tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post5129890300138009587..comments2024-02-13T12:50:30.457-05:00Comments on Rants Within the Undead God: Atheism Plus and the Liberal Conceit of Hyper-RationalityBenjamin Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-60258269469840013342014-01-07T16:09:39.707-05:002014-01-07T16:09:39.707-05:00I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to ...I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to keep this commenting format, since it has some issues. <br /><br />Are you suggesting another name for "existential cosmicism"? "Tragicosmicism" nicely plays on "tragicomedy," but "tragedy" and "cosmicism" are arguably redundant. That's also the main problem I have with "existential cosmicism": there's some overlap between them, at a minimum. <br /><br />I've read Zapffe's Last Messiah, I think. It's an article rather than a book, right?Benjamin Cainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-15373140347037267522014-01-07T13:03:54.479-05:002014-01-07T13:03:54.479-05:00May I suggest.....Tragicosmicism??
A feast with ...May I suggest.....Tragicosmicism??<br /><br /><br />A feast with Cthulu, The Hour is fast upon us ,<br />Life is a full loo, our souls are autocthonous<br /><br /><br />Thanks for the commenting reformat....ps I'm not supposed to be here, but I was googling during my off-internet time, and you were the ONLY relevant entry in 3 pages of results. Wicked. pps I dunno if u take driveby literature advice but try out peter zapffer's last messiah, it ties in with the 'death of god' theme you started off with in book 1, and ru(uuuuuuu)ns with it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-86409811509135845882013-02-24T10:47:27.637-05:002013-02-24T10:47:27.637-05:00Interesting. I think you're saying that free-t...Interesting. I think you're saying that free-thinking is just an excuse to sin. I see this connection more between libertarianism and modern, atheistic Satanism. See my recent article "Is the Devil a Hero?" for more on this. But I don't think atheists generally aren't interested in morality. For example, I'm an atheist who even thinks that morality is largely a matter of taste, but I take aesthetic principles to be more stringent standards for behaviour than the Bible. (See my articles on aesthetic morality.) Even with a divine command theory of morality, you've got the problem of subjectivity, because the Bible can be interpreted in many different ways and the reader has to choose a hermeneutic principle. <br /><br />Ultimately, we're ethically responsible for our actions only if we choose or at least voluntarily affirm our ideals. And when that element of choice enters the picture, so does the person's character and personal character is subject to aesthetic evaluation (in terms of its originality/creativity or ugliness due to weakness in responding to our existential obligation not to delude ourselves).Benjamin Cainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-29544386754147559442013-02-23T15:15:28.019-05:002013-02-23T15:15:28.019-05:00Atheism`s problems today are the mainstream and th...Atheism`s problems today are the mainstream and the dissident oppozition.<br />They are "against" the believers so they are for: "equality" for everything and "freedom" for everything.So we have the atheists of the contrary.Imagine their free-thinking!<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-72194098942238871142013-01-17T09:18:41.232-05:002013-01-17T09:18:41.232-05:00Thanks! I've actually written several articles...Thanks! I've actually written several articles here on liberalism and conservatism. I'll give you some links at the bottom, but first here's a summary. I distinguish between modern and postmodern liberals. Modern liberals were moved to scientism because they were so impressed by the Scientific Revolution. So they became ultrarationalists (including communists and technocrats), thinking that reason could and should control society just as it controls nature with technology. Because of the wars and failures of communism in the 20th C., liberals have become disenchanted with the modern myths, and so have moved to their nihilistic, postmodern phase in which they still pretend to believe in liberal rights but they lack any grand narrative to justify them. They rely on political correctness and end up being easily manipulated bureaucrats and system managers, defenders of the status quo which usually favours conservatives.<br /><br />Conservatives defend and prefer the default social arrangement, which is that of the dominance hierarchy or pecking order (symbolized by the pyramid, with a few oligarchs at the top and mostly peasants at the bottom, following the Iron Law of Oligarchy). There are secular (libertarian and elitist) and religious conservatives, but they both want to destroy any institution that can challenge the power of oligarchs by artificially empowering those at the bottom end of the pecking order. After all, the dominance hierarchy is nature's way of stabilizing most animal species.<br /><br />For more detail, see: http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.ca/2011/08/liberalism-from-scientism-to-nihilism.html<br /><br />http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.ca/2011/08/conservatism-myth-making-for-oligarchy.html<br /><br />http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.ca/2011/08/oligarchy-natures-inhumanity-to-humans.html<br /><br />http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.ca/2012/03/untangling-liberalism-and.html<br /><br />http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.com/2012/07/existential-grimness-and-cornel-wests.html<br />Benjamin Cainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-71780020834793126182013-01-17T07:30:31.583-05:002013-01-17T07:30:31.583-05:00I understand what you mean. I know I still have to...I understand what you mean. I know I still have to justify my wants for equality. I am going to work on it. Your feedback is good, it feels fine to unlift some veils from social issues, even if it is feels uncomfortable. But how do we get to either be liberals or conservatives? My whole family is on the right wing on social issues, disgust for the foreign is the norm, I have found myself asking all those whys of their behavior all my life. Why should we need that enemy to make us feel superior. It seemed a construction to me, it just felt fake and delusional, I felt it was their need to be above others. Also, would such a social stance on those issues, the nietzchean one I mean, perhaps give rise to certain dangers for people belonging to excluded groups? I would not stand by this, I would rebel against it, even if I were considered irrational myself.<br /><br />I highly believe that church and the state are in the root of social injustice, and that they combine forces according when it comes to groups the unthinking majority points her dirty finger on as "belowers". <br /><br />Could the postmodern liberalism come as an evolutionary bonus since our brains have evolved, now we can exceed our mere skin and think of humanity as a biggger self? I wonder. Thank u very much for the philosophical rants on the issue.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-86263069785366624162012-12-21T08:39:02.942-05:002012-12-21T08:39:02.942-05:00Yes, in my view, liberals nowadays are skeptical o...Yes, in my view, liberals nowadays are skeptical of nearly everything, but only out of postmodern political correctness, not out of a genuine feel for skepticism. They're highly educated, which is the source of their atheism, and they're much appreciative of science and technology for sustaining their secular materialistic and hedonistic culture. <br /><br />As I say in my writings here about liberalism, the problem is that liberalism is itself just a dubious metanarrative, and so "skeptical liberal" is a sort of oxymoron. Nietzsche was a genuine skeptic and he was no liberal. Certain ascetics also follow reason all the way (to undermining reason). Skepticism/rationalism is an accursed viewpoint (figuratively speaking), and so the upbeat, New Atheistic variety is just for show, for the political purpose of attracting moderates away from religion.Benjamin Cainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-23393736893942143512012-12-20T15:45:13.579-05:002012-12-20T15:45:13.579-05:00The A+'ers and the like (FtB, Skepchicks, etc)...The A+'ers and the like (FtB, Skepchicks, etc), were never generally skeptical, it seems to me.<br /><br /><br />They are atheists that are politically liberal. They apply skepticism to god claims and conservative political stances. They were never skeptical of themselves nor of the political stances they take. They use "skeptic" as some hipster, smarter-than-thou label. It is painful to watch.DubVhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14367764785422714196noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-24226837389629515582012-10-09T09:24:17.691-04:002012-10-09T09:24:17.691-04:00Thanks for your comments. I think you have a sophi...Thanks for your comments. I think you have a sophisticated understanding of where liberals stand. You grasp that they adopt instrumental imperatives, which means they assume some goals or values and then use science only as the best means of achieving those goals or applying those values. I'd have no problem with that use of science, and I'm not attacking liberals goals themselves in this article. Instead, I'm attacking the hyper-rationalistic view of liberalism, according to which science or reason in general, all by itself, can justify not just the means of achieving your goals but those goals themselves.<br /><br />After all, if the liberal concedes that her goals of happiness, equality, and so on, are not simply the most rational ones available, she's left with a big open question about whether other goals are preferable. In that case, she can't pretend that merely applying the atheist's methods of rationality (logic and science) to moral questions leads you to liberalism. That's the scientistic contention I'm criticizing here; there's still the initial choice of ideals, values, or goals, which reason alone doesn't settle.<br /><br />As for which goals I'd prefer, I do question whether happiness in the sense of personal contentment ought to be our overriding goal. See my early article in this blog, "Happiness is Unbecoming" (Aug 2011). I defend a more reserved, ascetic lifestyle as the best way of coping with existential angst. See, for example, "Inkling of an Unembarrassing Postmodern Religion" (Jan 2011) and "Defending Existential Cosmicism" (July 2012).Benjamin Cainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-78246417737089791802012-10-08T20:48:09.319-04:002012-10-08T20:48:09.319-04:00You state that "Moral commandments don’t fall...You state that "Moral commandments don’t fall from the sky nor are they carved into stone, because we’re not artifacts of a god." I agree. A skeptic naturally must assume that the universe is (most likely) agnostic to human actions, and if those actions can be said to be "right" or "wrong" it is not because they have some cosmically intrinsic evil or good properties. Rather we label actions "right" or "wrong" in relation to values that we humans, being the only ones available to judge our own actions, adopt. The question is then, "what values shall we adopt." To me, the most obvious answer to this question is "those values that maximize human happiness (however we, as humans, decide to measure happiness)." Of course, there is no cosmic, objective reason why we should attempt to maximize human happiness - we do it simply because, well, it makes us happy. <br /><br />I get the sense that you disagree with this proposition, since you say "All you’re entitled to conclude from some such evolutionary premise is that outgoing folks are normal and perhaps happier, meaning merely that they’re in the majority and that their lives are more pleasurable. To leap from that premise to the conclusion that the majority are also in the right is to commit a fallacious appeal to popularity." In this very statement, you assume that there is a "right" way to be, independent from our human perceptions of happiness. (Of course, not everyone is "happy" to be an extrovert, but that's beside the point). In essence, you are saying, 'it is not right to say that social codes should stem from maximizing happiness, because it is not clear that maximizing happiness is the right thing to do.' Of course, if there is no God, there's no reason to believe in a 'right thing to do' inherent in the universe, only a 'most effective thing to do if you want to accomplish x, y or z.' Science can and does often reveal what that 'best thing to do' is. <br /><br />Of course, you must start with an x,y or z you want to accomplish. If you ask the people in the A+ movement what that starting goal is, they'd probably indicate things like maximizing overall human happiness, maximizing their own happiness, reducing suffering, ending unnecessary death and disease etc. They would not deny that they choose these goals for emotional, irrational reasons. That's not the point - the point is that applying reason, one can deduce easily that, for these purposes, equality is better than inequality, science literacy better than non-literacy and so on and so on.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-80271658159766538302012-10-07T15:57:44.547-04:002012-10-07T15:57:44.547-04:00You make some interesting points, Kevin Moore. Rem...You make some interesting points, Kevin Moore. Remember, though, I'm not arguing here against liberalism as much as I'm arguing against a rationalist oversimplification of liberal social positions. <br /><br />Now, I think you're arguing that all illiberal social philosophies are irrational (nakedly self-serving to an elite class), and that therefore the opposite, progressive philosophy must be rational. Moreover, the correctness of liberalism can thus be deduced (by reductio ad absurdum or the principle of the excluded middle). There are a few problems with this, but the one that's most relevant here is that you've got to show that the illiberal ideologies are illogical or unscientific. If you bring in something other than logic or science to refute those ideologies, your case for liberalism is no longer purely a matter of applying skepticism to politics. <br /><br />See my writings in this blog on oligarchy and dominance hierarchies (e.g. "Oligarchy: Nature's Inhumanity to Humans," Aug 2011). Illiberal, sexist societies with vast inequalities in wealth are actually the most natural, which is why the Age of Reason was so revolutionary. I interpret an oligarchy as just the human form of the dominance hierarchy (pecking order) found throughout social species. <br /><br />So you've got to show that Reason (logic or science) dictates that we should revolt against natural norms. That seems a tall order, given the naturalistic fallacy. And again, I'm not arguing that we should follow primitive biological norms; instead, I'm arguing that when we revolt against them, we're doing something other than performing a logical calculation or conducting a scientific experiment. For example, there might be a creative act of will or an arrogant leap of faith involved in trusting than we can govern ourselves better than can Mother Nature. In "Existential Cosmicism and Technology" (Aug 2012), I compare this act of will to the theistic delusion, as we anthropomorphize the world to avoid having to confront nature's alien indifference towards us. At any rate, existentialists can better explain the revolt against nature than can skepticism or scientism.<br /><br />You say a defender of oligarchy doesn't have reason on his side. But what reason is there to believe that humans are sufficiently supernatural to be able to sustain a social order that doesn't reduce eventually to a natural dominance hierarchy (with alpha, beta, and omega males, for example)? I look at the transition from modernity to postmodernity as a case of growing disenchantment with the modern myth of our godhood. If we're animals, as science shows, we might be rather skeptical and pessimistic about the prospect of a liberal society in which equal rights are maintained. After all, look what happened to communist societies: they collapsed into oligarchies. And look what's happened to the US, to the leader of the free world: arguably, it's a plutocracy, or what I call a stealth oligarchy, using democracy as a cover to avoid something like another French Revolution. <br /><br />True, American women have mostly equal rights with men, but they won those rights only several decades ago, so we'll have to see how long that relatively liberal society lasts as such; African-Americans still form something like an underclass in the US. Reason reports that a dominance hierarchy is the most stable social order, which is why evolutionary forces tend to select for it. Benjamin Cainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-20422528705497458152012-10-07T13:18:08.126-04:002012-10-07T13:18:08.126-04:00But one could argue for a social justice by defaul...But one could argue for a social justice by default. That is, the application of reason to the various ideologies propping up the world's different hierarchies will most likely find them self-serving for the ruling classes; therefore there is no legitimate reason for the exclusion of other groups outside the norm established by these classes from participating in the decisions and the life of their societies. For instance, there is no good reason to deny a Saudi woman the right to drive; all reasons to be cited rely upon extreme interpretations of religious prescriptions or prohibitions and appeal to stereotypes and prejudices of the majority. Apply skepticism to them and they fall apart quickly.<br /><br />It is not as if privileged classes are acting with greater rationality in defending their powers and privileges. Yet there is a good reason to pick up a social justice oriented approach to skepticism: one's own self interest. The powers that oppress others can easily oppress you, too.Kevin Moorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00743155275284609835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-13246851411069601502012-10-07T11:11:53.783-04:002012-10-07T11:11:53.783-04:00Thanks, Alex! I've written a lot on liberalism...Thanks, Alex! I've written a lot on liberalism in this blog. Check out those articles through the Liberalism tag in the list of tags on the right. <br /><br />I agree that we should check to see if our worldview is rational. I think a liberal would reply to your example of inconsistency, by talking about the social contract: we voluntarily submit to the state when we choose to live in society rather than in the wilderness; we compromise to escape the terrors we'd face in a pure anarchy. So we need to balance individual freedoms with the common good. Should the state be able to legislate morality and religion by preventing abortions, given that the state can force people to pay taxes? I'm not so sure. Then again, I'm pretty critical of sexuality, but for different reasons. See my article, Embarrassment by Sexual Ecstasy (Nov, 2011). And regarding abortion, see Case Studies of Aesthetic Morality (June, 2012). <br /><br />I should say that while my view is influenced by Nietzsche, I don't follow him on everything he says. As you'll know, he wrote aphoristically and wasn't s systematic writer; he meant to challenge his reader by pushing points as far as they can go, to swing the social pendulum in another direction. I agree with Nietzsche on some key points, but I disagree with him on others. I especially like to contrast Nietzsche's more pessimistic atheism, though, with the New Atheist variety.Benjamin Cainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-39206912610026849422012-10-07T10:51:13.967-04:002012-10-07T10:51:13.967-04:00The question of freewill is relevant here. See the...The question of freewill is relevant here. See the freewill section in my article, Jerry Coyne on Scientism and Freewill (Aug, 2012). I'll check out your links.Benjamin Cainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-89365657148031751972012-10-06T18:59:42.861-04:002012-10-06T18:59:42.861-04:00Excellent article! You expressed my sentiments ver...Excellent article! You expressed my sentiments very closely. Liberals are also "hidden priests". The Church of Liberalism is, as you say, no less supported by irrational drives than religion. The "reasons" come after the fact, if at all, just as with religion. The democratic morality of our time passes for rationally grounded the same way Mormonism passes as rational in Utah. <br /><br />But I think there is more wrong with the Liberal paradigm. Within religion there is also an element of incoherence, which indicates its utter dependence on psychological factors for the origin and maintenance of the belief. Though I am a great fan of Nietzsche, I think the evaluation of belief-systems also invovles looking into its logic, and liberalism strikes me as irrational in the sense of subscribing to logically inconsistent tenets. For example, the Church of Liberalism affirms that people own their own bodies when it comes to sexual practices and abortion (You're probably familiar with Judith Jarvis Thomson's famous article on this.); but the church also holds that the state can impose its will on the bodies of its citizens through compulsory labor (taxation) directed toward liberal causes rooted in pity. I know this is not a Nietzschean objection; it is just that I think unbelief in God or the State relates both to psychology and to logic. When we disbelieve in Santa, it occurs in part because the social-psychological factors inducing belief fade as we age AND that Santa fails some practical rationality tests that an unimpeded mind when reality testing. <br /><br />Another general Nietzschean critique of this A+ movement would be that liberals tend to be statists. Nietzsche is anti-state because he thinks the state poses as "the people", while undermining the development of value creators and the actual peoples that grow from these overman types (See "The New Idol" in *Thus Spoke Zarathustra*).<br /><br />Again, great article. Alexnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-83350717534255559312012-10-06T12:59:15.510-04:002012-10-06T12:59:15.510-04:00But, at its absolute core, altruism/selflessness i...But, at its absolute core, altruism/selflessness is just one more biological knee-jerk reaction, straight out of the evolutionary soup. Maybe all human behavior boils down to a constant push-pull between the interests of the individual vs. the community, which seems to be embedded in our genetic structure.<br /><br />http://discovermagazine.com/2011/jan-feb/03<br />http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100921144121.htmAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-43501424825858589272012-09-11T09:26:49.103-04:002012-09-11T09:26:49.103-04:00Thanks for reading. I think that innate emotional ...Thanks for reading. I think that innate emotional reactions, like pity (empathy) or disgust are fundamental to most social relations. We then rationalize them with arguments. Arguments alone don't motivate behaviour; they need to be rooted in emotions. So what would kindness be without pity? An interesting question. Pity is when you act kindly towards someone who's either worse off than you or is in as bad a position as are you. <br /><br />Suppose you meet someone who's very well off, though, and who can't easily be pitied. In that case, the dynamic would be roughly of the sadomasochistic variety between master and slave. The very well-off person would assume the role of a god or an overlord, and the person lower in the dominance hierarchy would defer as though he were the master's servant. So how do slaves treat their masters? Not with pity or kindness exactly, but with a sort of facade of politeness, right? When you go into a store and the salesperson is so eager to please, with a phony smile and a sing-songy voice? The servile, phony politeness is the root of much kindness, I suspect. This is off the top of my head, but I'd say that altruism depends on pity or on that servant's fake politeness, depending on the power dynamic, and that what looks like kindness reduces to the latter in some cases. <br /><br />Then there's the case of Christian charity, which Nietzsche explained in terms of a slave's resentment. When a well-off person acts selflessly towards a less well-off person, I'd say pity is a major motivating force. But different sorts of moral acts require different analyses, since there are many subtle variations between emotions. If you look up the definition of "kind," you find all sorts of related motives (compassion, indulgence, gentleness, humaneness, affection, and so on). <br /><br />If your question is whether altruism is motivated simply by liking someone else and wanting to do a favour or offer a gift, I'm sure this is so. Still, whenever you act altruistically, you give someone something she doesn't already have, which means there's room for pity. If the person has more than you and you still act altruistically, you're acting like a servant. So pity or phony politeness still enter the picture. It's an interesting question, though.Benjamin Cainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-67533331994069991352012-09-10T21:45:30.813-04:002012-09-10T21:45:30.813-04:00A well written, clear and insightful article inde... A well written, clear and insightful article indeed. I almost completely agree with it. <br /><br /> You wrote "In my view, altruism is justified only by the distastefulness of feeling pity due to empathy with other people’s suffering."<br /><br />What is the difference between pity and kindness? Do you think altruism comes from pity and not from kindness? O.R. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com