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
As Penrose noted (paraphrased) we need a new kind of physics, like quantum mechanics, Newtonian physics and Relativity - something that translates between them.
Meanwhile, I keep an open mind to geometric physics and theories of relativity and cosmology (Wesson, Vafa, Fineman, Tegmark et al).
In my view Everett's theory is nearly as untestable as last Thursday-ism, that "all that there is" was created last Thursday.
My bias on such theories would be that of Einstein's, i.e. his dream to transmute the base wood of matter to the pure marble of geometry.
Yep and about the same testability as the God theory : )
As Penrose noted (paraphrased) we need a new kind of physics, like quantum mechanics, Newtonian physics and Relativity - something that translates between them.
Like I said before, there seems to be an emergent properties principle like a phase change that occurs. QM doesn't seem to play by the same rules that Relativity plays by. There doesn't have to be anything that translates between them.
Obviously I was not referring to God TXnMA. I was speaking of the constraints on human knowledge and how one tries to deal with them.
Agreed LeGrande. And very well put! Thank you ever so much for your observation!
It might not be possible for a human brain to grasp the totallity of reality..
Five senses and logic displayed by human language could be inhibited..
Science fiction MUST be logical to the human mind, reality need not be logical at all..
Human arrogance could challenge that though..
Personally, I doubt the human brain has the capacity to grasp the totality of reality. Thus we see "as if through a glass, darkly."
Human science could really be just technical gossip..
Tale bearing about what appears to be so... about what is, and what isn't..
What is sometimes isn't and what isn't sometimes is..
Human scientists may be like two old people discussing the neigborhood.. over a fence..
You know, busybodies overlooking whats really important.. fixed on what isn't..
“I may be a dim-witted, knuckle-dragging Christian, but I have to tell you: I require more substantial evidence than “done, but only once.” We call that a “datum.” It has no meaning whatever in isolation.”
Nothing happens in isolation. Everything has a context.
How many times do you have to burn yourself before you’ll be convinced the fire is hot?
How many atomic bombs must be exploded before you’ll be convince nuclear energy is possible.
Hank
“On the one hand, I am perfectly comfortable with the uncertainty of knowledge. It just reminds me that nothing is complete without God.”
“And thus on the basis of observation and experience, I have no reason to believe that ‘the certainty of knowledge’ is even possible.
But, since the certainty of knowledge is not possible, your “knowledge” that there is God must be uncertain and you are therefore basing your source of comfort regarding uncertainty on something you cannot be certain exists, else...
You really do believe you can be certain about something. Right!
Hank
“It turns out that there is a level of uncertainty to everything, nothing can be known to an arbitrarily precise number.”
You are confusing measurement (an arbitrary mathematical exercise) with counting, which is always certain and absolute. Only discrete existents can be counted. If I want to know how many eggs I have left in the carton, I simply open the carton and count them. If I count six, I know I have six eggs, absolutely and with no uncertainty.
Measurement can never be certain because the units are not discrete existents, but some arbitrary “unit of measure,” which whatever you are measuring may or may not be dimensionally commensurable with. With measurement, it is always, “as precise as needed.”
Within that limit, however, it is real and certain knowledge. Certain enough to be able to perform eye surgery or fly men to the moon.
Hank
“but a lot of very small uncertainties do add up”
In the sciences, uncertainty decreases with the number of repeateable experiments, in other words, uncertainties deminish by the inverse ration of the number of repititions.
Imprecisions can add up (as happens in cumputers), but not uncertainties.
If you think uncertainties can “add up,” can you give an example of how that would happen?
Hank
My "'knowledge' that there is God" rests on faith, not on reason. What is received in faith is not "uncertain." Nor is it unreasonable. In fact, it turns out that reason itself ultimately rests on faith in God.
As René Descartes put it, the idea of God is the prior condition in the human mind for the possibility of any other idea, even that of the ego itself. (You can follow his reasoning in the Meditations.)
Which observation evidently inspired Voltaire's rather waggish remark of a generation later, "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to create him."
Descartes argued that the idea of God is built into our very souls — it is the evidence of the imago Dei of our created nature. It's there, in-built as it were, whether we acknowledge God or not.
But denial of this can be costly, psychologically and arguably intellectually.
And now you're really gonna yell at me! :^) LOLOL!
Voltaire’s———————Do dat be Jean Marie Arouet ???—LOL..
Dat be the guy!!! LOL!
“And now you’re really gonna yell at me!”
Well, I’m not sure that I should not be insulted, though it is very hard to do that. I don’t yell, ever. And I’m not trying to convince you of anything.
I do have one question. What is the basis of your faith. I mean, it did not simply pop into you head one day to believe in God. What ever suggested to you that there is a God?
I’ll be fair and tell you where this is going. Before you can have faith in anything, you must first have knowledge, and lots of it, such as how to read, and and how to understand a language, and what heaps of words mean. After all, if you have faith in God, you must know what you mean by the word, and you had to know that before you could believe in Him, wouldn’t you?
Did you know the words knowledge and understanding appear in the Bible more the three times more often than faith and believe, in all their Greek and Hebrew forms?
(If I had time, I’d show you that what you call faith, just simply believing without evidence, is actually condemned in the Bible, which teaches that one should be faithful in believing what they know through the God-given ability to “understand” the truth by the God-given ability to “reason.”)
See, I did not yell at you.
Hank
I did have knowledge — a very young child's knowledge, based on what I could see in the world all around me. I used to love to explore Nature — the woods and fields and farms near my home. I had a favorite childhood hangout — a little pond in a clearing in the woods that was inhabited by a bullfrog. I used to love to go there. I'd just sit there with my friend the frog, and think and wonder. To me, that place simply had an aura of holiness and peace about it. It was kind of a little chapel in the forest....
Even as I child, I "knew" that the obvious order I was seeing in the world could not have been accidental. Don't ask me how a child can understand such things. The only way I could answer that question would likely not appeal to you. But here goes — it harkens back to what I've already said. There is something seemingly in-built in human nature itself that just naturally "knows" about God, almost as if this awareness was "programmed" into our individual human nature. It will speak to us if we let it.
Anyhoot, I knew God was there, and this long, long before I formally became a Christian. (I was not permitted to receive religious instruction as a child, because my Dad — a Deist — thought of religious instruction as brainwashing.) My "periagoge" or "born-again" experience came much, much later. That's when things got really "personal." But God Himself has always been there; I could see Him revealed in the order of the natural world and all the things in it. The astonishing symmetry of the patterns on the back of of a humble black beetle to me screamed, "look at what God did!" I could feel His Presence....
I can't explain it any better than that. So I'm sorry if this does not satisfy you.
p.s.: I called the little pond in the clearing The Watering Hole. And I named my friend the frog Freddie. :^) At that time, I was maybe six or seven years old....
The more knowledge... the less faith is needed..
Less knowledge requires more faith..
No knowledge at all requires ALL faith..
Faith is the currency in the economy of God..
What you have faith in..... is an asset or a liability..
We all are accountants.. Some are laundering Gods currency..
Others are investors..
“I can’t explain it any better than that. So I’m sorry if this does not satisfy you.”
Please do not worry about satisfying my interest. You’ve explained yourself very well. I’m very tired now, but will respond to this tomorrow in a way I think you will find interesting, but perhaps not, my knowledge of the future is, as all men’s are (except the vile Al Gore) always uncertain.
Hank
“No knowledge at all requires ALL faith..”
Nope. All faith requires knowledge of that which one has faith in, however spurious that knowledge might be.
I understand your point, but even “faith” is impossible without knowledge—which human nature requires always.
Hank
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