Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Nov 05, 2022 3:45 am
In a Godless world, there is no objective basis for morals. Ask Dostoevsky...or if you don't like him, read Nietzsche. The two couldn't have been more diametrically opposed in ideology, but both said it is true.
And it is. You can realize it is, if you think carefully. It might be put like this.
The cosmos is an accident (meaning a "happening" without intention or telos). Accidents have no opinions -- about morals or anything else. Therefore, the cosmos has no moral opinions.
Yes, it seems to be true: there is no *objective* basis for morals and moral systems. That is, if the natural world is taken as the model or the example. The world is amoral. Or, if there are morals and ethics they are of the sort that rule and dominate in the natural world. In that world preying upon surrounding creatures is encouraged and every aspect of the *natural mind* is a mind focused on outsmarting other creatures in order to consume them. The predator stays one step ahead of the prey but the predator also exerts a pressure on the prey to become more adept at avoiding predation.
Like it or not, accept it or not, it seems clear to me that these rules very much function in our human world. It is also true that these rules, these realities, are "appalling" to people when they realize what sort of a system they actually live in.
If a 'model of god' or a 'picture of god' were to be created as a reflection of the natural world, and the cosmos, it would not be the sort of god-image that grips your imagination. I think this is the problem that the planet faces in this present, unfolding time-frame. The former 'pictures' are no longer sufficient as explanatory models. The former models are rooted in a radically different time-frame.
So it seems to me that people hold to them out of habit but also out of *desperation*. Desperation has a special inflection in my use of the term. It means clinging to something because letting go of it would result in a 'loss of ground' and would have psychological consequences. So it seems to me that, knowing this, feeling this, people seek to bolster their position through an attempt to strengthen their *belief* in the old systems. It seems to become a process of *denial*. Denial of what they actually know, at an internal level, to be true.
I think that what happens as a result of that inner conflict is that people seem to go in one of two directions: one, toward the strengthening or bolstering of a belief-system that is actually fading away; and two to a position that is defined as 'atheism'. I see both as *strategies* and that word also has a special meaning.
In my own case
I do not judge a person who takes the atheistic stance. It is quite possible to live very well as an atheist. It is similarly possible to live wretchedly as a *believer*. In the end (it seems to me) the specific stance or the *declared position* does not matter as much as one would think. However, when an entire culture has lost its metaphysical grounding -- when *the horizon* gets erased and there is nothing to replace it -- then, as we all seem to know, nihilism as a sort of disease looms. So the *loss of faith* is not something without consequences.
Similarly, I observe a person like yourself -- a religious fanatic -- who seems to me to grip *belief* with such intensity that it deforms the intelligence and indeed deforms the personality. What you have in the end, and your argument follows an established pattern that does not vary, is *the curse*. "You'll see" "Just wait" "one of will be right and one of us will be wrong" and of course behind this threat is the
imago that you wield of a torturous hell-realm. You say "it's not me!" wielding this
imago and yet
it really is!
If you have bothered to read anything I have written you'd know that I do not regard the idea as flatly false but I do look at it through a different lens. The Christian picture is stark, binary, and in a sense *ruthless*. I believe that it
reflects a truth but needs to be better stated. I have written about this extensively. I doubt that you have bothered to read. Also, you
cannot read. You can't assimilate any idea that does not conform to your
idees-fixes. You distort everything.
Simply put, the world that we create by our actions and attitudes is the world that we will (eventually) have to live in. And we will continue to live in the result of our choices until we opt to change how we act and what we create. That seems to me to be a far more realistic view because we all verify this in our own lives. We see that our actions result in undesirable outcomes and we resolve, if we are able, to change our behavior.
I take Dostoevsky and Nietzsche as harbingers of "real things". That is, of nihilism that results from the falling away of systems of description that no longer match *the world* perceived and understood. In my view though it will not be possible to hunker down into an Old System that is no longer adequate or, to put it differently, it will only work for awhile. Eventually a given person and a person who has, let's say, crossed a certain threshold of awareness, will have to approach the new situation as a mature, thoughtful person. So, I do not see "leaving behind" the Old System as a bad thing necessarily. Though I do recognize that many people cannot handle what this entails. So, I recognize that some people really need the *container* of a belief-system and, as I say, will do all they can as a strategy to protect it, to strengthen as it were the shell.
I have said many times that "I am here for my own purposes". This all has a great deal or relevance and importance for me
personally. In my own case what now interests me, or what has risen up in my vision and perspective, is the degree to which we all live in systems of perception that are created and controlled by others for social, political and other reasons.
So, the question that looms -- for me -- is an interesting one. I ask myself "What is the
purpose of involvement in a religious practice and observance?" If I am, let's say, naturally inclined toward such, what is it really that I am trying to achieve? Or what would I like to be the result of it?
Frankly, I am right in the midst of concretizing my answer.
What interests me about your perspective -- and I admit that to encounter someone so radically involved in a fanatical perspective as you seem to be has forced me to examine fanaticism as an act of desperation -- is that your object is this thing you call 'salvation': to be freed from the consequences of sin (is how you put it).
That is your object. Everything else that follows from that is
provisional in a strong sense.
Is my
object (my stated *purpose*) different from yours?
I would say that in some sense no, it isn't. But I definitely do not believe that your religious system or your methodology is 'the only way' (as you regularly put it with John 14:6) To hold to such a view is, in my view, to wrap oneself in Hebrew idea imperialism (as I have said so many times). It is not the right way to go.
The only right way is the training of the soul, the training of the person, in those ways that lead to leading an honorable and upstanding life. I mean that when one examines the issue closely there is really no other alternative. You -- a given person -- will either become involved in such a project and live their life in relation to that objective (that purpose) or one will not.
But I do reject the idea, stated by many Evangelicals, of a salvation granted by a supernatural being as if a magic wand were waved that 'saves' one from one's own consequential actions. Or from a corrupt world. Or from *original sin*.
The picture, then, of what a purposeful, upstanding, decent and committed life is -- it really does begin to change.
