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Tuesday, January 08, 2013

Atheism Needn't Be Nihilism

Prompted by an aphorism of mine available here --
"Among many who profess to be atheists one will still find the curious belief that the Universe has preferences in the matter of which words humans use to describe it with and what values humans use to live it with."
-- a reader comments in the Moot:
uh dude, don't you see the inherent contradiction there? Aren't you using words to describe the universe or reality you live in, and aren't you abiding by values you feel are important? If not, then what is the point of this blog? as you have hit upon THE intractable truth, that the universe doesn't give a damn. It's even worse than that, as the universe is not even a living entity that can feel anything. As an atheist and nihilist, nay, as a human being, it is quite clear to me and everyone on the planet (whether they concede it or not) that the universe IS a nihilistic construct. The entire thing is a destructive process throughout. There really is no creation, simply a destruction. In order to build a home you must chop down the trees. You must disturb an environment and space. It's really a zero sum game. Nothing is created or destroyed, it's merely a repetition of disturbances, fluctuations, destruction after destruction. However, we are apes, "human beings", biological organisms, a collection of atoms, whatever, that create value based on the need to survive and propagate. This is curious, seeing as how nothing can really truly survive or propagate. In the end it will be a heat death and all our struggles, hopes, dreams, and lusts will have been for naught. You may counter and say this is the long view of things. But this is not the case. This IS the way things are now. We simply deny it, believing ourselves to be important. We are not important. Nothing is important.
My response, upgraded and adapted from the Moot:

The aphorism you mention is calling attention to the very contradiction you describe. Of course, the whole point of the aphorism is to emphasize that the universe has no preferences as to which words we use to describe it or which values we invest it with. But this is not the same thing as denying there are descriptions that put us in a better position to predict and control the environment or denying there are values worth fighting for.

I believe there are more and less reasonable scientific, legal, moral, esthetic, ethical, political beliefs and I believe that there are criteria on the basis of which their reasonableness can be adjudicated, and I believe it is better to be reasonable than not.

So, I am an atheist. And my atheism doesn't accept what looks to me like the backdoor onto-theism of correspondence accounts of truth or objectivist accounts of value, either. And yet I still passionately argue for better beliefs in matters of facts, concerns, and norms. I fully accept James' characterization of truth as the good in the way of belief, and good for definite assignable reasons (that last part doesn't get quoted as much as the first part, but that last part is where all the action is). I make these passionate arguments for warranted descriptions and progressive concerns and democratic values in the name of a reasonableness I prefer to unreasonableness. And hence I don't think I am any kind of nihilist at all, even though I don't believe in gods or other supernatural powers endorsing my values. (You will find many posts elaborating my sense of connections between pluralism, pragmatism, atheism, science, democracy anthologized here.)

By the way, I happen to think the universe is pretty marvelous and that our collective opportunities for solving our shared problems are always absolutely available right before our eyes, even though I think the universe is indifferent about whether humans enjoy the blessings available to them or not, or behave reasonably or not. I don't think there is anything particularly sad or bleak about a world that lacks sky-daddies and sky-mommies giving us the thumbs up or punishing folks who give us a hard time. I don't agree that the laws of thermodynamics make a mockery of our work to solve shared problems and offer up good works by our lights to the judgment of the world and of posterity.

I just don't need the universe to care about us for me to care about us. I don't need to fear hell to want to be helpful and fair so the world is less a hell on earth. I don't need the verdict of a priest telling me his version of the verdict of his god before I offer up to the hearing of the world my own verdicts about the right, the good, the beautiful, and the true. I am eager to see what the world will make of me, and what we will make of the world, peer-to-peer. That as close as I come to piety, personally.

13 comments:

Black guy from the future past said...

Indeed I never said not to fight, not to act. I am simply pointing out the futility and perverseness of the fight. How can I put this? It's NOT about deities or religion or any of that nonsense. People are ultimately not guided by those things whether they profess to believe in them or not. People are guided by animal instincts; fear, rage, lust and use religious or philosophical language and motifs to rationalize their clearly base instincts and behavior.

What I am pointing out though, is that ultimately, and only ultimately not a trace will be left. This is a physical and scientific fact. Though this fact does not get in the way of doing now or acting now. It simply colors my perspective on things. Even in the attempt to achieve peace and greater understanding we have used violence. It seems that the world is one great paradox and contradiction.

Dale Carrico said...

What is futile about solving shared problems? What is perverse about flourishing? It seems to me that even if you have given up on God, and even given up on the backdoor theology of correspondence truth/ objectivist norms, you may still be making the mistake of assuming an irrelevant god's-eye perspective on human endeavor and judging us wanting from that alienated and alienating vantage.

Anonymous said...

God is beyond both existence _and_ non-existence, kids. Study some apophatic theology. The fundamental atheist question “does God exist?” is kindergarten level theology.

“Consider the idea of a God who is essentially sadness and longing, yearning to reveal himself, to know himself through a being who knows him, thereby depending on that being who is still himself – yet who in this sense …creates… Him. Here we have a vision which has never been professed outside of a few errant knights of mysticism. To profess this essential bipolarity of the divine essence is not to confuse creator and created, creature and creation. It is to experience the irrevocable solidarity between the Fravarti and its Soul, in the battle they undertake for each other`s sake.”

jimf said...

> In the end it will be a heat death and all our struggles,
> hopes, dreams, and lusts will have been for naught.
> You may counter and say this is the long view of things.
> But this is not the case. This IS the way things are now.
> We simply deny it, believing ourselves to be important.
> We are not important. Nothing is important.

If I have to pee real bad, nothing is **more** important!

But seriously -- yes, it is true that expecting people to
do without the comforts (if not the threats) of traditional
religion (or for that matter, for some who would otherwise
declare themselves to be atheists, to do without the
comforts of the techno-religion of >Hism) is to expect
them to swallow a bitter pill, to adopt a pretty austere
world view. Not everybody can be Christopher Hitchens.
Or Bertrand Russell.


"All natural goods perish.
Riches take wings; fame is a breath; love
is a cheat; youth and health and pleasure
vanish... Back of everything is the
great spectre of universal death; the
all-encompassing blackness...

The fact that we can die, that we can be
ill at all, is what perplexes us; the fact
that we now for a moment live and are well
is irrelevant to that perplexity. We need
a life not correlated with death, a health
not liable to illness, a kind of good that
will not perish, a good in fact that flies
beyond the Goods of nature...

This sadness lies at the heart of every
merely positivistic, agnostic, or naturalistic
scheme of philosophy. Let sanguine
healthy-mindedness do its best with its
strange power of living in the moment and
ignoring and forgetting, still the evil
background is really there to be thought
of, and the skull will grin in at the banquet...

The lustre of the present hour is always
borrowed from the background of possibilities
it goes with. Let our common experiences
be enveloped in an eternal moral order; let
our suffering have an immortal significance;
let Heaven smile upon the earth, and deities
pay their visits; let faith and hope be
the atmosphere which man breathes in; -- and
his days pass by with zest; they stir with
prospects, they thrill with remoter values.
Place round them on the contrary the
curdling cold and gloom and absence of all
permanent meaning which for pure naturalism
and the popular science evolutionism of our
time are all that is visible ultimately,
and the thrill stops short, or turns rather
to anxious trembling."

William James, _The Varieties of Religious Experience_,
Lectures VI and VII, "The Sick Soul"

Andrew G. Gibson said...

Every time I come across that notion of an atheistic perspective leading to nihilism and "ugh, it's all futile" I can't but think of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Pa34orcwwA

Way to conflate two separate levels of analysis.

Dale Carrico said...

God is beyond both existence _and_ non-existence, kids.

God-talk is otherwise than sense or non-sense, fellow adult who cares about things I happen not to care about.

Study some apophatic theology.

Thanks, prefer different poetry than you. Do enjoy yours though.

The fundamental atheist question “does God exist?” is kindergarten level theology.

For me -- and I really am speaking only for myself, I wish you all the best -- there are better schools to study in.

Anonymous said...

It is this Fravarti which gives its true dimension to the person. The human person is only a person by virtue of this celestial dimension, archetypal, angelic, which is the celestial pole without which the terrestrial pole of his human dimension is completely depolarized in vagabondage and perdition. - Le paradoxe du monotheisme, 243

It may befall a soul to 'die' as a soul can die, by falling below itself, below its condition of a human soul: by actualizing in itself its bestial and demonic virtuality. This is its hell, the hell that it carries in itself - just as its bliss is its elevation above itself, flowering of its angelic virtuality. Personal survival cannot then be thought of as purely and simply prolonging the status of the human condition, the 'acquired dispositions.' The latter doubtless concern what we call the 'personality.' But...the essential person in its posthumous becoming and in its immortality perhaps immeasurably transcends the 'personality' of so-and-so son of so-and-so. - Avicenna & the Visionary Recital, 116

It is not in the power of a human being to destroy his celestial Idea; but it is in his power to betray it, to separate himself from it, to have, at the entrance to the Chinvat Bridge, nothing face to face with him but the abominable and demonic caricature of his 'I' delivered over to himself without a heavenly sponsor. - Spiritual Body & Celestial Earth, 42

Anonymous said...

The history of the modern West is the history of "l'homme sans Fravarti." - Le paradoxe du monotheisme, 253

On the Feast

The Gospel Parable of the Feast (Matt. 22:2-10, Lk. 14:16-24) means precisely what it says... It would be ridiculous to engage in polemics against men or women who refuse to come to the Feast; their refusal inspires only sadness and compassion. - The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 145


Dale Carrico said...

Uh, okay Anonymous -- what is it with Anonymoids? I mean, right on, follow your bliss, etc etc. But you can publish more in this line of your own personal jesus mystic crystal revelation on your own blog, okay?

Dale Carrico said...

expecting people to do without the comforts (if not the threats) of traditional religion (or for that matter, for some who would otherwise declare themselves to be atheists, to do without the comforts of the techno-religion of >Hism) is to expect them to swallow a bitter pill, to adopt a pretty austere world view.

I honestly don't get this, logically or emotionally. I mean, all the substantial supports associated with faith are really happening at the level of interpersonal support and aesthetic edification anyway. The atheist isn't missing out on any of that stuff, they just see it differently. I don't doubt the reality or validity of the experience you are testifying to, it's just that I really truly don't personally get it at all.

Black guy from the future past said...

Don't mind me Dale. What I said, and what is inevitable, whether anyone says it or not, in no way impacts my actions and concerns NOW. The inevitable death of the universe is akin to the deaths of human beings. Although, we all know, I know, I am going to die, I would like to live my live as splendidly and comfortably as possible before that inevitable end. This extends towards all beings. Our ends are inevitable, however, it is preferable to make that end comfortable rather than miserable. The realization that all things must terminate does not make me despondent. It actually fascinates me, and spurs me onto making human living as good as possible, as we have literally a limited time to do so, both in the short and long view.

jollyspaniard said...

Bits of the universe are alive. Some of those wonder about the meaning of it all.

As to some kind of path of destruction, it started with a huge explosion and has become more orderly and life friendly as time has gone on.

As to the heat death of the universe that's such an unimaginably long time away that it's virtually indistinguishable from infinity. We're talking about a several orders of magnitude above a billion years. That's a meaningful stretch of time by any stretch of the imagination.

Anonymous said...

Smurfs are beyond both existence _and_ non-existence, kids. Study some apophatic smurfology. The fundamental asmurfist question “do Smurfs exist?” is kindergarten level smurfology.

“Consider the idea of Smurfs who are essentially sadness and longing, yearning to reveal themselves, to know oneself through Smurfs who know them, thereby depending on those Smurfs who are still themselves – yet who are this sense …creates… Them (process of smurfication). Here we have a vision which has never been professed outside of a few errant pseudo-intellectuals of mystical smurfism. To profess this essential bipolarity of the divine smurf essence is not to confuse creator and created, creature and creation, Smurfs and non-Smurfs. It is to experience the irrevocable solidarity between the Smurfindle and its Smurfandle, in the battle they undertake for each other`s sake.”