>Red/Grey/Holy sister books are weird. Despite set in a monastery and all characters are sister/nuns, it has almost zero religion.
There you go, that's an example of what I mean. The author chooses the setting because he has certain assumptions about what it is to be a monk. So he gets ready-made a whole structure of oppression and regulation and rules. And that's fine. You can tell a good story within that. It's not that author who bothers me, it's that almost no one seems able to see further.
>Even Atheism is ultimately a faith, a religion, because there is no scientific basis for belief or rejection of the idea of a God, gods and there is the problem of morals.
Just a small note here. I wish there was the word Antitheism because that's what I see in most people who identify as atheists. There's nothing intrinsic to being atheist that leads to being critical of religion. In a specifically Christian context, it means someone who has not heard the Word, who hasn't experienced a conversion. That's a peculiarly Christian thing. To be a Muslim, you need only declare yourself to be one and to observe the rules of the faith. Similarly with Buddhism. Judaism is odd because there's an identification as a people--inheritance--but there's still a door open to converts. I'm not at all sure about Hinduism, but for the most part I think it's a birthright. Anyway, Christianity is unusual (unique?) in that it insists on a spiritual conversion.
I mean, right there, without even going into sects and heresies, is a rich panoply of religion and individual and society. IMO, the reason why it doesn't get done much is because we're fundamentally secular as a society. Religion doesn't resonate, save for the one area of religion as oppression and exploitation. To go further would require the book to do a bunch of hard work bringing the reader into it.
How many modern readers are going to be moved by Pierre's spiritual crisis in War and Peace? How many will think the issues raised in Narcissus and Goldmund are interesting? Or can feel the epic scale of A Prayer for Owen Meany?
