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
When a molecular structure is no longer able to consume metabolic energy to maintain and replicate its structures, when instead its organized molecular structures begin to break down and give off energy, then it no longer fits the definition of life, does it?
Therefore it would be dead.
Life and death is not at all relevant to “who am I”.
I am not my body. My body shall live and die.
I shall exist forever through the salvation of our Lord Jesus the Christ.
Agreed dearest sister in Christ! One clear sign of life seems to be the ability of an organism to "communicate" and "process information." Another seems to be the ability to maintain distance from thermal equilibrium. Et al. It seems life forms — unlike inorganic entities and machines — are complex open systems. We can tot up a list of features based on observation and analysis, but such a list will not tell us what life IS, just "what it looks like," and how it "behaves."
As Robert Rosen put it, "What is Life?" is the single most difficult and intractable question in science. He strongly suggests that the question cannot be answered absent Aristotle's idea of final cause — which as you'll recall Francis Bacon "abolished" from science. Certainly the Newtonian Paradigm has abolished it.
Thank you so much for your excellent essay/post, dearest sister in Christ!
A-G: That is a description of what life looks like, but it doesn't answer what life v. non-life/death in nature "is."
I agree, dearest sister in Christ. AMD's might be a good description of what life does, but it does not tell us anything about what life is. Plus it is notably silent about how the organism acquired "its own structures" in the first place.
[[I shall exist forever through the salvation of our Lord Jesus the Christ.]]
Jesus only saves those who beleive in creation
[[I shall exist forever through the salvation of our Lord Jesus the Christ.]]
And only htose hwo beleive in a young earth
[[I shall exist forever through the salvation of our Lord Jesus the Christ.]]
And intelligent design
[[I shall exist forever through the salvation of our Lord Jesus the Christ.]]
And in irreducible complexty
I like that. I think I will steal it : )
So you think the Pope is not saved because he doesn’t believe in a young Earth?
[[I shall exist forever through the salvation of our Lord Jesus the Christ.]]
And only those who blieve the fossil record shows discontinuity, NOT continuity
Thank you so very much for your wonderful insights and encouragements, dearest sister in Christ!
Claude Shannon's Mathematical Theory of Communication is the foundation theory of the branch of Mathematics called "Information Theory."
AMEN to that, dearest sister in Christ!
Tear down that wall!
It seems you are giving a description of a "closed system" here allmendream. But if living systems are open systems, as increasingly seems likely, then this "mechanistic" description is leaving out something vitally important (no pun intended). Plus your "model" simply takes life "for granted," assuming right up front that closed (e.g., inorganic) systems can be alive (or become alive) — which is begging the question, to put it mildly.
What about consuming energy makes you think I am in ANY WAY talking about a closed system?
What do you think I am leaving out of my description of life?
The vital spark provided by God?
Cannot be determined by scientific analysis. You were asking a biologist for a definition of life however, not a theologian.
The definition I provided is perfectly adequate for a physical description of what life is. If you want to get all metaphysical about the subject, have at it, but nothing of utility will come from it.
It reminds me a lot of the idea that a quantum collapse doesn’t happen unless there is an observer.
The way you were speaking connoted to my mind a state of entropy. (As if entropy = physical death). It is my understanding that entropy is that which inevitably occurs in closed systems.
What do you think I am leaving out of my description of life?.... The vital spark provided by God?
No. You continue to misunderstand me on his point. Questions about God are not scientific questions. Further, I am neither a mechanist nor a vitalist. What you are leaving out of your description of life are all the non-physical aspects (e.g., an explanation of biological organization targeted to biological function). Which being phenomenal ought to be susceptible to scientific analysis.
The fact is Darwin's theory has nothing to say about the organism qua organism. In fact Darwinism has effectively redefined biology, asserting that biology is about "evolution" rather than about "organism." In Robert Rosen's view (see his magisterial Life Itself, 1999, from which the following quotations were drawn; pp. 255–257), Darwin's theory turns evolution, thus biology, into "a collection of pure historical chronicles, like tables of random numbers, or stock exchange quotations."
Rosen can get even more pointed than that:
This picture struck me early as a kind of mythology, with evolution as protagonist, in its exact dictionary meaning of "serving to explain or sanctify some concept, usage, institution, or natural phenomenon."The definition I provided is perfectly adequate for a physical description of what life is. If you want to get all metaphysical about the subject, have at it, but nothing of utility will come from it.It was, for instance, entirely on such grounds that the ideas of Walter Elsasser ... were not only dismissed, but violently attacked, by those biologists who bothered to read what he had written. All Elsasser did was to exploit the [commonly accepted] assumption that organisms are "rare" among material systems, and hence disappear from "general laws" obtained by averaging. He was thus led to suggest that, in the sparse realm he envisioned for biology, there would be "biotonic laws" governing what went on there; not derivable from the average, "general" laws, although compatible with them. It was this last suggestion, that "laws" were operative at all in this biotonic realm, which exposed him to violent attack from the biological side. Mere paraphrase cannot convey the character of these. Here, for instance, are the words of [Nobel Laureate in Biology] Jacques Monod:
Summarized in a few words, here is Elsasser's position.With this language, then, Monod consigned Elsasser to the category of "scientific Vitalism," one of the lower rungs of his scientific Hell. And yet, all Elsasser did to deserve this was to draw an inconvenient conclusion from Monod's own assertion, embodied in the first few sentences of the preface to Chance and Necessity, that "Biology ... (is) marginal because — the living world constituting by a tiny and very 'special' part of the universe — it does not seem likely that the study of living beings will ever uncover general laws applicable outside the biosphere."The strange properties (of organisms) are doubtless not at odds with physics; but the physical forces and chemical reactions brought to light by the study of nonliving systems do not fully account for them. Hence it must be realized that over and above physical principles and adding themselves thereto, others are operative in living matter, but not in non-living systems where, consequently, these electively vital principles could not be discovered. It is these principles — or, to borrow from Elsasser's terminology, these "biotonic laws" — that must be elucidated.... The least one can say is that the arguments of these physicists is oddly lacking in strictness and solidity. (Chance and Necessity, pp. 27–28, emphases in original).
Monod's language, and that of countless other similar assertions which could be adduced, is clearly not the language of collegial scientific discourse. It is rather the response of someone who feels his myths are under attack. That is, it expresses a religious rather than a scientific attitude.
The above remarks from both Rosen and Monod do not deal with metaphysics.
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