Charlotte’s Web as an atheist parable.. discuss
Charlotte’s web is a really wonderful children’s book with gorgeous, funny writing and twin themes of coming-of-age and mortality, but the main plot of the novel is about animals tricking humans into believing that a pig is blessed by God so he doesn’t get killed and eaten.
The humans in the story are, reasonably enough, unable to conceive of any explanation for the words that appear in the spider’s web other than that they are a miracle. While there’s nothing particularly harmful about this (except the farmers losing pork and bacon), the humans in Charlotte’s Web miss out on the true beauty of the situation: the friendship, hard work, and community organizing that made the “miracle” possible.
I think it reflects how easy it is, especially for religious folks, to point to wonderful and unlikely events as miracles orchestrated by a higher power, thus missing out on the beauty of the science or love or hard work that actually caused the event. There’s also some really interesting stuff with how the author handles Charlotte’s death, but I’m not going to get into it right now!