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James Morrow


Author

Morrow has been called by the Washington Post "The most provocative satiric voice in science fiction."

In an April 1994 interview for Reality Break, Morrow says of a character in his novel Towing Jehovah "I guess the militant agnostic humanist feminist is maybe closest in some ways to my own sympathies."

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James Morrow is a science fiction author best known for his GodHead Trilogy. In an article in the February 26, 2000 edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, he is described as "...an atheist who writes science fiction with biting religious satire." See entire article at:

http://www.post-gazette.com/magazine/20000226scifi8.asp

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Update (28-May-01): In "A Conversation With James Morrow, Part 2 of an interview with Nick Gevers" Morrow is asked "how does an author of religious fantasies conclusively dispel the clouds of religious belief?"

Morrow answers "[...] I worry about it. I should begin by saying that -- as my readers might imagine by now -- I'm an atheist. I don't like that word, though, because the concept it identifies is keyed to a negative, a void, whereas atheists of my stripe experience their attitude as something quite positive, quite nourishing. As the British philosopher Galen Strawson recently observed, 'God loves the atheists best, because they're the ones who take him the most seriously.'

"Some readers say that, given all the woolly speculation in my fiction, I must be an agnostic. But I don't like that word either. I find it evasive. It lacks sinew. An agnostic is an atheist who has lost his nerve.

"Am I any sort of believer? Well, I believe in the universe, and all the mind-boggling mysteries the word 'universe' entails. Science has given us some authentic insights into that universe, but much of reality is still pretty cryptic. The philosopher Thomas Nagel says that, when we speak of God, we're using the word as a placeholder for the insights we don't yet have. So maybe I'm a placeholderist. But I'm not happy with that stance either, because 'God' is so easily confused with the answers whose place he's holding."

See http://www.sfsite.com/02a/jm97.htm for the full interview.

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Update (28-May-01): Morrow heard of his provisional status from an earlier edition of the celebatheist list and weighed in (May 2001): "I wanted you to know [that 'atheist' is] a perfectly accurate label."

He added "If you care to drop by my website (see url below) you'll see an ad for the James Morrow issue of Paradoxa. In that magazine, I refer to myself as 'a vulnerable atheist.'"

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Morrow's homepage can be found http://www.sff.net/people/Jim.Morrow/.

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