The Atheist Perversion of Reality

April 5, 2009 | Jean F. Drew

[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

[hosepipe]

[ Math is just a tool that we use to try and describe reality, it doesn't create reality, although some mathematicians may think otherwise. ]

Reality does not need to add up.. be logical.. or compute..
Reality is not trying to prove anything.. like science fiction..

[Alamo-Girl]

Truly, fiction like performing art needs the reader to "suspend reality" and thus must appear logical on the surface.

Thank you for sharing your insights, dear brother in Christ!

[betty boop]

LeGrande: "Math is just a tool that we use to try and describe reality...

Alamo-Girl: By this statement, perhaps you are revealing yourself to be an Aristotlean with regard to math. I am a mathematical Platonist like Penrose, Tegmark, Godel, et al. For instance, the mathematician doesn't invent the geometry, he discovers it.

Count me in as a Platonist too, dearest sister in Christ! For I do disagree with LeGrande here. For two reasons. (1) In the hands of a mathematical formalist, Math is not some passive tool. The mathematical objects selected to express the formalism "shape" any model the formalism constructs. The result may be that the model generated therefrom may not "map to Reality" too well. (2) I believe the foundation of the universe is mathematical or, more precisely, geometrical. The universe is what has evolved from that geometry.

Plato is "alive and well" with us, dearest sister in Christ!

[Alamo-Girl]

Yes indeed. Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dearest sister in Christ!

[hosepipe]

[ Truly, fiction like performing art needs the reader to "suspend reality" and thus must appear logical on the surface. ]

Good Point.. Science can be a performing art.. like a shamans show/performance..
The word Hypocrisy comes from the greek word for Actor..
Some science fact has been, and some no doubt still is science fiction..

[Alamo-Girl]

Hmmm... Thank you for sharing your insights, dear brother in Christ!

[Fichori]

I'm not avoiding your question, I was just waiting for the thread to die down ;-)

“Do you seriously disagree with astronomical measurements since the 1960's?”

I just might.

I'll explain.

It has been said [as scientific fact] by various people and institutions, that, among other things:

• A process called Vacuum Fluctuation™ created a Singularity™ which barfed out the universe.
• Everything was formed by processes of the Natural™ laws of physics.
• Life arose from non life due to Natural™ processes.
• All living things [including humans] Evolved™ from a single first life from.
• Global Warming™ is a Man Caused Disaster™ and we are all going to die. (and all the polar bears are going to drown)
• Comets come from the Oort Cloud™
• The Infinite Centerless Universe™ is Expanding™ along as many dimensions as needed to Explain™ everything.
• Space/Time™ is Expanding™ along as many dimensions as needed to Explain™ everything.
• Most DNA is Junk DNA™ leftover from Million And Millions Of Years™ of Evolution™
• The ~2% of human and chimp DNA not discarded as Junk DNA™ is ~98% similar. (which proves humans are related to chimps [which have a 10-12% larger genome])
• The Moon was created when a huge object struck Earth and broke some dirt off.
• All the Dinosaurs™ died off when they got hit in the head by a Low Flying Asteroid™
• Albert Gore is an honest, skinny, wise, and humble gentleman with a minimal Carbon Footprint™

I could go on, but I really don't see a point.

Basically, when someone says, this is scientific fact, I like to see their claim demonstrated before I accept it as fact.

They say the evidence proves it!, but what I usually find is that an interpretation of evidence [that fits a predetermined model] is all there is.

The evidence may be sound, but the interpretation thereof must be taken on faith.

So yes, I'm skeptical.

I place my faith in Christ alone, that He died on the Cross for my sins, that He rose from the dead on the third day, and that His Word is true.

So, when someone asks me to believe something as scientific fact, that depends on having faith in their interpretation of evidence which may have been influence by some preconceived ideas that may or may not reflect reality, I get the urge to start putting For Sale signs on bridges.

To me, astronomical measurements since the 1960's is a red flag.


We can use laser interferometry to make a ring laser gyro to measure the Earth's rotation.

Or we could demonstrate the non-instantaneous speed of light with a spinning mirror and a laser.

Can you with equal objectivity demonstrate the Expansion™ of Space/Time™?


FYI ping to mrjesse.

[Alamo-Girl]

Can you with equal objectivity demonstrate the Expansion™ of Space/Time™?

LOLOL! Your use of the trademark symbols and the exhaustive list of eyebrow raisers suggests that it will be a complete waste of time to present this evidence to you.

Nevertheless, you asked. So I give it to you in several parts, the background and the latest mission (WMAP.) The third link is for technical reports (LAMBDA.)

WMAP: background information

WMAP: mission results

WMAP: technical papers

If you wish to ignore all of it, that's your choice.

[Fichori]

“LOLOL! Your use of the trademark symbols and the exhaustive list of eyebrow raisers suggests that it will be a complete waste of time to present this evidence to you.” [excerpt, bold emphasis mine]

Oh contraire!

I find the evidence fascinating.

“Nevertheless, you asked. So I give it to you in several parts, the background and the latest mission (WMAP.) The third link is for technical reports (LAMBDA.)” [excerpt]

Based on the raw data, what we objectively know is what wavelengths are coming from a given direction.

I do not doubt that the scientists who collected the data, did their utmost to gather it accurately.

However, I find that their Explanation™ is lacking objectivity.

Their framework for interpretation is unverifiable.

“If you wish to ignore all of it, that's your choice.” [excerpt]

I don't ignore the verifiable data, however, I do not place my faith in their interpretation of same.


So, on the topic of Space/Time™ Expansion™, I'm going to remain skeptical. (sans objective verification)

On the topic of the very cool WMAP data, one conclusion that I find likely is that objects (ie, systems, galaxies, etc) within Space/Time™ are moving away from a central point.

But I am unaware of any way to objectively demonstrate that as a verifiable scientific fact ;-)

[Alamo-Girl]

On the topic of the very cool WMAP data, one conclusion that I find likely is that objects (ie, systems, galaxies, etc) within Space/Time™ are moving away from a central point.

From the inception - "In the beginning, God created..." - Gen 1:1

By "within Space/Time" are you suggesting that space/time pre-exists?

If so, what is your evidence?

[Fichori]

“By "within Space/Time" are you suggesting that space/time pre-exists?” [excerpt]

'Within' = 'subject to the constraints of'. (ie, physical objects)

“If so, what is your evidence?” [excerpt]

What evidences lead me to find it likely that objects are moving away from a central point?

Quantized red shifts and the WMAP data.

However, that conclusion is speculative at best. (as I indicated in what you replied to)

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for sharing your views, dear Fichori!

[Fichori]

Welcome ;-)

[betty boop]

BTTT

[mrjesse]

Said mrjesse:
"For an observer on earth at a point in time when Pluto is 6.8 light hours away and the earth rotates 102 degrees in 6.8 hours, when Pluto appears directly overhead, will it really be 102 degrees off - and not even really in the night sky? "

Replied TXnMA:
Yes

Greetings and a wonderful day to you, TXnMA!

Say, did you get a chance to look over some more of my color coded questions? Perhaps you might be so kind as to take a whack at another! Anyway, hadn't heard from you in a while, hope you're doing well and all.

Have a wonderful day,

-Jesse

[mrjesse]

Said LeGrande:
You are correct Zero Sum. I mistakenly thought they were relative, your explanation of the inertial-noninertial frames is what did it for me. That and when I tried to shoot your LAZER at the sun and make both frames equivalent. They aren't.

Mrjesse and Fichori you were essentially correct too and I would like to apologize for cavalierly dismissing your arguments and I would like to thank you both for your persistence in helping to show me my error : )

This is a very good day. I have been humbled a little bit and I have learned a couple of valuable lessons : )

Thank you, LeGrande.

*Sigh* [Big sigh of relief.]

Looking back, Wow. what an experience. And what learning. And for almost a year. This discussion started Mon 30 Jun 2008, and finally came to a close Sun 14 Jun 2009, just 16 days short of its first anniversary.

You know, it's been about 4 months since I introduced my list of color coded questions. You know, that was almost providential that you had the foresight to not answer any of those. How did you know, anyway? In an honest days course, I do wonder if maybe you somehow knew. Like I said, what an experience. I will never be quite the same again, but I'm glad. I learned a lot of fascinating stuff along the way. Thank you.

Anyway, if I recall correctly, we were discussing waves of nothing, when we got sidetracked. I would enjoy taking up where we left off, if you too would enjoy it. Maybe we can all learn even more. Wouldn't that be fun?

Have a wonderful day,

-Jesse

[TXnMA]

"Say, did you get a chance to look over some more of my color coded questions?"

~~~~~

Although I'm "retired" -- as Texas Archeological Steward and Chairman of the Cass County (Texas) Historical Commission -- I have an almost-too-busy life apart from FR... so my time for FReeping is quite limited. Your questions are fun - but they are a diversion from my primary quest for understanding re Creation, Scripture, and our Creator God.

You, apparently, understand the basic relationship between the speed of light, distance, and the relativistic effects on an observer in a universe where everything is moving -- and some things are moving with respect to themselves (rotating on their own axis). You seem to get it right on the small scale, so I am interested in where your reasoning falls apart so badly as to allow you to be suckered into to the concept of a young universe. Especially so since the data from the Hubble telescope and the COBE experiments are readily available.

Remember that I am a Christian and a firm believer in our (infinite, timeless, eternal, all-powerful, omnipresent and un-bound by space and time), Creator God and His incomprehensibly mighty works. What I am seeking is an understanding of why otherwise intelligent and thoughtful folks still insist on diminishing their concept of Him and his mighty creation so as to deprecate them into the man-centered YEC model -- when His works shout, "I AM far greater than your finite minds can comprehend!"

There is a huge difference between the truth of the words of "I AM" in Scripture and the ego-centered and geo-centered hubristic (mis)interpretation of His words by mankind...

IOW, what (aside from sinful ego and fear of being wrong) drives folks to cling to Ussher's 16th-century mind-burp misinterpretation of Genesis -- when they are literally "surrounded by so great a cloud of Witnesses" in what we can now see of His Creation?

Remember, I do not doubt the truth of Scripture; I only question the rationale of those who would deny clear evidence in order to belittle Almighty God down to a puny "thing" that their minds can "wrap around". And, I especially question those who go to great lengths of effort and expense to proselytize and try to force that (to me, sinful) belittlement of God on the rest of mankind.

~~~~~~~~

Sorry, although I would enjoy doing so, I haven't time to spend "playing with" your little "puzzles". If I interact further on this thread, it will be to return to the question of the "Universal Now" and how only a Being ("I AM") Who is outside of and unconstrained by time and space can comprehend the truth of that instantaneous totality of reality... (...and why any creature within that Creation can not -- by definition -- comprehend it...)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gotta run; a rancher a few counties from here has just unearthed another 10,000-year-old "Indian" site, and has asked my help in evaluating it...

[TXnMA]

BTW, great article, BB! However, from my perspective, it would be better titled,

"The Atheist and 'YEC' PerversionS of Reality"

'-}

[hosepipe]

Beautiful effort(the post) for so little obvious gain..
I would call it a sacrifice.. for a neigbor..
The wording was quite subtle.. and intricate..

[TXnMA]

Thanks - but let’s give it a bit more time to “work” before we declare the effort to be “wasted”...