Creative Nonfiction - Fall 2017

CREATIVE NONFICTION 15

ROBINSON: Neuroscience will do
what it will do, and should be will-
ing to stand up to considered criti-
cism of its methods and conclusions.
If it makes a better account of itself
in future than it has done to this
point, excellent. Freedom of inquiry
has never meant a loss of the same
freedom by people who find a project
questionable. I’m surprised to find
such a thing suggested in a scientific
context. I mention Dawkins because
he is an especially voluble instance of
the fact that this worldview—and I
am not speaking of atheism here, but
of the whole rattletrap machinery
of his and their particular school of
thought—is presented as Indubitable
Truth. It is a bad model of science
and reasoning. It makes the kinds of
claims that surely exist to be tested.
You use the word “ideological,”
which is striking. Is it ever appropri-
ate for science to be ideological? That
may be a part of my unease. Sciences
that undercut individuality, like
racial science and eugenics, rational-
ize inhumane ideologies, which in
turn support them politically. That
said, my criticisms always address
their methods and reasoning, areas
where opinion or ideology can be
put aside.

CNF: In Gilead, John Ames seems
to espouse many opinions similar
to arguments you have made in
lectures and essays. Stylistically,
however, your fiction and essays are
quite different. Do fiction and essays
serve different purposes for you in
exploring such matters as science and
religion? Do you approach them very

differently, as a writer? Do you aim

them at different audiences? 

ROBINSON: I don’t really think

about an audience for my fiction. My

essays are all lectures, so they are writ-

ten with the audience in mind that I

expect at some particular occasion.

CNF: John Ames’s moral, intel-

lectual, and spiritual inner lives are

so richly realized. Do you see fiction

as uniquely suited to deeply probing

this sort of inner subjective reality?

Does fiction—with its suspension of

disbelief—make the issues you want

to explore somehow more accessible

to skeptical or secular readers than can

be accomplished through nonfiction?

ROBINSON: Writing is a very

interior experience for me. I’m very

happy to have secular readers, but I

don’t think about making the work

accessible to them or to anyone else.

CNF: Above all, your characters are

tremendously human; they grapple

with faith, but more generally with

making complex, difficult decisions.

Is this what it means to be human?

And is the role we assign to science in

our culture changing that in any way,

by affecting the ways we understand

ourselves and each other? 

ROBINSON: To insist again on

that distinction—real science is a

spectacular achievement, a great

demonstration of brilliance that

should help us to value and celebrate

humankind. “Neuroscience” tells us

we have neither mind nor self. This

can hardly enhance our value in our

own eyes or one another’s.

CNF: It seems in many ways that the

endeavor of the writer—or any art-

ist—is to explore and translate what

in religion is understood to be the

soul. Referring back to your view

of neuroscience, does this mean that

art itself cannot escape conflict with

science, in some ways? 

ROBINSON: Again, that distinc-

tion—no real science offers a judg-

ment about the reality of the human

qualities traditionally called the soul.

So long as an ideological neurosci-

ence inserts itself into these questions,

art and everything we call humanist

will be caught up in this essentially

meaningless conflict.

Real science is a spectacular

achievement, a great demonstration

of brilliance that should help us to

value and celebrate humankind.

CREATIVE NONFICTION 15