Tuesday 1 October 2024

How is the metaphysical incoherence of atheism maintained?

Atheism is so upfront and in-your-face incoherent, and it incoherence is so fundamental (at the metaphysical level, with basic assumptions concerning  reality, in contradiction) that it is surprising that atheism can be maintained for a lifetime, and even across generations.

But I understand how it works, because I was myself an atheist for over 30 years, and I remember how the contradictions were dealt with.

The basic problem comes out with values; with truth, beauty and virtue (by whatever definition) - and in explaining why values are significant. 


Life is all about one thing being better than another, or at least preferable to another; and atheism can give no reason - indeed asserts there is no reason. Except that Every atheist, Especially the most outspoken atheists (i.e. the kind who argue it is Better to be an atheist - and who assume that reasoned argument is better than blank assertion or blind faith!) asserts values, and that his own preferences are significant.


How can this be tolerable? Why don't peoples, heads explode?

Probably because metaphysical incoherence is so normal as to be universal- in all religions and ideologies. Humans are structured to live among self contradictions, even when these are noticed - which is not often.

So people - including atheists - firstly don't notice their incoherence; because they get distracted easily - especially by focusing on the immediate and changing situation of interpersonal interactions. These seem overwhelming, and urgent - so urgent and vital that anything else ought to be postponed, indefinitely... 

And then there is negative stuff. People focus on what is negative in others' beliefs; and easily ignore the insanity of getting morally outraged from the basis of an explicit insistence that the universe, human life and their own lives have no purpose or meaning.


Life proceeds at a level where unconscious and spontaneous biological vitality is shaped and directed by social circumstances. From that situation, social assurance and expectations that there Are meanings and life Does have purpose, are sufficient here-and-now. 

The details are set aside as something that "must be" okay, because otherwise "people" would not act as if they were OK.

The whole thing is taken On Trust, because people do not trust themselves; and they don't trust themselves for good reasons - whereas (as social beings in a society) they automatically and by default trust vague notions of other people's judgement and motivations.


This is just how people are.

And for much of human history it did not seem to matter much, but now it does matter.

Now we live in a society and world where ultimate assumptions of no-purpose and no-meaning are built into social explanations and functioning; and where the consequent endemic state of demotivation and perplexed confusion have rendered almost-everybody helpless in the face of evil manipulation.

Whole nations/ races/ religions (and other groupings such as age, sex and sexuality) of many millions of people have been set up to fear, resent and annihilate each other. 


And because of actual-atheism rooted in ultimate deference to societal assumptions (and which renders modern religious identifications irrelevant because ineffectual), they have zero basis for noticing or understanding - let alone resisting - what is being done to them.

We now need to change the terms of evaluation from trust to responsibility.

The proper question is whether we take personal responsibility for our fundamental assumptions and convictions; or else refuse to do this in favour of entrusting our lives, our souls, our own mortal situation in this world - to some external "authority".



5 comments:

Ron Tomlinson said...

Vox said recently that we should have no sympathy for atheists. And although I can't pay much attention to their public pronouncements and writings anymore (partly because of the negative litmus results) I can't bring myself to dislike atheists qua atheists. You and I were both atheists and I'm not a snake who can shed its skin. There was *some* appreciation of virtue there and God used it to bring us to our senses. Atheism was part of our prodigal son trajectories.

Indeed I think consciousness is rooted in the awareness of good and bad. All our feelings are valenced. This is where I think militant atheism and religion will collide, with reasons debated, in the current attempts to create artificial consciousness.

There's also the interesting distinction between nominal atheism and spiritual atheism. There are people out there who you can just tell are closer to God than others regardless of the intellectual position they espouse.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Ron. Yes, there is no sharp division between self identified atheists and the religious, because nearly all are functionally and by aspiration atheist.

Also many supposed theists are actually deists (including "Christians"). What people call themselves has little value. Many trad orthodox Christians are Muslim in all essentials and with respect to core convictions.

However, most people are objectively more concerned about their social identity than about reality. For them, the most important step would be, to become more honest and clear about themselves.

Laeth said...

from the time i became myself fully (about 12) i was never an atheist and i think in part this is because i was raised in a completely secular environment. thus i escaped the stupidity of normal christians, and instead had to deal with the stupidity of normal atheists. and so it wasn't difficult to conclude that my inherent sensitivity to the numinous and to the arts and all that, meant there was a God, and a spiritual world, and all the rest. then i just had to investigate more, but never really doubted there was meaning beyond this world and this life.

i think a big part of what confirms people as atheists nowadays is just that the world is so chaotic, and ugly, and destructive, and etc etc. and the general idea of God is that of the omnigod. how can anyone believe it looking at things as they are? and if they do, it's easy to turn into the much more dangerous camp of, not disbelieving God, but thinking he is a monster for (at least) allowing all this, if not willing it.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Laeth. Yes, the issue is presented by the mainstream as either Omnigod or Nihilism. Neither of which make sense.

But the problems go deeper than metaphysics as well, or else the Mormon church would not have converged with Satanic totalitarianism (de facto atheism), and would have focused on post mortal exaltation rather than prescribed lifestyle and church service.

There is a lot going on!

Laeth said...

@Bruce,

wrt the mormon church, that's very true. i'm still trying to figure it out myself, but it seems to me that, as with many other things, the shift there started to happen in the sixties. there's another aspect too, now that i've had some dealings with LDS people, and it's something i think you've noted also: though their metaphysics differ greatly, they don't take it seriously enough. most of what they talk about or propose in fact fits better with the conventional metaphysics, so that in the end they are more like a reverse medieval peasant: supposedly believing one thing because it's official, but in practice believing the exact opposite. i guess that's why one of their perennial obsessions, which i find comical and absurd, is being accepted as christians by other christians on the second's terms.