Atheism is soulless
Or so it would seem. I believe it was Diderot who wrote that whether or not God exists, (he) is sublimely useless.
To claim atheism as the natural state (via birth) and to disregard the processes of the attainment of knowledge (including superstition) is to equate ignorance as the natural state (via birth) and thus render knowledge as useless as superstition. To tell a child that there is no monster under the bed certainly settles the question, doesn't it? And it means that Mom and Dad will sleep well for the next few years because Junior's fears have been quelled by the definitive statement that there is no monster under the bed. Right? Works every time, doesn't it?
Atheism is a natural state, but to remain so objectivist as to expect mere factual statements to be conclusive in another's consciousness reflects in itself a myth about people, that we are all the same in our biological, electrical, and higher functions.
To take the examples of two people close to me:
• My father is an atheist, and one who actively dislikes religion and religious people. He finds Christians to be weak people who depend on God like an addict depends on his drug of choice. Yet at the same time, he allowed the attempted indoctrination of his sons into the Lutheran church and even went so far as to employ his paternal authority toward that end. Nonetheless, in his broad rejection of myth, he has chosen to define what is or isn't a myth based purely on subjective (personal) definitions. We'll get to that in a moment.
• My brother and I being adopted, we have different cultural heritages. His happens to be native American, and while the public school he attended fostered this cultural identity, and his education at Stanford came largely through that cultural identity (after all, he is that intelligent) via scholarships and a cohesive community, he actively rejects much about that cultural identity. Myth in his presence deserves active scorn, but selectively. As I said, we'll get to that.
And so we shall. A few myths to consider:
• The myth of the car (I get this one from Markale, and it's particularly poignant in Seattle, as transportation has become quite an issue of local politics in recent times.)
• The myth of the state.
• The myth of the President of the United States (myth of authority).
• The myth of the value of a US dollar.
• The myth of patriotism.
• The myth of familial obligation.
• The myth of social propriety.
• The myth of artistic soul (e.g. music, painting, drama, &c.)
• The myth of right and wrong.
• The myth of men and women.
• The myth of environmentalism.
Shall I explore each? It would be inappropriate of me to assume that any atheist does or does not understand the sense of myth in each instance above.
The myth of the car: The myth of the car becomes apparent whenever transportation issues are involved in social deliberations. It also becomes apparent whenever one is the parent of a teenager. E.g.--
- Why does any teenager
need a car? It is subjective social conditions which dictate this, a comparison 'twixt people. Does a car make you
cool? Does its practical or luxurious aspects form the basis of the teenager's desire?
- We have up here a growing traffic problem. Our highways can't handle all the traffic, and the local politicos are trying to blow mass transit out their asses, intentionally overspending and under-achieving our regional light-rail plan, and stalling on the construction of a voter-approved, 45-mile monorail. Furthermore, we passed a $30 car-tab law; this is intersting, since some people's licensing fees actually rose (grandfathered cars under the previous MVET). In the meantime, there is another myth at play, that the $30 law worked. My brother, for instance, "Yes, it was $30, plus a couple of fees." Well, that's funny, because what I remember you all voting for was that you would walk into the DMV, put down thirty dollars exactly, and walk out with your tabs. However, the whole debate points toward a myth of necessity. People apparently need cars to get to work. Hey, I've lived in the Seattle metro area for six years now, and I still don't
need a car. What it seems to me causes the necessity of the car is the idea that people need to live between thirty and sixty miles from their place of work. The thousands of metro-area residents who bus, bike, or walk to work cannot offset the thousands of north- and south-county fools who foam and whine about traffic inbound in the morning and outbound traffic in the evenings. Furthermore, there's the several thousand directly entering the downtown from its western border (the water) because they ferry across Puget Sound from another county across the water to the west and southwest. The necessity of the car is only fostered by the necessity of living that far from your livelihood. When I was living in Salem and working in a pizza joint, I once got a call from one of our Portland stores, asking if there was anyone who could drive up and open their store. Unfortunately, being the nature of franchise, nobody on our end had keys to the store. What happened was that the underpaid manager, who felt the need to live forty miles east of town, got stuck in traffic on his way into work, and the other guy with the keys ... I'm not sure what ever happened to him.
The myth of the necessity of the car, the myth of the "classic" car, &c. ... my brother and father alike are possessed by them, but choose to look upon such myths as necessarily factual. It doesn't create that much of a daily moral problem, but by and large the result of converting fact to myth in pursuit of a myth-free lifestyle is just as religious as any number of churches in the area.
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The myth of the state: What is the state? What is a political map? What are the arbitrary divisions prescribed by people between territories? What of the motherland, the fatherland, the homeland? What do such myths earn us? Do I need to clarify beyond that? Oh, and these are rhetorical questions, demonstrating the sense of myth. Only answer them if you really feel like going out on that limb.
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The myth of authority: (e.g. President of the United States) There is a certain elevation of status we award to authority.
- What, for instance, about the assassination of a political leader is so different from any murder? In a truly utilitarian society, the death of one leader is inconsequential, and we can shift to the next leader as a matter of utility. But there is sentiment, outrage, all manner of of nastiness that such an event sparks in people. It's our
president, for instance. Who cares, technically? We'll either get the bad guys or, as shown so far by the current crisis (a matter of the myths of state and patriotism), not. One way or the other, the world will continue.
- In the US, the typical law of a state dictates capital punishment for anyone convicted of killing a police officer. First off, why is this? That officer is no different from any other citizen, and that human passing somehow carries greater weight? And let's not hear about the danger a police officer undergoes in daily life. That officer
chooses that path. For instance, if I choose to socialize with drug dealers, I can expect a certain amount of duplicity in people. If I choose to make my career dealing with duplicity and danger, I can expect a certain amount of duplicity and danger. Furthermore, the states routinely award police officers greater credibility than anyone else in a court of law, their badge apparently demanding it. As such, we see outrages such as Tulia, where hundreds have been sent to prison and 16% of the town's black children orphaned by a single police officer known to be corrupt who has failed in his accusations to provide a shred of physical evidence indicating the guilt of the accused. Or the Amadou Diallo shooting? Forty-one rounds? Hey, if you don't want the guy's hands to move, don't point a gun at him and order him to produce identification. Rudy Giuliani's illegal opening of a juvenile record in the wake of the Dorismond killing smacks of this myth. The cops assaulted and then shot a man to death for the crime of not having drugs, and Giuliani defends the officers' sterling credibility by calling the victim a career criminal and opening a court-sealed document pertaining to a never-prosecuted report that Dorismond might have committed petty shoplifting at age 13 (he was 26 on the occasion of his apparently-righteous murder).
Can anyone show an objective reason for the elevation of law enforement as morally and legally superior to their neighbors?
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The value of a dollar: If
anyone can tell me A) what a dollar is worth at any given moment, and B) how they figured that, I'll withdraw this one. In the meantime ....
-Three of 'em gets me a loaf of good sourdough; almost two of them gets me two litres of Pepsi. Almost six of them gets me a pack of cigarettes. This is a fine way to measure it, but how is the cost of those items determined without another way to measure the value of a dollar? If I go to work for an hour, I get approximately eleven dollars? Or, if I'm Alex Rodriguez, I get two-million of them each month for the next eight-and-a-half years?
-In the meantime, the value of the dollar has an impact in real results, e.g. political decisions that affect people both within and without our borders. That is, the myth of this dollar's value has a real impact on people.
-What happens if, tomorrow, the nation's ten-million or more stoners decide to stop recognizing the dollar. "Hi, Tom ... what's that? A gallon of milk? Let's just slip in the back and you can smoke me out." Of course, the myth of the value of marijuana would change if we moved to the marijuana standard; right now a gram is worth maybe six or seven gallons of milk if we make the dollar translation. Can you imagine walking into your favorite grocery or record store and being told that your money--that is, your cash currency--is no longer any good? What's the value of that dollar then? The bottom line is that despite any mathematical formula (that no one person is thus far capable of working), the value of a dollar is, in part, determined by the fact that we all in this country believe it to be so. Go to any street market and listen to the haggling. When they're arguing price, they're not debating whether or not the hand-knitted sweater will keep a person warm, but rather, how many dollars that warmth is worth. In the empirical sense of comfort, then, we see a shifting of the value of the dollar compared to its real result.
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The myth of patriotism: I have often pointed to
Emma Goldman on this subject, and will do so again:
What is patriotism? Is it love of one's birthplace, the place of childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations ? Is it the place where, in childlike naivete, we would watch the fleeting clouds, and wonder why we, too, could not run so swiftly? The place where we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken lest each one "an eye should be," piercing the very depths of our little souls? Is it the place where we would listen to the music of the birds, and long to have wings to fly, even as they, to distant lands? Or the place where we would sit at mother's knee, enraptured by wonderful tales of great deeds and conquests ? In short, is it love for the spot, every inch representing dear and precious recollections of a happy, joyous, and playful childhood?
If that were patriotism, few American men of today could be called upon to be patriotic, since the place of play has been turned into factory, mill, and mine, while deafening sounds of machinery have replaced the music of the birds. Nor can we longer hear the tales of great deeds, for the stories our mothers tell today are but those of sorrow, tears, and grief.
What, then, is patriotism? "Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of scoundrels," said Dr. Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our times, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment for the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities of life as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the average workingman.
Gustave Herve, another great anti-patriot, justly calls patriotism a superstition -- one far more injurious, brutal, and inhumane than religion. The superstition of religion originated in man's inability to explain natural phenomena. That is, when primitive man heard thunder or saw the lightning, he could not account for either, and therefore concluded that back of them must be a force greater than himself. Similarly he saw a supernatural force in the rain, and in the various other changes in nature. Patriotism, on the other hand, is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.
Indeed, conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.
The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that, from early infancy, the mind of the child is poisoned with bloodcurdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood, he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more battleships and ammunition. It is for that purpose that America has within a short time spent four hundred million dollars. Just think of it -- four hundred million dollars taken from the produce of the people. For surely it is not the rich who contribute to patriotism. They are cosmopolitans, perfectly at home in every land. We in America know well the truth of this. Are not our rich Americans Frenchmen in France, Germans in Germany, or Englishmen in England? And do they not squandor with cosmopolitan grace fortunes coined by American factory children and cotton slaves? Yes, theirs is the patriotism that will make it possible to send messages of condolence to a despot like the Russian Tsar, when any mishap befalls him, as President Roosevelt did in the name of his people, when Sergius was punished by the Russian revolutionists.
It is a patriotism that will assist the arch-murderer, Diaz, in destroying thousands of lives in Mexico, or that will even aid in arresting Mexican revolutionists on American soil and keep them incarcerated in American prisons, without the slightest cause or reason.
But, then, patriotism is not for those who represent wealth and power. It is good enough for the people. It reminds one of the historic wisdom of Frederick the Great, the bosom friend of Voltaire, who said: "Religion is a fraud, but it must be maintained for the masses."
In fact, this myth is well-played by both my brother and my father. Each sees war as a necessary thing and finds history irrelevant. Anything, that is, to justify a good old-fashioned ass-kicking by the Americans. I've even heard it from these mouths that it is cruel to the internationals (e.g. Afghanis) to raise their standard of living by paying better wages internationally. (Given how little US commerce there is in Afghanistan, this point slips by the wayside in its immediate sense, but considering child labor in Nepal, labor conditions in Central America and other places that send us goods to buy at low prices--the myth of the dollar?--we might wonder at how better wages are cruel.) I've also heard it from these mouths that they (e.g. Afghanis) ought to be thankful that we're using our rockets and airplanes and guns to raise their standard of living. In this sense, all allegedly objective factors (determined in part by the myth of patriotism) reflect the necessity of warfare as the only way to get anything done. The idea that the poverty of large numbers of people might be fostering anti-American sentiment is absolutely unacceptable to such "objective" minds. The only real truth is that we're good, they're evil, and everyone needs to fall in step with us.
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Myth of familial obligation: This one's close to me. I've seen it wreak incredible damage on human beings. It has, to my witness, prevented the revelation of sexual abuse against children, overridden decisions made by an individual on behalf of their self, and ensconced ridiculous obstacles against human progress well within the conscience.
To start with subjective examinations:
John Candy in
Only the Lonely has a poignant scene when, as his relationship with his overbearing mother comes to a head, he must explain to her that the reason his "no-good father" blew the Florsheim account was because
she sat at that business dinner making anti-Semitic jokes in front of Mr Florsheim, a Jew who happened to be the one who would be writing the checks. This was an excellent moment in terms of this example; even I am taught not to contradict my Mother, no matter how wrong she might be. In
The Lotus Eaters, R.H. Thomson plays Hal Kingswood, who argues with his mother (Frances Hyland) about the fate of his father, whom Hal had always believed dead. Mother Flora has a stroke as a result of the stress, and the guilt of the situation is only compounded by the fact that this is his
mother. What, for instance, if Homer and Barney (in
The Simpsons) are arguing and Barney has a stroke? From Joyce to Bloch to Neil Simon and beyond, the mother-myth is strong, and even has its roots in ancient civilizations to the point that an unnatural devotion to one's mother is called an
Oedipal complex.
At this point, if the notion of the myth of family is foreign to you, I find you both lucky and unfortunate. There was, recently, in the Ethics forum, a link to an ethical survey; one of the criteria examined by the 19-question inventory involved the different ethics one holds when the situation involves family.
Why, for instance, do the commandments demand that one honors their parents? To what degree has that been manifest throughout history?
What is it about "family" that takes precedent over "right and wrong"?
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Social propriety: Victorianism. Edwardianism. Puritanism. Why is it any more appropriate for a heterosexual to kiss in public than a homosexual couple? Hopefully such examples will suffice for brevity's sake.
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The myth of artistic soul: This one's particularly close to me; I'm not sure quite what my family recognizes as appropriate about my literary ambitions, but it certainly has nothing to do with that
soul commonly applied to music and other arts.
My brother, for instance, has impeccable taste in music. Well, in rock and roll. Get him to see a jazz or blues show? No, way. While he denies the sense of aggression his choice musics give him, he prefers AC/DC, Soundgarden, Metallica, and so forth because they "kick ass". But it has to be said that way. You can't point out that it makes him feel superior, empowered, and aggressive or else you're just another f--king music-hater. Yet he won't go see those jazz pussies or the old f--kers playing the blues. Stevie Ray Vaughan wasn't good because he played with soul, but because his cover of
Voodoo Chile kicked ass.
Movies? Sure. Eye-candy, eye-candy, eye-candy. Anything short of mass effects and explosions is a "chick film", meant only to be viewed as a concession toward getting laid. Theatre? Not a chance.
In such arts, it is hard to quantify his taste for comedy. That's something about acceptance, I think, since he only likes comedy according to two criteria (A) Is it popular? (B) Does it agree with what I already believe? I think he believes
Seinfeld to be a documentary series.
My father, by some odd circumstance, has come to believe that music is an environmental factor, and should never be the focus of anyone's attention. He has an uncanny appreciation for Muzak.
But what is it about a painting that is particularly affecting? Okay, to simplify according to my experience with atheists:
In that scene in http://us.imdb.com/Title?0091042Ferris Bueller's Day Off, when Cameron (Alan Ruck) is viewing the Seurat, focusing ever inward on each point until the frame is filled with unintelligible texturing, why is he doing this? That is, what intangible sensation is drawing him to obsess for whatever period over what he sees? What subjective connection does the painting have to what is in his consciousness? It is the
soul of the painting. And the lack of this soul is among the tragedies that I have observed, not only in the immediate examples of family atheists, but among those I've known in general.
What is it about McCammon or Bradbury that moves us so deeply? Randall Kenan? James Joyce? Joyce Carol Oates? How about Shel Silverstein? Anyone care to quantify the whole experience? What makes Emily Dickinson so easily-related? What is it about the written word, the tale spun, the fiction and the poetry, that keeps people interested?
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Myth of right and wrong: I should be able to stand on that and say, "'Nuff said." In fact, I will, unless anyone actually
needs greater detail.
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Myth of men and women: For brevity's sake:
The Battle of the Sexes. We might also consider recent considerations of the term
date rape buried in the later pages of Goofyfish's
prison rape topic.
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Myth of environmentalism: Quite frankly, if I ever hear how we're killing or destroying the planet again, I might bust a gasket. When entire nuclear arsenals are in the sky and plummeting back toward our doom, we can talk about destroying the planet. But will all the bombs kill the planet, or just what we recognize as life on its face? Short of that, however, pollution will not "kill the planet", merely the people and other living things on it.
I wouldn't worry about this myth except for the fact that I still hear it, and if environmentalists ever want to be taken as seriously as environmental issues should be, they should drop the histrionics and stop fudging the data. (e.g. Global warming; some of the most critical global-temperature data used by environmentalists toward the global-warming process omits climate fluctuations after
volcanic eruptions--e.g. St Helens and others--thus eliminating periods of data where broad regions experienced temperature drops of up to 4º centigrade; when you're dealing with averages, why cancel out factors?)
Now, what does all this have to do with atheism? Well, and it's only experiential, it seems that atheism demands a stricter objectivity in life than other ways of thinking. But given the number of myths that atheists blindly subscribe to, the criteria for excluding myths does, in fact, seem to be about gods. And, as we see at Sciforums, that atheistic rejection is primarily aimed toward the Abramic tradition, which the rest of the theistic world sees as just as whacked as the atheists tend to view it. Thus, broad rejections of mythical ideas are selective among atheists, who live--as the majority of people do--in ignorance of the myths they blindly subscribe to. Pick any one of these myths, and ask whether it's a factor in your life?
Or think of it this way:
• My high school was (and still is) settled on some of the best land in Tacoma, Washington, with a tremendous view of ... well, unfortunately a TJ Maxx parking lot. But yes, developers would kill for a chance to build condos there. Thus, what is most important: a peaceful, less-distracting, aesthetically-pleasing learning environment for upwards of a thousand young students a year, or the thousands and thousands of dollars you can make building condos and selling them without a thought to infrastructure, environment, or quality (as per the American way)?
Hey, there's a myth:
The American Way. Anyone care to figure what
that represents?
But there it is; the simple problem I had with my atheistic world was that there was nobody to share the magic with. It's a tragedy, all that beauty and beauty, being intangible, becomes a mere arrogance. I'm well aware that atheism isn't uniformly this soulless, but that's just part of another myth I have faith in, the
myth of human diversity. I could reject
that myth, but then atheists and all humans alike become worth nothing more than their weight in fertilizer for the daisies.
In the end, to be strictly objectivist, I can only conclude that the sample I have experienced in my life indicates that atheism is too clumsy in its rejection of the intangible, and too arbitrary in its acceptance, while also being too blind to tell the difference. It really does seem that the primary impetus of atheism, when identified, is aimed at a dominating religion--e.g. the Abramic experience--and thus seals itself primarily in that regard, and applying objectivity to myth according to a mythical definition of objectivity. That is, atheism is both arbitrary and selfish as a root philosophy. Of course, what one does with it is their own, but it's hardly a tribute to the intellect and morality of atheism when atheists say such things as the following
Proposition: Unless I happen to be God I have no right to make that determination of my fellow human being. And, since I'm not God...
Response: Well, I never understood that position. One, I'm an atheist. Two, I firmly believe it is not only our right but our duty to judge each other.
In addition to demonstrating an inability to communicate with one's human neighbors, what is the connection between (A) being atheist and (B) having enough knowledge to proactively seek people to judge? Certes, such a poster is not representative of the entirety of atheism (that diversity myth again) but what, then, separates the atheist from the theism rejected except a matter of labels? It is, if we explore further, the "knowledge" that
Judge not, and ye shall be crapped upon. This actually reminds me of something I see on freeways, all up and down the west coast of the US, at least: traffic bottlenecks.
That is, there's road construction somewhere up ahead. Theoretically, with three miles of warning, X number of cars
should be able to merge together and move in a clean flow through the bottleneck, reducing speed to 30 miles an hour in the interests of the safety of the roadworkers. We must understand, of course, that without this partial closure, you weill eventually suffer a full closure of the highway. Yet common-sense is not good enough for Johnny, who sees Phil race forward to get a better place in line, so Johnny whips into the closing lane, and races forward to merge in on Phil's tail so that the seventeen other cars between Johnny's original position and his merging point must come to a near-stop to avoid collisions. After about ... five or six of these incidents, the ripple effect has traffic stop-and-go all the way back past the original warning sign. So more people decide to "judge lest they be crapped on" and deem themselves important enough to break rank and force their way back into the line at the stake of someone's personal safety. The rush to judgement comes only because one judges themself that important. Washington, Oregon, California ... sure, we make fun of Canadian drivers, but come on, the drive east across Washington toward Idaho has one redeeming feature: if you hit road construction, you are statistically likely to be the only car in the line at that point. You'll see it in rush hour, too, people who are so upset at how slowly traffic is moving that they'll ask it to move even slower.
Just as people, fed up with a judgemental world, only contribute to the judgementalism.
Oh, yeah ... the judgement example comes from Goofy's
Prison Rape topic.
The only difference I mark between philosophies is the results thereof. Certainly Christianity could bring world peace, but how many bodies must we climb over to get there, and how many ideas must be reduced to nothing? Will that peace come when there is only one person left standing? Atheism, by my experience, can bring world peace, as well, but the world has already rejected Marxism as "too automatic", which point brings to mind considerations about the subjectivities of liberty, the myths thereof, and how atheists do or do not recognize such conditions.
Incidentally, it is worth noting that my theism qualifies as atheism if we apply older definitions, Diderot and Spinoza--vital to modern atheism--were reacting directly to Christianity, and Christianity itself was accused of being atheistic in its early days for having absolutely no coherent theology.
thanx much,
Tiassa
