: mysterium tremendum and mysterium fascinans. As Otto himself described it:

    “The feeling of it may at times come sweeping like a gentle tide, pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest worship. It may pass over into a more set and lasting attitude of the soul, continuing, as it were, thrillingly vibrant and resonant, until at last it dies away and the soul resumes its ‘profane,’ non-religious mood of everyday experience. It may burst in sudden eruption from the depths of the soul with spasms and convulsions, or lead to the strangest excitements, to intoxicated frenzy, to transport, and to ecstasy… It may become the hushed, trembling, and speechless humility of the creature in the presence of – whom are what? In the presence of that which is a mystery inexpressible above all creatures.”

    A concept of which Lovecraft was well aware and used similar language to describe it. As he attests in Supernatural Horror in Literature, a weird story is best when delivering:

    “A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain- a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.”

    Lovecraft, as well as some contemporary celebrity non-theists like Carla Sagan, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Paul Kurtz, have written extensively about the non-theist’s experience with the numinous and how it is not exclusively a religious concept. In fact Paul Kurtz’s excellent book The Transcendental Temptation examines that “breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces” as hardwired in all humans and its expression is as varied as the numerous philosophies, faiths and supernatural dogmas (from UFOs to faith healing) humanity has adopted and extolled.

    Matt Cardin has an excellent (well, most things Mr. Cardin has written are excellent even if I may disagree with his opinions at times!) older blog post on the subject of Christianity and horror fiction: http://www.teemingbrain.com/2010/08/17/lovecraft-christian-horror-and-weird-fiction/

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  22. I honor the pre-christian worldview of my heathen ancestors. I however, have no true belief in gods like Odin, Thor, Tyr etc though I respect and take lessons from parts of their mythology. I do all this in the worldliest of ways, with no fear of an empty afterlife, it’s simply a grounding reminder that my fathers who came before me, lived, fought and bested almost every challenge they encountered which led to me being here today.

    For that, I thank them.

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  24. Hi Mike. I think that the two do go together in some ways, but I’ve never thought they were exclusive. That Which Should Not Be referenced much in Christian dogma, legend, and doctrine. I don’t think it works to build it up as a straight Cthulhu-is-the-devil idea, but I had a great time playing around with the Christian religion and fitting the mythos into it.

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      • There is a whole book of such ideas! It is called Coach’s Midnight Diner: The Jesus vs Cthulhu Edition. There are actually a few good stories, including one where Jesus and the Devil grab Mjollnar and head to R’lyeh, to battle Cthulhu. However most of them take the tack that Cthulhu is anotehr word for Satan, and end up being feel-good cautionary Christian tales. I don’t exactly recommend it but absurd mythos completists (and you know who you are…) may want to give it a look.

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