To get to the bottom, to the core, of this conflict in perception and 'ruling idea' takes a bit of effort. I suggest that - essentially - the battles in our present - loosely understood as between atheism and theism - are continued battles that began some hundreds of years before, and which are part of a vast paradigm-shift. What interests me is the degree that 'most people' are unaware of what is happening
to them. Yet indeed something is being done. Consider the following from
The Rape of Lucrece:
For men have marble, women waxen, minds,
And therefore are they form'd as marble will;
The weak oppress'd, the impression of strange kinds
Is form'd in them by force, by fraud, or skill:
Then call them not the authors of their ill,
No more than wax shall be accounted evil
Wherein is stamp'd the semblance of a devil.
I suggest that it is crucial to take some steps back and to examine how an entire metaphysic, a way of being in the world, of relating to the world, and to being, has been undergoing a shift, a conscious or a willed shift on one hand, and a resultant, contingent, unavoidable shift on the other. There is both a conscious aspect and a more subterranean, unconscious 'will' in operation. If we are caught by unconscious force and do not and cannot really understand what is happening to us, and what is being imposed on us, I suggest we are the worse for it. Yet too 'ignorance is bliss': Knowledge is a heavy burden and demands much.
In argumentation - 'these days' - one notices that each polarised side attempts a devastating one-line destruction of the opponent's position. To render their distortions - their deliberate and conscious lies! - as transparent and obvious. But
“A lie that is half-truth is the darkest of all lies.”
And of course I am suggesting that both camps deceive themselves. But I would be forced to place myself in the 'theist' camp yet I would qualify that definition in so many layers of explanation that - to the atheist camp - they'd assume obfuscation and sophistry. The atheist camp, generally, cannot see the Ruling Ideas (and the perception-decisions this entails) that dominate their will and their intention. And to understand what they are up to - what they desire - one must, I submit, analyse to what end their will and their intention tends. Because isn't it true that each pole, in any argument, really represents a set of interests? If we cannot and do not come to understand what exactly we are advocating for, and why, and if some large aspect of it remains unknown to ourselves, it seems that our battles will be merely gory and violent and will lack warrior finesse and high skill.
I wish to suggest that the Atheistic Battle is an extension of The Rejection of Scholasticism in favour of another, a newer, a more practical mode of 'being in the world'. Scholasticism is complex but in simple terms it might be said to be: The imposition by the imagination of an Imagined Scenario on the Phenomena of The World. It can be intensely rational, and very intelligent! and thus deceptive. In fact, a great deal of our 'intellect' (as in
intellectus) is an historical endowment from the efforts of the Schoolmen.
[From
The Seventeenth Century Background by Basil Willey, 1934].
If you've managed to get through this, you will have noted that each position has its
raison d'être, its sane and sensible will and desire that it seeks to impose/enforce. And thus, I suggest, this entire 'conversation' is infected by misunderstanding, fear of deception by sophistry, deep historical suspicion, and blind
ressentiment which does not fully understand what it resists (and fears).
___________________________
- '...the infinite machine, beyond'
Indeed! I am thinking of Lacewing's emotional/metaphysical declarations about 'energy'.
What is interesting to consider - necessary to consider - is that both Scholasticism and all its declarations, and the new empirical quantifying method, are both erroneous! Or each contain errors, express errors. I am again reminded of Lacewing's
manoeuvre, which is not really her's but one of our age, to avoid making any decision because one (the soul, the person) senses that all decisions and hard-and-fast definitions will land one in their requisite errors.
I also suggest - it seems rather obvious - that we are in a transitional age where Idea, at the most basic level, and Idea that can connect all aspects of being (mind, soul, being, consciousness and physical structure) are
all up in the definitional air. But one thing that has not changed is the 'platform' in which we find ourselves: Eternal, constant, beyond comprehension.
You're just another anti-theist bigot.
