By ATHEISTEGBERT
Added: Tue, 04 Jan 2011 10:43:21 UTC

Novels are one of the best ways to get information out to the public, and yet atheists have simply not exploited such a market.

Of course, the selecting process for novels goes through editors and publishers -- which may or may not favour books that appeal to a mass market -- and therefore there may be a kind of bias to rule out novels with atheist themes.

There are some well-known atheism-themed novels out there, but they are flawed, or do not deal with atheism directly. Contact by Carl Sagan, Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams come to mind.

Of course, there is science fiction, and perhaps this is one genre that at least attempts to describe a worldview from a scientific perspective. But even science fiction is massively influenced by pseudo-science, fantasy and religion.

Is it not time that atheists -- especially new atheists -- began creating their own genre of fiction?

TAGGED: ATHEISM, BOOKS, EDUCATION