"Are you a religious man yourself?"
by Rob - May 5th, 2009.Filed under: Calculating God, Terminal.
A grade-12 student sent me an email today about my novels The Terminal Experiment and Calculating God (the former a Nebula Award winner; the latter a Hugo Award finalist), because she’s doing her final project for English class on them. She asked:
I don’t mean to ask anything personal, but are you a religious man yourself? Or do you tend to be more like Tom, in ‘Calculating God’, and not really believe in anything other than science? Or on the flip side, was this book a way for you to explain your reasoning to the idea that a supreme being must exist through Hollus’ character?
Here’s my response:
I’m not a religious person. It would take proof to convince me that souls, or God, exist — so I wrote books in which scientists found proof of those things to play with the notion of how skeptical people might react. I’m fascinated by the fact that many skeptics are as dogmatic in their anti-religious beliefs (nothing could convince them that they are wrong) as many religious people are dogmatic in their beliefs. I liked playing with the notion of whether skepticism/atheism was really a reasoned position, or simply another belief system that would endure regardless of the evidence, or lack thereof, for its veracity.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site