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Favorite Rationalist/skeptical Character?
Hi my fellow godless infidels!
I was just watching the season finale of "Bones" and it got me thinking. There are several characters in books, movies, and TV shows who show signs of atheism; They are rational, free thinking and are often the lead characters in the story. Who is your favorite?
Here's a list i could think of:
1) Dr. Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) - "Bones"
2) Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) - "House"
3) Dr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) - Star Trek
4) Asterix (comic) - "Asterix and the Soothsayer" (where Asterix is skeptical about soothsaying"
5) Edmund Dantes - "The Count of Monte Cristo" who openly states that he does not believe in God.
6) Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) - "The Big Bang theory"
Well, that's my list. Any more interesting ones? I would like to add Calvin from "Calvin and hobbes" but am not sure it counts. any clarifications?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jennifer Nicole on -
House. I love how he gets away with being an asshole and saying what everyone else is thinking. >.>
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Permalink Reply by visual@rchitect on -
yeah. house is probably my favourite too.....
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Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on -
I like Brennan a lot. Can't stand House.
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Permalink Reply by Pirate Bard on -
Sokka - from Avatar: The Last Airbender (cartoon TV show) A little more info in my blog, here.
Chirp - from Peep and the Big Wide World (kids show aimed at teaching pre-school aged kids science)
Can you tell I have young kids??
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Permalink Reply by Edward Teach on -
Edmund Dantes - "The Count of Monte Cristo" who openly states that he does not believe in God.
One of my favorite stories.... Never picked up on Dantes being a non-believer
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Permalink Reply by faith the atheist on -
House and Brennan are my favorites.
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Permalink Reply by faith the atheist on
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also patrick Jane from the Mentalist
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Permalink Reply by John B Hodges on -
Regarding Edmund Dantes- I have only seen the film version of "The Count of Monte Cristo". It is a great film, and I recommend it, but (as in many other portrayals of atheists in film) he apparently gets religion at the end. At least, the end shows a reason why he might, it doesn't show him doing it. I don't wish to spoil the story by telling the ending, but the end is a reference to something he says early in the film, before he loses his original faith.
I have been reading science-fiction and fantasy since I discovered it in my early teens... so many characters. If I had to pick a favorite atheist character, offhand I'd have to say Eleanor Arroway in Carl Sagan's novel CONTACT, played by Jodie Foster in the movie version. She (and Sagan) are more agnostic than atheist. CONTACT is Sagan's commentary on the relationship between science and religion.
Most of the novels I have read are not "about" religion or atheism. Either religion is not even mentioned, or it is a fantasy novel where some religion is actually true. For example, Anne McCaffrey has a series of novels set on a planet called Pern; besides the humans, there are dragons there who can fly and teleport and have limited telepathy, but otherwise Pern is an entirely natural place. The human society there has no religion; in the early novels it is simply absent, in some later novel it is explicitly mentioned that in human history there was an early period known as The Age of Religions, now thankfully OVER. So, all of Anne McCaffrey's characters in that series could be called atheist characters. But the topic never really comes up.
David Weber is one of my favorite authors these days; he's probably best known for his series of novels about an heroine named Honor Harrington (starting with ON BASILISK STATION). But he's started another series, the first of which is titled OFF ARMAGEDDON REEF, which is set on a planet, fully naturalistic, but ruled by a theocracy bolstered by many "miracles" that are actually done by very advanced science. The main protagonist in these novels is originally named Nimue Alban but is known by all as Merlin; he is a member of the original crew that colonized that planet, he knows the scientific worldview and has access to a cache of high-tech himself, and he sets himself to a long-term project of overthrowing the false theocracy. Weber writes large-sale, epic novels, the science-fiction equivalent of "War and Peace". Three novels in that series so far.
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