Something, something, Burt Ward ... er, I mean, Raithere ... late but not forgotten
Atheism, as far as I can be defined thusly, was part of the result, not the process itself.
As such, atheism is a result that is, by nature--it is, after all, an idea--ignorant of its effects. Atheists, however, need not maintain that particular lack of information.
It comes down, I suppose, to those intangible, irreducible standards. For me, it's hard to call anything irreducible, though such a comment may be unnecessary as I'm sure you know what I mean; we're always learning, our opinion of the irreducible changes occasionally for better or worse.
But questions of
why are never far from my mind, and far be it for me to demand the biographical why of anybody. But still, there is the aspect of why which does not regard "from what circumstance," and asks instead, "toward what end?"
So here I'll drag out Thelema for another appearance:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
People often mistake this, as you well know, for a holy pronouncement when in reality it is intended as an enlightened observation. Lysander Spooner, in
Vices Are Not Crimes notes that one cannot give to any institution what they do not have to give. Whether God or government,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. People can only invest in their rulers those ideas and needs which they have in the first place. And governments provide an interesting backdrop. People come together in collective associations for a number of reasons, but humanity is a socially dependent species. Do what we will? So we come together for our own benefit. Now if we look around our own society, "Do what I will?" A rape and murder spree? Hardly. One has a difficult time establishing the actual benefit. I suppose one is welcome to destroy themselves according to Thelema, and that's why the Rede come down from Gardnerian witchcraft looks ever-so-slightly different:
An thou harm none, do what thou will.
Toward what end does one do what they will? Do they create their own enemies to fight against? Or do they seek reconciliation and progress? Can they take that progress individually, or must it come amid a larger evolution of the collective? Shall we end up huddling at our terminals in tiny flats with many guns behind doors locked and barred because we have done what we will until chaos engulfed us? Can we protect ourselves, as such, by giving ourselves less to protect against? Let's talk to the Unabomber about progress ....
All of which goes to offer an anemic explanation the attitude problem I can't seem to shake in this topic. It's like the title:
Of course it's futile, because this is what people choose.
And I look to the atheists to bridge the gap because, frankly, atheists are allegedly
what?!
Smarter.
Religion is allegedly a
what?!
Neurosis; psychosis, memetic social disease; ideological cancer ....
Physicians! Heal thy selves, so that you may heal also the sick.
You can tell the poor, superstitious boy, "Yes, I'm going to chase the demons away," and give him the damn shot, or you can stand around arguing all day about there being no demons until his brain burns away.
And there's a measure of sympathy there, too. I know it hurts for many atheists, banging their heads against the theistic wall. It doesn't have to be this way. But by and large, if religion is a sickness, then the healthy folks either have to quarantine altogether--a losing proposition, as "normal" is statistically analogous to "sick"--or work to heal the sick. This is not like a cold or the flu; even in the first world, one cannot necessarily fight this sickness on their own.
I suppose I should invite you to look around,
Raithere. I know you're in there trying, but I'm just not seeing you as common, or your brand as holding a comfortable market share.
Most people keep attempting to define the object or interpret other's definitions literally.
And here again is where I wish to put a burden to atheists. Always exempt here are the natural atheists who simply have never been infected by the merest hint of the religious idea, and truly they are a rare breed. But what if futuristic anthropologists, discovering a civilization on a planet somewhere, simply landed and shouted, "You're wrong!" The religious are bound by certain limitations to certain interpretive methods; while there is a certain amount of individual diversity, we can fairly say that all Christians have certain common traits whereas the same problematic limitation does not have to bind atheists. Does one despise the people in the cave? Does one attempt to rescue and free them? Can one convince them that the reality they come to, emerging from the cave, is really reality?
These are the issues I see limiting the atheistic contribution to the debate. While I don't regard theism as yet being hopeless in this situation, I tend to look at inherited religion as a cruelty, and those who suffer that brand of indoctrination as victims. Perhaps atheists don't generally share this idea, but I do think it is part of the result of ....
The pertinent questions are where are we, how did we get here, and where are we going, not the infinitude of hypothetical alternatives.
The hypothetical alternatives are useful against limiting one's possible answers to the pertinent questions. One of the unfortunate realities pertaining to the topic title, at least, is that many atheists are nearly superstitious in their limitations of perspective concerning the pertinent questions. You can spot these as the most viciously cruel and condemning indictments against religions in history, which seem to forget that they are, in fact, regarding in some cases medieval mass superstition. Look how easily pop culture convinces people in modern America that Britney Spears or N'Sync or Creed are the best of musical creation. I think many atheists forget this and similar realities when examining history, just as partisans tend to demonize the history of their political opponents without consideration of the reality of the humans who lived those histories. It's just that it gets too easy to compress and conform the historical and developmental issues to match existing prejudices. It's easy enough to see when it's religious folks doing this, but I've found it equally difficult--but not impossible--to explain to atheists when the subjectivity of the method and its result don't have to do with the focus of the anti-identification--e.g. God. It is as if the absence of God forgives the same faulty processes.
I was examining the method and the results rather than the internal priorities.
Fair enough, but the method and results change. One of the things about mysticism is that it maintains human dynamism within the religious paradigm.
The thing that I find most useful about mysticism is indeed its flexibility.
I treat that flexibility as I treat poetry. Mystical ideas either work or they don't. When they don't they either disappear or change. When they do, they must keep up with reality or else suddenly they don't.
However, I find that this is also a weakness as it sometimes becomes so flexible that it loses its utility and meaning.
Depends specifically on the foundation of the idea itself and the condition of the individual examining the idea. Kind of like responsible gun owners. In theory, accidents should never happen. Likewise, it is irresponsibility in the seeker which leads to that loss of utility and meaning. The problem remains human-level.
The other side of the problem is the potential for misunderstanding such an abstract system literally.
Somewhere in Armstrong is mention of one of the Arabic mystics ... I'm thinking al-Ghazzali:
Some people possess a power that is higher than reason, however, which al-Ghazzali calls "the prophetic spirit." People who lack this faculty should not deny that it exists simply because they have no experience of it. THat would be as absurd as if somebody who was tone-deaf claimed that music was an illusion, simply because he himself could not appreciate it. We can learn something about God by means of our reasoning and imaginative powers, but the highest type of knowledge can be attained only by people like the prophets or the mystics who have this special God-enabling faculty. This sounds elitist, but mystics in other traditions have also claimed that the intuitive, receptive qualities demanded by a discipline like Zen or Buddhist meditation are a special gift, comparable to the gift of writing poetry. Not everybody has mystical talent. Al-Ghazzali describes this mystical knowledge as an awareness that the Creator alone exists or has being. This results in the fading away of self and an absorption in God. Mystics are able to rise above the world of metaphor, which has to satisfy less gifted mortals . . . . (pp. 189-190)
Hmm .. might
seem elitist? Actually, the only elitist thing about it is the idea of "higher" knowledge. I don't claim higher knowledge, for instance, when I make jokes about being an anti-prophet. I just look at factors differently from other people. I can't say that "awareness that the Creator alone exists or has being," is necessarily "higher" knowledge. But despite the Western tendency to anthropomorphize "the Creator"--and it's not just Westerners, but since we're ... oh, you know--the idea suffices. When I hear a religious or mystical person speak of awareness that the Creator alone exists or have being, it translates (for me) to support ideas I've floated around here like the Universe being a single event, and we are not so much individual beings as we are part of an ongoing single process. There are no multiple events in this Universe, only the one event of the Universe, and everything else we identify is merely a component. Yes, a murder or suicide or cancer death or whatever seems significant to the surviving family, but this "event" is no more independent than ...
that spark right there coming off Krypton after it exploded. Whatever the Creator is--Universe, Big Bang, whatever, as it needs not be aware or alive or anything else, it simply has to
be--it is the only real thing in reality. Horsepucky ideas of higher knowledge aside, I agree that mystical thought is something which is limited among people, whether by genes or social conditioning I do not know (though I tend toward the latter more directly and the former only in the fact genes are that important; there's no "mysticism" gene, but inasmuch as genetics affects perception, accommodation, and assimilation of information, yeah, genetics has an effect).
The potential for misunderstanding is inherent in human diversity.
Agreed, which is why I generally make the effort to respond respectfully.
I do not deny that.
But there are times when one needs to apply a good shock to the system. I find that the flat denial that so often attends the atheist perspective is precisely what much of society needs and deserves
I know the feeling. But the presumption to judge such a necessity is as severe as the presumption of God when you get right down to the result; that the process is different is incidental.
Frankly, personally, I find this supremely efficient. However it can be painful.
I'll leave you to your criteria, though my own observations of the world indicate that in general, the method is supremely inefficient:
- That atheism possesses a known 3 - 4% of the American culture, and by similar extrapolation as estimates of homosexuality as much as 20% total whispers insinuations against the efficiency of the
general atheistic communication. But this is not an indictment in itself.
- That so many people with so many identifications and so many opinions employ such a method, why do we not see the results? Is the supreme efficacy of one cause balancing out another? (As such, I would expect more open conversions back and forth here at Sciforums. I think the score is just about tied between atheists and theists, though I stopped paying attention a while ago. Suffice to say, I would expect more, regardless of who was "winning" according to the score.)
- I do think the shock approach, both at Sciforums and in the American culture at least, has lost its value. People just get annoyed these days. It never occurs to most that you're just frustrated and you might have a point. Oh, no. Heavens, the rough approach means you're something terrible. It's hard for me to deny certain people are anti-Christian bigots, but who the hell cares? But we see around here at Sciforums at least that an affirming idea which does not take lives is just as evil as a condemning idea that does take lives since the affirming idea opposes and therefore does not tolerate the condemning idea.
- I don't see what the approach really accomplishes. Heck, in my own shock approach, I've been known to lay down a record of what someone said and ask them what the hell they were thinking. Apparently reality is so flexible that they never wrote the words that I picked out of their post in order to ask them why they wrote it.
Suffice to say I still question the efficiency. Of course, there are aspects that you're accounting for that I'm probably missing.
How many sit and suffer, longing for an afterlife that may not be? This to me is the real travesty.
Is the travesty to be eradicated or healed? That's a vital question to me, because it is the essential difference between the surgeon's knife and a dagger in the heart.
This is why I offer alternative considerations rather than simple denials.
To back it up a couple of posts ... this I understand, but I do think that many atheists who don't have it all figured out are, in fact, pretending they have. It may not be a lack of ideas, but a lack of the ability to communicate those ideas. How important is the idea, then? Obviously, not very, or else they would learn to communicate it. If God whispered the answers in your ear, how would you or any atheist--or any
body--know?
True, it is equally disingenuous but at least it's obvious and is not pretending to be an answer.
Small comfort ....
Generally, I find that atheists do indeed dig down a little deeper although I will grant you that there are those who fly off with a doctrinal response just as quickly as any theist and with just as little honest contemplation.
If I go a million light years out, and you go two million light years out, did either one of us reach the end of the Universe? I find atheism is generally more practical in certain aspects, seeking reality instead of relying on illusion. But compared to the mere
idea of the absolute, the difference is almost inapplicable.
One does not need to keep up on the cutting edge of every discipline, this would be impossible.
Agreed, but ....
But what we lack, almost completely, is a grounding in the philosophy and methods of science.
While I agree that I would like to see a certain foundation laid--whether one's opinion moves them to say, "much earlier", or "as a mandatory cornerstone", or even "at all"--I do think that this will prove, especially as we move into practical applications of that information, more difficult than most are prepared to imagine. Why not make kids bilingual from the start? Teach them English and machine code.
Attending a class on the philosophy and methods of Science for an hour or two every Sunday would suffice I think
I say the same about psychology, anthropology, and the philosophy of history. Not necessarily about Sunday, though ... I'm a fan of a 4/3 week instead of a 5/2.
This is all that is required, and is being sorely neglected, with science.
True. Try teaching Emma's maternal grandparents to use a computer. Judgment Day will occur before that happens. And yes, they're insanely religious, but they're also old and old-fashioned and incapable of thinking of certain basic concepts about a computer. A friend of mine, a Mac tech, while really high one night, said, "But that's the thing. How long did it take you to pick up two separate platforms on a Mac?" I looked at him and said, "But I knew the old OS from high school, and the new one is that easy." Then he hit the pipe, looked at the screen thoughtfully, and said, "Tell me, do
you answer phones for the nationwide OSX tech support office?" I said, "No." He nodded. "Then trust me," he said. When I emailed him about a small problem once, he posted the email around the office, smirking. People envied that easy of a tech issue, even though there was no immediate solution to offer. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not flexing my prowess here. Operating a mouse-driven GUI and being able to tell someone what my computer's doing to annoy me don't seem all that impressive.
So yes, it's a sad state when people tell me this paltry sum is sufficient or daresay deviant toward the positive. The new generation, though, born amid a sea of information, adapts. They shouldn't smirk, though. I'd love to put any one of the snot-nosed comedians in a room with a Royal or an Underwood and say, "Type your humor there." When I was at the University of Oregon,
honors students out of the local public schools were coming to me to write their papers for them. The younger generation may be taking in and organizing more information, and more useful information, but in addition to the philosophy of science, something people seem to lack more and more of these days is the ability to communicate. Sadly, it has a strange amount to do with issues pertaining to conformity. (If I have to endure another episode of Whoopi's current TV series ....)
(Insert sarcastic netspeak here for example; yes, that's how removed I'm getting from the culture around me; I can barely write netspeak.)
Maybe we should stop teaching vocations in high schools and start teaching people how to think soundly.
Ah, what ever happened to the idea of "well-rounded" education?
A tall order calls for a tall glass. Drink up, dreamers, we're running dry.
We need more people to help push this damn thing out of the rut it's in.
I'll drink to that.
In the meantime ... I'm compelled to comment somehow about the discussion with
Wayne, but ... yeah. It's an unfamiliar layer of accretions I see in that. I want to tell you to draw a loop from the end of one of his sentences to come around to the beginning, though I beg your pardon if God only knows what good that would do.
