Letters to the Editor
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Is God a supernatural being?
How wearying it is to hear the same tiresome ideas trotted out about God. As Terry Eagleton remarked on the arguments of Richard Dawkins: "he is theologically illiterate."
God is not a supernatural being "somewhere" in the universe, or alongside the universe. He/she is not a supernatural being at all. If he/she exists at all, it is only as the mystery in which "we live and move and have our being."
To believe in God does not consist in thinking there is an extra supernatural being somewhere, it is about thinking that human things like love, justice, goodness or courage are not ultimately futile. Indeed, despite their claims of meaninglessness, many atheists continue to believe in such unprovable and unverifiable things as the love they have for their children or friends.
But aren't all of us just means of reproduction? What, then, is this strange insistence we seem to have in holding on to words like love?
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Pascal's New Wager
Pascal’s wager is that the safer course is to believe in God than not, that there’s nothing to lose by attaching yourself to the promise of Heaven over the inevitability of oblivion. But one of the many arguments against this philosophical pirouette is that deciding to believe in God arbitrarily, like flipping a switch in your mind, is absurd. There is a chasm of difference between believing because you believe and believing because you’ve told yourself you ought to. Mr. Wolpert has introduced a new sort of wager, but really it’s just the old one – believe because it’s good for you. But when you couple this with his rational arguments against the existence of religion, the schizophrenia becomes almost unbearable. All logic points in the direction of an empty heaven but we’re supposed to make ourselves believers nonetheless, which in our knowledge inflated world is becoming harder and harder to do. Mr. Wolpert, in this interview, appears to underestimate himself. He says, “I’m not trying to convert people out of religion,” but whatever his intentions, his arguments have an undeniable force behind them. Anyone who has dignity of his or her intellect, who is not willing to close eyes, plug ears and hum loudly when reason in the mind speaks out, will have a difficult hearing his arguments and staying the course in religion.
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had_enough:
So, you think even atheists are "religious"?!
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Less than Jake
How about Stalin, was he also "most definitely religious"?
I would say he was -- revolutionaries are political missionaries. They seek to overturn an existing order in pursuit of an idea or cause, in the pursuit of justice. Jesus was not a Caesar; he was a revolutionary.
Stalin was a theological seminarian before he dropped out for the heretical faith that was Marxism. Although people like to say "godless communism" as an epithet, really, Marxism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, and Maoism are all political faiths -- they conform to the very same human mechanisms that religious faiths use: prophets, holy books, heretics, fanatics, crusades, inquisitions, and so on. They even have a vision of Paradise (the so-called "Worker's State" -- conveniently dangled out in front of the flock). The Party is very much like the Church -- the enforcement arm of the faith.
From a Christian theological (or American political/economic) perspective, it could be convincingly argued that they worshipped a false god (although the truth or falsehood of a divinity is surely a political and demographic game -- had Communism won the Cold War, it would be "capitalist imperialism" that would be the heresy, versus Marxism).
The ultimate god of a political faith is the State -- and nationalism and fascism follow these courses, too, just for a different set of beliefs, a different type of state.
Communism wasn't atheistic, not truly -- it merely substituted "State" where "God" had previously resided; it was so vigorously opposed by the US was because it presented a rival faith, challenging "our way of life" -- capitalism and God, probably in that order.
People hamstring themselves when they try to think of Communism or Nazism as an example of atheism in action -- both ideologies had true believers, most definitely, with typically ghastly outcomes -- just like the true believers in every religion, when faced with infidels.
It's probably testament to the inextricability of belief in human life that even so-called "godless" political ideologies simply switch out symbols and create their own counterfaith. I think there is some self-negation in faiths that drives people to flock to them, which is why martyrs are so treasured and necessary to them.
The atheistic individual asks "why is it noble to sacrifice yourself (or others) for your faith?" -- we see it as a tragedy, as senseless violence and waste of lives.
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Slackie:
Thank you for telling me that Stalin went to seminary -- he was also an altar boy and his mom wanted him to be a priest -- that's why I took it completely out of the last question to had_enough: do you think atheists are "religious"?
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Back in the USSR
Hell, the Tsarist regimes in Russia, where Church and State were unified in the personage of the Tsar, where they ruthlessly ruled their populace (part of God's Russian Orthodox will for Russians), almost certainly paved the way for the USSR. Stalin was really just another Tsar, just serving a different God.
The ruthless authoritarianism of Bolshevism was probably a case of "best fit" given the culture of the Russians -- had the Russians been a society of atheists (instead of faithful, Orthodox Christians), they'd have likely told the Bolsheviks to blow it out their asses.
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@slackie
I think you're falling victim to the fallacy of mistaking the sign for the thing signified, the metaphor for the thing that inspired the metaphor. Stalin may have had something like religious zealotry for his political cause, it may have functioned in a way that suggests religion, but Marxism isn't a religion. It's a political philosophy. You're mistaking the map for the territory.
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Well, Slackie:
Do you think atheists are "religious"?
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Religion, atheism, and something else -
Charming, almost, an atheist coming up with a theory for the origin of God. Wolpert seems like quite a nice fellow.
Egolessness, whether manifested as enlightenment or inspiration or love, is the origin of religion, and also of the experience of a non-personal higher power, and is also accessible to atheists who continue as atheists. Perhaps it is no more than electrochemical brain activity. Cool, as they say. Accessing this activity with drugs, however, does raise questions about fanaticism and addiction; about, that is, other-direction and self-hate, which are inimical to healthy egolessness.
But there is no harm in anyone realizing the meaning and purpose of life inherent in experiencing life through organic electrochemical egolessness. Walking and meditation and doing art can provide a technology of transcendence, as the tranpersonal psych people say. Cool, as they say.
I'm not talking about the mystical fog which both the religious and the atheistic tend to poo-poo. I'm talking about experiencing one's unique irreplaceable aliveness through an electrochemistry that doesn't tend to occur in human brains preoccupied arguing about religion and atheism.
Best,
Monty
(More, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston"