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
That is metaphysics baby! (in my best Dennis Miller impression)
Yes, entropy is what is responsible for the organization of the body eventually breaking down; but it is not in any way to imply that this is within a CLOSED system. Most things die and are eventually or immediately eaten by something. That something that eats them breaks down the preys structures to derive energy to build up their own.
Thus livings systems accelerate entropy, creating disorder to create and maintain its own order.
What we know of physical reality is both necessary and sufficient to explain biological function. There is not a single observed biological function that requires anything “over and above” physical law.
Okay. Then describe for me how physical law accounts for "function."
An enzyme doesn't break apart a specific substrate because it wants to, it's amino acids form a electromagnetic environment that makes the substrate breaking apart energetically favorable because of its 3-D shape and the electromagnetic charge positions.
Once again however I think you are looking for something metaphysical.. purpose rather than function......you wont find some deep “purpose” by looking at biological molecular interactions, just mechanical functions.
I must assume you are asking “Why is there life?”
Science cannot answer that question. Read the Bible to find that answer.
So, by extension, the bits stored on a flash drive or the pits on a DVD are not "information", either -- until they are decoded and made to perform a function that interacts with a human.
I see a Newtonian analogy: All of the above data-storage forms are potential information -- much as water behind a dam, or gunpowder in a cartridge, or a weight hanging over your head ...represent potential energy.
So, by that analogy -- and your statement, "information" could be viewed as "kinetic data" that also interacts with a sentient recipient...
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Am I even close? ;-)
But AMD, that is precisely the question I'm not asking here!
Two reasons I'm not asking it: (1) I am trying to stay within the confines of science; but this "WHY?" question points straight to God (IMHO there is no other conceivable alternative cause that can stand rigorous logical test). Science cannot ask a question like that and still be science. (2) I already know the answer (see immediately above); but my knowledge of same isn't relevant to "doing science." And so I do not let it intrude (or try very hard not to) into scientific investigation. Which is premised on the empirical. (I.e., you have to show direct evidence in support of claims.)
On the other hand, the "WHAT" of life is what comes into the range of human direct perception, as aided by human intellect. Thus, the WHAT question belongs to science. The WHY question belongs to God.
What I want to work on here is the WHAT question. Can I make my intent any clearer?
I am only asking: "What is Life?" That is, what are the essential things we need to understand in order to come up with a valid, comprehensive "physical description" of WHAT life is. One in which formal theory maximally "maps" to phenomenal (physical+) biological Reality.
I deeply believe that this is a "conversation" that science — biological and physical — needs to be having right about now. FWIW JMHO
Oh, and by no means ought we neglect to invite the mathematicians to the party! Mathematical modeling may well hold the keys to the future development of a "realistic" biology.
[[(As if entropy = physical death). It is my understanding that entropy is that which inevitably occurs in closed systems. ]]
It is just as bad for open systems as it is for closed- it’s a common argument by evolutionists to insist that open systems allow for violations of entropy, but this is simply a false premise:
“The evolutionist rationale is simply that life on earth is an “exception” because we live in an open system: “The sun provides more than enough energy to drive things.” This supply of available energy, we are assured, adequately satisfies any objection to evolution on the basis of the second law.
But simply adding energy to a system doesn’t automatically cause reduced entropy (i.e., increased organized complexity, or “build-up” rather than “break-down”). Raw solar energy alone does not decrease entropy—in fact, it increases entropy, speeding up the natural processes that cause break-down, disorder, and disorganization on earth (consider, for example, your car’s paint job, a wooden fence, or a decomposing animal carcass, both with and then without the addition of solar radiation).
Speaking of the general applicability of the second law to both closed and open systems in general, Harvard scientist Dr. John Ross (not a creationist) affirms:
“...there are no known violations of the second law of thermodynamics. Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated [closed] systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems ... there is somehow associated with the field of far-from equilibrium phenomena the notion that the second law of thermodynamics fails for such systems. It is important to make sure that this error does not perpetuate itself.”
[Dr. John Ross, Harvard scientist (evolutionist), Chemical and Engineering News, vol. 58, July 7, 1980, p. 40]...
In short, the “open system” argument fails to adequately justify evolutionist speculation in the face of the second law. Most highly respected evolutionist scientists (some of whom have been quoted above with care—and within context) acknowledge this fact, many even acknowledging the problem it causes the theory to which they subscribe.”
http://www.trueorigin.org/steiger.asp#second
Looks pretty durned interesting to me, TXnMA. I'd like to explore your last further. I suspect you are on the right track here. I'd love to hear more about/help elaborate the details.
I do wonder about the "made to perform" language though. It is stated in the "imperative voice" of "natural speech (language)." The worry is, in general, it's not a good thing to "queer the deal" by imposing arbitrary limits from the get-go. (The word "made" presupposes an unidentified causal agency at work.)
Indeed, as you say, the message in Shannon's mathematical theory of communication can be seen as potential and the communication of that message as kinetic.
The receiver, however, need not be human. For instance, the communication could be from one computer to another - or within the molecular machinery of a houseplant, etc.
Of a truth, in biological programmed cell death, the message itself might be to curl up and die.
Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dearest sister in Christ!
Clothing... functions even moves and has purpose but it is not alive..
Is the human body merely clothing to the spirit?..
Are all "bodies" of living organisms clothing?... i.e. to types of spirits..
The old observer problem of "What is life?".. and that answered.. "What is death?".. or vice versa..
Erwin Scroninger wrote the definitive book on the subject a long time ago.
Biologists are fairly satisfied with a DEFINITION of life, for whatever esoteric purposes THAT could be put to, we are now engaged in a full fledged and total struggle to understand HOW life works, now that we are fairly satisfied we know what life IS.
It is the details of HOW life works that will lead to treatments for disease, understanding of pathology, understanding aging, etc.
A better definition of what life is isn't going to be useful for much, especially delving as you do into metaphysical navel gazing.
Once again....
Life: An organization of molecules that consumes energy in order to maintain and replicate its molecular organization.
I deliberately used the terms, "made to", "human", and "sentient" -- to stimulate A-G into revising her analogy into a more general form. '-}
As they say in Congress, "I now exercise my right to 'revise and extend' my own remarks:" ;-)
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A-G: "The letter in your mailbox doesn't become information until you read it. "
TXnMA: So, by extension, the words written on a letter, the bits stored on a flash drive, or the pits on a DVD are not "information", either -- until they are decoded and [made to] perform a function that interacts with a human [consciously] reactive recipient.
I see a Newtonian analogy: All of the above data-storage forms are potential information -- much as water behind a dam, or gunpowder in a cartridge, or a weight hanging over your head ...represents potential energy.
So, by that analogy -- and your statement -- "information" could be viewed as "kinetic data" that also interacts with a sentient [consciously] reactive recipient....
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Caveats and disclaimers:
Admittedly, I've never read Shannon, but, I really expect that there are some new "group insights" lurking in this train of thought!
How did the molecules get organized?
How did the molecules get organized?
The definition of something now has account for its origins?
I thought you wanted a definition of what life IS, now you seem to want an explanation of where life came from. Entirely different question.
Well that would be nice, but not necessary if all one is asking for is a description of the principles involved in biological organization. The "how" question, not the "why" question.
Reduced to a single phrase, the Shannon model tells us that "information is the reduction of uncertainty (Shannon entropy) in the receiver (or molecular machine) as it moves from a before state to an after state."
It is the action of successful communication, not the message itself. The message doesn't matter - it could be DNA, Shakespeare's Hamlet, etc. The language doesn't matter either as long as the sender and receiver speak the same language.
And although the receiver decodes the message from the channel, consciousness is not necessary to the model. The same model applies to television, radio, computers, the internet, etc.
The elements of a successful message in order are: message, sender, encoding, channel, noise, decoding, receiver.
Information content is measured by the reduction of uncertainty in the receiver, in bits (which are not necessarily binary btw in Shannon's model.)
As far as I know, there is no known materialistic origin for information (Shannon, successful communication) in the universe. Indeed, there is a standing prize of a million dollars for the first scientist to propose a feasible answer to that problem. AFAIK, that prize has not been collected. I'd research it, but as I said, my time is very limited today.
To make a long story short, an astrophysicist friend of betty boop's - whose specialty is the sun - early on wondered about light as an information carrier (channel.) His speculation sounds like it might dovetail into your field of expertise.
Any hoot, I look forward to reading your next, dear brother in Christ!
Again, I aver a better definition is successful communication (Shannon) in nature.
Where there is successful communication in nature, there is life. When it ceases, there is death. And where it never happened, there is non-life.
"Purpose" in that definition is a matter of the message itself, whether to maintain, replicate, metabolize, organize, etc.
It is also mathematics, universal and holds up to intense scrutiny. And as a bonus it offends neither side of the ones who refuse to look any further: "nature did it" v "God did it."
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