Matters of Faith

I wonder...would an atheist have anything to fear from a vampire? By this I mean the whole basis of the vampire myth is rooted in Christian mythology; otherwise a cross or holy water would have no effect on them. So, if a person doesn’t believe in Christianity, or any variation thereof, then could such a being as a vampire effect them or would the vampire react to such a person as if they were a religious icon personified? Or suppose you did believe in a religion, though not Christianity.

And most importantly, what if this religion had no basis for the vampire mythos.

Would the vampire simply not exist upon encountering such a person?

I think the answer is Yes, though there is an important caveat. That caveat is that the non-belief would have to reach a critical mass, and the more people that believed it, the weaker the vampire’s hold on this level of existence would be because change would come on a quantum level, which be very inhospitable for the vampire because not only would the creature itself be rejected, but the very notion of the thing’s existence would no longer be in effect.

Which leads to the question: Where do gods go when we no longer believe in them? Do they still occupy the same lofty firmament of their glory days, and their teeming legions of followers, or is their fate non-existence?

And No, because you have to be talking about the Christopher Lee era Dracula and vampires of that ilk because the portrayal of that character appears very much driven by Biblical aspects. In other words, that version of the vampire exists because it its opposition to all things Christian. Take those things away, and I think that it could be persuasively argued that the vampire itself would no longer exist, as if he were exposed to the light of day, because it exists only BECAUSE of its opposition to Christianity.

These vampires do not exist in and of themselves. Instead they are projections, manifestations, extensions of the contrary impulses in humanity.

Now, the vampire myth has changed to match the times, and the religious aspect in most cases are no longer necessary or secondary considerations. For example, if you were to run into the vampires of Near Dark or those of the Blade series (in which I somewhat reluctantly include the weakest film of the series, Blade: Trinity) of films then I suspect that they would care less what your beliefs were.

In fact, this theme–the moving away of the vampire from the religious to the secular–is portrayed in excellent fashion by the second film of the Blade trilogy: Blade II. Directed by Guillermo Del Toro, the new vampire is a result of the excesses of science, not God.

Then again, isn’t science simply the New Religion?

And our research centers and laboratories our new cathedrals.