[_ Old Earth _] We Have Come From Nothing, and Will Return to Nothing"

[Devekut]

I would like to establish what I mean by materialistic, darwinist athesism. This is very different from the atheisms of the past, of Buddhism today and probably from the agnosticism of both past and present. Materialistic, darwinist atheism indeed holds the spectacularly new opinion of man's existence as "coming from nothing and returning to nothing".

I think the reader should pause here and really consider the novelty of this idea. It is a novelty and, as far as I know, no successful civilzation has ever held this at a popular or even ideal level. The atheist regards this as an advancment, a sophistication, an unloading of these "superstitions of the past". He acknowledges its novelty as a sign of progress. Although I can not see it for anything more than the nihilism which it will inevitably produce if these "superstitious" understandings of the world as "having an inherent meaning" were to lose the deep place in our collective consciousness that they currently retain. I don't think we can discount the profound effect that religious thinking has had on the human mind, even for those who are fervently non-religious. Every atheistic moral philosophy that has been thought up has been done so against the background of a world that has taken its own significance and man's own transcendent purpose for granted. Give it long enough and atheism will paint that backdrop black with its grounding assumptions, and probably not intentionally.

Now I don't think atheism will lead to the very end of man. Perhaps of man as we've know him, but perhaps, and this is something I should reflect on more, perhaps the end of philsophy? I think that a system rooted on this adage, I will likely continue repeating, that "we came from nothing and return to nothing", can not possibly help but undermine any sound moral and or rational principles that are derived from it.

Jay, you said

I do believe you are wrong here. Nature did intend man, or we wouldn't have been selected by it to be here.

Now, to the one who holds to strict materialist atheism, the above is the same kind of superstitious heresy that us religious folk have been teaching all along. Something that is not conscious can not possibly intend anything. Does water intend itself down the river? Does the sun intend to shine its rays? If there is not a mind behind the material world or within it controlling it, then the word "intention" becomes a simple euphemism for "nature produced man".
The agnostic is not sure where he came from and is not convinved as to where he is going. The atheist Buddhist or Vedantist still thinks eschatalogically, that is, he thinks of his self-fulfillment in transcendent terms , beyond merely the object of materalistic human flourishing (beyond, but not excluding) and he aims for "Nirvana" or "Moksha" and relates all of his efforts here in this world as ideally working towards this ultimately "super-natural" aim above the mundane human experience.

It is here where I think all religions share a common ground, whether theist or not, in opposition to the material atheism which considers man to be grounded in nothing more than the material and to have evolved without any actual theological or metaphysical relations to his environment. Man is simply a part of his environmen t, it wasn't created for him, it created him. Nor can he use it for anything other than the reality that immediately presents itself to him. He can only create out of it a better environment, a more comfortable life, longer legivity, less disease. In the end he simply "returns to dust" and all of his accomplishments are revealed as solely temporal in nature.

When you say:

I don't think atheism alone would lead towards a good or bad society necessarily.

Surely, atheism alone would not be neuteral for society. We can't be so naive as to think that it will mean nothing in terms of effects. If we take atheism to mean a denial of any transcendent purpose, cause or end, then the only end is with ourselves and the only purpose must be there to . We can erect all kinds of rationalistic arguments that "man ought to do this" because it is better for society, that we should have this law or that law because it puts a stopper in anarchy, that we should do"this or that" because it will make less people suffer. But we can not quite establish why society matters at all, why anarchy is a bad thing, why suffering should be eased or why charity is good. To be sure, even under atheism alone men will have compassion and sympathy and love for order and goodness. But he won't know why.

If man, and so civilizaion, is just a lucky by-product of natural processes, why should I care ultimately about my neighbour, never mind future generations? Why should I care if those not yet born will enjoy this world? You see this now with some of today's apocolayptic Evangelical factions who, because of poor eschatology, disregard legitimate environmental problems because quite soon Jesus will return and this earth will come to nil. To the rest of us Christians we have a duty to preserve the earth as its stewards and we do not know when he will return. Of course to the atheist the world is bound to nil no matter what we do. You see, there is a kind of eschatology involved in atheism. It just doesn't happen to include any of us.

We must respect others, and this can be grounded both rationally and emotionally, both with and without God.

Again, why should I care about my neighbour? We can observe in the natural order that animals, while capable of harming one another, generally are not "murderers" in the human sense of killing for pleasure, greed or indifference. With animals it is far more likely to be out of neccessity. In this sense, we might wonder if the natural order proves what you are saying. That nature does what it needs to continue. But you are forgetting another imperative, the "Human Imperative". That is, the command that we as, self-conscious beings, understand precisely why we should behave as nature dictates . Animals obey nature because they are not free to choose otherwise. Man is free to choose otherwise, his knowledge has made this possible. He has broken through nature in his capacity to question it and knows he is no longer forcefully held to it . Is this not the source of both civlization and disorder?

So the question is, why obey nature? Why obey even the impetus of evolution? If this answer can not be given, I think its adherents will have built a system, as wonderful and humanitarian as it sounds, that is not capable of sustaining itself at its base.

 

[Jayls5]

I would like to establish what I mean by materialistic, darwinist athesism. This is very different than the atheisms of the past, of Buddhism today and probably than the agnosticism of both past and present. Materialistic, darwinist atheism indeed holds the spectacularly new opinion of man's existence as "coming from nothing and returning to nothing".

Let me start by saying that this post was really well thought out, and I will do my best to answer your questions from the perspective you disagree with.

Buddhism might have some form of transcendent thought, but I would argue that it is not mutually exclusive from a non Buddhist atheist or agnostic. We can express this wholeness of the world that Buddhists cryptically speak of through the language of science. When you think about it, we really are just a collection of matter making up groups of cells that behave in a certain way. These collections of nerve impulses collectively make up our consciousness, but we are nevertheless aware that we have a very basic origin. We are made up of the same types of matter as everything else; as Carl Sagan put it, we are really just made up of star dust. It gets even crazier when you think about the fact that not a single cell in your body remains from when you were 10 years old. Our 10 year old body has been spread out into the world outside of us, contributing to the giant circle of life on earth. When we pass away, our consciousness may fade, but the essential matter/energy that made us up will remain until the end of time. Call this a soul if you will.

Buddhists, during meditation, often try to escape our traditional consciousness and busy thinking of our current hard-wired brain. When we finally learn to stop wandering and just "be," we become awakened to the whole of reality, the fact that we really are both a product of our environment and we are our environment. The "you - I" dichotomy disappears.

So, as I have shown, a science oriented atheist/agnostic can adopt this view rather easily.

I think the reader should pause here and really consider the novelty of this idea. It is a novelty and, as far as I know, no successful civilzation has ever held this at a popular or even ideal level. The atheist regards this as an advancment, a sophistication, an unloading of these "superstitions of the past". He acknowledges its novelty as a sign of progress. Although I can not see it for anything more than the nihilism which it will inevitably produce if these "superstitious" understandings of the world as "having an inherent meaning" were to lose the deep place in our collective consciousness that they currently retain. I don't think we can discount the profound effect that religious thinking has had on the human mind, even for those who are fervently non-religious. Every atheistic moral philosophy that has been thought up has been done so against the background of a world that has taken its own significance and man's own transcendent purpose for granted. Give it long enough and atheism will paint that backdrop black with its grounding assumptions, and probably not intentionally.

Now I don't think atheism will lead to the very end of man. Perhaps of man as we've know him, but perhaps, and this is something I should reflect on more, perhaps the end of philsophy? I think that a system rooted on this adage, I will likely continue repeating, that "we came from nothing and return to nothing", can not possibly help but undermine any sound moral and or rational principles that are derived from it.

I must disagree with your assertion that atheism inevitably leads to nihilism. Just about every existentialist philosopher (sparing Kierkegaard), had a metaphysical position similar to the one being discussed here. They were essentially, “thrown into the world†and void of purpose. The question is, what do we do with this lack of objective purpose?

We make it for ourselves.

The fact that no successful state has ever held this popular view is a moot point. There haven’t been many atheistic states to get a solid idea. We can also say for certain that most nations that failed were religious. The fact that most nations that have failed were religious should tell you that religion probably has little to do with the success of a nation. You are trying to assert causation where there is only correlation.

A good idea for society will be good for society regardless of whether or not you believe in God. The fact that most (if not all) of the few atheistic socialist states failed merely shows they had stupid ideas on how to run the country. To say that poor political and moral views are intrinsically tied to atheism is completely unsubstantiated. In fact, there is plenty of evidence to the contrary – just none that have been put into power.

Jay, you said

I do believe you are wrong here. Nature did intend man, or we wouldn't have been selected by it to be here.

Now, to the one who holds to strict materialist atheism, the above is the same kind of superstitious heresy that us religious folk have been teaching all along. Something that is not conscious can not possibly intend anything. Does water intend itself down the river? Does the sun intend to shine its rays? If there is not a mind behind the material world or within it controlling it, then the word "intention" becomes a simple euphemism for "nature procuded man".

Of course nature doesn’t consciously think about producing humans. I didn’t mean for the word “intend†to be used in that manner. If you meant that specifically, then yes, I’d agree humans were not intended.

The agnostic is not sure where he came from and is not convinved as to where he is going. The atheist Buddhist or Vedantist still thinks eschatalogically, that is, he thinks of his self-fulfillment in transcendent terms , beyond merely the object of materalistic human flourishing (beyond, but not excluding) and he aims for "Nirvana" or "Moksha" and relates all of his efforts here in this world as ideally working towards this ultimately "super-natural" aim above the mundane human experience.

It is here where I think all religions share a common ground, whether theist or not, in opposition to the material atheism which considers man to be grounded in nothing more than the material and to have evolved without any actual theological or metaphysical relations to his environment. Man is simply a part of his environmen t, it wasn't created for him, it created him. Nor can he use it for anything other than the reality that immediately presents itself to him. He can only create out of it a better environment, a more comfortable life, longer legivity, less disease. In the end he simply "returns to dust" and all of his accomplishments are revealed as solely temporal in nature.

Well, one possible view here is that you’re not doing it for yourself. You don’t seek some traditional heaven-like place in death by acting ‘good’ during life. You just do things that you think are good for society. You do it for your sake while you’re living, and you do it for your children’s sake. We have an interest in seeing our kids survive. You can even take a more grand evolutionary perspective, that we have an interest in seeing our human race survive. You believe the human race has value, because if you didn’t, you’d simply kill yourself. We probably wouldn’t be around here if we naturally didn’t believe we had any value or reason to live.

In death, we only return to nothing in the sense that we don’t have a consciousness. The “I†as a self aware individual is gone. This isn’t much of a problem. The first 4.5 billion years before I was self aware wasn’t all that bad, and I imagine it won’t be that bad after I’m gone either.

I don’t have reason to believe that this realization will necessarily lead to the absence of values that allow a society to flourish. In fact, the evolutionist would place religion under their view. The majority merely choose a religion, banding together while placing their views on a moral pedestal “above†their individual opinions. There is no inherent God behind it all. You might argue that it’s more evolutionarily useful to subscribe to the idea of God, and you’d be supported by that for the time being.

If we are taught to naively believe “God doesn’t exist†while we have no purpose, I’d agree it might be detrimental to society. If we teach our children to be progressive thinkers and adopt our parent’s moral views, I don’t see how it would be much different than what we are already doing. Instead of grounding it arbitrarily in God, we would merely assert views as “good or bad†before they were of age to understand the complexity of our world. When they are of age, they could come to understand that morality can be grounded in a lot of things – and it depends on the end we intend to achieve. This end can be the “good†of society, the “good†of ourselves, the “good†of our children, etc. In the end, time will tell which individual view comes out on top. Hitler tried to form a master race and conquer the world, but the supposed “inferior†people prevailed. We all believe our views are the best. I believe evolutionarily that cooperation and generally helping others is better for both our children and society as a whole.

When you say:

I don't think atheism alone would lead towards a good or bad society necessarily.

Surely, atheism alone would not be neuteral for society. We can't be so naive as to think that it will mean nothing in terms of effects. If we take atheism to mean a denial of any transcendent purpose, cause or end, then the only end is with ourselves and the only purpose must be there to . We can erect all kinds of rationalistic arguments that "man ought to do this" because it is better for society, that we should have this law or that law because it puts a stopper in anarchy, that we should do"this or that" because it will make less people suffer. But we can not quite establish why society matters at all, why anarchy is a bad thing, why suffering should be eased or why charity is good. To be sure, even under atheism alone men will have compassion and sympathy and love for order and goodness. But he won't know why.

I really don’t believe Atheism in itself will do anything positively or negatively. I don’t think that religion in itself will do anything positively or negatively either. Both can be used to shape a world view that is either agreeable or disagreeable to you and I.

Arguably, you don’t know why something is good either. You have merely put your morals upon the pedestal of God. It’s good because you say it is, and like it or not, it’s strength in numbers. We can only fight for what we call “good†for ourselves. Different people will ground it in different ways, but in the end, it’s the moral itself that will be agreed upon, tolerated, or fought over. Christianity teaches tolerance, but it can only be applied to an extent. We do not tolerate people trying to kill our children. We do not tolerate rape, stealing, and things of the sort. We generally agree on cooperation, but we must face the fact that we will fight each other over things we cannot tolerate. If you were to ask me “why†I should defend my child from a rapist, then I couldn’t tell you my reason came from God. I’m sure I could ground it in some rational moral theory if I needed to. Ultimately, I don’t think I need to justify my position for defending my child – I just have to. Some things we simply must do, and we must expect consequences from those who cannot tolerate it.

If man, and so civilizaion, is just a lucky by-product of natural processes, why should I care ultimately about my neighbour, never mind future generations? Why should I care if those not yet born will enjoy this world? You see this now with some of today's apocolayptic Evangelical factions who, because of poor eschatology, disregard legitimate environmental problems because quite soon Jesus will return and this earth will come to nil. To the rest of us Christians we have a duty to preserve the earth as its stewards and we do not know when he will return. Of course to the atheist the world is bound to nil no matter what we do. You see, there is a kind of eschatology involved in atheism. It just doesn't happen to include any of us.

It’s not a matter of “luck†in a sense of traditional gambling like the roll of a dice. It’s “luck†in the sense that we can be thankful that despite all perceived odds, we are here. We can see what is and has been useful that resulted in our existence, and we can continue to practice this moral behavior. Helping your neighbor might still be evolutionarily useful to this day.

We must respect others, and this can be grounded both rationally and emotionally, both with and without God.

Again, why should I care about my neighbour? We can observe in the natural order that animals, while capable of harming one another, generally are not "murderers" in the human sense of killing for pleasure, greed or indifference. With animals it is far more likely to be out of neccessity. In this sense, we might wonder if the natural order proves what you are saying. That nature does what it needs to continue. But you are forgetting another imperative, the "Human Imperative". That is, the command that we as, self-conscious beings, understand precisely why we should behave as nature dictates . Animals obey nature because they are not free to choose otherwise. Man is free to choose otherwise, his knowledge has made this possible. He has broken through nature in his capacity to question it and knows he is no longer forcefully held to it . Is this not the source of both civlization and disorder?

So the question is, why obey nature? Why obey even the impetus of evolution? If this answer can not be given, I think its adherents will have built a system, as wonderful and humanitarian as it sounds, that is not capable of sustaining itself at its base.

I think you might be confusing what nature is according to the evolutionist. Nature doesn’t necessarily mean we must behave like animals and naively fight for survival. Nature has produced us, and we have flourished because we in fact avoid this habit of most other species. We have witnessed the usefulness of empathy and collective identity. Conversely, we have witnessed the product of ‘master race’ mentality and the lack of progress made by it.

You are right; we are free to choose. However, this choice never contradicts what nature dictates to us. We all collectively contribute to the complexity of nature. None of us are held to a specific standard. All we can do is do what we feel is best.

I'm not sure if this is the caliber of response you were expecting, but I'll be happy to clarify anything and answer anything I've missed if you point it out to me.

 

[Devekut]

Thanks Jay,

I will reply when some of my studies clear up here at school and I can give a detailed response.