Atheism: The Case against God

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

It is my firm conviction that man has nothing to gain, emotionally or otherwise, by adhering to a falsehood, regardless of how comfortable or sacred that falsehood may appear. Anyone who claims, on the one hand, that he is concerned with human welfare, and who demands, on the other hand, that man must suspend or renounce the use of his reason, is contradicting himself. There can be no knowledge of what is good for man apart from knowledge of reality and human nature—and there is no manner in which this knowledge can be acquired except through reason. To advocate irrationality is to advocate that which is destructive to human life.

While this sort of statement is inarguable to those who desire and want to receive its *truth*, and who have decided that any notions of God and such are unreal and should be done away with (by sane, rational persons in the 21st Century), the more interesting issue or question is to seek out and discover what, exactly, is being resisted and what exactly is to be done away with.

The entire nature of the relationship of God-to-man and man-to-God that is described in the primary document of the Occident, the Hebrew bible, and the god-concept that is now being resisted (and some part of this for good reason, in my view), is a quite general idea: It is really a paradigm of experience. Essentially it is a shamanic idea, or to put it more accurately, it is modelled on the shamanic initiation events. Some here may have studied shamanism to one degree or another, but what happens to a shaman is that through strange events which occur in his dream-life, or come through configurations of outer events (omens, signs, mysterious visitations), and very importantly through what is called shamanic sickness or the shamanic healing-crisis (the shaman may discover he suffers a terrible ailment the cure for which is to heed the spirit helper and to undertake the entire path of being a shaman, which is to say a healer to his people since all shaman are healers of one sort or another), the shaman is forced to enter a path of relationship to his guiding spirit, or the great spirit, or God.

• "Get thee out of thy thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will show thee." [Abraham]

The same model appears again with Moses and certainly with each of the prophets. In each case it is a dramatic inner experience, not a shared or communal experience, which calls. And then there are various levels of initiation and induction. It is certainly quite possible, now, and also at any time, to see this sort of experience as a kind of madness. For in fact it is! The ethnographic literature on shamans, say the Siberian originals (the post-Ice Age sorts), or the South American jungle variety, all share a great deal of commonality: They are called into the service of their people by a series of dramatic events, or a healing crisis which incapacitates them and introduces them to the process of rebuilding of the interior man. In some shamanic literature the shaman, in dream or vision, sees himself dismembered, and his spirit-helper in some instances takes his bones apart, scrapes and polishes his bones, or turns them into crystal or metal, and then reassembles the man. There is dismemberment, but then there is rebuilding, or coming back together in a new way.

I suggest that the Christian model usually follows this paradigm, and often to a 'tee': The individual has a healing crisis and comes to a bottom-out point where he just can't manage any longer. He surrenders to his guides and powers and, after the death and rebirth cycle, is then reassembled as a 'new man'. This is rebirth. This is a new opportunity. And it is also a recurrent pattern in everyone's life, in one way or another.

In order for there to be such an 'inner experience', there has to be an 'inner man'! And so the whole possibility of spiritual life is a matter of the inner man and what he senses, understands, feels, perceives, and responds to.

So, and if this model is 'real' and considerable, I think it suggests that, in fact, no one is really outside of the core of this prototype of experience, though it will not in some cases be understood as being God-to-man. The form seems to remain, and I suggest it is a universal constant, but the symbols and the events associated with it vary.

What is the advantage of 'it'? One advantage is that - as in the case of the Hebrews (and almost all other instances) - it induces a person to 'cast their fate to the wind', or to take steps, or to begin dramatic journeys, inner and outer, and to place the very person and the personality on the line. For what? That of course is the core of the question. As long as we are in bodies we have to deal with the fact we are embodied. This is often not as easy, or not as easy to accept, as one imagines. On one hand people desire to escape 'their condition', but then they also seek to transform their conditioning, and to dream radical new circumstances.

In this sense, though this is not a popular interpretation, it is the Christian Vision that has birthed Occidental culture, and every level of 'dream' and 'vision' which has been brought into this world. I include there all aspects of experience, in all domains of activity, from the visionary-poetic to the material-scientific. We are the OUTCOME of visionary experience, and of the Inner Man's being called to dramatic life-experience which has the power to transform that small, individual life, but which also has transformed cultural life, social life, and the entire platform of our existence.

Thus, and seen in this way, we must not do away with the possibility of inner experience of the inner man, but we evidently must make it even more real and more relevant NOW.

It is this entire description, this unfolding of the possibility of experience, which the writer of the above paragraph just cannot take into consideration. These ideas, these possibilities, and certainly this level of experience, is closed to his consciousness. But for those who have lived in these spaces, who have been stopped, ground up, reconstituted, and refashioned, well these know what is being talked about!

[The Inglorious One]

In order for there to be such an 'inner experience', there has to be an 'inner man'! And so the whole possibility of spiritual life is a matter of the inner man and what he senses, understands, feels, perceives, and responds to.

I used that particular excerpt because it really highlights, I think, my quarrel atheism: not because it denies the existence of God, but because it denies or resists the inner life.

Given all the data we have regarding how the brain works, it is simply absurd to claim knowledge of reality and human nature can be be acquired only by reason. Smith does this throughout his book. But don't get me wrong:

(2081.4) It required a great power, a mighty influence, to free the thinking and living of the Western peoples from the withering grasp of a totalitarian ecclesiastical domination. Secularism did break the bonds of church control, and now in turn it threatens to establish a new and godless type of mastery over the hearts and minds of modern man. The tyrannical and dictatorial political state is the direct offspring of scientific materialism and philosophic secularism. Secularism no sooner frees man from the domination of the institutionalized church than it sells him into slavish bondage to the totalitarian state. Secularism frees man from ecclesiastical slavery only to betray him into the tyranny of political and economic slavery.

(2081.5) Materialism denies God, secularism simply ignores him; at least that was the earlier attitude. More recently, secularism has assumed a more militant attitude, assuming to take the place of the religion whose totalitarian bondage it onetime resisted. Twentieth-century secularism tends to affirm that man does not need God. But beware! this godless philosophy of human society will lead only to unrest, animosity, unhappiness, war, and world-wide disaster.

(2081.6) Secularism can never bring peace to mankind. Nothing can take the place of God in human society. But mark you well! do not be quick to surrender the beneficent gains of the secular revolt from ecclesiastical totalitarianism. Western civilization today enjoys many liberties and satisfactions as a result of the secular revolt. The great mistake of secularism was this: In revolting against the almost total control of life by religious authority, and after attaining the liberation from such ecclesiastical tyranny, the secularists went on to institute a revolt against God himself, sometimes tacitly and sometimes openly.

(2081.7) To the secularistic revolt you owe the amazing creativity of American industrialism and the unprecedented material progress of Western civilization. And because the secularistic revolt went too far and lost sight of God and true religion, there also followed the unlooked-for harvest of world wars and
international unsettledness.

[Hobbes' Choice]

This guy calls himself a philosopher? Where did he get his credentials? Did he find it buried in a kitty litter box? There is so much wrong with that one paragraph that it does not even rise up to the level of ludicrous. First of all, a belief that comforts is a gain for the believer whether or not that belief is true, and to rob the believer of that comfort without giving him or her something to fill the void is an act of cruelty.

And you think this is satisfactory? Have you no respect for yourself or the truth?

Secondly, what is the good of man? Is the good of man necessarily good for the cosmos?

Your reason has obviously escaped you; this does not relate to the passage. HINT: this is a good example of why your first point is empty.

Third, if atheism is right, man is a rationalizing creature, not a rational one. His mind evolved to survive, not to discern what is real—which means Smith's 'firm conviction' is no more legitimate than a religious fanatic's claim to truth.
Have any of the atheists here read it? Any favorite excerpts you'd like to share?

Rationalism is an artefact of culture, not evolution. Three thousand years of thinking have honed reason. You are a key example of the out-of-date thinking that preceded rationalism. You also, incidentally misunderstand natural selection, but then since you believe in god you have no reason to adopt a correct and working understanding of it.

[Hobbes' Choice]

to rob the believer of that comfort without giving him or her something to fill the void is an act of cruelty

I am an atheist but that has absolutely no negative bearing on me at all either emotionally or philosophically
However if believing in God brings one comfort so be it just as long as this does not impact upon anyone else

Except that in religion the first casualty is truth.

[The Inglorious One]

There is no reason at all to respond to comments that ignore what neuroscience has to say about human 'rationality,' but there is some confusion about my criticism of Smith's usage of the word 'good.' Smith states “There can be no knowledge of what is good for man apart from knowledge of reality and human nature...” without telling us―anywhere in the book, for that matter—what 'good' is or how it is measured. To make the statement 'knowledge of what is good for man' meaningful, he must

examine the motives that influence conduct: pleasure, well-being, happiness, duty, obligation, moral law, etc. The supreme determining factor in all such considerations will obviously be the ultimate end of man, whatever this may be: his destiny as revealed by a study of his nature and place in the universe. ~ Peter Coffey, Ontology or the Theory of Being.

Smith does not do this anywhere in his book--though he certainly thinks he does by reducing values to the intellect and ignoring the elephant in the room. Smith does not know, or even cares to know, what the good of man is.

But I asked atheists here whether they've read his book and to share any favorite excerpts—just as theists share excerpts that are meaningful to them. Clearly, none here have read the book in spite of its popularity among atheists. The excuse, I'm sure, is that they don't let anyone do their thinking for them. That excuse, however, doesn't fly because unless they explore what ideas others have to offer, they are not “free thinkers,” but “stuck-in-a-rut” thinkers.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

That is a good angle to pursue: the question of 'the good'. My impression of the opponents of a religious perspective, or those who refuse a means to a definition of divinity as a foundation within the created, existent world, is that they desire to dominate the possession of the notion of 'good' and assume that they own it, control it, define it, and even understand it. This stems from 17th century assumptions and not all of them are 'wrong' or 'bad'. It all has to be sorted through carefully and what we see on this forum is that when 'they' are called to the task they balk. They don't have the background to participate in the fuller and wider conversation.

Additionally, they suppose they can dominate the notion of 'reason', 'rationality' and ratiocination. They understand the processes of scientism, and the scientistic mind, and hold it up as an example of 'rationality'. But in actual point of fact this is not quite the truth. Just as we require a definition of the 'good' to be able to proceed in defining 'good life', we also need to define what we mean when we say 'reason' and 'rationality'.

First, what they mean is something more akin to 'mechanical mind' or 'mathematical mind', and this means a mind ordered around the assembly and the analysis of facts and figures and quotients. Yet life itself, in its fullness and wideness - and this is obvious to anyone and this is also one reason why 'they' have no argument against it when it is brought out - certainly requires the use of reason except that this reason is not at all the mathematical reasoning that they desire to privilege. It has not ever been that (historically, and in all cultural settings) and all 'wisdom' and mature idea has never been of this newer, mathematical sort.

Reasoning, I would suggest, is the endeavour and the activity that defines man, and it is infinitely more than just analysis of facts and that sort of robot-like or even insect-like 'reasoning' that most people engage in and assume they have attained man's highest capabilities. I would suggest - and Coleridge developed these ideas of course - that reason is a spiritual trait, a spiritual capacity. It involves man's mind, his reason (normally understood), his heart and emotions, his imagination, and his intuition and his sensitivity as a human person. It requires the inner man. If this is so, I would further suggest that one cannot therefor reason without the inner man, and this puts a great deal of emphasis, all over again, on that inner man.

The classical 'atheist' is a person who seems, largely, outside of the domain of reasoning as I have defined it. If reason is man's highest faculty and if it is reason that is defined as man's most powerful tool and even his salvation, then I certainly suggest that those who attempt to claim and own the term do not understand it, and do not have it. They certainly do not have any right to possess and to define the use of the term nor its real content.

It then becomes a question: What do we mean by 'reason'? What does it mean to 'reason' about life at the highest levels? Who can be said to undertake reasoning of this sort? And to what degree is consciousness of divinity, or a relationship to divinity through the 'inner man' a part-and-parcel of reasoning?

[The Inglorious One]

In talking about atheism and morality, Smith says:

Because man is free to choose his actions, because he is not biologically programmed to act in a given manner, he requires a code of values—a system of principles—to direct his choices. Man's volitional nature necessitates that he choose to think and act in order to survive.

Man's purposive nature means that man is goal-directed, that he is not (and cannot be) bound to perceptual, range-of-the-moment responses. Since man is faced with alternatives, and since he is free to choose among them, if he conceptualizes his choice he must think in terms of purpose. A value preference (as it applies to and motivates human action) necessarily implies a goal or end—namely, the object, process or state that is valued.

To summarize these three elements: man's conceptual capacity is his ability to think in terms of principles; man's volition necessitates that he think in terms of principles; and man's purposiveness determines the content of those principles.

It is not enough for a man to know only of the abstract role of principles in human survival; one must be able to determine concretely, within the context of one's own life, how to achieve the values required for one's physical and mental well-being. If man is to achieve goals, he must have some have some method of predicting which actions are conducive to those goals. This is the function of standards. A standard is a principle used to predict the consequences of one's actions.

This is interesting for two reasons: it is exactly what any thinking theist would say and be heavily criticized for saying it (at least in this forum), and it puts him in a very precarious position. Alan Watts explains in Behold the Spirit:

Either the living God is, or he is not. Either the ultimate Reality is alive, conscious and intelligent, or it is not. If it is, then it is what we call God. If it is not, it must be some form of blind process, law, energy or substance entirely devoid of any meaning save that which man himself gives to it. Nobody has ever been able to suggest a reasonable alternative. To say that Reality is quite beyond thought, and therefore cannot be designated by such small, human terms as “conscious” and “intelligent” is only to say that God is immeasurably greater than man. And the theist will agree that he is infinitely greater. To argue that Reality is not a blind energy but a “living principle,” an “impersonal super-consciousness,” or an “impersonal mind” is merely to play with words and indulge in terminological contradictions. A “living principle” means about as much as a black whiteness, and to speak of an “impersonal mind” is like talking about a circular square. It is the result, of course, of misunderstanding the word “personal” as used of God—as if it meant that God is an organism, form, or composite structure like man, something resembling Haeckel’s “gaseous vertebrate.” But the word is not used at all in that sense. From many points of view the term “personal” is badly chosen, but it means simply that God is alive in the fullest possible way.

If the ultimate Reality is indeed a blind energy or process devoid of inherent meaning, if it is merely an unconscious permutation and oscillation of waves, particles or what not, certain consequences follow. Human consciousness is obviously a part or an effect of this Reality. We are bound, then, to come to one of two conclusions. On the one hand, we shall have to say that the effect, consciousness, is a property lacking to its entire cause—in short, that something has come out of nothing. Or, on the other hand, we shall have to say that consciousness is a special form of unconsciousness—in short, that it is not really conscious. For the first of these two conclusions there neither is nor can be any serious argument; not even a rationalist would maintain the possibility of an effect without a sufficient cause. The main arguments against theism follow, in principle, the second conclusion—that the properties and qualities of human nature, consciousness, reason, meaning, and the like, do not constitute any new element or property over and above the natural and mechanical processes which cause them. Because Reality itself is a blind mechanism, so is man. Meaning, consciousness, and intelligence are purely arbitrary and relative terms given to certain highly complex mechanical structures.

But the argument dissolves itself. If consciousness and intelligence are forms of mechanism, the opinions and judgements of intelligence are products of mechanical (or statistical) necessity. This must apply to all opinions and judgements, for all are equally mere phenomena of the mechanical world-process. There can be no question of one judgement being more true than another, any more than there can be question of the phenomenon fish being more true than the phenomenon bird. But among these phenomena are the judgements of the rationalist, and to them he must apply the logic of his own reasoning. He must admit that they have no more claim to truth than the judgements of the theist, and that if rationalism is true it is very probably not true. This is intellectual suicide—the total destruction of thought—to such a degree that even the rationalist’s own concepts of mechanism, unconscious process, statistical necessity, and the like, also become purely arbitrary and meaningless terms. To hold such a view of the universe consistently, one must separate oneself, the observer, from it. But this cannot be done, for which reason a contemporary philosopher has complained that man’s subjective presence constitutes the greatest obstacle to philosophical knowledge!

Now this is pure nonsense. Man’s subjective presence is, of course, the very condition of knowledge both of the universe and of God. It is precisely the existence of man in the universe as a conscious, reflecting self that makes it logically necessary to believe in God. A universe containing self-conscious beings must have a cause sufficient to produce such beings, a cause which must at least have the property of self-consciousness. This property cannot simply “evolve” from protoplasm or stellar energy, because this would mean that more consciousness is the result of less consciousness and no consciousness. Evolution is, therefore, a transition from the potential to the actual, wherein the new powers and qualities constantly acquired are derived, not from the potential, but from a superior type of life which already possesses them.

Watts is wrong in one respect: some rationalists do maintain the possibility of an effect without a sufficient cause.

___________________

...one cannot therefor reason without the inner man, and this puts a great deal of emphasis, all over again, on that inner man.

This is why anyone who tries to marginalize or ignore the "emotional elephant" should investigate what neuroscience has to say about what happens when people suppress it: it saps the will. This might go a long way toward explaining what is happening in Europe today.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

That is a great quote of Watts. I liked this especially:

• But among these phenomena are the judgements of the rationalist, and to them he must apply the logic of his own reasoning. He must admit that they have no more claim to truth than the judgements of the theist, and that if rationalism is true it is very probably not true. This is intellectual suicide—the total destruction of thought—to such a degree that even the rationalist’s own concepts of mechanism, unconscious process, statistical necessity, and the like, also become purely arbitrary and meaningless terms. To hold such a view of the universe consistently, one must separate oneself, the observer, from it. But this cannot be done, for which reason a contemporary philosopher has complained that man’s subjective presence constitutes the greatest obstacle to philosophical knowledge!

It is a harder path in this sense to define God and divinity and *meaning* and all the rest than to abandon it. I think I understand fairly well why people choose to abandon the endeavor though. With good, solid reasoning as Watt's is one is encouraged to stick with it.

Great stuff. I'll have to get the book.

[Arising_uk]

...religion deals with eternal and cosmic values. ...

Such as?

[Arising_uk]

... The rational mind is like a mouse riding an emotional elephant. The mouse can train the elephant, but it cannot command it and it cannot suppress it without detrimental effects on the entire being. ...

I can understand why you wish this to be the case as you wish to promote faith and unreason but the rational mind understands that a rational thought is one that integrates the emotions along with the other representations of the thought, they are not opposed but synchronised.

[The Inglorious One]

Gustav, the book is available in Kindle.

[The Inglorious One]

... The rational mind is like a mouse riding an emotional elephant. The mouse can train the elephant, but it cannot command it and it cannot suppress it without detrimental effects on the entire being. ...

I can understand why you wish this to be the case as you wish to promote faith and unreason but the rational mind understands that a rational thought is one that integrates the emotions along with the other representations of the thought, they are not opposed but synchronised.

What relevance does your complaint have unless you address the proverbial elephant in the room, i.e., the excerpt from Watts' Behold the Spirit? The answer: none.

The will to disbelieve is no less part of the human condition than the will to believe.

The will-to-disbelieve, if given a free rein, would at last involve us in a depth of scepticism indistinguishable from complete cowardice. But in actual life it never goes to this length, except in the world of pure dialectics and in asylums for the insane.

• -- Lawrence Pearsall Jacks, Religious Perplexities

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

I can understand why you wish this to be the case as you wish to promote faith and unreason but the rational mind understands that a rational thought is one that integrates the emotions along with the other representations of the thought, they are not opposed but synchronised.

There can be said to exist a non-reasoning faith. But so is there a similar non-reasonable, or automatic, or lower-level, style of reasoned thinking. Not all thinking is necessarily good thinking, or complete thinking. So, reasoned thinking is not easily attainable and may not even be that common. It seems to me that good thinking is far more complex than it appears.

I cannot any longer accept the false dichotomy between faith and reason. Faith as I now understand it involves reason, but reason of a higher sort. To attempt to establish that faith - which means many different things and involves many different parts of a man - is unreasonable, unreasoned, or standing in opposition to faith, is a form of a lie, and I now tend to think that it all hinges on the quality of the person, his aptitude, his fullness as a human person. At a higher level - the level I desire to define and locate my self - reason and faith work together. Good use of reason brings one toward faith, and faithfulness does not negate or suppress reason.

[Arising_uk]

... The rational mind is like a mouse riding an emotional elephant. The mouse can train the elephant, but it cannot command it and it cannot suppress it without detrimental effects on the entire being. ...

I can understand why you wish this to be the case as you wish to promote faith and unreason but the rational mind understands that a rational thought is one that integrates the emotions along with the other representations of the thought, they are not opposed but synchronised.

What relevance does your complaint have unless you address the proverbial elephant in the room, i.e., the excerpt from Watts' Behold the Spirit? The answer: none.

Where have I complained?

My point is simple, you claimed the intellect is a mouse upon an emotional elephant with the implication that the elephant is in charge but the mahout works with the elephant and the elephant does, by-and-large what the mouse wills.

If you want Spinoza's 'God' or even Zuse's and Fredkin's I'm fine and dandy with that, I'm just puzzled why most theists insist upon talking about this unknowable entity?

The will to disbelieve is no less part of the human condition than the will to believe.

And yet if you don't teach the children about a 'God' they'd be just as happy believing it's all fairies, goblins and santa claus?
p.s.
You still haven't said who these 'they' are that are threatening your culture nor what these cultural values are that you think are under threat?

[Arising_uk]

There can be said to exist a non-reasoning faith. But so is there a similar non-reasonable, or automatic, or lower-level, style of reasoned thinking. Not all thinking is necessarily good thinking, or complete thinking. So, reasoned thinking is not easily attainable and may not even be that common. It seems to me that good thinking is far more complex than it appears. ...

Depends what you mean by 'good' thinking? I have it as the processes involved in attaining one's goals, you?

I cannot any longer accept the false dichotomy between faith and reason. Faith as I now understand it involves reason, but reason of a higher sort. To attempt to establish that faith - which means many different things and involves many different parts of a man - is unreasonable, unreasoned, or standing in opposition to faith ...

did you mean reason here?

, is a form of a lie, and I now tend to think that it all hinges on the quality of the person, his aptitude, his fullness as a human person ...

Depends, as faith as described by the Church(and most theist religious institutions) is something the laity have to take upon the word and not question. Now they do say that faith can be arrived at by scripture or revelation, the former is something that they reserve for themselves and the latter they tend to abhor. So is your point that the Churches should be disbanded?

At a higher level - the level I desire to define and locate my self - reason and faith work together. Good use of reason brings one toward faith, and faithfulness does not negate or suppress reason.

You appear to already prejudge that to not have faith is bad reasoning?