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
“This is just a long-winded way of saying that our worldview structures the way we think about the world ...”
Perhaps for you, and perhaps for others, but certainly not for all. It is a common mistake to assume that others think the same way you do.
My world view is the result or sum of all I think and learn about the world. To start with a “world-view” in one’s thinking is like trying to learn arithmetic from the rules of the calculus. One’s world view ought to come at the conclusion of one’s thinking, not the beginning. Attempting to start with a world view requires the acceptance of some such view before one has learned enough to know which world view to adopt.
I think it is a mistake to let that happen, but suspect most people do.
Hank
With that "ought," you not only describe, but privilege a particular world view. Being an "ought," it comes at the beginning of one's thinking, not at the end.
It seems to be quite a reductionist world view at that, suggesting that the "whole" is nothing more than the "sum of its parts" (i.e., "enough knowledge," such that at some threshold of "sufficiency," it can completely describe the whole of which the items of our knowledge are the parts. Question: How do we determine how much knowledge would be "sufficient" here?)
As Robert Rosen persuasively points out, the strategy of reductionism requires that any whole system can be decomposed into and regarded as a simple sum of its constituting parts. Yet such reduction irretrievably loses information about the whole system, specifically its structure of causal entailments. Rosen says it is a far more promising strategy to put the system under study into a "bigger system," or a larger context, in order to understand its behavior. In the context of our present discussion, this "larger system" would be a world view....
You wrote: "It is a common mistake to assume that others think the same way you do."
I assume that other people think as I do, but only in the sense that I'm a human being who thinks; and common sense tells me it is not an illegitimate reach to suppose that other human beings do likewise. I do not assume that other people "think the same way I do." Quite the contrary! (I'd be quite astonished to find out they did.) I just impute the ability to think to them, with no expectation that what they think about, or the conclusions they reach, are like my own thinking and results.
Sometimes I think that what the "freedom from" attitude really boils down to is "alienated man" desires to be free of the human condition.... Why be a man, when one putatively can be a god? Of course, it's necessary to "bump off" the real God first.... Which is really quite impossible. :^)
Thank you so very much, dearest sister in Christ, for your wonderful insights!
=[[“God is a cause,” You need to rethink that one.]]
No I don’t- you’ve asserted somethign that isn’t true- God is not a cause- He causes- God is eternal- He was not caused, nor is He a cause of something
[[shannon theory and information theory have absolutely nothing to do with human intelligence or the nature of life.]]
It most certainly does- information is useless without a way to communicate that information to the receiver- We are NOT talking about human intelligence here- We are talking about hte sustaining communicaiton of informaiton- You missed a VERY good thread here about Shannon theory
[[Why do you go on and on about “life could not have inititiated itself.”]]
Why? Because you made the statement that it did (and consequently, life DID come from non life- whether you hold to God’s creation, or the impossible Macroevolutionary ideology
[[this is really only a model, because we cannot study life in the same way we study any physical process.]]
Life IS a physical process
[[Life is not a “thing” or a “substance” but it is an attribute or quality that changes the mere physical into a living organism.]]
Hmmm- not really- Life is a process driven by energy conversion, chemical conversion etc- it’s a set of conversions that keep the species going/thriving and in a fit condition- when any of htose processes cease, or begin to break down, the species begins to suffer, and eventually cease to thrive
[[The physical aspects of an organism cannot sustain life.]]
first, without hte physical, the informational process that keeps hte species fit has nothign to work with- there woudl be no receiver, no ability to communicate the info etc- the two, the physical and hte informational, are interdependent- co-dependent
[[It is the life process that sustains the physical aspects of the organism,]]
That is true- however you’ve oversimplified, underexpounded upon, the ‘life process’- the ‘life process’ consists of many inderdependent physical and informational, and communication systems
[[Don’t know? Then don’t regale me with nonsense about Shannon theory.]]
It would seem that you are hte one that doesn’t understand the theory or hte process or the heirarchies that MUST exist BEFORE the species can thrive- and chemicals and nature can NOT provide those heirarchies unfortunately, it MUST come from a Causer- an intelligence that configures and constructs these highly complex systems of informaiton. Again you missed a VERY good htread on htis issue
[[since you know all about shannon codes and such.]]
I don’t know ‘all about’ it, but I understand enough of the basic principles to KNOW that you MUST have several very key processes, receivers, and senders of information, and heirarchies inp,lace BEFORE the communication of information can take place in order for hte species to thrive and remain fit in hte face of entropy/the second law- Shannon hteory isn’t about code- it’s about ‘sender/receiver’ communication of hte info- and in ‘life’s irreducible complexities’ thread, the thread shows that species MUST have metainformaiton inplace BEFORE a species can thrive- it (the metainformaiton needed to sustain life) can NOT simply form naturally via mutaitons and blind processes
[[I worked for years in IT, and created endless error correction methods,]]
Good- then you KNOW systems MUST be created intelligently then- working out all the errors and corrections in order for hte ‘species’ (or program) to remain as fit as possible- without error correction, species (and programs) can NOT thrive- but this has nothign to do with Shannon hteory- Shannon hteory is about the communication process (pipeline if you will-) It’s the pipeline between hte sender and receiver- or rather the process- or how info gets from sender to receiver- and it’s about the NEED for a process of sending and receiving- info without that process is useless/static/ of no value- just as a letter is of no value UNTIL it somehow reaches the intended receiver- sitting on the desk of the creator, it is useless- of no value- Again- you missed a VERY good htread on Shannon theory- you’ll need to ask BB or Alamo Girl for hte link- it’s quite fascinating
Well dearest sister in Christ, thank you for seeing it as I do. On the other hand, I strongly suspect that Hank would regard my statement as totally silly.
Still, there is a further point buried there, from the Greeks. Plato had a word for what happens to human reason when it is "unplugged" from its source, divine Nous. Unsurprisingly, the term is anoia — literally, "no mind." Which eventually propagates as a pneumopathological disorder, or spiritual disease, which he called nosos.
Suffice it to say that nowhere do we find within the psychological/psychiatric canon of today any reference to "spiritual disease" in general, let alone to anoia in particular. The very idea of "spirit," or "soul" seems to have been abolished from the practice of professionals whose sole raison d'etre is to make us "mentally well." Which is particularly noteworthy in light of the fact that the very name of their profession comes from the Greek word psyche — meaning: breath (spirit), and soul.
And yet, not only humankind, but the entire Creation itself is "groaning" under the travails of this non-existent disease.
May God have mercy!
“God is not a cause”
Is see. So do you believe in a first cause, and if so what is it, since it is not God?
Or are you agreeing with me that there is no first cause.
Hank
“...to remain as fit as possible- without error correction, species (and programs) can NOT thrive ...”
Gene repair and protein reconstruction are not “error correction” though that expression is sometimes used metaphorically.
Maintaining the integrity of digitally transmitted information (actually it is not maintained—but recreated when received) has nothing to do with biological functions, which are not digital. Shannon codes are not at all that mysterious, and there are actually more reliable ways to accomplish the same thing—the most reliable of all being triple redundancy—but it is very “expensive” in terms of hardware and bandwidth.
Information theory is another animal altogether. It has nothing to do with “intelligence” or “knowledge.” Only with the relationships between bandwidths and noise. There are analog applicatoins but it is generally digital. Ah well!
Error correction is not needed at all for many computers and programs. It is only needed where there are known transmission problems, which can be solved in other ways, also.
Hank
Life IS a physical process.
Really? I don’t believe in God or spirits, but know that life is not a “physical” process.
You believe in God and spirits and believe life is a physical process. Does that mean you do not believe God, angels, and the souls of men are alive, or that you believe God, angels and the souls of men are physical.
Just wondering.
Hank
The truth is; "You gotta serve someone"(Bob Dylan)..
Even if that service is to yourself or physical body..
Freedom may be over rated..
Service(sacrifice) to God, a Neigbor or Yourself is not freedom..
If you choose one of three, and deny the others its still service..
I must re-think freedom.. It might not be possible for a human to be FREE..
At least at this time...
as you said, being free of the human condition may be the only way..
Of course you can grow to appreciate service as a good thing.. and freedom as not so good..
Duh!......substitute Christianity or whatever religion in that sentence and the same hold true.
Just looking at the constant haggling on the religion forum I don't think anyone should be pointing the finger at others for "distorting reality". Come on!
But that's precisely what I cannot say, and will not say, dear brother in Christ!
The human condition, to my mind, is precisely what needs to be embraced, in order for us mortals to see how very much the human condition carries out God's Plan for the Creation.
To my mind, what you seem to propose here is nothing less than some kind of prescription that allows us to cut ourselves off from our Maker. That somehow human existence can in any way be considered as meaningful, absent any universal (read: divine) standard of meaning.
But I think you recognize as well as I do, the dangers that pertain whenever man decides to make himself (i.e., human experience per se) the "measure" of reality....
p.s.: I think Bob Dylan was a very wise man, to notice that human beings by their very nature (it seems) must “serve somebody”; i.e., must serve something larger than themselves and their immediate concerns, whatever they might happen to be.
Yes, but Christians admit that their worldview is founded on faith. Materialism is equally faith-based, but its followers refuse to admit it.
It is fascinating how so many draw boundaries, e.g. the Newtonian paradigm, and play within those boundaries as if nothing else exists. I suspect it may be a symptom of the disease you name when they actually believe that there is nothing beyond the walls they built themselves.
Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dearest sister in Christ!
But I don't think it is possible for any person to escape the "human condition." Even those in a coma will eventually die and have to deal with it.
[ But I don’t think it is possible for any person to escape the “human condition.” Even those in a coma will eventually die and have to deal with it.]
What is being “human”?.. and what does a “human” become when “born again”?.. Are they the same? and “born again” is a metaphorical reference(of something)?..
Or is it possible humans are really spirits with a body as clothing?.. and literally no one(spirit) actually “dies”?.. And being born again is the knowledge you are not a physical body but a spirit?..
The Bible calling the human body “the worm”.. speaks to metamorphosis.. before that term was invented.. The human condition is not a given.. From worm to butterfly is a beautiful image for humans/spirits to consider.. At least for me..
http://www.learnthebible.org/their-worm-dieth-not.html
[[Gene repair and protein reconstruction are not “error correction” though that expression is sometimes used metaphorically.]]
It is error correction- biologically, a cell is pre-equipted with code that anticipates errors due ot mutations and dividing errors
[[Shannon codes are not at all that mysterious,]]
Again, we’re not talking about Code when discussing Shannon theory- we’re talking about the comunicaiton mechanisms of code- about the sender and receiver- not what hte sender sends
[[Information theory is another animal altogether. It has nothing to do with “intelligence” or “knowledge.”]]
First- noone said information is intelligence but you- secondly, it takes intelligence to construct information-
[[Gene repair and protein reconstruction are not “error correction” though that expression is sometimes used metaphorically.]]
“Error correction mechanisms are common in biology and widely thought of as endemic to that realm to the exclusion of the quantum. However, the evidence would seem to side with error correction mechanisms being very much a part of the atom and having been part of the quantum world since the beginning of time. If anything, the biological would appear to be a younger sibling to, derivative from, and homologous with the quantum insofar at the attributes of error correction mechanisms are concerned.
Showing their degree of efficiency, Lesli Orgel writes that: “DNA polymerases make use of elaborate error-correction mechanisms that may cut the error rate to below 10-8.”1 Of another occurrence of biological correction mechanisms, von Neumann wrote:
It is easy to note that the number of nerve actuation’s which occur in a normal lifetime must be of the order of 10^20. Obviously, during this chain of events, there never occurs a malfunction which cannot be corrected by the organism itself, without any significant outside intervention. The system must, therefore, contain the necessary arrangements to diagnose errors as they occur, to readjust the organism so as to minimize the effects of errors.2...
The atomic error correction mechanism is found in the delicate balance maintained down to the level of nanometers – a level of control only few if any humans will ever master. What we find is that atomic forces do indeed work as error correction mechanisms and in effect function in a manner as gargantuan manmade particle accelerators do (or – uncannily – vice versa). Where it is the electromagnetic force mediating between the protons of the nucleus and electrons of the shells – counter-balanced against the nuclear force – subatomic particles maintain their delicate orbits. So exact are these mechanisms that protons not destroyed through cataclysmic events such as supernovas have existed virtually unchanged since the big bang. Error correction mechanisms, then, evidently must reside within nucleons monitoring the behavior of quarks. “
http://mightymall.com/1st3seconds/errorcm.html
[[Error correction is not needed at all for many computers and programs.]]
Ah- but try introducing error into hte programs- noise- and see where it leads- because htis is what macroevolutionists must deal with- ascerting that nature somehow was able to evovle error correction naturally without hte help of intelligence guiding the ssystem, or without hte need for metainformaiton anticipating future errors. The degree of error correction present in biology is staggaring, but apparently, according ot macroevolutionists, we’re to beleive species ‘evolved the capability to correct itself without hte help of itnelligence?
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