7 posts tagged “atheism”

Over the few years that I have lived in the Happy Valley i have heard innumerable people voice that they preferred Karma over Dogma, often in a very condescending tone, or with a sneer on their face and voice. I'm sure many have seen the bumper sticker that says My Karma Ran Over Your Dogma. Since blogging on Vox, i have read many blogs and YouTube presentations blaming Communism's brutality not on a secular ideology, but on the fact that those dictators that ran these little carnivals of horror relied upon religious dogma. (Stalin, you know, was training to be a priest so its all Christianities fault-- it couldn't be that certain atheist understood that if God doesn't exist, everything and anything is permissible?)

So let us define our terms, shall we? My Mac laptop has a little dictionary, and that dictionary defines Dogma as: 
 

"A principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true: The Christian dogma of the Trinity/ the rejection of political dogma. Origin: mid 16th century: via late Latin from Greek Dogma, 'opinion,' from dokein, 'seem good, think.'

And Karma?

"(In Hinduism and Buddhism) the sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as defining their fate in future existences. Also, Informal destiny or fate, following as effect from cause. Origin: from Sanskrit karman, 'action, effect, fate.'

While we're at it, how bout the word ideology?

"1. a system of ideas or ideals, esp. one that forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy: the ideology of republicanism. Also: the ideas and manner of thinking characteristic of a group, social class, or individual: a critique of bourgeois ideology.Also: archaic visionary speculation, esp. of an unreasonable or idealistic nature.
2. archaic the science of ideas; the study of their origin and nature. Origin: Late 18th cent. (sense 2) : from French ideologie, from Greek idea, 'form, pattern' + logos (denoting discourse or compilation).

I can't really figure out the argument, truth be told. There has to be connotations that have been added to these words that i don't know about.

Dogma is easily understandable -- there are a core set of principles to anything that, when questioned and challenged, damages it irreparably as to make those challenged principles into something else entirely. I suppose the trouble is that authority has declared those said principles as dogma, as incontrovertible truths. Modern people have made rebellion against authority an assumption and a duty. The Church, secularists favorite target, is the big bad authority, based on tradition instead of progress, calls doctrine like the Incarnation, the Trinity, and the Resurrection dogma. But secularists have their own dogma, Evolution being the most obvious. Try being a biologist and challenge that "theory," and see where it gets ya. Try being a Communist and challenge the dogma of progress.

Karma can both benefit and come along and bite you in the ass. I have never understood the attraction that western people have with karma, except that is is something new and different from traditional western thought. There is a lived out ethic, and a very reassuring cause and effect kinda vibe happening here which vaguely echoes the Christian teaching of the last judgment. Mean people suck, and with this belief, mean people will get theirs. The problem, of course, is that everyone will do whatever is necessary to protect their self-interest and justify their actions in a lifetime, which means at the end of anyone's life they will have fucked up way more than they will have done what is right. Mother Theresa ministered to the dying untouchable caste in India precisely because no one else would -- why should they if they were getting exactly what they deserved from actions they had taken in a former lifetime? When hard times happen now with those people around me i don't hear a lot of people whose karma ran over the dogma stoically enduring as if they deserve their fate. What i hear from these folks is bitching and moaning about why bad things happen to good people...

Ideology is easily understandable as well. Ideology is a whole system of belief, and can be both good and bad. I personally love the political ideology of republicanism -- i like what the American founders were thinking when they wrote the US Constitution and set up the government. I happen to dislike Socialism as an ideology, and i hate Communism unconditionally and with savage abandon. Ideology, however, has its limits in real life situations, boundaries set because often ideologies are abstract and idealistic.

Dogma, karma, and ideology get bad raps mostly because of certain personalities that tend to thrive and obsess over them -- people who cling to them as a means to an ends, as the vehicles for their will-to-power. Dogma is set as incontrovertible truths, but that doesn't set those truths as something that cannot be examined and proved. Every theologian worth his or her salt throughout Christian history has had to come to grips with the central Christian dogmatics. Likewise those who would disregard without pity or sympathy the poor and the dying as those who deserve their karmic fate in order to persue their own goals. The same goes with ideologies. There are always those, like the Russian intelligentsia, that are willing to single-mindedly apply their ideology regardless of the immorality of their actions. The irony is, of course, that the temperament of these people, regardless dogma or ideology, are remarkably similar -- and once again, in the name of the greater good, bullshit reigns and blood flows..

As for me, sometimes its good to be on the road, and revisit highway 61.

 

"They [the Alliance] will swing back to the belief that they can make people better. I don't hold with that." Capt. Mal, Serenity

It has occurred to me that most of the ills inflicted upon people in this life has been done in the name of good. Many a crime against humanity has been done in the name of religion or progress. Or, as the falsely accused lead character in The Green Mile said, this world uses people's love to kill them (as the real killer used the love the two sisters had for each other in order to make them be quiet when he abducted them in order to rape and murder them). It is theology Sunday Wednesday ;o), and today's subject is Original Sin.

Classic orthodox theology has always taught that God created this world and everything in it, visible and invisible, and that He pronounced that creation, including mankind, as "good." This would be why Christians called the very first rebellion against God as a fall from grace and not an improvement (as the later gnostics would claim), and why Christians have never believed in a dualism between the material and the spirit. The fall of mankind may be likened to a priceless Ming Dynasty vase toppling and smashing onto the marble floor of the museum, after which the curator tries to put it back together with glue. Although the repaired vase can be identified as a vase, its integrity and wholeness has been shattered, and it is no longer the priceless vase it was. Man was made in the image of God, but that image has been shattered, and everyone is trying to repair themselves with Elmer's Glue.

The fall, the rebellion of man against God, was and is about power, about control. Genesis has Satan tempting the pair with the promise that they would be like God, knowing good and evil, that they would be equal to the Uncreated Himself -- they no longer would have to depend on God for their life and provision. Satan lied, of course, and instead of being equals with God we were cut lose as enemies, separated and alienated from He who is love, from He who made us. We have become our own god, and we will do whatever is necessary in order to insure our own survival and security -- for our own good.

We are all born this way, with this will to power hardwired into our human constitution, beyond DNA or RNA. We are the authors of our own misery, the victims of our delusions of grandeur. In the new Harry potter, as in TLOR, the two wizards are be tempted by power, and would be corrupted by that power in seeking to do good. Gandalf would use the Ring for Good, and end up being worse than Saurman; Dumbledore would dominate the Muggles with Grindelwald "for their own good.. for the greater good," and become much worse a tyrant than Voldemort.

I believe the new tyranny will come in the here and now are from those who seek to control/manipulate for the greater good, for the Public's safety. This is a very efficient way to tag and eventually bag everyone. Here in Massachusetts, everyone now has to have health insurance under threat of penalty, and no one can smoke anyplace public because the Democrats are so concerned about the health & wellbeing of each and every one of us. The Republicans would wage unending conflict in the Middle East for the security of the US and for every American's "way of life." I don't know about you, but i don't sleep better at night knowing that they are concerned about how i live my life. Sam Harris, Dawkins, and Hichens all want to ban religion from the world for the good of humanity, regardless of the concept of the freedom of religion written in the US Constitution or the fact that they are a sliver of a minority in the world. But let us not spare those "Christians" and members of other religions that want to impose their own morality on pretty much everyone else. Lord, please spare me the attention of all these people so concerned about my own good...

I'm with CS Lewis -- half the reason i think Christianity, the Christianity faithful handed down from the Apostles anyway, is true is because it is so counter intuitive to the will to power. Messiah Jesus says blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. In other words, blessed are the ethically and  religiously bankrupt, those who realize their condition to be catastrophic, who realize their total inability to heal or repair their inherited lack, or to impress God with their good works. If you would gain your life, says Jesus, you must first lose your life. This humiliation is such a contradiction to modern ears!  All that we have schemed and constructed and achieved for our security must be renounced; we must fling ourselves into God's hands and depend on Him to supply our needs instead of ourselves -- this is not music to our ears.

I'll be honest -- i think most of the people everyone else considers spokespeople for the "Christian Right" are just men or women who have hijacked religion for political purposes, to use to justify their will to power. Usually it isn't politics that need protection from religion, it is vise versa. I think of extremists "Muslims," militant atheists, ideology driven politicians from the Right and the Left and i don't think they represent what they claim they represent. We live in interesting days, eh?

It may sound strange, and the book cover may look like kinky porn, but one of my favorite authors is British philosopher and atheist John Gray, and his best work by far is Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals.

He is actually an atheist without an ideology, which pretty much places him in a category all his own. He takes atheism to its logical conclusion, which is something i respect:

Today the good life means making full use of science and technology -- without succumbing to the illusion that they can make us free, reasonable, or even sane. It means seeking peace -- without hoping for a world without war. It means cherishing freedom -- in the knowledge  that it is an interval between anarchy and tyranny. The good life is not found in dreams of progress, but in coping with tragic contingencies. We have been reared on religions and philosophies that deny the experience of tragedy. Can we live a life not founded on the consolations of action? Or are we too lax and coarse even to dream of living without them? p.194.

For Gray, the aim of life is not to change the world but it is instead to see it rightly. Gray claims that humans humans are not something special, they are part of the animal kingdom just as any other animal. "Modern Humanism is the faith that thru science humankind can know the truth -- and be set free. But if Darwin's theory is true of natural selection is true this is impossible. The human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth. To think otherwise is to resurrect the pre-Darwinian error (he means Christianity) that humans are different from all other animals" (p. 26).

I completely disagree with him, and he completely disagrees with me. Yet i find his thought and style to be very attractive and his argument irenic; i do not see him as the angry, aggressive, cynical, rationalistic, reductionist, ideologue as when i read Hitchen, Dawkins or 90% of pro atheist blogs right here on Vox.  What can i say? I recommend this book on my newly christened Literary Thursday!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, life is strange because life is good! The Mrs. is happy and challenged by her work, my best friend is moved to New York and is now within traveling distance, and i am very close to beginning to get some work done on the used computer i recently bought. Plus i am averaging about Two Offices a day and sometimes three or four -- it is good to have a regular diet of Scripture and prayer. Of course there is still stress and uncertainty, but what they hell, when won't there be?

I am also almost done with my book on the depression and WW II as part of my research for the beginning of my Kerouac book... it is, after all, literary Thursday!

I've been getting quite the kick out of the whole atheism debate that has been building over the last several years. At first i was a little concerned, as i HATE ideology, and this particular "ism" has been responsible for turning Eastern Europe, Russia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea, and China into one vast unmarked graveyard (and makes me thankful for the Second Ammendment, ironically brought to us by functioning atheists that were also humanists, such an animal as has never seen again here in the States since, unfortunately).

But now i am relaxed again, because i remember that most of these rationalists, these empirical, dateless, joyless wonders, are such a small part of the American culture as to be considered shades in a Greek tragedy, ghosts walking among us that occasionally make a racket before everyone forgets about them all over again. Over 90% of Americans believe that there is a God, and that God loves them. Figure the other 9.9% as agnostic, and you can kinda get a picture of just how small and elitist this bunch is, their influence far in disprorportion to their actual numbers. The ONLY reason numbnuts like Sam Harris or wingnuts like Dawkins are even on the cultural scene is because everyone considers their beliefs so outrageously insane that they are largely a curiosity, a novelty act that are promoted for their entertainment value. It turns out you think your hearing a human being talking, but it turns out to be only the wind in the leaves.

The question is not if God exists, it is how a world of deeply flawed people who believe differently and repeatedly falls for that old temptation, the will to power, can exist together in some type of workable tolerance. People are wired to worship -- hell, even Buddhism, which is atheism with spiritual trappings, isn't all that evangelical about denouncing people who believe in God -- which even atheists do, as instead of God they enshrine rationalism or the intellect, and bow down low, which makes them twice the hypocrits they denounce. Like Dylan said once, everyone serves somebody or something. So i will still glance over all those blogs written by atheists and tagged in the christian, christianity, or religion subjects, as otherwise, who would even care? But no more of my writing space will be used on this dead subject...

OK, so i am back--back to work, back to the union stuff, back to school. My knee is better, but it is still sore as hell. What is worse, i returned to find out i still work for morons. It is times like these when i am reminded of the Stoics. They believed that they shouldn't worry about any of the things that they could not control because expectations are the source of all misery. So i am going  to concentrate on letting go of the things that bug me, because my managers will be stupid no matter what actions i do or do not take. Take tomorrow -- please. The person who is supposed to help me tomorrow called out. So what if i run outy of product, I can still just sell coffee if i run out. Why worry or frett about whether i can restock or if there will be enough stuff for the night? Do i think i'm working for a commision?

It looks like i seriously need to lose some wieght if i am gonna have that opperation. I hate losing wieght, as i am compulsive and selfish by nature and hate to change any behavior or routine that i like or that gives me comfort. On the other hand, i have done this before, i have lost a serious amount of wieght when i found out the thyroid died. I also used to be an athlete, i actually used to have the discipline needed for this endevour.

I've been having a small debate, hardly worth mentioning, really, with a guy here on vox about athiesm and ethics. I thought about it today, about how our assumptions color our behavior. Many Christians claim that God exists and then they live like He doesn't, which is too bad, but there it is. This doesn't make them skeptics, or godless, or sociopaths, it just makes them hypocrits.  Many an athiest claims that God does not exist, and lives their lives  to a higher moral code than some Christians. What did Jagger sing in "Sympathy for the Devil?"  All the criminals are saints, all the saints are sinners? Life is full or paradox and contradictions.

Yet there is something to be said about ethic based upon "revelation" versus ethics based upon an inward subjectivism based upon rationalism. Believe it or not, most religious expressions, from the Egyptian Book of the Dead to the Bible to the Koran to the Sutras of Buddhism have simimiler ethical and moral cores. CS Lewis, in his book "The Abolition of man" has at the end a kind of universal Tao. Bad or misguided men and women may act something different, but they are judged by an unchanging standard, and few Christians could, with a straight face, justify the Crusades or the Spanish Inquisition. Although motivation may be complex, and the human heart far too devious to understand, actions are simple to interpret. Mercy is still mercy, even when the motives of the merciful are less than pure. One may spout Christian doctrine while in the midst of rape and murder, but thier own Scripture condemns them.

But for a system of ethics based purely on subjectivity and ego -- there are no firewalls. Why was Stalin or Hitler or Mao or Pol Pot a monster? Especially for someone inside the system? Why was it wrong for them to kill so many? Ideologically they had their justification. They had the power. Why were they wrong to do what they did if, from the rationalistic view, the ends will always in some way justify the means? I run into students and professors every day that say National Socialism, or Communism, is still a good idea, that these men simply distorted what Marx was saying. When atheist and Coimmunist historian Eric Hobsbawm was asked, "What it comes down to is saying that had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, the loss of fifteen, twenty million people might have been justified?" he immediately said yes... Yet what if, as many have done, argue that what these men did was simply cause and effect? That  far from these men being the exception, that they were the norm, that they were the logical results of men who assumed that there was no God -- Friedrick's ubermen? It made me value Robert Conquest's  history of the 20th century all the more.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, things are going well. The Wife and i are sharing this Mac, and we are at the place when it is no longer viable to share a laptop. I found a two year old 12" G4 Power Book (the grey ones) for $750, and placed a down payment on it. I have no idea how we will be able to pay for the rest, but often where there is a need there is a solution. This week i have a rough draft of my paper due, and the week after that  my paper is due for my other class. I need to finish this up-- i have over 20 pages written, but i need to edit everything a put in footnotes and a bibliography. Meanwhile, i am looking forward to services tomorrow -- God has been so good to me, and i and The Wife has been so happy the last two weeks. It is actually hard to write this without weeping... So, i guess its time to work on my paper.

 

You scored as Christianity.
Your views are most similar to those of Christianity. Do more research on Christianity and possibly consider being baptized and accepting Jesus, if you aren't already Christian. Christianity is the second of the Abrahamic faiths; it follows Judaism and is followed by Islam. It differs in its belief of Jesus, as not a prophet nor historical figure, but as God in human form. The Holy Trinity is the concept that God takes three forms: the Father, the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Ghost (sometimes called Holy Spirit). Jesus taught the idea of instead of seeking revenge, one should love his or her neighbors and enemies. Christians believe that Jesus died on the cross to save humankind and forgive people's sins.
Christianity 92% Judaism 67% Buddhism 63% Islam 50% Paganism 25% Hinduism 17% agnosticism 17% Satanism 8% atheism 0%

Wow. Can't say i was suprised.

I liked this test because it gives you an idea about just how sympathetic you might be to other religions. Although i already knew there are similar parallels in the big four as represented in the above, perhaps my use of the word "sympathy" isn't the right word. I really actually hate Buddhism, as i figure its just a spiritual way to be an atheist, and the 20th century was the bloodiest century in the history of humanity primarily from ideologies sringing directly from secular philosophy. Atheism isn't just real high on my list of approved "isms," i guess.

I forget the link i found this on... i was exploring vox and was looking on some wiccan chick's blog page and she had it linked up....

The Wife is in CT helping her mother move, which means i am batching it here till at least Friday. She was thoughtful enough to fix me up some chicken casserole. Whoo Hoo! I should have gotten more work done today, but what can i say, the freedom was intoxicating. I got to watch the 3rd season of "That Seventies Show." This is my guilty vice, watching TV seasons on DVD. I have Northern Exposer, Wings, Battlestar Galactica, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files, Veronica Mars, and Arrested Development. That and wiping out a whole bag of whoppers made to look like Easter eggs...

I did get to write a bit of my Kerouac paper, but i gotta admit my mind was elsewhere. It is so fricking hard to concentrate these days. Besides, the one where Eric gets a Woodstock tatooed on his ass by Tommy Chong is fricking funny. Tomorrow the games continue in the NCAA Tourney, which of course means i'll probably get less work done tomorrow than i did today.

I'm reading The Existential Joss Whedon: Evil and Human Freedom in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, and Serenity at work, which has turned out much better than it actually sounds. Their thesis is that most Americans share the Russian existentialism of the Russian philosopher Lev Shestov's postulation that "Freedom  consists in the force and power not to admit evil into the world" (Athens and Jerusalm, 1966). The authors link rationalism and evil with the Genesis story, that the tree of good and evil was based upon knowledge, which is original sin. "What we are exploring here is one of the deeper reasons the youth of America have almost unconsciously been drawn to the Buffyverse. It provides teens raised in secular homes with much needed mythos which sureptitiously includes the Biblical story of the genesis of evil through partaking of the tree of knowledge. It encourages us to smell the rat in the logo-ratio secular, the rat in the rational. Youth raised in more fundamentalist religious households also find the Buffyverse strangely compelling, for it allows them to rebel against the narratives their parents find sacred without rejecting the values and mythos found in those texts." Its been an interesting read, and it kinda makes me smile when i think of an out and out athieist reading Shestov on just exactly how binding the law of non-contradiction is -- Sam Harris would pretty much shit his pants.

Well, tomorrow is another day, and Donna and Eric hgave broken up over a promise ring, bringing an end to season three. Will those two crazy kids eventually end up together? I'll just have to watch season four...