In Memoriam: Iain (M.) Banks

[muriel_volestrangler]

Banks was always atheist, secular, and humanist (well, humanoidist, I suppose, for his sci-fi Culture novels) in his writing. From his non-sci-fi books, I'd recommend 'Whit', for a take-down of religious cults; and from the sci-fi, almost anything (The Culture, the setting for most, was completely non-religious, and liberal, while the aggressive opponent societies it had to fight tended to be religiously inspired - even including fanatics inventing an artificial hell, just because they damn well feel that some people deserve to suffer for eternity in cyberspace).

He died a few days ago, after a couple of months of being Officially Very Poorly with gall bladder cancer. In his own words:

"And I just took it as bad luck, basically. It did strike me almost immediately, my atheist sort of thing kicked in and I thought ha, if I was a God-botherer, I'd be thinking, why me God? What have I done to deserve this? And I thought at least I'm free of that, at least I can simply treat it as bad luck and get on with it."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-22780003

In 1996, when you were first interviewed by New Humanist, you described yourself as an “evangelical atheist”. Has anything made you change your mind?

Nope. In these trying, troubled times, I think it’s even more important to keep on making a proper fuss about refusing to buy into all this “religion” bollocks.

In your latest novel Stonemouth, the protagonist Stewart, feels “embarrassed for us as a species” that we continue to need religion. Is this a fair reflection of your own view?

It is. Homo Sapiens’ middle name is Gullible. No, really, it is.
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http://rationalist.org.uk/articles/2832/qa-iain-banks