Notes on Something
Quinnsong said:
Can you please make an appearance? Some of us would like your head on a platter(served with copious amounts of mea culpa on the side)
I got distracted a while back trying to figure
Yazata's post at #687; I'm not especially worried about the prospect of mistakenly taking it seriously, but that post includes awareness of the underlying problem.
As to the rest, let us be less than pedantic but more than simply superficial.
To be quite technical, I called out a
behavior.
Those who disdain that perspective have a simple task before them:
Simply show that it isn't the representative aspect of atheism at Sciforums.
Do you recall when we traded some posts about "apathism"? (
1,
2,
3,
4,
5). (Ah,
yes, you would appear to.)
And, hey, from
that thread:
When I inject the proposition that "nothing ever begins" into a broader consideration of ethics, morality, justice, history, psychology, the human endeavor in general ....
When I inject the proposition, I can always point to where I got it and tell people what it means.
Emma Goldman, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Norman O. Brown, Ranier Maria Rilke, Jim Henson, Shel Silverstein, Ray Bradbury, Jack Cady, Roger Waters, Albert Camus ... it really is a broad canon, and each of these and more have contributed something to my understanding of the world around me.
For a theist to abandon faith and become an atheist, this vacuum previously occupied by moral structure must be filled. In my experience, this proposition seems to confuse atheists, which in turn only reminds me why I won't call myself an atheist. Well, these days, it's because I've become an apathist, but that never would have happened without the piss-poor examples of what counts for atheistic integrity I've observed and encountered distally, proximally, and intimately, for over twenty years. The consistency must necssarily count for something, but in the end, the more important thing is to find a way to reconnect cynical atheists to the human endeavor.
As has been noted, I have a long history at Sciforums that clearly defines my regard for religion. But none of this really matters, does it? Look at the superficial political arguments. If the answer is that one needs better reading comprehension, what good will making that point do? And it's true, there are people like Balerion, (Q), Aqueous Id, and others, who demonstrate less reading comprehension than what they were teaching my fifth-grade daughter in fourth grade. There's a joke about the rationality of fisking that I often make:
Do you read novels? How? "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"? What the fuck, Charlie, it can't be both!
I'm not worried about those neighbors of mine trying to construct some fantasy windmill to tilt like Don Quixote on methedrine; they're demonstrating my point better than I could ever express it—life just works out that way, sometimes.
Below is a section of the unposted response to Yazata, regarding the statement,
"So I take it that on Sciforums, 'atheism' isn't just disbelief in religious deities?"
This is part of the underlying question.
One of the outcomes of this strange reservation of atheism unto its own proposition and nothing more is that such an argument is best suited as a fortification from which to lob fireballs.
We expect of other people a certain integrity according to their identity labels; any deviation from how an individual perceives that identity label is easily and often condemned as hypocrisy. However, if we limit the "rational" assertion of atheism unto itself and nothing more, we effectively cut ourselves off from any obligation to rationality beyond that.
This is problematic for a number of reasons.
Politically, there is an audience that is not composed entirely of hopeless hardliners who will never be swayed by anything. When it comes to civil rights and general societal respect, this is the market to which we should play. The overwhelming majority of these are ensconced in societal traditions sympathetic toward religious sentiment. The mere appearance of atheists being holier-than-thou hurts our progress. Then again, it's also a human thing, with each individual making his or her own mistakes, achieving his or her own merits, and so on. But the effect is that the terrible things the religious nuts like to make up about atheists sound less unreasonable if we act like that.
To win out, it is not sufficient to simply show the irrationality; the rational solution must be possible. Perhaps it might seem an easy maneuver around this problem to simply offer no solution at all, but I would think the detriment of such an approach would be obvious.
Consider the thread around here somewhere about what we will replace religion with.
Balbutive. Pabulum. Ludicrous.
I recall a couple got close with that quote about a more cosmic religion, but that's the point: Religion is not going anywhere until one of two things happens:
• Fundamental adaptation occurring in the creative centers of the human brain according to demand of circumstance, i.e., evolution.
• Fundamental reorientation of the functional relationship between mind and brain, so that the creative centers are employed in an entirely different way, which could, in the end, lead to the point about evolution, anyway.
Otherwise, all we are replacing religion with is more religion. And that's fine with me. I don't want to give up every little irrational ritual, like rising on the two and two in the top of the ninth in support of your pitcher. Sure, we can rationally argue psychological effects, but we cannot presume the batters are necessarily cowed. And do not ever, in my presence, say a damn thing about how good the pitching is until the game is over. Now, that has no rational foundation, but it's also the functional rule in my social circles.
And what I want of religion is simply that it be for a constructive purpose. Abramist ideologies will eventually select out. Look at them now, coming apart at the seams. Imagine in another century.
I would hope we don't elevate state or species as the faith. I have great faith in the species, but that is the sort of arrogance that myth teaches will destroy us.
But what value has myth? How much do we focus on the present psychological effects of myth in culture? I would not suggest this is a vain pursuit, but it is literally numbing to witness the dearth of the other psychoanalysis of myth.
Myth offers us various snapshots of how human culture and eventually civilization has evolved. What you have at Catal Huyuk, or in Gilgamesh, or the Bible or Qur'an, even in the witch and vampire and monster legends that permeate human cultures, is a psychological cross-section that can be rationally analyzed.
And all of this comes back to a complication I remind from time to time:
It is a Freudian theorem that each individual neurosis is not static but dynamic. It is a historical process with its own internal logic. Because of the basically unsatisfactory nature of the neurotic compromise, tension between the repressed and repressing factors persists and produces a constant series of new symptom-formations. And the series of symptom-formations is not a shapeless series of mere changes; it exhibits a regressive pattern, which Freud calls the slow return of the repressed, “It is a law of neurotic diseases that these obsessive acts serve the impulse more and more and come nearer and nearer the original and forbidden act.” The doctrine of the universal neurosis of mankind, if we take it seriously, therefore compels us to entertain the hypothesis that the pattern of history exhibits a dialectic not hitherto recognized by historians, the dialectic of neurosis.
—Norman O. Brown
All of that analysis falls by the wayside in our community. Sticking to the simplistic and often fallacious rhetoric intended to insulate "atheism" against criticism reminds that such arguments are more about ego defense than anything substantial and potentially effective.
Consider Spidergoat:
To convert the religious to rational.
Consider the effective detachment of the leading atheistic argument in this and so many other such considerations:
The rational obligation of atheism ends at the atheistic assertion.
The lack of pathos? It's important because it
slows progress and bulwarks the most superstitious.
We know that religious faith is an intricate mess of mind and brain. The big
fuck you that comes from common atheistic regard for the vacuum created in a person's psychomoral outlook by abandoning God is certainly suggestive. The atheistic argument generally prefers things simple, straightforward, and unattached to any other reality. Progress is hard. Ego gratification is easy.
Did it ever occur to you to wonder why the atheistic moevement that doesn't really exist or whatever gives so much attention to the simplest, most blatantly stupid arguments we hear from televangelists and politicians? A functional reason, in the context of a political campaign, for keeping attention focused on the simplistic is that delving into anything more complex is politically dangerous. The idea that Bill Nye can whip Ken Ham's ass in a question of evolution and creationism is what it is; the whole point was to raise money for Ham's museum project, which that performance did, as well as reinforced creationists' faith.
But where the atheistic argument is lacking comes when we look beneath the surface, at the dialectic of neurosis.
Have you ever had one of those moments—they're fairly common in my life—when someone responds to a fact with disbelief, because, "Why would (somebody) do that?"
In many cases, if we look at the superficial markers, it really is a noodle-scratcher. But if we dive beneath the surface, we can often find where the logic goes astray. That is to say, even though you and I might find it morbidly laughable, there is a reason some Republicans are appealing to Christian conscience by arguing that Christian duty is to
not feed the hungry.
Even if we can mark all of the glitches, skips, quirks, and twists along the way in order to establish a rational understanding of how that idea works, it means nothing if all we do is sit and hurl stones.
Proposition: Religious belief has brought to the world many miseries.
(1) Solution 1: Make "religion" go away. See above for a consideration of the basic problem with this.
(2) Solution 2: Comprehend the dialectics motivating the behavior and attempt to reconcile the broken pieces.
Solution 1 is easy, and completely useless.
Solution 2 is difficult and risky, but includes the potential to mitigate the miseries by reconciling the psychopathological conflict. And it is virtually absent at Sciforums.
But, no, of all the things I'm worried about, some petulant ego gratification from a handful of ethically questionable members really isn't on the list.
As to those who parade along with the pipers, you know, it happens. This
is pretty much a
political issue, these days. And politics is awash in neurotic discord.
Consider Kittamaru's post at
#16:
"religion does have some backing evidence... after all, SOMETHING had to have motivated people, even after the creation of the sciences, to continue to believe in the Almighty. Else, why would humanity have done so for so long, and with so many variations?"
It is easy to overstate this point, but the answer is actually a matter of evolution. Nature is not extraneous; these functions in the brain and, subsequently, mind, are selected. What will we replace religion with? Ask me again when the human brain has adapted its creative centers. To wit, did you know that when we laugh, we share laughter? (
See Radiolab 4.1.) This goes to the point that we will
invent another person to share laughter with when we are otherwise alone. Dancing with myself? Well, yes, in a more literal way than we would have thought. (Oh, oh, oh-oh!) That we should share our fear in such a way, or our ignorance, or even our general abstraction—
e.g., "perfection"—seems hardly an extraordinary proposition. But, apparently, when it comes to the gods we invent, we're supposed to set such considerations aside?
Religion is generally explainable in a psychohistorical context, but that's a lot more demanding a path than simply complaining about the irrationality of believing in God.
The task of getting rid of religion is generally impossible. And as long as we pretend that religion is as idiot-simple as the snake-handlers, suicide bombers, and politicians make it out to be, progress toward a better society will only come about by accident of circumstance.
As to certain complaints, I'm reminded of an occasion recently when, in the middle of an argument about how I handled an EM&J thread as a moderator, someone complained that I don't write enough Republican propaganda in Politics.
Rationally speaking, there is no God? Very well. And if that's all atheism is, then it is a useless endeavor of ego gratification.
I mean, hell, if this whole atheism-theism conflict is just for sport, that would be one thing. But we probably need to make that clear one way or another.
____________________
Notes:
Brown, Norman O. Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytic Meaning of History. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1959.
Abumrad, Jad and Robert Krulwich. "Laughter". Radiolab. 2007. Radiolab.org. April 30, 2014. http://www.radiolab.org/story/91588-laughter/
