H. P. Lovecraft
Biography:
American author (1890-1937).
Lovecraft was an atheist by the age of 7, as reported in a biography by De Camp. His writings also indicate that he probably had a non-Christian, if not atheistic philosophy.
Lovecraft A Biography
Abridged By The Author
by L. Sprague De Camp
Copyright 1975, 1976
ISBN 0-345-25115-6-195
First Ballantine Books Edition, August 1976
Chapter 2
pages 19 - 24
"H. P. Lovecraft was strongly influenced, not only by his
mother but also by the books he read. ... At five, he ...
(read) ... a junior edition of The Arabian Nights. He at
once fell in love with the glories of medieval Islam and
spent hours playing Arab. ... One effect of dabbling in
non-Christian traditions was to make Lovecraft skeptical of
the faith of his fathers. Before he reached his fifth
birthday anniversary, young Lovecraft announced that he no
longer believed in Santa Claus. Further private thought
convinced him that arguments for the existence of God
suffered the same weaknesses as those for Santa.
At five, Lovecraft was placed in the infant class of the
Sunday school of the venerable First Baptist Meeting House
on College Hill. The results were not what the elders
expected. When the feeding of Christian martyrs to the
lions came up, Lovecraft shocked the class by gleefully
taking the side of the lions. He wrote:
The
absurdity of the myths I was called upon to accept and the
sombre greyness of the whole faith compared with the Eastern
magnificence of Mahometanism, made me definitely an
agnostic; and caused me to become so pestiferous a
questioner that I was permitted to discontinue
attendance.
...... My
grandfather had travelled observingly through Italy, and
delighted me with long, first-hand accounts of its beauties
and memorials of ancient grandeur. I mention this aesthetic
tendency in detail only to lead up to its philosophical
result - my last flickering of religious
belief.
....... His skeptical view of the supernatural - his
nontheism - and his love of the Classical world were not the
only lasting passions formed in his childhood. .....
...... he embraced eighteenth-century rationalism, which
confirmed him in his atheistic materialism."
From our friends at Famous Dead Non-Theists
Books
- At the Mountains of Madness
- Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and Macabre
- Eternal Lovecraft : The Persistence of HPL in Popular Culture
- Lovecraft : A Study in the Fantastic
- Lovecraft : Disturbing the Universe
- The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft
- The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
- The Doom That Came to Sarnath
- The Dream Cycle of H.P. Lovecraft : Dreams of Terror and Death
- The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
- The Dunwich Cycle : Where the Old Gods Wait (US 1996 Paperback)
- The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions
- The Loved Dead : And Other Revisions
- The Lurker at the Threshold
Articles
None published in the Secular Web Kiosk.