atheism

A God-Eat-God World

By in atheism, philosophy, religion, who's žižoomin' who?

A self-identified “Christian atheist,” Zizek wants to de-sanctify God but not kill him entirely. There are two main problems with a totally godless world. First, as the murderous regimes of modern history have proven, the absence of divine authority creates a power vacuum that is easily exploited. Second, when we lose the feeling that God is watching over our shoulder, we don’t gain freedom. Rather, God’s presence is replaced in our psyche by an even more powerful anxiety. “If there is no God, then everything is prohibited,” Zizek said, quoting Lacan. The committed multiculturalist is cursed to live in fear of violating someone else’s rules.

I’ve been staring at this paragraph for some time now, waiting for it to stop goofing around and start making sense, but it looks like this is all I’m going to get. So, then.
1. There is never going to be a “totally godless world”.
1b. The murderous regimes of modern history simply replaced “God” with “the State” or “the dictatorship of the proletariat” or “the Völk” (and for the record, Hitler’s personal relationship with Christianity was ambiguous and contradictory, but the Nazis on the whole were by no means implacably hostile to religion.) The worship of abstract concepts remained the same.
2. A traditional belief in or acceptance of “divine authority” has hardly been a bulwark against the depravity of kings, emperors, prime ministers, presidents and other tyrants, to put it ever-so-mildly, and worldly rulers with the same human, all-too-human goals have been cynically appealing to it ever since Constantine himself. Many of them, if possessed of the same technology and infrastructure as 20th-century monsters, would have been happy to rack up similar body counts while paying lip service to whatever metaphysical beliefs were in fashion at the time.
3. What the fuck? Seriously, just…what the fuck? The fear of being insensitive to other cultural preferences is more psychologically damaging than that of trying to please an inscrutable, psychotic deity while condemning and suppressing all the thoughts and feelings that most essentially comprise your humanity? Seriously, is that what he’s saying? Show your work here, please.

For the Sake of Argument

By in atheism, foolosophy, nietzsche

Andrew Anthony:

Nonetheless, Hitchens mentions a “narrow but quite deep difference” between himself and Dawkins. Unlike the evangelical biologist, he has no wish to convert everyone in the world to his point of view, even if it were possible. In other words, he savours the counterargument. Like John Stuart Mill, he is aware of the empty end of achieved objectives. The true satisfaction lies in the means. Although Hitchens is often seen as a provocateur or a contrarian, and both are indeed aspects of his character, at heart he’s incurably in love with the dialectic.

Right on. Let me quote this Nietzschean aphorism again:

Even if we were mad enough to consider all our opinions true, we should still not want them alone to exist: I cannot see why it should be desirable that truth alone should rule and be omnipotent; it is enough for me that it should possess great power. But it must be able to struggle and have great opponents, and one must be able to find relief from it from time to time in untruth – otherwise, it will become boring, powerless and tasteless to us, and make us the same.

Mecagum Deu

By in atheism, religion

Even now, a decade later, you hardly have to expend any effort to find yet another right-wing blog trumpeting the perils of impending dhimmitude, warning us all to wake up and take appropriate measures BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE. Even now, you still have people shrieking in fear over anything even vaguely crescent-shaped, and you can marvel at the spectacle of godforsaken states feeling the need to ban the nonexistent threat of sharia law.

So, then, to revisit a point I made recently, I really have to wonder why our Islamophobic patriots don’t spend more time focusing on one of the things that truly makes America worthy of all the praise we can muster: the fact that we’re free to blaspheme our sacrilegious asses off.
Actually, wait — no. No, I don’t wonder about that at all.
(Image via.)

Philosopher Stoned

By in atheism, books, philosophy, religion, spiritual-not-religious

Nathan Schneider:

The gist is this: most of what goes by the name of religion is really idolatry—especially the appeal to supernaturalism. The only kind of God that satisfies the ancient claim of being the “Highest One” is a God of this world, offering no selfish fantasy of paradise in the next. This God is perfectly in tune with the immanent, Carl Sagan-ite account of science, yet one can also find information about Him in scriptures and religious traditions, selectively read. It’s a God that calls to mind, for instance, Spinoza’s “God or Nature”; J. N. Findlay’s 1948 paper claiming that the object of the ontological argument for God’s existence must be something higher than the God of religion; and sociologist Philip Rieff’s critique of the gods we invent to serve our own desires—religious, clinical, and otherwise. The second half of Saving God features a series of technical moves that, as best I can gather, is an attempt to squeeze some kind of Heideggerian phenomenology into the back door of analytic philosophy, which in turn makes room for introducing a close-to Hegelian view of God as Being’s self-disclosure to beings in history—yada, yada, yada.
All this is to say (and here I am imitating Johnston’s alternating rhetoric referred to above) that God is here and now, not beyond. Inscribed in all the fluff and error of religion—even in the story of the Christian Passion—there are basic truths about the universe and the Mind that pervades it which philosophy, fortunately, has the means to extract.
Ye gads. Heidegger? Hegel? Capital-M Mind? I actually wouldn’t mind reading this book one day, but this all sounds terribly reminiscent of Ken Wilber, to name another modern Idealist who tries to buttress run-of-the-mill spiritualism with what appears to be a familiarity with science and philosophy. I don’t really mean to suggest that Johnston is on a par with a goofy hack who sells an Integral Life Starter Kit for $200, but I don’t find this description too encouraging.
I say again: this desperate attempt to preserve something called God by simultaneously defining it as Everything and Nothing is only ever going to appeal to a small group of intellectuals. Most people are not even remotely interested in a God that doesn’t answer prayers and reserve us a seat in the afterworld next to all our family and friends. I am amused, however, at the fact that it’s apparently okay for believers to tell the vast majority of their fellows, “Religion: Ur Doin It Wrong,” but if an atheist says the same thing, they’re being arrogant and intolerant. Whaddayagunnado.
And speaking of mirth, this sounds promising: “…yet one can also find information about Him in scriptures and religious traditions, selectively read.” Selectively read, eh? You mean as in cherry-picking scriptures and traditions for whatever appeals to your experience as an educated, twenty-first century Westerner, ignoring any contextual or historical details that contravene the message you’re determined to see? You don’t see a potential lack of intellectual integrity in this approach? I can admire the brass balls on Thomas Jefferson, acting as a one-man Jesus Seminar long before it existed, brashly cutting out all the parts of the Gospels that he felt didn’t belong with the model of Jesus he was envisioning – one who turned out to totally agree with Thomas Jefferson, will wonders never cease – but I daresay it probably wasn’t his proudest scholarly achievement.

Hypatia’s Revenge

By in atheism, jests japes jokes jollies, religion

Speaking of that Pew survey:

On average, people who took the survey answered half the questions incorrectly, and many flubbed even questions about their own faith.
Those who scored the highest were atheists and agnostics, as well as two religious minorities: Jews and Mormons. The results were the same even after the researchers controlled for factors like age and racial differences.
“Even after all these other factors, including education, are taken into account, atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons still outperform all the other religious groups in our survey,” said Greg Smith, a senior researcher at Pew.
That finding might surprise some, but not Dave Silverman, president of American Atheists, an advocacy group for nonbelievers that was founded by Madalyn Murray O’Hair.
“I have heard many times that atheists know more about religion than religious people,” Mr. Silverman said. “Atheism is an effect of that knowledge, not a lack of knowledge. I gave a Bible to my daughter. That’s how you make atheists.”
Zing!

In the Depths of Their Humanity, All I Saw Was Bloodless Ideology

By in atheism, history, jesus tie-dyed for your sins, moralizing, non compos mentis, religion, waiting for the barbarians

I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but the perpetually aggrieved Bill Donohue is a steaming, whistling little teakettle of a man, forever boiling over one thing or another. What is it this time, Bill?

The pope did not go far enough. Radical atheists like the British Humanist Association should apologize for Hitler. But they should not stop there. They also need to issue an apology for the 67 million innocent men, women and children murdered under Stalin, and the 77 million innocent Chinese killed by Mao. Hitler, Stalin and Mao were all driven by a radical atheism, a militant and fundamentally dogmatic brand of secular extremism. It was this anti-religious impulse that allowed them to become mass murderers. By contrast, a grand total of 1,394 were killed during the 250 years of the Inquisition, most all of whom were murdered by secular authorities.

Yawn. Same old, same old. I’ve heard this so many times it’s starting to sound in my ears like the way adults talk in the Peanuts TV shows: Mwuh mwah muh mwah mwah mooah. Hitler an atheist? Nope. Stalin and Mao primarily driven by radical atheism? Pick your favorite response.

But let’s leave Mr. Donohue to his angry jitterbug on the stove burner and take a closer look at the more interesting theme here. One thing all three of those famous monsters actually had in common with Christianity was a belief in the teleological progression of history toward utopia, as well as in the redemptive, cleansing power of blood and violent sacrifice. Biblical scholars are united in saying that Jesus, assuming he actually existed as a historical person, was just one in a long line of Jewish apocalypticists. I know they don’t tend to emphasize this in devotional readings for some reason, but the entire point of his ministry was to prepare anyone who would listen for the coming end of the world, with violent retribution for all whom he felt deserving, followed by endless paradise. Since then, whether it’s based on visions of heaven, the classless society, or living in perfect harmony with nature, this idea that the ends justify the means pops up repeatedly throughout history. Utopia is waiting just around the bend, right after we get through the great purification by flood, fire, earthquakes or mass murder. It honestly has nothing to do with religion or the lack thereof. It’s an abstract concept of perfection that isn’t exclusive to anyone in particular.

As I’ve said before, I expect that we’re in for some hard times in the next few decades as the glory days of life in America fade further into the past, and we face choices over how far we’re willing to go to maintain our privileged position in the world, especially as nations like India and China look to get some of our standard of living for themselves. Perhaps some more equitable, balanced lifestyle will be the end result of our downward spiral, but human nature being what it is, I’m not optimistic. And because of that, I don’t see any reason to gleefully anticipate the chaos and upheaval that may come. Hell, I’d be happy to be wrong. For me, a rule of thumb is that if you’re so attached to your ideological convictions that you would rather see widespread suffering on a massive scale than to have to revise those convictions, if you can envision that sort of suffering while feeling smug over having accurately predicted it, you might just be the kind of zealot we’re talking about here.

Musical Mysticism

By in atheism, foolosophy, music, nietzsche, philosophy, religion, the big sleep

Let’s fall in love with music
The driving force of our livings
The only international language
Divine glory, the expression
The knees bow, the tongue confesses
The lord of lords, the king of kings
– Mother Love Bone

In keeping with this, we find that the interest inspired by philosophical and also religious systems has its strongest and essential point absolutely in the dogma of some future existence after death. Although the latter systems seem to make the existence of their gods the main point, and to defend this most strenuously, at bottom this is only because they have tied up their teaching on immortality therewith, and regard the one as inseparable from the other; this alone is really of importance to them. For if we could guarantee their dogma of immortality to them in some other way, the lively ardour for their gods would at once cool; and it would make way for almost complete indifference if, conversely, the absolute impossibility of any immortality were demonstrated to them. For interest in the existence of the gods would vanish with the hope of a closer acquaintance with them, down to what residue might be bound up with their possible influence on the events of the present life. But if continued existence after death could also be proved to be incompatible with the existence of gods, because, let us, say, it presupposed originality of mode of existence, they would soon sacrifice these gods to their own immortality and be eager for atheism. The fact that the really materialistic as well as the absolutely sceptical systems have never been able to obtain a general or lasting influence is attributable to the same reason.

The early Christians were, ironically enough, called atheists by the Romans because they refused to recognize the state gods. In somewhat the same way, I call myself an atheist because, as far as the common conception of God in my culture is concerned, I am. I don’t believe in any sort of personal god, which, as I keep asserting, is the only kind anyone is really interested in, and I myself am not interested in a god that has to be defined out of existence to be kept away from the prying eyes and grasping hands of science. But it’s always worth repeating, I think, that I don’t even consider the existence of God or the lack thereof to be all that important. It’s fun to argue about, in a mental exercise, intellectual sparring sort of way, but as the man just said, the only reason anyone even cares is because their ideas about personal immortality are all caught up in it. I’m not aware of any cultures that worship anything like the omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent Christian God without a corresponding belief in personal immortality (though perhaps I should check with Pascal Boyer again and see if I forgot some), but some schools of Buddhism have managed to hold a belief in personal identity surviving physical death without any deity being involved. The thought of death, the knowledge of its inevitability, gives us all pause at the least, if it doesn’t inspire outright fear. We want to believe that it’s not really the end for us. Everything else flows from that. In keeping with that, I feel that disbelief in the “self” is far more radical than mere atheism, and more relevant to the heart of religious belief. If you’re not going to experience any reality except life in this world, and the most God is ever going to bother revealing about himself is vague images to thrill superstitious old ladies in the form of a stain on the wall, a burnt section of their waffles, or writing on a cat, then all that existential angst disappears in a puff, and all the tons of paper wasted on tortured attempts at theodicy can be used to start fires in cold weather.
But continuing with our themes of personal identity, life, death and nineteenth-century German philosophy, here’s an interview with Nietzsche scholar Julian Young that touches on a type of immortality I can fully endorse:

How did Nietzsche’s ideas about music affect his philosophy?
“Without music life would be an error” is a great T-shirt slogan, but its meaning is far from obvious. Here is how Nietzsche glosses his aphorism in a letter from 1888, the last year of his sanity:
“Music … frees me from myself, it sobers me up from myself, as though I survey the scene from a great distance … It is very strange. It is as though I had bathed in some natural element. Life without music is simply an error, exhausting, an exile.”
Nietzsche’s first book, The Birth of Tragedy, dedicated to Richard Wagner, is constructed around the duality between the “Apollonian” and the “Dionysian.” Apollo stands for intellect, reason, control, form, boundary-drawing and thus individuality. Dionysus stands for the opposites of these; for intuition, sensuality, feeling, abandon, formlessness, for the overcoming of individuality, absorption into the collective. Crucially, Apollo stands for language and Dionysus for music. What, therefore, music does is to–as we indeed say–”take one out of oneself.” Music transports us from the Apollonian realm of individuals to which our everyday self belongs and into the Dionysian unity. Music is mystical.
Since the human essence is the will to live–or for Nietzsche, the “will to power”–the worst thing that can happen to us is death. Death is our greatest fear, so that without some way of stilling it we cannot flourish. This is why musical mysticism is important. In transcending the everyday ego we are delivered from “the anxiety brought by time and death.” Through absorption into what Tristan und Isolde calls the “waves of the All,” we receive the promise and experience of immortality.
Later on, Nietzsche realized that not all music is Dionysian. Much classical music, based as it is on the geometrical forms of dance and march, is firmly rooted in the Apollonian. Yet as the 1888 letter indicates, he never abandoned the musical “antidote” to death. Without music, life would be anxiety and then extinction. Without music, life would be an “exile” from the realm of immortality.

Show Your Work

By in atheism, augean stables, religion, science

Most of us have seen the movie Weekend at Bernie’s, right? Two guys going through all sorts of wacky hijinks in order to convince people that their dead boss is still alive, while going to hilariously desperate lengths to deflect any close scrutiny that might reveal the truth?

For some reason, I was reminded of that movie while reading this screed from Anthony McCarthy about religion and science.
Why is anyone paying attention to what Stephen Hawkings or most other scientists say about religion except on the basis of their presumed authority? And it’s the flimsiest kind of authority on the topic, based in a reputation gained in an entirely different field of study. As far as I have been able to see, Stephen Hawking has never published a scholarly paper on the subject in a reviewed journal so it’s not even passed that level of testing. Perhaps if he had tried his ideas in that academic realm he might have avoided limiting himself to one, very crude assumption about religious thinking, believing that all of it is as unaware of the vicissitudes of the study of religious questions as he obviously is.
Anyone who has read even a little of the rigorous, formal literature around various religions, would know that the contemporary critics of religion almost never have the slightest knowledge of what serious people have said on the topic.
Nameless contemporary critics “almost never” know what nameless “serious people” have said about it, eh? Well, that was most certainly, uh, precisely vague! As has been said many times before, it’s amusing to see how they don’t even bother trying to disguise this ridiculous double standard. The most unsophisticated, uneducated professions of faith are always accepted as valid and genuine; the most simpleminded believer is accepted to have had some meaningful experience of the truth of God’s existence. No one would think of scoffing at the faithful for daring to speak of their beliefs without having spent years in seminary first. Yet skeptics are constantly told that they must display intimate familiarity with the most irrelevant nuances of theological reasoning, from Augustine to Niebuhr, in front of a panel of judges who can hardly be said to be impartial, before their objections will be treated as “serious”. And you should be ashamed of yourself for suspecting that this is all just an elaborate exercise in keeping the goalposts in constant motion!
But lest you think I’m unsympathetic here, let me hasten to assure you that I know all too well what it is to suffer from this sort of doctrinaire purism. My sophomore-year geometry teacher, mathematical fascist that she was, repeatedly refused to consider the ornate brilliance of my thirty-step proofs, dogmatically insisting that I had failed to establish my given! So I fully appreciate how tiring it must be to have to listen to these philistines nattering on about how you need to provide some evidence that we should even take the idea of an invisible deity seriously to begin with before we can move to discussing all his/her/its glorious attributes.
Okay, seriously though, fine. It’s simple, really — put up or shut up. Devise whatever standardized religious literacy test you want. Name whoever you want as a “serious” source for us to familiarize ourselves with. I guarantee you there won’t be any problem finding an atheist who can ace it. Hell, we can start with an agnostic like Bart Ehrman right off the bat. Anything else you want to complain about?
Not a single law of science is anything other than the product of human thought. Not a single one of them has been developed except within a realm which excludes everything but what we can discover of the physical universe. I believe that exclusion is based in our experience and the extension of our logic, which, itself, is a means to address our experience of the physical universe.
…A passage in the Book of Isaiah that often comes to mind when thinking about this topic, is when God is said to have said, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,”. Whatever else people have held about God, no matter how much of our limited minds and thoughts and even our crimes and injustices we have attributed to God, even the most anthropomorphic religion holds that God is not a human being. To think that God would be required to follow our laws of science or, indeed, any possible actual mechanisms of a universe created by God, is rather touchingly naive in a way that even the “ignorant goat herders” who are believed by the incredulous to have written the Bible were able to surpass.
Ah, yes, that’s the good stuff. Science and our conceptual ability are limited to being able to understand the “physical” universe, which we experience through our senses. God is beyond all that. God is like Emily Dickinson times infinity, hiding in a closed room he/she/it never leaves, slipping cryptic notes out every so often, written in a private language that can only be understood via mystical communion by those already inclined to believe in him/her/it. So how, then, asks the skeptic, are you, a fellow human with a similarly limited brain, capable of perceiving this mysterious “beyond”? What is this God you speak of, if he/she/it is too enormous to be caught in the puny little conceptual nets we humans are limited to using? And even if you claim we can’t look directly upon God in all his/her/its mind-shattering majesty, what discernible effects does this God have in the universe we live in, and what do they have to do with our cultural standards of morality? If even that’s too much to ask to see, well, could you at least tell me how an incomprehensible, imperceptible God is distinguishable at all from a nonexistent one? Can’t you point to some sort of common, shared experience we can use as a foundation for further discussion?
“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe…”
Moving along.

It seems to be an emotional need of the new atheists to believe they have disposed of the question of purpose but most people seem to be unimpressed with that artificial substitute for reason. And that’s only one of the questions that we, mere mortals, have about the universe which we find ourselves in. I am more convinced as I see us destroying ourselves, to a large degree with the products of science and technology, that unless we include questions of purpose, justice, rights, morality and other entirely non-scientific features of human thought and culture, that science is inadequate in itself to ensure our continued existence.

I’m not sure who these nameless people are that think science alone is going to solve all of our problems independent of ethical or practical considerations, but assuming there are some out there somewhere, I’ll agree, he sure put them in their place. But once again — whatever solutions we come up with are going to have to come by way of communication over a shared experience. I’m not interested in what your particular favorite holy book says. I’m not going to take your word on the validity of the supposedly mystical insights you’ve had if you can’t even begin to express them in some form others can understand and relate to. And I don’t care how many religious authority figures in history have advocated the Golden Rule as a general ethical principle if I can reason my way there by myself.

The Metamorphosis of Narcissus (Hopefully)

By in atheism, george carlin, religion

Have you ever noticed that when you’re driving, anyone going slower than you is an idiot? And anyone going faster than you is a maniac? Why, I tell ya, folks, it’s a wonder we ever get anywhere at all these days, what with all the idiots and maniacs out there. Because no one ever drives at my speed.

– George Carlin

Religious people have no real interest in Dawkins, whom they find extreme, clinical, mechanical, and monolithic.

I’ve noticed this a lot lately, this apparent unspoken agreement to make Richard Dawkins the official representative of Atheist Fundamentalism®. From Boteach and other religious believers to Matt Taibbi to random blog commenters, I keep hearing about how Dawkins is humorless, ignorant, strident and intolerant. But I read The God Delusion, something I suspect many of his critics did not, and I didn’t see evidence of anything like that. The only real attempt I can recall from recent memory to actually engage in measured criticism of something he’s said, as opposed to just repeating the same declarative insults, was this recent column from Gary Gutting, and even that, well…
I’d really love it if we could arrive at a common understanding that this sort of thing is not an argument. It’s a psychological balancing mechanism, a way to position yourself as the voice of sensible, moderate reason, by drawing false equivalences between the fanatics on both sides of you (who are frequently invented if they don’t already exist).

Our Father Who Ain’t in Heaven

By in atheism, calvin and hobbes, foolosophy, philosophy, religion, science

Calvin: Why do you suppose we’re here?

Hobbes: Because we walked here.
Calvin: No, no. I mean here on Earth.
Hobbes: Because Earth can support life.
Calvin: No, I mean why are we anywhere? Why do we exist?
Hobbes: Because we were born.
Calvin: Forget it.
Hobbes: I will, thank you.
Rev. Robert Barron says that Stephen Hawking should shut up about philosophy and theology since all he knows is physics…and then proceeds to talk as if he understands physics based on the excerpt from Hawking’s new book that everyone is talking about, where he says that science makes God irrelevant when it comes to the “how” of the universe’s existence.

The classical philosophical tradition gives us an adage that is still hard to improve upon: ex nihilo nihil fit (from nothing comes nothing). Any teacher worth his salt would take a student to task if, in trying to explain why and how a given phenomenon occurred, the student were to say, “well, it just spontaneously happened.” Yet we are expected to be satisfied with precisely that explanation when it comes to the most pressing and fascinating question of all: why is there something rather than nothing?

‘Tis a mystery. One that isn’t solved or explained by postulating a God about whom nothing tangible can be said or understood. Why do you act as if you’re owed an explanation for metaphysical puzzles anyway?
You and I are contingent in the measure that we had parents, that we eat and drink, and that we breathe. In a word, we don’t explain ourselves. Now if we want to understand why we exist, we cannot go on endlessly appealing to other contingent things. We must come finally to some reality which exists through the power of its own essence, some power whose very nature it is to be.
But that whose very nature it is to be cannot, in any sense, be limited or imperfect in being, and this is precisely why Catholic philosophy has identified this non-contingent ground of contingency, this ultimate explanation of the being of the universe, as “God.”
Three things:
1) Many Buddhists would be happy to explain to you how we can “go on endlessly appealing to other contingent things” to understand our existence. You’ll notice I didn’t say they will explain why we exist, which leads us to the next point.
2) The very question “Why do we exist?” is inherently invalid, resting as it does upon the unquestioned assumption that our existence itself is teleological by nature, something that is unclear and unproven, to put it mildly. “Purpose” is a human concept, a tool we use, not a built-in feature of life itself.
3) Anselm? Really?

Spotted Dickhead

By in atheism, jests japes jokes jollies, moralizing, religion

This is funny. I saw a column in the Financial Times this morning from Gideon Rachman titled “The Hatred of Tony Blair is Over the Top” (no link available without a subscription). Not having read it, I vaguely wondered what that was all about. Then, apparently unrelated, I see this:
Tony Blair said that many of the challenges facing the world today were similar to those that confronted Jesus and Mohammed, the founders of Christianity and Islam.
…“We face an aggressive secular attack from without. We face the threat of extremism from within.”
Arguing that there was “no hope” from atheists who scorn God, he said the best way to confront the secularist agenda was for all faiths to unite against it.
I can honestly say that I woke up this morning not having spared any thought or emotion for Blair in a good, long while, but now it’s probably fair to say that my hatred for him is well over the top, too. In fact, I am now fully on board with Harry Hutton’s campaign to see this stupid bastard hang. (Also funny.)

You Know I Hate Every Porn Star That I Ever Met

By in atheism, religion, sex-you-all

But Nina Hartley seems to be really cool. PZ points out a pretty good interview with her, but I thought an earlier one she did with Brad Warner was much better. Too many good parts to excerpt. So if you like reading interviews about pornography and religion, among other topics, check ’em out.

Oh, go ahead, you know you want to. Don’t worry about looking too eager. No need to fake being dignified. Run, don’t walk.

Room 101

By in atheism, foolosophy, nietzsche, philosophy, religion

In a recent post,”On Christian Horror and Atheist Dread” author Mike Duran makes the rather broad and erroneous claim that Atheist horror centers around the fear of “The Great Void.”
“A world without meaning and purpose is the ultimate horror. A universe that arose by chance, exists without meaning, where lives plummet toward annihilation is the worst kind of horror.”
I would, in fact, assert that the fear he describes is at the heart of Christian Horror and in the entire Christian faith if not all faiths. It is what drives the religious screaming to their church pews and confessionals, clutching their bibles to their bosom. It is what makes them cling to faith and stubbornly resist reason. The atheist simply accepts the void as reality and moves on with his or her life.
…There is nothing to fear from non-existence because you will never experience it. You cannot experience nothingness. You will never “feel” not being. So what’s to fear?
Or, to invoke one of my favorite ancient Greeks again:

Epicurus also believed (contra Aristotle) that death was not to be feared. When a man dies, he does not feel the pain of death because he no longer is and he therefore feels nothing. Therefore, as Epicurus famously said, “death is nothing to us.” When we exist death is not, and when death exists we are not. All sensation and consciousness ends with death and therefore in death there is neither pleasure nor pain. The fear of death arises from the false belief that in death there is awareness.

This is such a simple idea, but paradoxically so hard for people to adjust themselves to. I was raised, like most people, to accept the idea of a soul and an afterlife as perfectly obvious (my mom was a typical lapsed Catholic of her generation, who found the casual, hazy, nonjudgmental, nondenominational religious beliefs of the New Age movement to be much more to her liking). I remember how jarring it felt to me at first to be forced to consider a materialist point of view, and like a lot of people, I took my initial knee-jerk aversion to what I perceived as a “meaningless” worldview to be a worthy objection, as if any affront to my vanity was ipso facto invalid. You still hear this all the time from people who reject the idea of atheism or materialism, that it was too depressing for them to contemplate for very long. But I say as gently as I can to them: the universe does not need your personal permission to be what it is.
How many there are who still conclude: “life could not be endured if there were no God!” (Or, as it is put among the idealists: “life could not be endured if its foundation lacked an ethical significance!”) – therefore there must be a God (or existence must have an ethical significance)! The truth, however, is merely that he who is accustomed to these notions does not desire a life without them: that these notions may therefore be necessary to him and for his preservation – but what presumption it is to decree that whatever is necessary for my preservation must actually exist! As if my preservation were something necessary! How if others felt in the opposite way! If those two articles of faith were precisely the conditions under which they no longer found life worth living! And that is how things are now!
– Nietzsche
The sticking point seems to be that we take for granted, probably as a lingering inheritance of our monotheistic history, that meaning is something that has to be given to us (by a god, obviously), that has to be bestowed upon the raw clay of matter; otherwise, matter just sits there, inert and lifeless. But meaning does exist. It exists as an ongoing project between us, a social reality. Isn’t this obvious? Think about the things that have made your life worth living. Why should they be any less enjoyable or meaningful just because they’re not absolutely guaranteed to exist forever in some form? Why should the fact that something ends cancel out the fact that it began and endured in the first place? Life itself has no inherent meaning, in the sense that life itself is not a symbol of something else. It isn’t a signpost pointing the way to someplace else. It just is. And yet, the basic material conditions of life, supposedly so desolate and hostile, have produced at least one type of creature with a certain type of brain capable of thinking conceptually and symbolically, capable of living lives devoted to concepts like art, beauty and love. We grew and developed out of those conditions, and we dissolve back into them. Fearing what it will be like after you’re dead is akin to fearing what it was like before you were born. It’s just a confused way of projecting yourself into situations where “you” can’t even exist.

Inkblot Christ

By in atheism, jesus tie-dyed for your sins, religion, spiritual-not-religious

Anne Rice is going to renounce her friends and family, convert to Judaism and start preparing for the imminent end of the world by wandering around in public with a sandwich board, haranguing strangers to repent. What, you think I’m kidding?

Q) I wanted to ask you about that, because you have said that you quit Christianity “in the name of Christ.” From a practical standpoint, what does that mean, how do you follow Christ without a church? Are there rituals that you intend to maintain?
A) I think the basic ritual is simply prayer. It’s talking to God, putting things in the hands of God, trusting that you’re living in God’s world and praying for God’s guidance. And being absolutely faithful to the core principles of Jesus’ teachings.
Oh, okay, you might say she just means something about love and goodwill, but I’m going to take her at her literal word there. His “core principles” were quite a bit different than the clichés we’re all familiar with, most were not relevant or applicable to modern life, and I assume she knows that, given how much she professes to have studied scripture.
Speaking of clichés, reading yet more tripe about “organized religion” and how being an atheist means living in a dark, meaningless world has made me feel a little gloomy here. So I’m going to go read this again, probably the funniest thing I’ve seen written so far about Anne’s crisis of faith.

Bi-spurious

By in atheism, psychology, tribalism

I remember when John Cole was among the nuttiest of wingnuts, which makes it all the more entertaining to read him these days. You don’t see many people willing to call out the slavering hordes of their own comment section like this:

I keep seeing “warmed-over conservatism” and other petty bullshit like that, and all I have to say is that if you want the public debate about policy, you better get some more game. I’ve gone through every post Erik has written, and I have not once seen him attack liberals, dismiss other people’s ideas, or generally be the kind of petulant dipshit a lot of you are being in the comments.
You dislike his argument? Make a counter argument. You guys constantly claim you want to honestly engage thoughtful and decent people who will argue the merits of issues, and now you are presented with one, and your gut instinct is to insult or try to shut him down.
That, to me, is not the sign of a confident movement. You think his ideas are bullshit and warmed over conservatism, explain why. Make the argument. Make the case. What the progressive movement needs is not to emulate the Dan Riehl’s and Michelle Malkins, but to confidently make their case that their ideas are better.
…And I’ll bet a bunch of you were joking about Republicans and epistemic closure. Wankers.
It’s funny cuz it’s true! Herd mentality is a bipartisan phenomenon, sad to say. Some of the biggest progressive blogs have some of the absolute worst circle-jerking comment sections I’ve ever seen.
I’ve read a little bit of Kain’s stuff before, but I wasn’t even aware he was conservative until he started posting at Balloon Juice, and even then, like Cole said, I don’t see anything worth getting freaked out about. Really, I read other sane conservatives/libertarians like Radley Balko and Daniel Larison regularly, and there are long stretches of time where I can’t find anything at all to disagree with them about. Being exposed to a daily supply of shrieking batshit insanity from teabaggers has a lot to do with it, of course — that would make anyone look reasonable by comparison. But still, you’d think people would be overjoyed every time they find someone capable of having intelligent disagreements with.
It is a fine line to walk, though, knowing when to engage and when to walk away and not waste your time. To repeat something I just said the other day, open-minded is not the same thing as empty-headed. I don’t think there’s necessarily a blanket rule to follow, but there are times when it’s fair to say that you’ve heard all the arguments before, made up your mind, and don’t see any need to keep suspending judgment in case someone comes up with a brand-new idea. Atheists, for example, are frequently accused of being closed-minded to opposing arguments (something that curiously never seems to apply to religious apologists). But speaking for myself, how many times do I have to act as if I’ve never heard the ontological, cosmological or teleological arguments for God’s existence before? Wake me up when you have something besides another variation on those tired old themes. This isn’t Memento; I don’t need to treat every day as a blank slate where everything has to be learned anew, and imagination is the only limit.
And this also cuts to the heart of another issue: what do we mean when we call someone stupid or intelligent? We use those terms as if they describe something clear and easily measured, but of course, it’s never that simple. For me, the dividing line is more about attitude than anything like standardized test scores or a set of beliefs. Intelligent people are those who are capable of setting their own egos aside when arguing or studying, able to change their mind when necessary, graceful enough to keep their own identities from getting hopelessly tangled up in this or that doctrine. Stupid people are those who decide in advance what they want to believe, and only look for evidence that backs them up, while ignoring anything that suggests otherwise. Rhetorical cuttlefish, they resort to just about every logical fallacy in the book while pretending to argue in good faith, and if they do manage to get outwitted despite their efforts, they act like the kid who would overturn the table in a fit of pique when losing at a board game.
Just to make it even harder to define, though, it’s necessary to keep in mind that this line weaves through all of us. Individual people contain varying degrees of both; no one is ever simply “intelligent” or “stupid” through and through. Even mostly smart people have blind spots or emotional predilections that are unlikely to be noticed by themselves, which is why it’s always good to have people you can intelligently disagree with who might reveal them to you without the defensiveness that accompanies typical arguments getting in the way. Without them, you end up in the echo chambers.
I certainly don’t always live up to it myself, but the famous sentiment expressed by Spinoza is always a good one to keep in mind:

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

There Are No Believable Gods

By in atheism, nietzsche, religion, spiritual-not-religious

Returning briefly to that Roger Friedland post, this also caught my eye:

Almost everybody who claims to belong to a religion also believes in God. A lot of students — just shy of a third — don’t identify with any religion. But just because somebody doesn’t belong does not mean they don’t believe. About a quarter of those unaffiliated nonetheless believe in God. Most commonly, they believe in a higher, ordering power or cosmic force, but not God, not the big Who. True atheists are a tiny minority in the sample — about eight percent.

“A higher ordering power or cosmic force.” So…you guys are members of the cult of the Theory of Everything? Seriously, what the fuck does that even mean otherwise?

A brief aside: Contra the conventional wisdom, I don’t see a necessary conflict between agnosticism and atheism. Agnosticism is a statement about the limits of available knowledge. Atheism is a statement about the limits of credible belief. I can fully acknowledge that we don’t know everything important there is to know about the universe (and may never be able to do so) while still feeling confident enough to say that, given what we do know, there is no personal God waiting to judge us on our behavior after we die. That God is a primitive artifact of the reptile brain, but funny enough, it’s the only kind that most people would have any use for — better a violent schizophrenic who might at least occasionally answer a prayer than the indifferent Watchmaker God of the Deists.

Anyway, this is probably the most common objection to explicit atheism you’ll hear from the spiritual-not-religious crowd, that there might be some unknown principle or force governing everything, so it would be premature to declare against the existence of a god or gods. But when I hear words like principle, power or force, it sounds to me like we’re in the domain of science, are we not? What God worthy of the name could be neatly encapsulated in a scientific formula? And this from people who bristle at the idea that they could be explained in terms of natural phenomena, without any need of supernatural metaphysics!

Really, this is just an attempt to continue believing that meaning and validation are “out there” somewhere to be discovered, having been created for us already. But having grown too sophisticated to believe in a literal superhuman father figure who lives somewhere out in space, these people are stuck at the next step, incoherently muddling around, hoping to find preordained meaning by avenues that were never meant to provide it, like science or nature.

You’re in the vanguard. It starts with you.

“This is my way, where is yours?” – Thus I answered those who asked me “the way”. For the way – that does not exist.

— Nietzsche

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