I would disagree. Herbert was more than a simple atheist in his approach to speculative religious paths in a sci-fi novel. People have speculated for years about Herbert’s religion. I’ve read that he was raised a Catholic and converted to Zen Buddhism. I’ve read that he was a pragmatic atheist, an agnostic, even religious. Hard telling.
But if you glean atheism from Dune, I would have to say I don’t draw that same conclusion. Dune is about many things–ecology, psychology, politics and intrigue, monarchies, sanity and madness, human potential (look at the Bene Gesserit and Guild, etc) both good and bad roads therein, prophecy themes, language, how humans can develop without technology, system thinking, betrayal, eugenics, drug abuse, destiny, prescience, survival, and a myriad other things. Religion is a piece of the book, not the entire core by a longshot.
But within the novel, Herbert doesn’t have any atheist leanings nor, from my view, does he have a deeply cynical anti-religious tone to it. What I think he is exploring is how myth or prophecy could be manipulated or how the players within prophetic revelations that come true don’t realize that they’re players. It makes me think of how the Assyrians or Babylonians or the Pharaoh or many of the other “bad guys” of the Bible didn’t realize that God was using them. They thought they were free agents in control of their own destinies. Look at Herod and the killing of the innocents and how he still cannot escape destiny. Or look at how Judas is a necessary evil for our salvation in the Passion narrative. Herbert is no different. He is painting a tapestry showing how Paul becomes Muad’dib with narry a thought of it being legit, more of a missionaria protectiva ploy from Jessica, his mother, to survive and thrive and rally for revenge against House Harkonnen. But in the process, Paul becomes the prophecy and the ugly side of him that is a dictator and a Jihad emperor comes out. He has to walk away from the role as he hates what he has become and the necessary evils that came along with it.
I don’t see the goal being truly human. I see Herbert showing the negative potential in human beings when they become TOO fixated with breaking through “mere” humanity into something far greater. Dune shows the negative impacts of trying to go beyond our humanity. I’m suprised, quite frankly, at all these “Dune is atheistic!” folks and how they miss the fact that the human potential narrative is painted as folly and cynical, not hopeful or a good thing. The Bene Gesserits have gone beyond mere humanity and they are miserable, back-biting, cunning, lying, intrigue-driven witches. The Spacing Guild is also mutated into something more than human but they are drug-addicted, sad, pathetic figures who have no soul and they are willing to kill, destroy, and enter unholy alliances to keep their drugs flowing. How is this Nietzhchean? If anything, it pokes fun at or admonishes us not to be excessive humanists.
That’s just my take anyway. I’ve read the book many times for years and admire Frank Herbert as an author and a man a great deal. He had a talent that was out of this world. And I think he presented a dystopian vision that is supposed to be a warning, not a glowing warm-fuzzy for the future…And I think also a lot of it was real ecological and social analysis, not just religion, as I said earlier.
