Religion
Related: About this forumHow to be an honest atheist
Eugene O'Neill, Albert Camus, and the case for existentialism
By Damon Linker | 6:10am ET
In a controversial column from last March, I argued that most contemporary atheists are being fundamentally dishonest in claiming that godlessness "is not only true but also unambiguously good for human beings." It most certainly is not, I claimed, referencing passages of philosophy and poetry to show that, viewed honestly, atheism is "utterly tragic" — and that the denial of this tragedy amounted to little more than "sentimental, superficial happy talk."
Many readers were not amused. A number of the most indignant critics limited themselves to colorful variations on "how dare you say that!" But some gave a more substantive reply, wondering if I meant to imply that a genuinely honest atheism would involve living in a state of perpetual psychic misery.
That's a fair question — and one I'd like to answer by making a case for existentialism as the most honest form of atheism.
Existentialism differs from the greeting-card version of atheism so prevalent today, in taking its cue from the realization that life without God is hard.
http://theweek.com/article/index/255508/how-to-be-an-honest-atheist
I would like to have seen him bring Marcus Aurelius into this. He was more sanguine with the subject.
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Scuba
(53,475 posts)rug
(82,333 posts)
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)"and the religious revival is spreading from the masses to the intelligentsia."
I'd like to see some circa-2006 evidence that that statement is true. Certainly untrue of members of the National Academy of Science (USA).
rug
(82,333 posts)It helps if you consider the full quote:
You may prefer "hot" religion.
The National Academy of Sciences, while part of it, hardly defines the intelligentsia.
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)I specified the NAS to hopefully goad the conversation in the direction of tightening up what the meaning of 'intelligentsia' was, in context.
Who dat?
Where is the proof of an increase in faith in that group?
rug
(82,333 posts)AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)"If you're interested in non-sequiturs, alarmism, and a juvenile at best - revisionist at worst - understanding of American history, then this book is for you! If you're looking for in-depth analysis of religion and politics in contemporary America, then read the magazine First Things for yourself. Linker is clearly out of his league and is no academic. One must wonder if he actually did any research for this book - apart from his own questionable experience as an editor of First Things - or merely read what liberals say about Fr. Neuhaus and his publication."
I think I'd rather set myself on fire than pick that piece of shit up, BUT, I will try and scope it out at the library and see if it has any citations AT ALL.
rug
(82,333 posts)AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)so I remain skeptical that it has a source for the claim that a religious revival is increasing in the US intelligentsia.
I suspect that claim is flat out untrue. By certain measures of 'intelligentsia' I can show it is flat out false, but I don't know his scope of that word.
Brettongarcia
(2,262 posts)Many believers mistakenly think that if you give up Christianity there is no positive vision or morality left; certainly not in atheism. But Philosophy knows that's not true. Beyond Religion, is secular Ethics. The Stoics; the Epicureans. And such ethicists as Marcus Aurelius.
Aurelius is particular useful, in making a transition beyond Christianity. His writings at times sound quite Christian; other times more secular. Most significantly though, his writings see quite like say, much of Biblical "wisdom" literature. Much of which is, surprisingly, not sure about the afterlife either. Like "Ecclesiastes."
I often quote the Bible in support of Atheism and Agnosticism - because I believe that ironically, the Bible itself finally gives up on itself, and on religion. And supports Atheism. This may be a strange thesis at first. But bear with me; scholars have long known about this in relation especially what is called the “Wisdom” tradition in the Bible. Which seems to be mostly about “wisdom” - and not so much about God, often.
An interesting case in point often cited in the literature, is the Book of Ecclesiastes. Which seems to acknowledge God at times. But then seems to doubt many of his promises. Like first of all, the afterlife:
“One fate comes to all, to the righteous and the wicked.... (Ecc. 9.2). They live, and after that they go to the dead. But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a deal lion. For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward....” (9.4-5; see also 11.8).
Faced with the likelihood that there is no after life (behold a shadowy “Sheol”?), Ecclesiastes concluded that we might as well just make the most of the time we have on earth: “Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart” (9.7).
Here oddly, a book of the Bible begins to sound a lot like Epicureans. Or Marcus Aurelius. Or in some ways, like an Atheist. For a significant moment, in the Book Of Ecclesiastes, the Bible itself does not believe in any very substantial afterlife.
As it turns out, there are many, many such moments. Which finally add up to … the Bible's own rejection of traditional Judeo-Christian religion. The Bible being finally, a self-critical, selfdeconstructive document. One that first advanced, but then in a deeper level of the text canceled, its own authority.
Do parts of the Bible go the other way? Do other parts of the Bible seem to support our afterlife in say, “heaven”? I read those parts more carefully; and found some strange qualifications. Jesus himself told us for example, that “no one goes up to heaven, except the one who comes down from it.”
Hmmmm. Could it be that 80 generations of preachers, and their promises of “heaven,” were false? Even according to the Bible itself?
Scuba
(53,475 posts)
cbayer
(146,218 posts)The only thing atheists are lacking is a belief in god.
They are neither more nor less gullible than anyone else.
Goblinmonger
(22,340 posts)
rug
(82,333 posts)Goblinmonger
(22,340 posts)Or are you making an ad hom?
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)what I desire to be.
"It's hard because part of us wants to believe that we reside in a moral universe"
Nope.
"Rather than denying these core human truths in an effort to make godlessness seem more palatable"
Not only do I in fact deny these 'core human truths', I don't recognize even the possibility of such a concept as a 'core human truth'.
The entire article proceeds from false premise.
rug
(82,333 posts)AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)"Existentialism differs from the greeting-card version of atheism so prevalent today, in taking its cue from the realization that life without God is hard."
First off, existentialism is a useful philosophical tool regardless of faith or non-faith.
Second, realization that life is 'hard without god' proceeds from the assumption that life WITH god is easy. Picking the most common contemporary US religion, from my vantage point, accepting the scapegoating, and sharing in the proceeds from the torture and murder of the one 'perfect being' is hard. The mental gymnastics of accepting that I could be created flawed, expected to be perfect, and offered only the sharing of the profit from a brutal murder as my only hope for a salvation held beyond my reach by a capricious creator that knew full well when he created the first man ignorant of deception, and also created the most deceptive creature known to the universe, and then left the two in the same fucking room alone for a while, that we would start down a path that would require said blood-profit/murder and torture to redeem me....
The prospect is fucking exhausting. Not kidding.
cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)
PassingFair
(22,434 posts)The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)That's pretty awesome, thank you.
Brettongarcia
(2,262 posts)
jeff47
(26,549 posts)The giant flaw in his argument is assuming everyone is like him.
rug
(82,333 posts)Besides, I don't address anyone who's not there.
Brettongarcia
(2,262 posts)Which almost redeems him, I'd say.
longship
(40,416 posts)First, start with a straw man...
What? Who says that? Yes, I believe there is insufficient evidence of gods but I would not put that as an absolute truth. That would be what religion does.
What the fuck is "unambiguously good" mean, and which atheists claim that?
No need to read further.
pokerfan
(27,677 posts)was pretty much what I got from this piece of tripe.
longship
(40,416 posts)
2ndAmForComputers
(3,527 posts)rug
(82,333 posts)
struggle4progress
(118,293 posts)towards Kierkegaard, who seems to have started the entire movement by identifying as the central problem the need for each individual to choose who to be/become
... There is a view of life which holds that where the crowd is, the truth is also, that it is a need in truth itself, that it must have the crowd on its side. There is another view of life; which holds that wherever the crowd is, there is untruth, so that, for a moment to carry the matter out to its farthest conclusion, even if every individual possessed the truth in private, yet if they came together into a crowd (so that "the crowd" received any decisive, voting, noisy, audible importance), untruth would at once be let in ...
A crowd - not this or that, one now living or long dead, a crowd of the lowly or of nobles, of rich or poor, etc., but in its very concept - is untruth, since a crowd either renders the single individual wholly unrepentant and irresponsible, or weakens his responsibility by making it a fraction of his decision ...
The crowd is untruth. There is therefore no one who has more contempt for what it is to be a human being than those who make it their profession to lead the crowd. Let someone, some individual human being, certainly, approach such a person, what does he care about him; that is much too small a thing; he proudly sends him away; there must be at least a hundred. And if there are thousands, then he bends before the crowd, he bows and scrapes; what untruth! No, when there is an individual human being, then one should express the truth by respecting what it is to be a human being; and if perhaps, as one cruelly says, it was a poor, needy human being, then especially should one invite him into the best room, and if one has several voices, he should use the kindest and friendliest; that is the truth ...
And to honor every individual human being, unconditionally every human being, that is the truth and fear of God and love of "the neighbor"; but ethico-religiously viewed, to recognize "the crowd" as the court of last resort in relation to "the truth," that is to deny God and cannot possibly be to love "the neighbor." And "the neighbor" is the absolutely true expression for human equality; if everyone in truth loved the neighbor as himself, then would perfect human equality be unconditionally attained; every one who in truth loves the neighbor, expresses unconditional human equality; every one who is really aware (even if he admits, like I, that his effort is weak and imperfect) that the task is to love the neighbor, he is also aware of what human equality is ...
... A crowd is indeed made up of single individuals; it must therefore be in everyone's power to become what he is, a single individual; no one is prevented from being a single individual, no one, unless he prevents himself by becoming many. To become a crowd, to gather a crowd around oneself, is on the contrary to distinguish life from life; even the most well-meaning one who talks about that, can easily offend a single individual. But it is the crowd which has power, influence, reputation, and domination - this is the distinction of life from life, which tyrannically overlooks the single individual as the weak and powerless one, in a temporal-worldly way overlooks the eternal truth: the single individual ...
LostOne4Ever
(9,289 posts)But he never said that though 
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Marcus_Aurelius
rug
(82,333 posts)LostOne4Ever
(9,289 posts)Don't you just love it when people tell you how you think and feel and when you tell them that you don't think and feel that way they accuse you of lying?
rug
(82,333 posts)He may be speaking of some but there is certainly no universal experience.
Jim__
(14,077 posts)Camus lays out our dilemma better than anyone else I've read, including O'Neill. An excerpt from The Myth of Sisyphus:
If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. This word is not too much. Again I fancy Sisyphus returning toward his rock, and the sorrow was in the beginning. When the images of earth cling too tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes too insistent, it happens that melancholy rises in man's heart: this is the rock's victory, this is the rock itself. The boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These are our nights of Gethsemane. But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged. Thus, Oedipus at the outset obeys fate without knowing it. But from the moment he knows, his tragedy begins. Yet at the same time, blind and desperate, he realizes that the only bond linking him to the world is the cool hand of a girl. Then a tremendous remark rings out: "Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well." Sophocles' Oedipus, like Dostoevsky's Kirilov, thus gives the recipe for the absurd victory. Ancient wisdom confirms modern heroism.
One does not discover the absurd without attempting to write a manual of happiness. "What! by such narrow ways--?" There is but one world, however. Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd discovery. It happens as well that the feeling of the absurd springs from happiness. "I conclude that all is well," says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile sufferings. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men.
All Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory. there is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his effort will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that silent pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which becomes his fate, created by him, combined under his memory's eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.
I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
LeftishBrit
(41,208 posts)There used to be an advert to the effect that 'Guinness is Good for You'; but I've never heard it said that 'Godlessness is Good for You'. Has a nice ring to it, I suppose. But no, most atheists don't think that godlessness is good for you. They just don't think that God exists.
'Life without God is hard'...
It can be. So can life with a God!
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)with his strawman proposition.
Starboard Tack
(11,181 posts)The problem, IMO, is about searching for a meaning to life, rather than concentrating on the purpose of life. Life has no meaning, apart from what we decide to ascribe to it, by inventing a Creator, who somehow thinks like us. A God, who is driven by human reasoning. How convenient.
For me, life is a journey, to be enjoyed to the full and in doing so, to evolve as an individual. That is its purpose and how we live it is what counts. That's where our spirituality kicks in, which has nothing to do with religion or any god. We are all spiritual beings, regardless of our beliefs.
Too many religionists and atheists are wrapped up in the world of WHY and miss out on the HOW of living their life. O'Neill's Edmund almost had it, but failed, inevitably, as he was still looking for the "meaning of life" and thus missing life's purpose. A classic Sisyphus.
