Pandeism and Fictional Worlds

Pandeism and the world of Star Wars

The Star Wars Universe is characterized by the central role of the Jedi, an essentially religious order which corresponds to a metaphysical characteristic of that world -- The Force. And what is The Force? Obi-Wan Kenobi tells Luke Skywalker of it being "an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together." But in practice it appears that The Force is not restricted to living things even, at least insofar as Force-user seem undiminished in their application of its power in deep space and on planets lifeless but for their own presence (such as the volcanic world of Mustafar where a younger Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker duel amidst torrents of lava).

And what is it that The Force enables for those able to access it? Well, a series of relatively minor miracles, to be sure. Most prominently shown are the levitation of objects of varying size (up to an entire spacecraft as done by the venerable Yoda), and comparable telekinetic acts including choking from a distance, especially enjoyed by Darth Vader; feats of augmented strength, endurance, and dexterity; the emission (by those on 'the dark side' of 'Force lightning' -- bolts of energy that electrify their target; controlling the minds of others, if those minds are weak and impressionable; and sensing distant events both distant and nearby but hidden. Possibly the most remarkable application of The Force is in the ability of certain of its users to reportedly either raise the dead, or defeat death itself, continuing to exist after death as conscious and communicative beings (if incorporeal ones) -- visible at least to other wielders of this power.

Now, one interesting thing about The Force is that, much like the magical talent on display in the Harry Potter series, access to it (formally called being 'Force-sensitive') seems limited to those with a genetic predisposition, an accident of birth perhaps, but one which is clearly inheritable. Parents who are 'strong in The Force' will be likely to have children with the same propensity. One who had not inherited this knack would not be able to use the Force for levitation and mind control and such, no matter how strongly they believed in it; just as the few regular humans in Harry Potter's world who actually know about the magic are not themselves able to wield wands and cast spells.

Interestingly as well, although the Jedi are unquestionably shown to exist and to exercise remarkable abilities, they are not infrequently dismissed as quasi-mythic -- even to their faces!! This is best illustrated in the earliest film, where we see Obi-Wan training Luke as they travel in the Millennium Falcon; Luke is attempting to block blasts from a hovering training robot:

Obi-Wan: Remember, a Jedi can feel the Force flowing through him.

Luke: You mean it controls your actions?

Obi-Wan: Partially, but it also obeys your commands.

Han Solo: (laughing as Luke is blasted by the training robot) Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.

Luke: You don't believe in the Force, do you?

Han Solo: Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other. I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all-powerful Force controlling everything. There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny. Anyway, it's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.

Obi-Wan then places a blast helmet on Luke, covering Luke's eyes. Despite misgivings, Luke follows Obi-Wan's instructions to 'stretch out with his feelings', and then succeeds in blocking several blasts from the training robot. Han Solo's response, when confronted by the reality before him, is to call it luck -- to which Obi-Wan insists, "there is no such thing as luck."

Han Solo presents perhaps the most interesting theological perspective, for he begins this journey as a true atheist, with no faith in 'hokey religions' or a 'mystical energy field.' And yet, we are shown throughout the course of the series that such an energy field -- the Force -- does indeed exist!! At the same time, despite the actual presence of one spiritual truth, it is shown that some adhere to religiosity reflecting false superstition, as with the Ewoks worshiping C3PO as a deity (notably even before Luke Skywalker supplies the physics-defying display which cements this impression).

But for all of the wonders accessible through The Force, the Universe of Star Wars offers no explanation as to why this phenomenon exists. The extended universe of novels and other materials includes some reference to an ancient 'discovery' of The Force, but offer no explication of its origin. This has been left in a sense to critics who have attacked the stories as supplanting theistic religions with a form of Pantheism, the idea that 'God' is the Universe itself. And, despite the occasional condemnation of this notion from theists, a fairly significant number of people have responded to census requests by identifying themselves as 'Jedi.'

But here we find the world of Star Wars to operate consistently with a pandeistic Universe. Look at the things going on here. First, despite the fuzziness of the technology in use, there is unquestionably a consistently governing physics. Comparable to Star Trek once the metaphysical element is put aside, the distribution of life forms observed on various planets is consistent with each such planet's life developing through a process of evolution by natural selection. This process has led to intelligent life arising on numerous worlds, such that interactions between civilizations generate a rich array of experiences, as predicted by the presumption in the most popular formulation of Pandeism, wherein our Universe is designed to provide such experiences to the Creator which has become it.

And, the governing dynamics of the Star Wars Universe are sufficiently decipherable that people therein have been able to develop technology and move towards transhumanism, with lost and damaged body parts being replaceable with mechanical substitutes. At the same time, true artificial intelligence exists. And, on top of all of this, there is the recognition of an underlying energy suffusing the Universe, one which certain people by happenstance can tap into to perform seemingly miraculous physical feats, divine prophecies, and so influence others towards belief in the quasitheological import of these abilities. Despite the leveling of the accusation of Pantheism against the authors of Star Wars, there is no element in that fictional Universe suggesting it to be an temporally static (or even an uncreated) Universe. In having a present pantheistic aspect, it is thusly entirely consistent with a pandeistic Universe wherein the Creator has becomes the Creation so that it might experience things like the breathtaking adventures of Jedi Knights swashbuckling their way around the galaxy and defeating the forces of evil.

Lastly, given the possibility that physics may vary by slight degrees in different parts of our Universe, and given that the story related in the Star Wars saga is claimed to have happened "a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away," it is impossible to declare absolutely that the events thus depicted are indeed fictional at all. Indeed, their putative author, George Lucas might well have been unconsciously capturing and relating historical facts preserved and transmitted to his thoughts through some unknown mechanism of the fabric of a pandeistic Universe. Not that this is proposed as a likely explanation of anything, and certainly not as an aspect of the theory of Pandeism itself -- but simply as a diversion of thought, and one of the myriad fascinating possibilities our Universe presents to us.

Pandeism and the world of Star Trek

Does the world of Star Trek operate consistently with the theological model of Pandeism? Well, any longtime watcher of Star Trek will have observed the general lack of religiosity expressed by the main characters of that series, its heroes, the starship sojourning personnel of the United Federation of Planets. This is often observable as well with various of the other spacefaring species whom the Federation types contend with. This flows from the convictions of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, who believed that there would in the future be no room in human society for what he perceived as the divisive peculiarities of religious systems. According to one of Roddenberry's closest collaborators, Brannon Braga:

In Gene Roddenberry's imagining of the future, religion is completely gone. Not a single human being on Earth believes in any of the nonsense that has plagued our civilization for thousands of years. This was an important part of Roddenberry's mythology. He, himself, was a secular humanist and made it well-known to writers of Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation that religion and superstition and mystical thinking were not to be part of his universe. On Roddenberry's future Earth, everyone is an atheist. And that world is the better for it.

Even after Roddenberry's death, the perpetuators of his work more or less held to that principle. Ronald D. Moore, Another collaborator, wrote, "Gene felt very strongly that all of our contemporary Earth religions would be gone by the 23rd century, and while few of us around here actually share that opinion, we feel that we should leave this part of the Trek universe alone."

Expressions of religious belief in Star Trek:

Commentary on theistic manifestations of religiousness in fact is largely confined to two types of beings shown in the shows and (to a much lesser extent) in the flicks.

First, there are the ignorant, non-spacegoing civilizations. These peoples are religious simply because of their primitive gullibility and impressionability, and this is highlighted by the fact that such planetbound primitives are as likely as not to attribute godhood or a like level of worshipfulness toward any wayward Earth-human astronaut who crashlands in their vicinity. Though not necessarily focused on the fickleness of faith, in "A Piece of the Action" an entire world models its behavior on 1920s gangsters based on a book left behind by Earthers who went missing on that planet a century ago. The book is explicitly considered "holy" by the tommy-gun-toting terrestrials. Another episode, "Patterns of Force," sees a visiting Starfleet professor able to convince an entire planet to emulate the Nazi model (though he meant only to capture the efficiency of that system, its proponents end up recreating the genocidal aspects as well). Indeed, wherever a group of primitives is shown to worship a godlike source of power, or even a powerful being claiming to be a god, it is always shown to be something scientifically explcable and disposable.

This leads into the second, for there are as well various superpowerful beings who often masquerade as deities. In "Who Mourns For Adonais," the Greek God Apollo shows up and, in addition to displaying his various powers of growing to a massive size, grasping an entire starship in his projected grip, and shooting lightning bolts from his fingertips, reveals that the ancient myths were true in a manner of speaking -- for he and his kind visited Earth centuries before and inspired humanity to its belief in gods. Notably, Captain Kirk hints at a continuing monotheism, declaring to Apollo, "Mankind has no need for gods. We find the one quite adequate." But although a deity from a now extinct religion is used here, the implication is inescapable that the miraculous powers inspiring modern religions may similarly have been simply the mundane abilities of advanced extraterrestrials. And, beyond Apollo Star Trek featured other entities such as the superpowerful Organians, Trelane (aka "The Squire of Gothos"), the Q continuum, and the entity claiming to be 'God' in "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" (but who apparently needs a starship to escape the planet he occupies). Trelane and the Q (especially given fan speculation and even an official novel marking Trelane as a wayward Q) certainly seem to have more than sufficient power to pull off every miracle ever reported on Earth -- even the creation of Earth itself -- reinforcing the possibility that the 'old' religious beliefs of man are simply the toyings of superevolved alien beings.

There are exceptions to these patterns of belief, if roughly hewn. The Klingons are shown in the later series to have a complex religious structure, including belief in an afterlife for heroes, something similar to the Norse idea of Valhalla. Much of the "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" series involved the intrigues of Bajoran religion, which was driven by the presence of an intergalactic wormhole near Bajoran space, which humans considered an anomaly and Bajorans accredited with prophecy-fulfilling theological significance. There are, as well, nontheistic manifestations of religion and religion-like thinking. Vulcans, who are most strongly characterized by their adherence to logic, are shown to have system of ritual and symbolism which is described by outsiders as 'Vulcan mysticism,' and which entails some portion of their population being engaged in clearly priestlike and monk like rules. And, there appear some symbolic vestiges, at least, of the old Earth beliefs. In the closing scenes of "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" Montgomery Scott pounds out "Amazing Grace" -- traditionally a Christian hymn -- on the bagpipes to mourn the death of Spock. Occasional episodes showed presumptively Hindu female personnel adorned with the bindhi on the forehead, traditionally a symbol of that faith. But both of these examples might simply be secular carryovers from traditions no longer carrying religious import, as with the modern giving of candy on Halloween.

Metaphysical phenomena in Star Trek:

But the question here need not rely upon what is believed by denizens of the world of Star Trek. For as has been noted before, many things are or have been believed in human history which are necessarily untrue, oftimes simply absurd. Star Trek is somewhat extraordinary even relative to other science fiction series (which are often simply about action going on with cool technology and alien races) in that Star Trek is fundamentally about an intense pursuit of knowledge itself. The very reason we've ventured forth to the stars there is to learn scientific truths (which, it has been observed before, are compatible with a pandeistic Universe). But within the Star Trek world there are phenomena at play which do seem to require a metaphysical explanation. Beings of pure energy exist. Amongst several races in this Universe, fairly physics-defying exhibitions of telepathy -- instantaneous, and faster than light across vast distances -- are displayed. Between the second and third films, it is revealed that Spock was able to transfer his entire personality and body of knowledge into McCoy's brain with a few seconds of face-touching mind meld action. And in these instances, the Universe of Star Trek operates consistently with the principles of a pandeistic Universe.

Indeed, Pandeism would go far to explain the characteristics of the world of Star Trek. Earthly monotheisms do not do so well in this regard, for they tend to claim universality, even as the world of Star Trek is one with many civilizations far removed from Earth which have consequently never received the revelations which would be expected from an involved universal deity. But Pandeism especially predicts that there ought to be many intelligent civilizations, and that they would find some way to technologically overcome the distance between the stars so as to be able to interact, and generate the infinite potential of diversity of experiences to be found in such interactions -- the experiences for which our Creator is theorized to have set forth our Universe. Even the most godlike beings of Star Trek's reality -- beings which would have no difficulty convincing population such as the ancient Earth civilizations to worship them as the 'all-powerful' deities of our religious traditions -- are not gods in any divine metaphysical sense, but are simply very advanced products of the same sort of process of evolution and technological advancement as has brought man to his present point. And it is indeed within the expectations of Pandeism that our Universe promises to bring us however much further.

Pandeism and the world of Doctor Who

The Universe of Doctor Who is an odd one to consider within the context of the theological theory of Pandeism -- after all, Pandeism is logic-based, whereas the Whovian realm is perhaps somewhat more.... whimsical. A bit silly, even, not only in the behavior of its denizens, but in the operations of time and space and physics.

For the uninitiated, the world of Doctor Who centers on the adventures of the Doctor -- a Time Lord from the once-great (and now sadly destroyed) planet Gallifrey. The Doctor inhabits a time-and-space ship of sorts called the TARDIS, which externally looks like a 1960's British police box, but is enormous on the inside, and which enables him to travel to any point in time and space. This he does, fighting a variety of enemies, old recurring ones as often as new ones, and generally (though not always entirely) saving the day. In so doing, the Doctor has racked up several dozen (human) lifetimes worth of positively undreamt of experiences. The theological theory of Pandeism, on the other hand, centers on the idea of a Creator which, instead of setting forth a Universe separate from itself, wholly becomes our Universe (or, perhaps, the Doctor's Universe) so as to learn from the myriad combination of experiences of those beings which come about in such a Universe.

As with all fictional worlds, there are several directions from which the particulars of this world allow for the pandeistic enquiry. One is in terms of what the occupants of this world believe. But belief is actually not so important (although, perhaps what the Doctor believes is more important, as we shall consider). Another is the actuality of that Universe, its physics and governing dynamics, including the actual presence (or absence) of supernatural phenomena.

What is believed?

Like many science fiction universes, that of Doctor Who is well-stocked with religiosity. And, like many science fiction universes, religious belief is often shown to be errant and manipulable. Things deemed by common folk as supernatural are routinely shown by the Doctor as having a proper scientific explanation -- typically in the form of aliens pretending to be gods (or being mistaken for them; or, indeed, the Doctor himself being mistaken for one). Except that those scientific explanations are themselves quite often things which defy scientific reason. A very recent example is the episode, "The Rings of Akhaten." Here, the Doctor and his companion, Clara, visit a planetary system where instead of money, things are bartered for with items having 'psychometric' value, being the source of some emotional attachment. The denizens of this world are sending a young girl to join in an eternal chorus being sung to an especially demanding god--one which might awaken and destroy the girl if it is not placated with her singing. But something goes wrong with the song and the god awakens and threatens to devour the entire system, and then others beyond it. Fortunately, after the Doctor fails to placate it with his own life story, Clara is able to overcome this god by feeding it "the most important leaf in human history," one which allowed her parents to meet, but which now represents the infinite possibilities lost with her mother's untimely death.

And so, instead of an actual 'god,' we find in this episode that the culprit was simply a run-of-the-mill unfathomably powerful living planet which eats sentimental attachments, and can be stopped by a single leaf which happens to be imbued with infinite possibilities. Does that not sound like magic? Beneath the veneer of this being a commonsense scientific explanation, does that not smack of a wholly supernatural account springing straight from ancient mythology? But in the world or the Doctor, it is indeed routine -- one supernatural explanation explained away by another one framed as scientific. But in a pandeistic world the explanation would more likely actually be unequivocally and testably scientific, and not an equally implausible device simply dressed in scientific language.

What does the Doctor believe?

The Doctor's own views would be of especially remarkable weight in the Doctor's Universe because he clearly possess vastly more knowledge then the typical human can even grasp (even if he does often act as if he were confused by human romantic and sexual relationships). In "The Parting of the Ways," companion Rose Tyler has looked into the heart of the Tardis and so was being overwhelmed by having obtained the ability to see "everything. All that is, all that was, all that ever could be." The Doctor sympathetically responds, "That's what I see. All the time. Doesn't it drive you mad?"

With all of this knowledge and centuries of wisdom, it is notable that the Doctor never prays to any deity. He never endorses the truth of any scripture or doctrine, invariably immediately doubting any reliance upon supernatural explanations (and for good reason, based on his experience in the matter). But neither does the Doctor ever clearly express outright atheism.

Such is the case even when the Doctor confronts a creature claiming to be the Devil itself, in "The Satan Pit." Here, the Doctor is visiting an expedition to an 'impossible planet' orbiting a black hole. The planet turns out to be a prison for a powerful evil, one which awakens and claims to be that universal bogeyman of badness, Satan. The Doctor asks, "If you are the Beast, then answer me this: Which one, hmm? Because the universe has been busy since you’ve been gone. There's more religions than there are planets in the sky. There's the Arkaphets, Christianity, Pash-Pash, New Judaism, San Claar, Church of the Tin Vagabond. Which devil are you?" Naturally, the creature claims to be "All of them," and when the Doctor asks when was it imprisoned here, it answers "Before time and light and space and matter. Before the cataclysm. Before this universe was created." This, the Doctor doubts: "You can't have come from before the universe. That's impossible." "Is that your religion?" the creature asks. "It's a belief," the Doctor replies.

Later, the Doctor explains, "If that thing had said it was from beyond the universe, I'd have believed it. But before? Impossible." On closer examination, the creature's claim is indeed impractical -- it's confinement seems to hinge on technology and principles of physics which necessarily postdate the creation of our Universe. And naturally, it could not have engaged in the evils attributed to supernatural bogeymen had it been incapacitated for all those billions of years. But as to the Doctor's belief that nothing could come from before our Universe, perhaps this extends from the understanding in modern physics of time itself as a function of our Universe, with "before the Universe" itself being akin to "North of the North Pole." But if time is a function of our Universe, it would seem to follow that "beyond our Universe" is the same as "beyond time," and so the Doctor's understanding would not preclude an entity from existing outside the bounds of time itself.

What do people believe about the Doctor?

One theory popular amongst some fans (though derided by most) is that the Doctor is "God." (PBS even dares ask, Is Doctor Who a Religion?, though not on this point especially). Examples abound of the sort of thing which fuels this Doctor-as-deity sort of thinking. One can be found in the episode, New Earth, when the Doctor makes a life-or-death call an anthropomorphic cat nun asks, "And who are you to make this decision?" The Doctor responds, "I'm the Doctor. And if you don't like it, if you want to take it to a higher authority, then there isn't one. It stops with me."

At the end of "The Wedding of River Song," it is revealed that the Silence, a religious order, have been seeking to prevent the Doctor from answering the question "Doctor who?", believing that "silence will fall when the question is asked". According to Dorium Maldovar, the question was told in this manner: "On the Fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the Eleventh, when no creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a question will be asked — a question that must never be answered. The first question, the question that must never be answered, hidden in plain sight, the question that you've been running from all your life. Doctor who?" And why would this be "the first question"? Well, it may mean that the Doctor is God, or it may mean that there is no God, in which case the Doctor is surely about the closest thing to one. Or it may mean that whatever god might exist is not one to which an appeal can be taken, and one for which that would be an appropriate "first question"-- which Pandeism would be an example of, such deity having become the unanswering Universe itself.

And, what is?

More important than what is simply believed is what we can see of how this Universe functions. After all, people will believe all sorts of wrong things for all sorts of reasons (and, even, will come to believe right things for wrong reasons); but are there clues to its workings which coincide with a the operation of a pandeistic theological model? The Universe of Doctor Who is quite a curious place. Physics seems to function more or less coherently -- gravity and electromagnetic reactions in all the right places. But it is, naturally, a place where time travel is possible. And, interferences with the time stream seem to have varying effects on reality -- pasts and futures change, but the same people seem to show up regardless. The degree to which change occurs is inconstant, and this inconstancy is handwaved away with references to temporal polarities or the like. This is a place where things like teleportation and telepathic communication and mind-occupation can be found (in The Lodger, the Doctor demonstrates the ability to convey his own memories and experiences to another person through a head bonk).

The Universe with which the Doctor is familiar teems with alien species of most every imaginable configuration, from many different hues of humanoids to the country-sized Space Whale of "The Beast Below." These aliens equally range in disposition from friendly to murderous, with species such as the Sontarans who are dedicated to warmaking, and the dreaded Daleks, which worship hate and yearn to wipe out all life in the Universe. These beings differ from life on Earth not simply in appearance, but in a host of more arcane capacities. The Akhaten planet-being is one example. Some beings do indeed exist as nothing more than clouds of energy. Another, closer to home, is the Weeping Angels, creatures which look like old-timey grotesque statues of people, but which eat temporal energy (forcing their victims back in time by a few decades when feeding, and which are incapable of moving when anybody is looking at them). Oddly, the Doctor himself describes the Weeping Angels as a product of evolution, though what sort of evolutionary path could produce such things is well nigh unfathomable. The Daleks and another regular foe, the Cybermen, seem to be examples of transhumanism gone wrong, with efforts to augment living things technologically yielding monsters instead of marvels.

And then there is that quite strange creature, the Doctor. Like all Time Lords, he is effectively immortal -- at least up until he gets killed by temporal radiation or alien spiders or the like enough times to use up all of his "regenerations," and so is no longer able to return with a new actor- er- face. If the exploits of other Time Lords are instructive, he has superhuman physical strength. Despite his immense arsenal of abilities, the Doctor is certainly not, by appearances, infallible or omniscient or omnipotent. In "The Waters of Mars" he attempts to prevent a fixed point in history from occurring, and fails tragically, and with great lamentation of this failure. In "The Angels Take Manhattan," he grieves for his inability to ever see companions Amy and Rory again, because his paradoxical doings with New York's time stream have made it too delicate to withstand any further intervention.

Additionally, as noted before, the Doctor is not the only Time Lord to have graced the Universe (though it seems he is now, having destroyed the rest to save the Universe from a fate worse than death). Once, there was a whole planet of them, presumably all at least possessed of the relative immortality which the Doctor enjoys. True, the Doctor seems special even amongst his fellow Time Lords -- on his trips to Gallifrey in earlier incarnations, he usually got the better of them in when they were at cross purposes. Even the Doctor's most able foe, the Master, was ultimately always defeated, even though his apparent final destruction, in "The End of Time," was essentially a self-sacrificing suicide. The event which this suicidal sacrifice prevented was the attempt of the time-locked Gallifreyans to end the Universe itself, and become beings of pure thought. This is interesting on a number of levels firstly because it unquestioningly assumes that the Gallifreyans do indeed have the ability to end the entire Universe, as well as the ability to initiate and then persist in an existence as beings of pure thought. One must wonder if this is a one-way transition -- if material beings can become thought-beings, does it not follow that thought-beings (or, perhaps' one great thought-being) can become material?

And, if the Doctor is God, then aren't those amongst his fellow Time Lords who can from time to time defeat him?

But, naturally, if Pandeism is true then, well, so are we all. And herein arises a uniquely pandeistic possibility, for perhaps the Doctor knows this (or the possibility of it), and so is simply somebody who happens to have a better handle on the power which accompanies such status (or, indeed, comes from a race of beings so empowered). Time Lords apparently gain some of their depth of knowledge, and perhaps other abilities, from a childhood ritual in which they are made to stare into an untempered schism in the time vortex, which would be a handy metaphor for looking straight into the power of a Universe-creating entity underlying all things. And, interestingly, in the episode, "The Pandorica Opens," River Song laments "I hate good wizards in fairy tales. They always turn out to be him." Would it be any surprise whatsoever if, in this reality, Jesus turned out to be the Doctor in an earlier adventure? Or indeed if Moses or Arjuna or Odysseus or Lao Tze or any other mythohistoric figure turned out to be the selfsame sojourner?

Pandeism and the world of Harry Potter

Many millions of words have been devoted to the question of what role religion and religious symbolism play in the richly populated and thoroughly described world of Harry Potter -- indeed, commentary and scholarship on this subject, all taken together, dwarfs even the substantial content of the Harry Potter novels themselves. But there's another question to be asked here, which is, what theological model would best explain the goings-on in Harry Potter's reality.

Naturally, the first theological voices raised with respect to the series -- which ultimately produced seven books and eight blockbuster movies -- were condemnatory. Fundamentalist Christians, especially, responded to the popularity of the works with some of the same vitriol which had earlier been vented towards such threats to the moral order as Dungeons & Dragons and Elvis Presley. The initial focus of theological ire towards these words stemmed from the accusation that Harry Potter promotes witchcraft, and in so doing, Satanism, or Satan worship. And, unquestionably, the books do expressly portray witches (and wizards) not simply in a positive light, but in a positively glorious light. Numerous flyers and pamphlets, and eventually entire books detailed the satanic scheming credited to the works, a trap to draw children into defying authority and believing in all sorts of outlandish things (condemnatory sources including a Jack Chick comic decreeing Harry Potter to be a 'doorway to Hell').

But, even as the popularity of Harry Potter grew (utterly brushing off these efforts), others within the same faith communities began seeking to exploit this popularity by drawing parallels, asserting that the Harry Potter stories were in some sense allegorical of their own belief systems. This sentimentation seems most fully borne out by the culmination of the series, wherein Potter, for the sake of saving his friends bravely goes forth to be killed by Lord Voldemort -- except that instead of dying eternally, Potter is resurrected. Doesn't even have to wait three days for it -- more like three minutes. And, in his death/resurrection scenario, he takes a big necessary step towards vanquishing evil. Other broadly symbolic events are pointed to throughout the series. Snakes are shown as being evil, as with the Biblical serpent. The House of Gryffindor, into which Harry is sorted, has as its symbol a lion, claimed to be a symbol of Jesus (unsurprisingly given the vast number of gods and men for whom this animal is claimed).

All of this aside, in reading these works one can not help but notice that there is simply no overtly religious dimension to Harry Potter's world. Excepting a few uncredited scriptural quotes showing up on tombstones, and a Christmas celebration (which is at the same time more reflective of the secularly commercialized holiday, and of the pre-Christian pagan roots of the day, then of any modern theology) there is no acknowledgment that religious belief even exists. No one ever discusses any degree of faith in a higher power or supreme being; no theory of creationism is ever proposed or sought to be reconciled with evolution (though the latter, as with all of our 'hard science,' goes unmentioned as well). Scripture of all stripes goes unmentioned while spellbooks flourish, and adversity is met with action instead of prayer invoking the name of any deity. But, then, the question is not really what people believe in this world -- for people all over the world (our real world, that is) believe in all sorts of contradictory things, necessarily mostly false, if not all inevitably so. And indeed, the sorts of 'miracles' which have traditionally captured theistic (and polytheistic) attentions are accessible lessons at Hogwarts -- mundane, even. Transformation of materials; invisibility; healing all manner of illness or injury; divination. But the world of Harry Potter naetheless can be found to operate consistently with a pandeistic Universe, and it may be contended that the world of Harry Potter is more likely a Universe of Pandeism than of any other theological model.

Consider first the capacity of certain individuals to practice 'magic.' In Harry Potter's world this certainly appears to be a matter of genetics. Like an ear for music or a knack for golf, some people are simply born -- even to unremarkable parents -- with this talent. And, as with most genetic traits, two parents with a higher degree of ability in exercising such talent are likely to give birth to children similarly expressing such talent. Now there are in this fictional realm two other phenomena worthy of discussion, and these are the prevalence of magical items and the magical bestiary. The interesting thing about magical items is that they seem generally contingent upon the activation of a magically able person to work. This ought to bring to mind the degree to which a hammer is especially useful when put into the hands of a carpenter; or a collection of circuit board parts and other bits of metal and plastic can be transformed by an appropriately educated electrician into a device capable of transmitting communications to distant people or perhaps rendering an electrical shock against an opponent. As to the magical creatures, these seem most likely to be the product of a magical counterpart to genetic engineering. There is very little likelihood that natural selection would by happenstance yield a centaur, with a perfectly horselike lower body and a perfectly humanlike upper body and mind. But the sort of magic shown throughout the series might well be accommodated towards the modification of existing life towards having these unusual characteristics.

And as for the magic itself, certainly the nature of this fictional realm is inconsistent with atheism being its operative theological model, as it is a world in which nonscientific metaphysical phenomena really do exist. But it is, as well, a world crediting no theistic revelation or scripture, and showing no signs that any of its magical happenings reflect any sort of divine intercession. But here is where Pandeism comes in, for this is still a world wherein events have transpired as necessary for intelligent life to come about, and this life is certainly not simply able to reflect upon itself, but is exceptionally self-accelerative. The defining capacity of this world, of certain of its inhabitants exhibiting a limited seemingly supernatural control over one's surroundings is a phenomenon which would be fully accounted for in the pandeistic model. The persons using such powers would actually be unknowingly accessing the underlying power of our Creator, of which all things are simply aspects. (Not that they wouldn't know they were accessing power, but they simply wouldn't know that it is the underlying power of the all-encompassing and all-sustaining Creator).

And so, I propose that the world of Harry Potter is entirely consistent with, really a sort of supercharged Pandeism. One wherein an especially large segment of the population is, by dint of a talent developed through evolution, able to access the underlying power of a Creator which has wholly involved its energy in the becoming of a nonintervening Universe, of which all denizens are fragments. And such magical energy is seen by the inhabitants of that world (as we see with gravity and magnetism and such in our Universe) as a useful natural phenomenon of that world, whose origin and fundamental nature are simply unknown, perhaps appearing unknowable.

Pandeism and the world of Sherlock Holmes

What can the fictional world of Sherlock Holmes possibly have to do with the theological theory of Pandeism? Well, really the question is, is this world consistent with Pandeism, and the answer: why wouldn't it be?

Unlike the magical world of Harry Potter and the alien-filled science fiction realms of Star Wars and of Star Trek, the world of Sherlock Holmes is utterly mundane. Like the earlier Scooby-Doo mysteries, every mystery has as its resolution purely human activity -- and, indeed, even those cases brought to Holmes under the pretense of supernatural activity -- ghosts, curses, demonic possession -- are inevitably shown up as man-made manipulations of mind and matter. And so, to speak of the theological model underlying that world is to speak of a world with no especial metaphysical activity ongoing. We might just as well be speaking, then, of any such mundane world, of that of adventurers like Tom Sawyer, actioners like James Bond or Jason Bourne, the mundane mysteries of CSI and Law & Order, or any other sort of media in which things simply happen, without second thought, in accordance with the laws of physics and without any appearance of divine intervention or other metaphysical causation (or, at least, without any such appearance not ultimately debunked as being of human manufacture).

This is not to suggest that these sorts of media are absent of displays of religiosity, for they depict the real and present world, and naturally people in this world have religious beliefs, all sorts of them.

Religion, as she is depicted in the stories of Sherlock Holmes:

In the course of the Sherlock Holmes stories, there are references to Jews and Gypsies, Muslims, Hindus, and various denominations of Christians. Perhaps the most famous treatment of religion in the Sherlock Holmes canon is to be found in A Study in Scarlet, one of only four full-length Sherlock Holmes novels (the remainder of the literary contributions being short stories). It is eventually uncovered in the story that the mysterious deaths being investigated are of Mormons against whom the killer was taking revenge, for years before their community had kidnapped his love and murdered her father, forcing her into a marriage which resulted in her own death a short time later (the story attributes the girl's death to a broken heart, but implies that she was ill-treated by her forced husband, who ultimately seemed more interested in inheriting what had previously been her father's land). The treatment of Mormonism generally is of a dangerous cult which exercises rigid control over its members and condones lawlessness against outsiders, who are distrusted. Author Arthur Conan Doyle is claimed to have later privately apologized for this depiction, though this report is itself somewhat dubious.

But the general treatment afforded to religion by Sherlock Holmes and his compatriots is apathy. In one story, Holmes dismissed knowledge of astronomy as useless to his work; doubtless he would have so opined on theological questions. Holmes occasionally uses idioms incorporating religious terminology (as in, "my God" and "for God's sake," or suggesting that a doomed man is bound "to meet his maker"), and one story mentions Holmes as being on his way to a chapel (for reasons not specified). But on no occasion is Holmes shown to attend a purely religious service, utter a prayer, or explicitly voice a belief in any higher power. Indeed, in one of the earliest stories -- The Sign of the Four -- Holmes commends to compatriot John Watson a book titled The Martyrdom of Man by one Winwood Reade, which as it happens incorporates a secularist and materialist antireligious examination of world history, especially in depicting Jesus as delusional. And yet, Holmes calls this work "one of the most remarkable ever penned," which would in that day be tantamount to endorsing atheism, as much as if somebody modernly were to declare Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion to be amongst the finest books ever written.

Sherlock Holmes contemplates the meaning of life:

But even Holmes waxes morosely philosophical from time to time, as depicted in the 1892 story, The Cardboard Box:

"What is the meaning of it, Watson?" said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. "What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever."

Similarly in The Retired Colourman, Holmes decries, "But is not all life pathetic and futile? We reach. We grasp. And what is left in our hands at the end? A shadow. Or worse than a shadow -- misery." And in The Veiled Lodger Holmes declares, "The ways of Fate are indeed hard to understand. If there is not some compensation hereafter then the world is a cruel jest." Such contemplations suggests at the same time a wish to find a larger purpose to our Universe, even while rejecting all the explanations which have been considered up to that time. Holmes is equally dismissive of supernatural explanations for mundane crimes, refusing to contemplate for example the proposition that The Hound of the Baskervilles is anything but a flesh-and-blood beast, rejecting the possibility of unearthly agency again in The Adventure of the Devil's Foot, and commenting in the late-written story, The Sussex Vampire, "But are we to give serious attention to such things? This Agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. This world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply."

The television and film adaptations of Holmes' stories have tended to remain faithful to general irreligiosity of the character, or more likely to have ignored theological questions altogether. In the first Robert Downey Sherlock Holmes film, Holmes dismisses, and later disproves, an apparent miraculous resurrection from death; in Young Sherlock Holmes mystical explanations are similarly disproved as Holmes discovers hallucinogenic drugs to be responsible for seemingly supernatural experiences (and the villains are attempting to perform an ancient Egyptian ritual to boot); in the modernly-set BBC reimagining Sherlock, the character is if anything more scornful of religious beliefs and explanations.

Could the world of Sherlock Holmes occupy a Pandeistic Universe?

But all of this relates to what Holmes believes, perhaps to what Arthur Conan Doyle believes -- which is, in the larger scheme of no matter. Were Holmes depicted as a devout Christian or a devout Muslim, or a Jew or a Sikh, such depiction would not work to make real the religion believed. There may be a billion devout Christians in the world (Christians will claim there are more, but that requires some sleight of hand with who they would call 'devout') but that has never operated to convince Hindus, Jews, or Mormons of the truth of Christianity; and the same can be claimed of the comparable number of Muslims, or of Hindus, or most any denomination. That it is believed simply proves that it is believed, not even that it is rationally believable, much less true. So, whatever the religion of Sherlock Holmes or James Bond or any other figure existing in a nonsupernatural world, from Robin Hood to Rocky Balboa, the question remains whether the world which they inhabit is consistent with a pandeistic Universe.

And the answer in all of these cases is indeed that it is. For, although Pandeism fully accounts for miracles and other apparently metaphysical or supernatural events, and so would account for the magic of Harry Potter's world, the Jedi powers exhibited in the world of Star Wars, and the superpowered and telepathic aliens often encountered in Star Trek, none of these sorts of things are required in Pandeism. They are simply accounted for, if they exist.

It is entirely possible to conceive of a world -- indeed, of this world -- where no miracles, no telepaths, no supernatural events of any sort exist, where all reports ever made of such are the consequence of coincidence, mistake, hallucination, imagination, or deception, and yet where the fundamental explanation for the existence of our Universe, at all, is pandeistic Creation. Even if all other religions are disqualified in such a world, where all of their reported miracles and wonders and fancies are by default simply false, Pandeism may yet be true.

In the final analysis (and in the world of Sherlock Holmes, there always is a final analysis), it is even somewhat surprising that Sherlock Holmes, to whatever degree he speculates on religious questions, has not come to contemplate at least Deism (which was well known in his day), if not the more obscure Pandeism, or some comparable variation of Pantheism. But, then, if the orbits of the planets are of no matter to Holmes, perhaps these even greater orbits would be of even less interest.

Pandeism and the world of Left Behind

So now we know that even the most mundane and miracle-free world may yet be a world where Pandeism is the operative theological model. And, as well, I have proposed that worlds with metaphysical capacities not accounted for in those worlds by reference to religious beliefs might as easily explain those capacities again by the pandeistic model. But what about worlds in fiction where seemingly, or even unquestionably, miraculous events are seen to happen, and where these events are ascribed to the especial truth of one specified modernly observed religion? Such is the world of Left Behind. Now, my first thought upon hearing that name was that is sounded like My Left Foot -- but why would somebody write a novel about just one buttock? But it turns out, in fact, these books are intended to convey a theological program, imagining what the world would be like if one theistic religious viewpoint especially turned out to be the truth.

The story being-- er, told:

The essential story of the books begins with the sudden disappearance of a several million people, who seem to instantaneously bodily evaporate, leaving behind even their clothes and still-moving vehicles. Undoubtedly these wholesale erasures of carefully selected human bodies would entail a quite contorted natural explanation were it to happen in real life, and so it almost certainly would have to be called a miracle. Some characters in the story (who, obviously, have not disappeared) put two and two together and realize that all of those who have disappeared were observant, Rapture-believing Christians. In the same framework, the machinations of the series' black hat are detailed -- Nicholas Carpathia, a suspiciously Eastern European product of the genetic engineering of sperm donated by two homosexual men. (Bad things happen to homosexuals and those who love them wherever and whenever they pop up in this series.) Carpathia is, naturally, employed by the United Nations, where he carries out a devious plot to end war and sickness and such. But just to be sure you know he's evil, he secretly kills people and plots genocides and such. And uses mind-powers (not effective against believers, mind you) to cover his crimes.

Now, getting back to the disappearing people, at this point it might be proposed that the combination of events points to the truth of the theological model assumed by the characters who believe them to have indeed been caught up in events prophesied in the biblical book of Revelations -- the Rapture. One minor hole in that theory is that there isn't exactly a reference to any such thing in the Bible -- in fact, the modern notion of a Rapture, where the best believers are swept up to Heaven prior to the Earth going through some years of various horrific tribulations, was actually invented around the 1830s. It was then that Irish-born New England preacher John Nelson Darby, a member of a Christian order called the Brethren, began preaching this notion, and when others challenged it as non-Biblical, he shrugged that it was a personal revelation to him from God.

And incidentally, and perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly in light of that history, some of the strongest criticism of the novel series has come from within the community of Christianity. Though the books are popular amongst evangelicals, various Christian scholars and denominations have denounced them as distortive and misrepresentative of the scriptural passages from which the Rapture meme is drawn. The Roman Catholic Church -- which officially rejects the idea of the Rapture -- has officially condemned the books as antiCatholic for insisting that Catholics will not be saved (and portraying the then-Pope of the first book as raptured only because he was in beliefs a closet Protestant, while making the successor Pope an outright evil character, the leader of a God-rejecting Babylonian mishmash of religions).

A more general criticism is the seeming glorification of violence against non-Christians (or against those who are insufficiently Christian, as with adherents to the wrong denominations). The series sets up a seemingly anti-Biblical fundamental rule: those who accept the Mark of the Beast are lost, and cannot be redeemed, even if they were tricked or coerced into it, even if they later completely change their mind -- which makes them fair game to be slaughtered by Christian commandoes seeking to survive the tribulation. And eventually, even Jesus gets in on the killing, killing, killing -- literally, incinerating millions of people. One would think the presence of an actual Jesus would have sort of amelioratory effect, possibly even allowing what would be miraculous by this book's standards, marked men to convert and be 'saved.' But such appears to be beyond the power of this series' Jesus (hence raising wary voices from members of the Christian community, especially those who pick the loving and constructive doctrines over the hateful and condemnatory ones).

Throughout the series, miracles occur favoring the believers, angels show up carrying divine messages, and finally Jesus and God make appearances in person. Once we get to the culmination of the last book, Kingdom Come: The Final Victory, it would seem all bets for a pandeistic model are off. In this book, despite the fact that the operative deity of the books has shown up in person and engaged in the process (though startlingly slow and inexact for a supposedly all-powerful deity) of wiping out the bad guys, it seems that not only are there still people who reject this deity, but that by the end of the book they number in the tens of billions. Now, perhaps this is because by the end of the last book, we find ourselves in the thousandth year of Christ's reign on Earth, in Jerusalem. We know this because it starts off with the thousandth birthday party of one of the heroic characters.

And so it happens that these billions of people who reject God -- despite the actual presence of God -- heavily arm themselves to do battle against God (a notion itself as illogical as the fact that God is depicted as sitting idly by for years while all this happens, only occasionally sending an angel to rescue one especially important follower or another). This disobedient army surrounds Jerusalem, and Lucifer personally shows up to lead the charge. And then, to fairly ridiculous anticlimactic effect, Jesus simply meets them outside the gates, declares "I Am Who I Am," and, poof, this army of billions is engulfed by fire and incinerated, screaming. Except for Lucifer, who Jesus lectures for a bit before opening a hole in spacetime, showing Lucifer that Carpathia (and another bad guy, Fortunato), are writhing in eternal agony while screaming "Jesus is Lord!! Jesus is Lord!!" Which is where Lucifer ends up as well. The remaining believers are then taken to Heaven and given glorified bodies (although some had been given these earlier in the series, another entirely non-Biblical innovation). Unbelievers are cast into the Lake of Fire for all eternity, Earth is reduced to cinders by heavenly fire and then instantaneously recreated by Jesus. Heaven, which turned out to have been up in the sky all along after all, floats gently to the ground where God steps out, declares that his work is done, and proceeds to live on Earth amongst his faithful followers (in their new sexless and forever childless glorified bodies), for all eternity.

The nonpandeisticality of the model:

The early-on miraculous events are on the edge of what might reasonably happen in a pandeistic Universe. After all if the spells of boy wizards and the machinations of godlike aliens are explicable within a framework of Pandeism, the disappearance of a few million people on one of the smaller planets around could simply be chalked up to the exploits of such a magician or alien type. If the magic or technology exists to transport people wholesale from one location to another, why ought their clothing not made to stay behind? And, naturally, Pandeism fully accounts for events which human minds interpret as the appearance and communication of spiritual beings, or the miraculous interventions of unseen hands. But that idea has rational limitations.

Now, there are a number of reasons why the conclusion of this series is inconsistent with a pandeistic Universe. One might immediately suppose that the chief one of these, obviously, is that it envisions a clearly interventionist metaphysically operative deity, acting on things in our Universe as an entity separate and distinct from our Universe. True, the realm of action is actually quite finite, all of it taking place on the planet Earth. And so the entity thus depicted could simply be a locally powerful demigod, one of dozens like it but having dominant physical power concentrated in the one corner of the Milky Way where it is active (it's never shown to be able to act outside that physical constraint). But even a being such as that would be more at home in at least a polytheistic Universe over a pandeistic one.

But, perhaps more importantly, the events of this story cannot occur within a pandeistic Universe because it portrays a deity figure as acting far too irrationally and illogically -- indeed, insanely -- to accord with the logic demanded by Pandeism. For example, the deity engaging in these actions is either lacking in omniscience and simply not needed to sustain existence -- or else it would share in the knowledge of all the suffering of all the tens of billions of 'nonbelievers' whom it had cast into that Lake of Fire, and sustains eternally in existence there; or it is indeed an omniscient sustainer but is utterly masochistic, unnecessarily condemning itself to know the endless torment of those it sustains in its Hell. There is some odd relishment of the fact that hundreds of billions of people in this fictional Universe are written as openly contesting and defying an entity which has already been fairly demonstrated to possess massive destructive capabilities; only a few rational explanations suffice for the hundreds of billions of humans acting so contrarily to reason -- one being that they are either being controlled by the identified evil force, which is thusly being allowed to do so by the deity being contested (and so are without the free will to engage in culpable conduct), or even worse they may be under a direct compelsion to do this by the deity itself. Or, perhaps, the deity is one so inherently repulsive in morality -- bigoted, antisemitic, homophobic, and uncaringly allowing its own innocent followers to be hurt by those who it easily could have stopped aeons before -- that people simply can not help but oppose the insanity.

But the deity proposed in this series is supposed to be powerful enough to deal with all of its Creation through much less ham-handed tactics then are actually employed. And so we come to the bottom line of the incompatibility of Pandeism with the Left Behind series: the fictional Universe at issue hinges upon a deity which is simply far too stupid and casually cruel to ever face up to the minimum requirement of rationality set forth in the pandeistic model.

Pandeism and the Many Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein

I give you this premise: Suppose all of fiction were, in actuality, simply an alternate reality? A report of the actual goings-on in another Universe? -- And, indeed, even one which the author could willingly create and alter by setting forth in the writing of it?

I have written quite a few nodes now on Pandeism as it relates to this fictional world or that -- generally from the premise that Pandeism would or would not be a plausible theological model to explain such things as the mystical "Force" of Star Wars, the multiplicity of humanoid aliens in Star Trek, and the magical operation of Harry Potter's world. But what we have here is not a proposal as to whether Pandeism would account for phenomena in the worlds envisioned in the fiction of science fiction visionary Robert A. Heinlein (it is unquestionably clearly established as a viable explanation of the goings-on, for example, in Stranger in a Strange Land, where it is explicitly contended that we are all aspects of a greater Creator, able to do miraculous things.... if we will only relax and accept this). This discussion is, rather, a rumination on Heinlein's own unserious theory of the degree to which "fiction" itself might be considered "real."

Heinlein's unserious Eschatological Pantheistic Multiple- Ego Solipsism

A lexical contribution of Heinlein's was his coining of the phrase, Pantheistic Multiple-Ego solipsism. This phrase has little to do with either Pantheism or solipsism, but it indeed has something to do with Pandeism. In his last book, the 1987 novel, To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Heinlein sets forward the suggestion that alternative Universes are created simply by imagining them; that is, all the ‘Universes’ described in fiction are real, and are made real by the very act of describing them in fiction. He writes, surely tongue in cheek, of a party, where people from multiple Universes -- fictional to one another -- gather in yet another ‘reality,’ describing:

the biggest party ever held anywhere, bigger than the Field of the Cloth of Gold: the First Centennial Convention of the Interuniversal Society for Eschatological Pantheistic Multiple- Ego Solipsism, with guests from dozens of universes. It was a wonderful party and the few people killed in the games went straight to Valhalla — -I saw them go.

And so Heinlein does go. In generating his “notion of ‘the world as myth,’ the idea that we create what is usually called reality” — he suggests that authors who write sweeping and seductive accounts of other worlds in actuality create those worlds, which then become as real as our own. Heinlein himself wrote in that same account that “Much as I love Hilda, much as I love Jubal and respect his analytical genius, World-as-Myth doesn’t explain anything.” But Heinlein, who had taken a closer approach to the pandeistic model of a Creator (or Deus) than many before, may have understood a necessary and fundamental truth as to the experience of the Deus. For, indeed, it was one of Heinlein’s favourite and most recurring characters, the wise and ancient Lazarus Long (whose voice was often Heinlein's own, who in Heinlein’s “Time Enough for Love” held to the aphorism that in creating our Universe, “God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends.” Lazarus continues, “This may not be true, but it sounds good — and is no sillier than any other theology.”

And indeed, Pandeism proposes that our Creator, the Deus shares in the physical experience of our Universe as a whole, including the sensations of pain and pleasure (and within that all the sensations of friendship) of all living things, and the observations of real and happening events through the eyes of those which are able to observe. But the Deus shares in the thoughts of all beings which are able to think as well, and the human experience offers a world of examples of thoughts which do not comport with reality in the least. There are two important paths by which such thoughts are manifest, delusion and fiction.

A trip through the lens of realized unreality

Consider through this lens the immensely popular world of Star Trek -- not, by the way, from the question of how Pandeism would manifest this world, but from how the popularity of this fictional collection of works impacts our real world. Star Trek is woven to some degree into our thoughts and memories and the things we think we know. This multimedia phenomenon began as a television series which ran for three years, and was cancelled. But, beloved as it was to its core audience, it modernly occupies a world all its own, having spawned several additional television series, more than a dozen theatrical films (it has been calculated that the film and television media alone add up to over 550 hours of material, so that one might spend a month watching Star Trek for 18 hours every day, and still not see it all), scores of novelisations, comic books, role playing games, video games, massively multiplayer online role-playing games, conventions, all unsurprisingly topped with fan-fiction which takes the original concept in directions utterly unforeseen (and often unapproved) by its creator. All of the ‘experience’ of Star Trek is in actuality the experience of hundreds of millions of human beings who experience this media -- from those who envision it and tangibly create it, to those who consume it, ingest it, incorporate it into their very being.

Now, there are without question some small number of people who have real difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality, and who consequently conduct their existence with the conviction that Star Trek is a portrayal of real events. But the vast majority of participants in this (or any other) genre know at a fundamental level that what we see on the screen is a troupe of actors reciting lines on a carefully constructed set, and that what we read is an author’s fanciful musings. Nonetheless, the participants in this “real” world commit ourselves to spending some time suspending our partaking of reality, ignoring the fundamental truths of our lives and instead committing our thoughts, our imaginations, to the temporary illusion that what we see on the screen is real, that what we read in the novel is a true account.

In the realm of fiction, there exists the phenomenon known as the ‘willing suspension of disbelief,’ a phrase first used by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1817, in his Biographia Literaria, wherein he writes of certain of his poems, though touching upon the supernatural, which are nonetheless designed “so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.”

The experience of writing fiction may even have this effect upon its author. E.M. Forster has insisted of characters in fiction that they:

…arrive when evoked, but full of the spirit of mutiny. For they have these numerous parallels with people like ourselves, they try to live their own lives and are consequently often engaged in treason against the main scheme of the book. They ‘run away,’ they ‘get out of hand,’ they are creations inside a creation and often inharmonious towards it; if they are given complete freedom they kick the book to pieces, and if they are kept too sternly in check, they revenge themselves by dying, and destroy it by intestinal decay.

Luigi Pirandello, in his play, “Six Characters in Search of An Author,” has the character called ‘the Father’ declare:

Authors, as a whole, hide the labours of their creations. When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him; and he has to will them the way they will themselves — for there’s trouble if he doesn’t. When a character is born, he acquires at once such an independence, even of his own author, that he can be imagined by everybody even in many other situations where the author never dreamed of placing him; and so he acquires for himself a meaning which the author never thought of giving him.

And William Gass once made the observation,

from any given body of fictional text, nothing necessarily follows, and anything plausibly may . . . . Authors are gods — a little tinny sometimes but omnipotent no matter what, and plausible on top of that, if they can manage it.

Recall the concept of how conatus compels divine ketosis through a radical kenosis. It has a separate connotation relevant to this area. For in literature and the fine arts, kenosis describes the affect, the feeling, which the reader of lyric or of poetry forms experiences. In emptying of the ego-personality of the reader into the immediate sensory manipulation of poetics, this form of kenosis inflicts upon the reader an experience of timelessness. The comparable affect created by drama is called catharsis, and that created by literature is kairosis.

And, more to that, we add to what we see, and especially to what we read. We imagine the fictional characters in circumstances and situations outside of anything which we have seen or read, wondering how they might react to certain situations, projecting our understanding of them into new stories which exist nowhere but our fleeting thoughts. When we read, our mind provides the visualisations, the voices, even some of the emotion of those characters — things which go beyond the written word, and are in most instances unique to each reader.

In apprehension how like a god

In Pandeism, the Deus, the Creator-which-has-become-all-things, shares in these experiences in the same way in which it shares in all experiences of mundane reality. Verily, the shared experience of a million, or ten million, or a hundred million people around the world having watched a particular movie, having all had the opportunity to react internally to the lives of the often-fictional people thrown up on the screen, surely occupies a more profound place than the true life of any single average individual. So, without ever even having an objective experience of the reality of any of these worlds created in fiction, the Deus shares in the collective subjective experience of all who partake in the fiction. Moreover, here we have discussed fiction which is presented and accepted as fiction. But the Deus has the same experience of sharing in our collective subjective experience of religion, and of the tales of the Buddha, of Moses, of Jesus, of Arjuna, of Mohammed, as felt by practitioners of those faiths.

And verily, so diverse and astounding are the worlds imagined in the minds of men, worlds of magic and miracles and mythic creatures, worlds of odd rules and amazing technology, one might well wonder whether our inevitable invention and experiencing of such worlds was itself a desire expressed in the plan of a Creator. Was our infinite array of fiction a motivation to a Creator setting forth a Universe such as this?