The Big God Brouhaha

30 July 2008 (22:45) Alzheimer's Nation Other Terry Pratchett Books Interviews News Terry Pratchett News Archives

As you may or may not know, in the past few months an interview with Terry Pratchett kicked off media speculation that the famously-atheist author had got religion, a misconception he then rebutted in an essay for The Mail On Sunday, which paired the essay with a misleading headline.

Got it? Well, if you didn’t, here’s the story, slowly, with the details:

Brian Appleyard from The Sunday Times interviewed Terry Pratchett in an article titled “Terry Pratchett, Lord of Discworld, fights to save his powers.” It starts out innocuously enough, with light chat about yellow mustaches.

‘Do I,” says Terry Pratchett suddenly, “have a small yellow moustache at the moment?” He does. His wife Lyn has just given him a turmeric drink.

“There is some evidence from America that it has some effect on Alzheimer’s, slows it down, but anyway I like it. She had me on that from the word go.”

The article discusses the effect Alzheimer’s has had on Pratchett’s writing and daily life.

Aricept and/or turmeric seems to be working for him. His condition has improved since December. In the car, he no longer has to keep stabbing away with the seatbelt; he can fasten it in one. Dressing, he’s no longer baffled by his clothes; he just puts them on.

And it mentions the 25th anniversary of the Discworld series this year, as well as the spates Pratchett has had with other popular authors over the years.

… when I bring up Rowling he sits there comically tight-lipped. I get round this by talking about the novelist Margaret Atwood, who displayed similar genre snottiness when she said that Pratchett didn’t write sci-fi but “speculative fiction”.

“Oh good! Right!” he roars, “Well, I’m writing advanced folklore, perhaps – alternative folklore!” He slips into a prissy Atwood persona – “I’m just speculating about the future. It’s got robots in it, but it’s not science fiction.”

Only near the end does the article kick off the controversy, saying “Pratchett may have found God.”

“I’m certainly not a man of faith, but as I was rushing down the stairs one day . . . it was very strange. And I say this reluctantly, because I am trying to deal with this situation in as hardheaded a way as I can. I suddenly knew that everything was okay, that what I was doing was right and I didn’t know why.” …

It was his first such experience. Did it make him rethink his lack of faith?

“Faith in what? If I get pushed in this corner, I believe in the same God that Einstein did. Einstein was a clever bloke . . . And it is just possible that once you have got past all the gods that we have created with big beards and many human traits, just beyond all that on the other side of physics, there just may be the ordered structure from which everything flows.

“That is both a kind of philosophy and totally useless - it doesn’t take you anywhere. But it fills a hole.”

Other news mediums immediately leaped at this “news.” Here’s a sample of what journalists had to say:

[Terry Pratchett] said an unexplained experience had caused him to reconsider his beliefs. (from Telegraph.co.uk)

TERRY PRATCHETT, the fantasy writer suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, has suggested he may have found God after years of atheism. (from TimesOnline.co.uk)

In response to this unwarranted speculation, Pratchett obliged The Mail On Sunday with an essay about his faith, or lack thereof. He made clear that he is still an atheist, saying “There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.” The entire essay is well worth a read (although a very slight spoiler warning is appropriate). Terry Pratchett ends:

It’s that moment, that brief epiphany when the universe opens up and shows us something, and in that instant we get just a sense of an order greater than Heaven and, as yet at least, beyond the grasp of Stephen Hawking. It doesn’t require worship, but, I think, rewards intelligence, observation and enquiring minds.

I don’t think I’ve found God, but I may have seen where gods come from.