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The Atheist Perversion of Reality
April 5, 2009 | Jean F. Drew

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


TOPICS: Current Events; General Discusssion; Religion & Culture; Religion & Politics
KEYWORDS: atheism; atheists; culture; jeandrew; jeanfdrew; marx; reality; voegelin
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To: TXnMA
[ Thanks - but let’s give it a bit more time to “work” before we declare the effort to be “wasted”... ]

I don't see sacrifice as a waste.. i.e. Jesus, Apostles, Preaching, Prayer etc..
It is merely a service or could be a form of love..
a.k.a. the golden rule..

841 posted on 06/22/2009 8:21:15 AM PDT by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to include some fully orbed hyperbole....)
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To: TXnMA; Alamo-Girl; mrjesse; hosepipe; LeGrande; Hank Kerchief; xzins; logos; metmom; ...
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.

It really does appear that the YEC view stuffs our Almighty Eternal God into a little box about the size of our puny notion of Time.

We humans experience Time in a certain limited way (irreversible linear series of moments moving past–present–future). God does not. To use Him as the authority to back up the very limited, partial human view of a "young earth" (~6,000 years) seems, er, inappropriate in the face of accumulating evidence. To say the least. At the heart of such a claim is a major "category problem": God and His Ways do not reduce to our human conceptions (no matter how brilliant) simply because He is God and we are not.

It's interesting that some commentators here favorable to the YEC thesis are aware of all the evidence piling up in support of a ~13.7 billion year old universe (If past predicts future, probably that estimate is not cast in stone). They say they appreciate the evidence, it's pretty dandy, and such like. But they maintain that the conclusions from the data are "faulty." I gather they are faulty because they do not square with the YEC perspective. No other explanation has been advanced so far, AFAIK.

And yet the burden is on them to show how the cosmological data can be interpreted differently than the way contemporary physics interprets it. This is a scientific question; so to answer with a literal reading of Genesis wouldn't cut it....

Don't get me wrong. God is the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe and everything in it, including you and me — but this is so regardless of how old or young we conjecture the universe may be from our human standpoint.

Thank you so very much, TXnMA, for your excellent essay/post!

842 posted on 06/22/2009 9:36:36 AM PDT by betty boop (Tyranny is always whimsical. — Mark Steyn)
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To: TXnMA

Thank you TXnMA!


843 posted on 06/22/2009 9:37:52 AM PDT by betty boop (Tyranny is always whimsical. — Mark Steyn)
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To: betty boop
“Don't get me wrong. God is the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe and everything in it, including you and me — but this is so regardless of how old or young we conjecture the universe may be from our human standpoint.” betty boop

Excellent point, I would add that in addition to the AGE of something being immaterial to the fact that it was created by God, so too is the mechanism of creation immaterial to the fact that God is responsible for its creation.

Discovering the mechanisms of biological evolution no more means that God didn't create all life any more than discovering the mechanisms of nuclear fusion means that God doesn't make the Sun shine.

844 posted on 06/22/2009 9:52:20 AM PDT by allmendream ("Wealth is EARNED not distributed, so how could it be redistributed?")
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To: allmendream; Alamo-Girl; TXnMA; mrjesse; hosepipe; LeGrande; Hank Kerchief; xzins; logos; metmom
...in addition to the AGE of something being immaterial to the fact that it was created by God, so too is the mechanism of creation immaterial to the fact that God is responsible for its creation.

Well that's certainly true allmendream. The only problem is TToE has nothing whatever to say about the Creation except that it was somehow "mechanical" or a mechanistic event. Theist evos turn God into the cosmic Watchmaker. But still evo theory doesn't have a clue how God made the watch. They just try to explain how it goes on ticking.

Darwin's theory is ineluctibly in the grip of the Newtonian Paradigm and the "Cartesian metaphor" of the Universe conceived as machine. If we want to understand the origin of Life, this is the WRONG MODEL!!!!!!

You'd think biologists of all people would be interested in this question.

At the end of the day, to me TToE is ultimately a doctrine, just as YEC is a doctrine. Both would seem to need serious, rational reexamination.

JMHO FWIW

845 posted on 06/22/2009 10:10:07 AM PDT by betty boop (Tyranny is always whimsical. — Mark Steyn)
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To: betty boop
I am only curious about this in a couple of ways. I'm making no argument here.

You wrote: “We humans experience Time in a certain limited way (irreversible linear series of moments moving past–present–future). God does not.”

The first curiosity is, how would you possibly know how God experiences anything, much less time?

Secondly, do you think “time” is a thing or an attribute?

I do not, by the way, believe time is a thing. For me, time is a concept for the relationship between motions, just as linear dimension is concept for the positional relationships between things. I think, to treat time as a “thing” with metaphysical attributes of some kind, is hypostatization or reification. (I'll happily accuse Einstein of that mistake.)

I don't think you agree with that though, and would be interested in why not.

Finally, one other irresistible question. Do you think for God, time is reversible? (That, for example, a child could become a baby, reenter the womb and become a fetus, then a zygote, then split into an egg and sperm, etc.)?

Hope you are having a good day.

Hank

846 posted on 06/22/2009 10:24:59 AM PDT by Hank Kerchief
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To: betty boop
Yes, just as nuclear fusion to a scientist is a “mechanistic” event. This doesn't make God into the cosmic star maker / watch maker, and is somehow less involved, it means that God is God.

It seems that unless God did things in a magical mystical way beyond understanding that he is somehow less of a God to you. To me a God who created the mechanism whereby all things would come about under his guidance is a lot more powerful and foresighted than one who has to go “poof”.

Just because God makes stars using gravity and nuclear fusion doesn't mean that God didn't make the star, or that describing gravity or nuclear fusion removes a need for God.

Biological evolution has nothing to do with the origins of life, only how they change in response to selective pressure.

As a biologist I am interested in the question of abiogenesis, and my basic philosophy is exactly the same.

If and when a rudimentary life is created by a scientist from non living matter it will, to me, only speak to the strength of the scriptures whereby God commanded the land and sea to bring forth life.

To others it will be a death blow to their faith that God can, for some unexplained reason, only create life or change life by magical mystical means rather than by utilizing the natural laws that God created.

847 posted on 06/22/2009 10:35:45 AM PDT by allmendream ("Wealth is EARNED not distributed, so how could it be redistributed?")
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To: Hank Kerchief; Alamo-Girl; hosepipe; xzins; metmom; MHGinTN; TXnMA; freedumb2003; allmendream; ...
Hank: The first curiosity is, how would you possibly know how God experiences anything, much less time?

bb: I don't. But I have very good reasons for believing that He doesn't experience Time as humans do (unless He wants to, as with Jesus Christ Incarnate), based on category reasons. The Creator and the created "occupy" distinctly different logical categories, which are decidedly inequivalent. Thus one cannot use finite concepts as a measure of God's timelessness, or Eternity. I AM and Eternal Now express the reality of the divine Nature. That's all I need to know.

Hank: Secondly, do you think “time” is a thing or an attribute?

bb: I think it is neither. I think of it as "context" in which things happen i.e., events occur. It is essential to causal entailment in Nature. (So is Space.)

Hank: Finally, one other irresistible question. Do you think for God, time is reversible?

bb: Time itself is a "creature" of God. The Creator is not subject to the laws governing the Creation. One imagines questions regarding the reversibility or irreversibility of time are moot to the Being wholly outside of Time — in Whom we mortals live and move and have our being....

It's a rainy day today. Again. Sigh....

But I'm good! I'm wishing you the same Hank!

848 posted on 06/22/2009 11:01:27 AM PDT by betty boop (Tyranny is always whimsical. — Mark Steyn)
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To: allmendream
God did things in a magical mystical way beyond understanding that he is somehow less of a God to you. To me a God who created the mechanism whereby all things would come about under his guidance is a lot more powerful and foresighted than one who has to go “poof”.

Boil it all down, allmendream, and what we have is this: You would make yourself the measure of God.

Or so it seems to me. FWIW.

p.s.: On that dated "mechanism" stuff. The Universe is not a machine and the Creation event was not a construction job — a mere assemblage of parts. For the Creation has a Telos, an Omega — a divine Purpose. Machines do not have purposes of their own.

849 posted on 06/22/2009 11:09:55 AM PDT by betty boop (Tyranny is always whimsical. — Mark Steyn)
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To: betty boop

How do we, as Christians, know ANYTHING about God? Through the Bible.

2 Paul 3:8 My dear one, do not lose sight of this one thing. A thousand years to the Lord is as a day, and a day is as a thousand years.


850 posted on 06/22/2009 11:12:57 AM PDT by allmendream ("Wealth is EARNED not distributed, so how could it be redistributed?")
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To: allmendream
How do we, as Christians, know ANYTHING about God? Through the Bible.

Is that the only way?

851 posted on 06/22/2009 11:16:15 AM PDT by betty boop (Tyranny is always whimsical. — Mark Steyn)
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To: betty boop
You are the one insisting that unless God went “poof” he is somehow less of a God to you; thus it seems to me that it is you who is attempting to measure and limit God, not myself.

Science can only deal with things “mechanical”. And a machine does have a purpose, and was created for a purpose; just as our universe has a purpose and was created for a purpose. The machine I create doesn't need to be magical for it to be an embodiment of my intent and purposes.

So if creation was a “mechanical assemblage of parts”, somewhat knowable and predictable by scientific means; that diminishes God to you more so than if it was a magical assemblage of parts?

852 posted on 06/22/2009 11:17:22 AM PDT by allmendream ("Wealth is EARNED not distributed, so how could it be redistributed?")
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To: betty boop

What other ways to you recommend?


853 posted on 06/22/2009 11:18:28 AM PDT by allmendream ("Wealth is EARNED not distributed, so how could it be redistributed?")
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To: allmendream; Alamo-Girl; xzins; TXnMA; metmom; spirited irish; wagglebee; LeGrande
So if creation was a “mechanical assemblage of parts”, somewhat knowable and predictable by scientific means; that diminishes God to you more so than if it was a magical assemblage of parts?

Magic has nothing to do with it!

Science — as presently constituted — can only deal with things “mechanical.” But that doesn't make God the Great Mechanist, or the Creation mechanical at its root. Science LIMITS itself by the ironclad presupposition that the universe ultimately "bottoms out" in particles. These teensiest hard-bodied "billiard balls" of the Newtonian mechanistic picture are thought to be the ultimate "parts" of the universe.

However, awareness is growing that the universe bottoms out, not in the particles per se, but in the relations between them and with the system they constitute. This view (emerging in the fields of system theory and information theory) holds the information/communication relations (so to speak) as preeminent.

Such relations are not "material" in any way; they are not "physical." What they are, is: Phenomenal (i.e., are capable of being modeled and evaluated on the basis of evidence). And as such, seem like proper subject matter for science to me. Provided there is a willingness to slip out of the straightjacket of the "mechanistic model" for a time, if only hypothetically....

Until/unless biologists are willing to do this, a prediction: The creation of a living organism from non-living matter will remain the pious yet ever elusive pipedream of doctrinaire Newtonians.

JMHO FWIW.

854 posted on 06/22/2009 12:23:02 PM PDT by betty boop (Tyranny is always whimsical. — Mark Steyn)
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To: allmendream; Alamo-Girl

I believe God gives us four Revelations of Himself: (1) Holy Scripture; (2) the “Book of Nature,” or the Creation itself; the Incarnation of Christ; the Holy Spirit with us. One Single Message in “four languages,” so to speak.


855 posted on 06/22/2009 12:31:24 PM PDT by betty boop (Tyranny is always whimsical. — Mark Steyn)
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To: betty boop

It’s a rainy day today. Again. Sigh....

But I’m good! I’m wishing you the same Hank!

Thank you and good for you. Happiness does not depend on circumstances. It’s rainy here too, since we are both New Englanders. No sun ‘til Friday I’m afraid. I was really counting on global warming, too. ;>)

Hank.


856 posted on 06/22/2009 12:54:22 PM PDT by Hank Kerchief
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To: Hank Kerchief
I was really counting on global warming, too. ;>)

Yeah. Me too! :^)

857 posted on 06/22/2009 12:58:41 PM PDT by betty boop (Tyranny is always whimsical. — Mark Steyn)
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To: betty boop
Science “as presently constituted” has been an unambiguous success in terms of gaining knowledge and improving lives.

Science that “steps out of the straight jacket” of dependence upon physical causes to explain physical phenomena needed to be in a padded cell and IN the straight jacket, as such is the domain of kooks and quacks and charlatans who have accomplished NOTHING of any value.

858 posted on 06/22/2009 1:17:16 PM PDT by allmendream ("Wealth is EARNED not distributed, so how could it be redistributed?")
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To: allmendream; betty boop
To me a God who created the mechanism whereby all things would come about under his guidance is a lot more powerful and foresighted than one who has to go “poof”.

So, essentially, God isn't a great God unless He did everything the way you think He should have.

So, please explain WHY God is more powerful and foresighted if He did it your way, instead of *poof*? We're looking at an entity who can create something out of nothing. If you grant that He created the whole universe then why is His greatness dependent on HOW He created it. Did it take more thought? More creativity? More anything?

Is an entity capable of creating everything more or less powerful because of HOW He created it than THAT He created it?

Since God is unbounded by time, it didn't take Him any longer from His perspective to create it step by step that to do it instantaneously.

859 posted on 06/22/2009 1:17:27 PM PDT by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
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To: metmom
There are idiots out there who suggest that discovering the mechanics as to HOW things are created means that God is not their ultimate creator. It is they who wish to limit God to a magical mystical being who must either “poof” things into existence or is relegated to being a “clockmaker”.

I see no reason why the means used during creation change if God is “hands on” or “hands off” in any way.

Yet the assumption of many in the time of Newton that any description of planetary motion in reference to natural forces (gravity) meant that God was not responsible for moving the planets.

To those stupid enough to stake out the ground that God must magically move the planets, suggesting that gravity does the work diminishes God to them.

Similarly, to those that suggest that species can only be created or changed by magical means, suggesting that evolution through natural selection of genetic variation does the work diminishes God to them.

860 posted on 06/22/2009 1:26:25 PM PDT by allmendream ("Wealth is EARNED not distributed, so how could it be redistributed?")
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