Posted on 04/05/2009 8:10:35 PM PDT by betty boop
The Atheist Perversion of Reality
By Jean F. Drew
Atheism we have always had with us it seems. Going back in time, what was formerly a mere trickle of a stream has in the modern era become a raging torrent. Karl Marx’s gnostic revolt, a paradigm and methodology of atheism, has arguably been the main source feeding that stream in post-modern times.
What do we mean by “gnostic revolt?” Following Eric Voëgelin’s suggestions, our definition here will be: a refusal to accept the human condition, manifesting as a revolt against the Great Hierarchy of Being, the most basic description of the spiritual order of universal reality.
The Great Hierarchy is comprised of four partners: God–Man–World–Society, in their mutually dynamic relations. Arguably all the great world religions incorporate the idea of this hierarchy. It is particularly evident in Judaism and Christianity. One might even say that God’s great revelation to us in the Holy Bible takes this hierarchy and the relations of its partners as its main subject matter. It has also been of great interest to philosophers going back to pre-Socratic times — and evidently even to “anti-philosophers” such as Karl Marx.
In effect, Marx’s anti-philosophy abolishes the Great Hierarchy of Being by focusing attention mainly on the God and Man partners. The World and Society partners are subsidiary to that, and strangely fused: World is simply the total field of human social action, which in turn translates into historical societal forms.
Our principal source regarding the Marxist atheist position is Marx’s doctoral dissertation of 1840–1841. From it, we can deduce his thinking about the Man partner as follows:
(1) The movement of the intellect in man’s consciousness is the ultimate source of all knowledge of the universe. A human self-consciousness is the supreme divinity.
(2) “Faith and the life of the spirit are expressly excluded as an independent source of order in the soul.”
(3) There must be a revolt against “religion,” because it recognizes the existence of a realissimum beyond human consciousness. Marx cannot make man’s self-consciousness “ultimate” if this condition exists.
(4) The logos is not a transcendental spirit descending into man, but the true essence of man that can only be developed and expressed by means of social action in the process of world history. That is, the logos is “immanent” in man himself. Indeed, it must be, if God is abolished. And with God, reason itself is abolished as well: To place the logos in man is to make man the measure of all things. To do so ineluctably leads to the relativization of truth, and to a distorted picture of reality.
(5) “The true essence of man, his divine self-consciousness, is present in the world as the ferment that drives history forward in a meaningful manner.” God is not Lord of history, the Alpha and Omega; man is.
As Voëgelin concluded, “The Marxian spiritual disease … consists in the self-divinization and self-salvation of man; the intramundane logos of human consciousness is substituted for the transcendental logos…. [This] must be understood as the revolt of immanent consciousness against the spiritual order of the world.”
How Marx Bumps Off God
So much for Marx’s revolt. As you can see, it requires the death of God. Marx’s point of theocidal departure takes its further impetus from Ludwig von Feuerbach’s theory that God is an imaginary construction of the human mind, to which is attributed man’s highest values, “his highest thoughts and purest feelings.”
In short, Feuerbach inverts the very idea of the imago Dei — that man is created in the image of God. God is, rather, created by man, in man’s own image — God is only the illusory projection of a subjective human consciousness, a mere reflection of that consciousness and nothing more.
From this Feuerbach deduced that God is really only the projected “essence of man”; and from this, Feuerbach concluded that “the great turning point of history will come when ‘man becomes conscious that the only God of man is man himself.’”
For Marx, so far so good. But Marx didn’t stop there: For Feuerbach said that the “isolated” individual is the creator of the religious illusion, while Marx insisted that the individual has no particular “human essence” by which he could be identified as an isolated individual in the first place. For Marx, the individual in reality is only the sum total of his social actions and relationships: Human subjectivity has been “objectified.” Not only God is gone, but man as a spiritual center, as a soul, is gone, too.
Marx believed that God and all gods have existed only in the measure that they are experienced as “a real force” in the life of man. If gods are imagined as real, then they can be effective as such a force — despite the “fact” that they are not really real. For Marx, it is only in terms of this imaginary efficacy that God or gods can be said to “exist” at all.
Here’s the beautiful thing from Marx’s point of view: Deny that God or the gods can be efficacious as real forces in the life of man — on the grounds that they are the fictitious products of human imagination and nothing more — and you have effectively killed God.
This insight goes to the heart of atheism. In effect, Marx’s prescription boils down to the idea that the atheist can rid himself and the world at large of God simply by denying His efficacy, the only possible “real” basis of His existence. Evidently the atheist expects that, by his subjective act of will, he somehow actually makes God objectively unreal. It’s a kind of magic trick: The “Presto-Changeo!” that makes God “disappear.”
Note that, if God can be gotten rid of by a stratagem like this, so can any other aspect of reality that the atheist dislikes. In effect, the cognitive center which — strangely — has no “human essence” has the power of eliminating whatever sectors of objective reality it wants to, evidently in full expectation that reality itself will allow itself to be “reduced” and “edited down” to the “size” of the atheist’s distorted — and may we add relentlessly imaginary? — conception.
To agree with Marx on this — that the movement of the intellect in man’s “divine” consciousness is the ultimate source of all knowledge of the universe — is to agree that human thought determines the actual structure of reality.
Instead of being a part of and participant in reality, the atheist claims the power to create it as if he himself were transcendent to, or standing outside or “beyond” reality. As if he himself were the creator god.
This type of selective operation goes a long way towards explaining the fanatical hostility of many Darwinists today regarding any idea of design or hierarchy in Nature — which, by the way, have always been directly observable by human beings who have their eyes (and minds) open. What it all boils down to seems to be: If we don’t like something, then it simply doesn’t exist.
We call the products of such selective operations second realities. They are called this because they are attempts to displace and finally eliminate the First Reality of which the Great Hierarchy of Being — God–Man–World–Society — is the paradigmatic core.
First Reality has served as the unifying conceptual foundation of Western culture and civilization for the past two millennia at least. What better way to destroy that culture and civilization than an all-out attack on the Great Hierarchy of Being?
Thus we see how the gnosis (“wisdom”) of the atheist — in this particular case, Marx — becomes the new criterion by which all operations in (the severely reduced and deformed) external reality are to be conducted, understood, and judged.
Conclusion
Marx is the self-proclaimed Paraclete of an a-borning utopia in which man will be “saved” by being reduced to essentially nothing. With God “gone,” man, as we denizens of First Reality know him, disappears also.
But whatever is left of him becomes a tool for social action. He becomes putty in the hands of whatever self-selected, self-proclaimed Paraclete seeking to promote his favored Second Reality du jour (usually for his own personal benefit) manages to stride onto the public stage and command an audience.
Such a charmed person blesses himself with the power to change human society and history forever, to bring about man’s self-salvation in a New Eden — an earthly utopia— by purely human means.
Of course, there’s a catch: As that great denizen of First Reality, Sir Thomas More, eminently recognized, the translation into English of the New Latin word “utopia” is: No-place.
In short, human beings can conjure up alternative realities all day long. But that doesn't mean that they can make them “stick.” Reality proceeds according to its own laws, which are divine in origin, and so cannot be displaced by human desire or volition, individually or collectively.
And yet the Marxian expectation argues otherwise.
Out of such fantastic, idiotic, specifically Marxian/atheist foolishness have great revolutions been made. And probably will continue to be made — so long as psychopaths hold the keys to the asylum.
Note:
All quotations from Eric Voëgelin’s article, “Gnostic Socialism: Marx,” in: The Collected Works of Eric Voëgelin, Volume 26 — History of Political Ideas: Crisis and the Apocalypse of Man. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1999.
©2009 Jean F. Drew
April 4, 2009
We really cannot speak of "unalienable" rights if man is the grantor of those rights. All we can speak of are alienable rights. What man's law gives can be rescinded by man. The Framers understood this. Which is why the Declaration of Independence states that we have our unalienable human rights as grants of our Creator. Because they are divine grants, man cannot rescind them.
Do you have any problem with this, Gondring? Do you think the Framers were foolish men?
If man can grant rights to non-human entities, e.g., apes (as recently happened in Italy I believe), then what do rights actually mean? What is a "right?"
Do you believe you have a soul? Do you think there is such a thing as human nature?
Just wondering....
Internalized it, and forgotten its source. But indeed, it is a "part of you."
Beautiful, beautiful essay/post, marron! Thank you so very much!
[[What I see again and again is this: People make assumptions about what a “god” must be like, and then when that doesn’t make sense, or doesn’t seem to jibe with reality, they reject God’s existence. There is another way to go about it. Rather than assume what a god must look like, and then not finding anything that looks like that, assuming that there isn’t one, reverse the process. There is a much bigger adventure ahead if you let God reveal himself to you.]]
Great post Marron- and this real God is hte God who is laid out in the link I posted above to the Christian think tank- He states the exact same thing time and time gain, that people get a false idea of what God is supposed to be like, and hwen they don’t experience that god, they give up and assume He doesn’t exist, or htink that if he does exist, then he is someone htey don’t want to know because htey think that god violates their own inner sense of morality (Which oddly enough comes from the very God that don’t truly get to know)
Christ is proven to Christians in the most direct and powerful way imaginable.
But I cannot meld into you in order to give you this proof.
Nor could you receive it even in the face of signs.
Where [is] the wise? where [is] the scribe? where [is] the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.
For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. - I Corinthians 1:18-25
But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, [even] to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. - John 1:12-13
Hey don’t even get me started on Dewey. My wife is currently in school to become a teacher and some of her textbooks paint Dewey as some kind of saint. At least Texas,where I live, has the good sense to publish a Texas edition of textbooks in an attempt to mitigate some of the damage.
Okay, disprove it for us. And don't go the "all of its prophecies have failed to materialize" route, because that statement is false. The greatest prophecy of the Holy Bible was the coming of Christ; and indeed, He came.
"Cognitive dissonance hurts?" I have no cognitive dissonance whatever, since I see no conflict between what the Holy Scriptures say and what the creation reveals.
[[Okay, disprove it for us.]]
He can’t= 2000 biblical prophesies have already coem 100% true, and there are 500 more to come and are playing out right now as we speak. The chances of the 2000 prophesies comeing true 100% are 10/2000 power- and his ismply making hte statement that they haven’t is a statement detached from reality. He’ll no doubt point us all to sites that attempt to ‘disprove’ these prophesies, but these sites have been totally refuted with the truth of hte matter. Legrande we must remember wants to excuse his unbelief and will continue to attempt to do so by malignign and falsely accusing and preferign to beleive liars who have been refuted time and time again- We will just end up in YET ANOTHER round for round argument where everyone of his suppsoed ‘proofs’ are easily refuted- but it will mean nothing to him, as he’s been told time and time again that those sites he gets his supposed ‘proofs’ from are deceitful and innacurate- but that doesn’t matter to him apparently, as he brings htis rabbit trail argument up time and time again
Two days ago I prophesied that B-Chan and I would be posting to each other. I wrote down the prophecy today, after it had been fulfilled. See how easy that was : )
That's enough for me.
Are you so easily convinced in other aspects of your life? I have some real whoppers if you want to hear them.
Sad but true, dearest sister in Christ.
I commend you for these wonderful insights:
So even if a person has no spiritual discernment whatsoever – no “ears to hear” – still, if he is a rational thinker and cares to think about the evidence as objectively as he can, he will conclude that God is and also, that man cannot measure Him, cannot put Him under a microscope, observe Him with a telescope, draw pictures of Him or subject Him to mortal judgments, etc.So beautiful — and truthful.He might be Deist, he might think that God started it and then walked away or ceased to exist, he might rationalize Him in Platonic or Aristotlean terms or vague philosophies or mysticisms - but the evidence is so great, the rational man would not ignore it.
Thank you oh so much for your outstanding essay/post!
I wonder why LeGrande invests so much time and energy in debunking Christianity. What's it to him if we Christians believe in God? We acknowledge his right to disbelieve, though we think he's wrong to do it. Why can't he simply return the favor?
Given the historically provable existence of the texts prior to the time of the events they prophesied, that argument does not work.
For example:
Physical evidence supporting the 165 BCE date of the Book of Daniel comes from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Eight copies of Daniel were found at the Dead Sea Scrolls site. The oldest copy has been scientifically dated to 125 BCE using carbon dating techniques. Since it is a copy, the original was written long before 125 BCE.
Daniel, an edited text, was probably completed prior to 500 Before Christian Era. However, the text's existence prior to the INCEPTION of it's most magnificent prophecies is proven by the carbon dating above.
Nevertheless, one cannot base one's following of Christ on such things. Eventually, each human must say "Yes" or "No" to Christ being the Lord/King of his/her life.
Whoever believes in Jesus will not perish, but they will have everlasting life.
There is no prophecy in the Tanakh that Christ clearly fulfilled. But lets take the best "Prophecy' that the Christians have. Isaiah 7:14 "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel."
"The King James Version mistranslates the Hebrew word "almah", which means "young woman" as "virgin". (The Hebrew word, "bethulah", means "virgin".) In addition, the young woman referred to in this verse was living at the time of the prophecy. And Jesus, of course, was called Jesus -- and is not called Emmanuel in any verse in the New Testament."
Clearly Christ did did not fulfill that prophecy. Christianity is thereby falsified.
"Cognitive dissonance hurts?" I have no cognitive dissonance whatever, since I see no conflict between what the Holy Scriptures say and what the creation reveals.
Where is all the water surrounding the Earth? Do you really think that Joshua stopped the Sun and the Moon from orbiting the Earth? Etc. etc. etc.
If you don't have cognitive dissonance, you aren't thinking. I know how easy it is to just accept what you are told.
I would love to hear of an instance of a Christian telling you to worship God.
Marxism is fundamentally irrational, MHGinTN. But you already know that.
I mean, it's replete with self-contradictions and unfounded speculations. Which is probably why Marx absolutely forbade all questioning of his system.
Also, Marx doesn't "emancipate" anybody. Au contraire, he'd put us all in chains. He's not the least bit interested in human liberty, because human liberty inheres nowhere but in individual souls, and Marx says that we don't have any.
Thank you ever so much for writing, dear MHGinTN!
Aha! But I DON'T DO THAT. That is not my method at all. I have to reason things through for myself. Faith and reason are not mutually-exclusive terms.
That is not the best prophecy that Christians have by any stretch. The word is “maiden” and maidens who weren’t virgins didn’t survive very long.
It was an assumption about the purity of the maidens of Israel.
So why do they hate each other?
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