Theologic: Refuting Atheism as "Logical"

This idea came to me today while I recalculating GPAs. It took me so long to jot down the notes that I had to call it a "lunch break" and ended up not actually eating. So I hope it was worth it.

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I'm sure that anyone who catches the sight of this title and who probably also knows that I believe in a "god" would expect an entire litany of earthly properties inexplicable by science alone, all sorts of proclamations about the awesome improbability of life itself, the beauty of it, yada yada.

I hope you know me better than that.

There is certainly a wide spectrum of those who would consider themselves atheists, I realize that. Most of them would be considered agnostics by a lot of outside standards. Conversely, a lot of agnostics could be argued as atheists. By some standards even I would fall into those categories (though I try not to fall at all). Some self-titled atheists believe vaguely in a higher order, but not a sentient, omnipotent entity, not a "person-god" as is common in western religion. Some atheists believe there is quite a lot of layered mystery in the universe, but do not consider it "higher", or even paranormal. A disturbing number of general atheist types have revoked specifically the religion of their upbringing, including its historically violent rise to power, which is a faction I could easily be considered part of, but we part ways where they use this momentum to reject god itself. Personally I find this shortsighted. since they make a point to deny specifically the god of their religion, and in doing so accept all of the terms and features attributed to god by the very religion against which they rebel. Does that make sense? It's not the belief, but the lack of analysis that I take umbrage with.

And again, to a fundamentalist in any religion, others of a different faith are just as good as atheists. So here is what I mean: for the purpose of this essay, an "atheist" is a materialist, a total reductionist. And atheist is one who specifically refutes even the possibility of some higher order, who negates the existence of a soul, who claims that even love is nothing more than a rush of neurotransmitters, that life was a chemical accident, that science is the only truth, all "transcendence" is a function of human subjectivity, etc.

Those are the most extreme of atheistic ideas, the materialist. I'll use them for the argument, not to build a straw man, but to cover all bases, from farthest left to farthest right.

Then there is "god". I use lower case god, and quotes, to get as far away as possible from the connotation of the Judeo-Christian god. He's in there, but not what I'm talking about. Ok, I'll drop the "god" quotes because they are annoying and I'm sure you know what I'm saying by now.

Also, I am certainly not setting out to say that atheism is illogical. The point is that atheism, like theism, is neither logical nor illogical. I'm saying that in trying to saddle the cosmic "what" and "how", logic is both useless and irrelevant. And no, the irony doesn't escape me that I would use logic to point this out. I hope only to dismantle the erroneous belief that atheism is logical, intellectual, while belief in a higher power is emotional, cultish, and ignorant.

Fundamentally, we do not totally know the true nature of our universe (here the scientist would agree with me much more enthusiastically than the zealot). The problem is that logic relies on evidence, but evidence is only good if you know what you are trying to make evident.

In a courtroom trial, both the prosecution and the defense must state their aims before going any further. What good is exhibit A if you don't know the charge?

In the same way, all attempts to prove or disprove god fall flat, because they first presume to know the nature of god. For example, there's a pretty funny lecture on the internet about intelligent design. I will try to find it. As an actual theological argument, though, it's not much though, because it argues that we are too dilapidated to have been intelligently designed, and in doing so presumes that everything god creates would be perfect, or even good.

Given that, lets accept for a second that we don't know the reason we exist because we haven't been able to prove anything. It's a question mark. I hope you can at least accept a question mark, broad enough for literally every belief you could possibly have.

Now picture that the universe is a closed cardboard box. Inside that box is the ultimate truth, is the why-are-we-here. Christianity says there is a red rubber ball in that box, Judaism says there is a wooden spoon in that box, Islam says there is a tiny kitten, whatever. But atheists say there is nothing in the box (or science could be in the box, it doesn't matter) that the box simply assembled itself through a random but meaningful accumulation of cardboard particles, and trust me, that's okay.

The problem is that as a culture we are trained to think in opposites, in contrast, in dichotomies. There is black and white, yes and no, up and down, substance and absence. And our popular mode of thinking is that there is either cosmic substance or there is cosmic absence. There either is a higher force, or there is not. So, for every possible option, there is a corollary absence. For every spoon, or ball, or kitten, there is a not-spoon, a not-ball, a not-kitten. You add all of these up, and it seems far more likely that there is "nothing" there than there is specifically one of these things.

It looks like of like this: (forgive me, I never took statistics)

It could keep going. Add up the totals there, it seems in this case that "Nothing" has an infinitely greater chance of being in the box than David Duchovney.

To a materialist, "Nothing" is the great big counterpoint to any and all supernatural possibilities. It is infinitely more probable that any one belief, yet powerful enough to hold its own against all beliefs, and and it is this notion which falsely ties together materialism and reason.

But get this: Nothing is not nothing.

Nothing is Something.

Nothing is not the absence of belief, it is a belief, pro-actively made. It's strength is derived when two ideas contrast each other.

The key point is this:

Ideas have opposites. Not things. Absence and substance are only opposites in concept. In reality, substance has no opposite.

A chair has no opposite.

A table has no opposite.

A tiny kitten has no opposite.

Outside this box, we must think in ideas. Unable to see through the box, ideas are all we have. That is why spiritualists and atheists alike find it so easy to draw the neat line between something and nothing.

Inside the box, however, is not an idea, but a reality. Even if that reality is nothing. In this case we are dealing with real substance, "nothing" is not the opposite. Nothing is only one of the possibilities, including all the various incarnations of "nothing" that people think up.

So it really looks more like this:

Inside that box there can only be substance, again, even if that substance is nothing. Nothing has weight. Nothing is exactly equal to all other possibility.

The ultimate purpose of religion is to shake that box long and hard, to listen for clues and make compelling and educated guesses as to its contents.

Ludicrous is the religion or the individual who stands back and points resolutely at the box (especially if it is only hearsay and they have never themselves touched it!) and says with utter certainty that "X is in the box", because no matter what, you're hedging 100% of your bets on an infinitely small chance, and that certainly is illogical.

To say "I shook the box and heard nothing" has a great deal more reason behind it, because it stakes no guaranteed claim and speak only from experience, which is all we ever have to speak from beyond studying what the great shakers and listeners of our time heard themselves.

There is, of course, always the option to stand back and say "I have no idea what's in the box" but what a hard thing to do when it is so close within your reach!

It may seem now, from my little flimsy percentages, that I believe it far more likely that something exists than nothing. Not so. Because once you start adding up the disparate substances, you are back to the Idea-of-substance (real life objects cannot be added to each other like a chair added to a fork). Each separate answer to "what's in the box?" must be considered individually to maintain their substance-hood, for you cannot weigh an idea (all anything!) against a substance (the lone nothing). It's nonsensical.

And I'm sure there are those who reject the box metaphor all together, who say there is no interior and would rather fold it up into a piece of flat cardboard. But know that if you do this, you are not refusing theology in the name of science. You are refuting science. You are negating Darwin, you are killing Nietzsche and the big bang. You are refuting every possible cause, refuting even that we were ever caused at all.

You are welcome to do that, of course, but it's trying a bit hard, if you ask me.

We've Got to Go Back!

My sleep schedule has gone a bit wonky, which leads me here at 3 in the morning, despite having a 9-5 job, and a conference tomorrow morning at 9:30. This meeting-type thing (I know relatively little about it) will take up almost the entire day and run until 3:00. I intend to take copious notes, as Boston is slated to expand quite dramatically in the industry and I intend to be a part of that. I see John taking a lot more initiative on this front than I did when I just got out of school. This makes me happy. He has a lot more confidence than I do and he's taking a little more time to find the right job instead of just any job. I could not do that last year, for pragmatic reasons, and quickly found myself in the most evil company I have ever associated with, a thing that shook me quite deeply, but, I think, ultimately pushed me in other directions politically and ideologically, which is a good thing. Since then, life has been a search for good.

LOST

Last Wednesday me and a few friends gathered in the livingroom to watch the season 5 premiere of Lost. Boy howdy! John and I have been holding our breaths for months.

There was nothing terribly mind-blowing about it, besides a few soft punches. Contrary to typical Lost-style, I think more questions were answered than created. I feel as though the episode was about establishing new ground rules, making solid some shared knowledge so that the questions can begin to build again on a new level.

When we were first introduced to Daniel Faraday, I was skeptical and a bit dismayed. Lost is my favorite show ever in the history of time, but it also has moments of transparency. Ok so, Faraday is a physicist who has devoted his life to understanding time travel. I wonder if he's going to be useful to the plot? Nah.

However, unlike almost every female character on Lost, they put a real person inside Faraday. He's got a funny, skittish way about him, with squinty eyes always carefully dissecting the thin papery layers of perceived truth and cosmic reality. (Miles: "something wrong with your neck?"). He never knows - I realized once - he never knows the world at face value like everyone else. For him, each moment requires conscious effort to understand the most basic assets of his environment. When is he? When does everyone else think they are? What should he tell them to make them understand? What should he say to avoid being lynched? It's quite obvious how intimidated he is by the other survivors, and not without reason. Very good character, and he's the first one in a while to challenge Ben's place as my favorite character ever.

One of my biggest problems with Lost is the lazy, two-dimensional way they've portrayed virtually every female on the show. You know the Madonna/Whore complex? They've got that, except it's the Tough Chick/Wallflower complex. There are two exceptions, Rose and Sun. Sun was definitely a Wallflower until recently, with hints of her outcoming scattered through former seasons (accidentally poisoning Michael, and what the hell was she burying when she lost her ring? I can't remember anymore). Rose started out cool, being the woman who lost her cancer and telepathically knew her husband was still alive, but since then she's disappointedly fizzled into a sassy-old-black-woman cliche.

Sun is my favorite female character because she alone plays her cards really close to her chest. She's totally sweet and nice until it counts. And you know what? I'm a little afraid of her now. I think the perpetual lesson of Lost is that people go a little crazy when they lose the ones they love. I don't know if Sun is going to turn into some kind of villain, but you know what? I think I'm going with her, either way.

Every other woman on this show is either innocuous/complacent/sweet/a little dumb or a constipated adrenaline junkie with a really bad attitude*. Is that their idea of a strong female? People like Juliet who can't manage their problems and thus traipse around with a self-righteous smirk which they intend to inflict on every underling who attempts at complexity? Okay. People like Charlotte Lewis? Who is she? Did she wander off the set of Indiana Jones? Get lost, Charlotte, with your stupid multilingualism.

Char, Faraday, and Juliet. *Note identical expressions on the females. Note squinty Faraday eyes.

Beyond this, um, I really like this show delving into time travel and paradoxes. I LOVE Desmond and his Billy Pilgrim syndrome. I wish Hurley and Sayid had been the odd couple for a little more than one episode. I like Ben's new slick look. I don't know how Sun came around to blaming Ben for Jin's "death" (still dubious). I still don't care about Kate. Ms. Hawking is back: OK.

I made this for fun tonight.

Joan Robinson is Neat, Too.

Herman Daly is my new hero, up there with Noam and Chesterton and Kant. But less so the last two, because they are dead. I've heard about Daly before, but never read any primary source text.

But you and everyone you know should read this:

http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/81/the_crisis.html



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Simulation and Simulacra Response Pt 1

Beaudrillard begins Simulacra and Simulation with a sentence that is a paragraph long, half of which is a parenthetical phrase referencing - but not really describing - a fable I have never heard of. At first I thought, “god,he’s obtuse.” Then I began to think he was full of sawdust. I don’t really think that anymore, but I do think he’s not so good at explaining things. He’s talking from inside his own head, vaguely alluding to his own unspoken thoughts, or at least that’s what it seems like.

The “hyperreal” is a model of the real without origin. It has effectively become its own pure simulacrum, a thing unto itself. It’s particularly interesting to think - I remember several years ago walking through Times Square with Mike Lore when he said suddenly “this is all so hyperreal”. It’s spooky and strange to think of Times Square as pure simulacrum, a gobbled up and spit out representation of itself, a hollow reflection of a thing that used to exist - or did it? B says the representation eventually destroys the reference. This was what I first thought was blither-blather, apparently not so much.

The image moves from (in his words) reflecting a profound reality, to masking a profound reality, to masking the absence of a reality, to becoming“reality”, pure simulacrum. He says that particular sects of protestantism disavowed simulacra in the church because on some level they feared that the simulacra would reveal the “truth” that God him/itself is also simulacra, that the imagery of the Catholic church only masks the absence of God, no, actually destroys the “reality” of God by their existence.

You make think I’m phrasing it wrong, or that I’ve missed the point, and it’s because I had. I did miss the point. I’m just explaining my thought process.

Without any other context I thought that possibly what he was trying to say was that simulacrum reveals the falsity of the original by...um...exposing the process. In other words, making a statue of a deer undermines the authenticity of a real deer...because the deer itself is just a creation. But of course that made me totally confused. For one, is an object rendered false by the act ofcreation? That’s just silly. Does simulacrum require intent? Maybe, haven’t read that far yet. But most of all, I’m pretty sure Beaudrillard isa hardcore atheist, and implying that a live deer is “created”, as in, by a sentient being, as in, one capable of intent, that is actually an argument insupport of God. In that case, the image would support the original. So at that point I knew I had misunderstood, and I was only on page five. Stick with me.

I got it on my next lunch break, when I resumed where I had left off. It’s not the physical form that’s being negated, it’s the meaning, or the transfer of significance in the case of the Anabapists and the no-image thing. There is a statue of the crucifix at the front of the church, with Jesus hanging up there by his wrist bones, because Christian are kind of messed up like that. The statue begins as a reflection, a reminder of Christ. Then it becomes (as it already has) the predominant image of Christ in people’s minds. Eventually on some level Christians stop worshipping Christ and worship the statue, or, in a broader sense, the image of the crucifix. The statue representation at the front of the church has effectively canceled out the original. The symbol comes into its own.

This is particularly strange and telling when you think about communion and Catholic transubstantiation. This is unique to Catholics. I was raised Lutheran and I guarantee you they weren't that literal. But that doesn’t mean they haven’t reached the point of pure simulacrum on some level. I’m not sure yet as to whether “pure simulacrum” necessarily includes the physical image or just the conceptual one. I remember when I was little, reading the story of Moses on Mt. Sinai while the people worshipped the golden calf. I remember asking my mom whether the people were worshipping the golden calf itself, that is, the physical statue, or another god that was merely represented by the golden calf. I don’t remember what she said because that was, like, 18 years ago, but she probably said that they were worshipping the actual statue, because she takes a pretty literal view of the bible. We were baptists back then. Big surprise there.

Beaudrillard goes to say that simulation, the kind that has destroyed the original and come into its own, “inaugerates the era of simulacra and simulation, in which there is no longer a God to recognize his own, no longer a Last Judgement to separate the false from the true, the real from its artificial resurrection, as everything is already dead and resurrected in advance.”(p.6*)
What he describes as the “Last Judgement”, I’ve thought about before as an outside, true Objectic Standard, sort of a Cosmic Yardstick . Without really stating this explicitly, or stating it as God, most humans believe in the Cosmic Yardstick. They also believe in the closely related Cosmic Ladder. What I mean by this is an actual, final Truth, a totally objective classification of everything in the universe that stands independent from human interference.

If you ask me, the Cosmic Yardstick doesn’t exist - total human construct -but it also kind of does in a tiny way. To think that reality is built entirely on human perception, that subjectivity is everything, and that the universe would cease to exist without us to perceive it, that’s not only narcissistic but it’s just silly. I’d take it a step further. Reality does exist objectively outside of us, but not only is it totally, completely, impossibly inaccessible by human comprehension, but our silly little attributes don’t apply or matter. Beaudrillard says there is no final judgement of“original” vs. “simulation”. I have pages and pages of journal entries dealing with the final judgement, or cosmic yardstick, and lack thereof. What, for example, is value? How can we possibly assess value to things, except toadmit that value is meaningless outside of our shared agreement? And what does it mean to “deserve” something? The number of advantages or disadvantages in life are so impossibly relative, at what point does anyone actually deserve anything? I won’t continue down this train of thought because it’s too tangential. But basically, a lot of things look different when you absolve the Cosmic Yardstick. But it gets better once you accept that the Yardstick is only human, and therefore still important to us.

Post-modernism isn’t the only line of thought that’s inherently self-destructive, but I hadn’t thought about science and anthropology. The point at which Beaud told the story of the Tasadays is the point at which I caught his drift.
A group of extremely primitive tribespeople cut off from civilization was discovered in the jungle of the Philippines in 1971. The Philippines government decided to put them back in the jungle untouched, encouraged particularly, and ironically, by anthropologists. It’s a historical inevitably that indigenous peoples are destroyed by contact with civilization, starting with the scientists. The scientists know that to observe the object is to destroy it. It changes under the microscope. Beaudrillard then refers to the Vengeance of Death. When the object dies, it enacts its vengeance by becoming inaccessible to the scientist. It’s sort of a more philosophical version of the Quantum Measurement Problem, most commonly exemplified as Schrodinger’s cat.

To look at something is to change it. B says it’s naive of us to think that primitive people are the only victims. “We are all Tasadays” (p.9*) he says. We have all been destroyed and resurrected as the artifice, the simulation. New York, Times Square, it is a thing that would not exist as it is without observation and recreation, without the giant, intangible loop of sight and being seen. Times Square knows you are looking, and when you look, it morphs into the image you have created from popular concept. This isn’t fluff - it happens in a very real and consequential fashion to post-colonial third world countries, Westerners attracted to their exotic mythos came to observe it. Impoverished countries figured out very quickly that the more they exuded and performed the Western narrative, the more the tourist dollars flow in. So these people in various corners of the world have functionally streamlined, filtered, and saturated their own culture to live the mythos for Western consumers. Those who have won the hegemonic battle are those who write the narrative. Fact and Fiction interlock until they are virtually indistinguishable. But we shouldn’t pity them for this reason alone. We’ve done it to ourselves. We live the symbol.

This paints The Hills in an interesting color, doesn’t it?



*University of Michigan Press, 2006

Vaganto

The next book after Mirror Men that I want to write (other than a couple of Mirror Men sequels which are endlessly entertaining in their possibilities), is Vaganto. The idea started during a conversation with him about the various unforeseen forces which could affect our global future. At first it was about the future aesthetic, how, instead of the sleek metallics, we reverse into a sort of nostalgic wood-finished look. New things made to look old. Maybe as a ramification of technology gone awry, maybe as a result of a crumbling infrastructure, who knows. But function, not just form, would be on the chopping block. It's interesting to imagine a world in which incredibly advanced technology exists alongside antiquated tools, tools resurrected out of history because Marxist alienation reached its breaking point, or because exponentially advancing scientific discoveries stratify society to a point where one man's basic is another man's unattainable, or some trendsetter revitalizes pre-industrial rev. "utopia", or some man-made catastrophe decimates mankind and creates a Japanese-style fear of technology which results in the opposite extreme. Any of these things. But Vaganto won't be about any of that. It will take place in a future world in which all of our hot topics have been said and done. That isn't the story.

The reason I bring this up is trivial. I can't find my notebook. The crux of Vaganto (which means wanderer in Esperanto), is that an inestimably large portion of people renounced their citizenship at some point a few generations ago, and it continues to be a common occurrence. Not just US Citizenship. People from all countries collectively - yet separately - decided that alignment with a city-state is not only useless, but actually contrary to their own interests.

The notebook (which I lost and am now trying to find again) had all of my random thoughts about such a global society, or non-society. These people are called Non-Citizens, and they are both collective and staunchly individual. Many of them are wanderers. By sheer number alone they force changes in immigration and travel legislation. People with no paperwork can't be catalogued. There are myriad ways in which established countries deal with this problem. The United States, surprisingly, is one of the more accommodating. But that's too much to get into now.

In my notes I also had a list of the groups of Non-Citizens, loosely formed around particular ideologies. There are, for example, extremely militant Non-Citizens who not only against citizenship, but against any sort of organization at all, even among themselves. There are native-non-citizens, people who were born to non-citizens, many of whom don't even know their country of origin. There are native-non-citizens who wish to re-integrate, 1st generation elective non-citizens, non-citizens who wish to form some sort of alliance, and so on. They all have their own names, but I can't remember because I can't find my notebook.

And the trains. Trains are a big deal. They are not only the primary mode of transportation, they are a hub of contention and violence. Because non-citizens make up something like 85% of of train traffic, trains can't even be partially supported by federal taxes. Trains become completely privatized and are near monopolies, with only two or three companies controlling the entire world. It's the Gilded Age all over again, but bigger. Trains are the biggest and baddest example of corporate rule, as corporations now wield more power than governments, and in some cases this is the ironic result of the non-citizen movement. There are those who wage war against the train system by forcing their way on with violence - hijacking and destruction are common along train routes, clusters of makeshift non-citizen camps collect alongside them like river silt.

There are so many things in my notebook. This notebook describes this world in a level of detail I can't possibly recreate. They have their own mythology, their own aesthetic, their own language, their own rules. Globalization moves East to West. There are stories of "Tragi-villa" that are never explained. The geography is different. The main character is a man with a made-up name and vague, non-descript features. He doesn't know where he's from. He just keeps walking.

I'll find it. Grr.

After that, I have a screenplay to write that goes in the opposite direction. The two main eponymous characters are Abaddon and Abednego, a pair of arch angels livings alongside man in an ancient civilization.

True Story

Did you know how we got the word "sabotage"?

Before the industrial revolution hit France, most lower-class French people were farmworkers. They essentially sharecropped for the richy-rich estate owners.

They had special wooden shoes called "sabots". When they found themselves being replaced by much more efficient machines, they sought revenge by throwing their shoes into the gears.

Sabotage.

Lot's Wife

Maybe in the end

She didn't give a shit

what the big man thought

she was the wife of Lot

he kept running

just to save himself

he kept running

She said you don't know

what it means to be human

you think you know

but you're so full of hubris

you don't know

what it means to be able to die

to not know what comes after

the end of time

Lot's wife, she hated her teeth

she was the angriest woman

you'd have the pleasure to meet

She was always hanging on to things

on to things

She kept her hair tied up tight

and hated her neighbors

till she woke up in the night

and heard them screaming

She wondered what, God,

is the point of faith

if you're just gonna keep

taking it away (from me)

and what, God, is the point of Love

you talk so much

but I don't see any of it

What. God. is the point of faith

if you're just gonna keep taking it away

What, God, is the point of Love

you talk so much, but I don't see any of it.

So maybe in the end

she didn't give a shit

what the big man thought

the wife of Lot

he was no bleeder

he was no seeker

Lot's Wife, at first they thought she was rare

but it turns out, she was everywhere

with her white skin

and her eyes looking back on sin

Lot's Wife, at first they thought she was rare

but it turns out, she was everywhere

Lot's Wife, at first they thought she was rare

but it turns out, she was everywhere

she was so dry

she's in the rocks now