Writing and belief: a stray realisation

[la_marquise]

I've just realised that a key theme in my writing -- apart from water, which literally gets everywhere -- is rationalists and non-believers discovering that the irrational and the weird are real and can affect them.
I have no idea why. I'm not particularly religious/spiritual in the formal sense (though I may be superstitious and I do talk to saints and trees on occasion. Also to the late and loved Caspian cat). I wasn't brought up with any kind of faith. But it's there in Living with Ghosts, particularly through the characters of Thiercelin and Joyain. It's in quite a few of my short stories ('The Whale's Daughter, certainly; 'Coldrush'; 'Clocks'; to some extent in 'Seabourne') and in the various sections of the ongoing, unfinished Gaheris saga.
What's this about? Should I be worried? Is this a sign of Dangerous Fluffiness or WooWoo, a weake girly non-science-yness? Or is it an artefact of a background in, amongst the history, social anthropology, which leads me always to look at the stories cultures tell about themselves, their origins and their environment. I tend to find fantasy novels which either lack reference to beliefs of any kind, or import default cardboard ones, very unsatisfactory. (And somewhere someone must have written a story about J******h's W******s in their mission starship, banging on the doors of new colony worlds.) I tend to be much more convinced by books where the author has clearly thought through how and what peoples believe -- Violette Malan's The Sleeping God, glass_mountain's Children of the Shaman, freda_writes's Dark Cathedral, to list a few. It's about world-building and depth and texture.
And yet, none of that explains this writing tic I seem to have, this 'more things in heaven and earth' -ishness that I seem to be returning to, over and over.

Comments

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

to me, one of the things about science is that it explains things. And the things that science can't explain? those are the 'more things in (isn't there a 'your' in there somewhere?) heaven and earth' parts. I mean, I know that the biologists can explain all kinds of things about how my body works. I know that they can explain 'why' in the sense of the mechanics, or even give sensible reasons for some things, e.g., the 'fight or flight' response and its connection to adrenaline bursts. But get to the questions of *why* why, like why four fingers, or such variation in human bodies, when cows and pigeons are pretty much the same? I'm not entirely sure science can give truly satisfactory answers.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

That tends to be my feeling also. But I suppose I've imbibed the notion that those writers who are all with the science are some how more meaningful. Or so0mething. Faith is neither a popular nor a routinely accepted subject for sf and fantasy, and most kinds of faith manifested therein tend to be dismissed with little thought by many critics. Why that matters, and why I don't still with my own views, I know not!

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't think of myself as being particularly religious, and I love science and scientific explanations for things. But when I get down to it, I am always pulled toward the whole prime mover thing. Nothing in sf seems impossible to me (unless the scientists tell me it's stupid science). Fantasy? yeah, less believable (with the exception of Gaiman and Pratchett, both of whom I find utterly believable, always). But the universe? Any universe? Has an ineffable quality to it that I'm not sure science will ever really fully explain.

And you know? totally ok with that. I like living in a world where we can know more and more, every day, and come up with rational, provable explanations for things, every day, and still know that there is always something else. It does sometimes annoy me that it keeps philosophers and theologians in work, but still, knowing that there will always be more to discover is part of being kinda in love with the universe.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

The answer to the five digits of the vertebrates is, simply, because, by chance (or by some evolutionary pressure of which I am currently unaware) the common ancestor of all of them had five digits. I don't honestly think there is anything that is inexplicable, though there are things that are, as yet, unexplained.