Atheism is semantically erroneous

By Reuben.

Now that this post’s title has gathered your attention, let me draw your attention to a rather excellent quote:

I’m a polyatheist – there are many gods I don’t believe in.

- Dan Fouts

There is a subtle logic here; most believers (of a theistic or deistic bent) believe in one God – usually one ‘true’ God who has much political clout when it comes to dicatating matter. But they therefore must exclude all other Gods mustn’t they? A Christian does not call their God ‘Allah’ while most Jews do not follow the Scientology God known as Theta (or something like that…it’s hard to comprehend most of what Scientology says anyway). Nobody actually believes in every single conceivable God. It’s logically and morally inconsistent to believe in the God of the old testament whilst supposing that – at the same time – Thetans exist inside us (to borrow the Scientology example again). Jews are not also Muslims, Catholics and those who follow the Bahai Faith. That would certainly render the entire purpose of religion in politics (that is, to divide people based on a set of irrational superstitions) completely and utterly useless for starters…never mind the theological side.

Monotheism thrives wholly on the principle of exclusivity even though you can blatently see that, for example, Jews and Muslims worship the same theistic tyrant (who has given false impetus for both people to engage in bloodshed). You’d be hard pressed to find a Muslim, Christian or Jew who’d freely admit their God is the same as another monotheistic religion. Intelligent believers do concede that the Koran, the Bible and the Torah have many traces and evolved from a common source…but they stop short of saying that, name notwithstanding, their God is the same as each others. For the atheist, this is plain to see. Since it’s obviously inconceivable that all three Gods exist as per their relative religious texts’ instructions side-by-side (thus forfeiting their own ‘all powerful’ identity), monotheism has more than enough to answer for…

Pantheism is more curious. Spinoza espoused his own version of this and touched on the idea that perhaps pantheism is a precursor for atheism. Dawkins takes this one step further and I quote:

“Deism is watered down theism. Pantheism is sexed up atheism”

- Richard Dawkins

It would appear that if we were to truly follow pantheism, the whole concept of a powerful being is void. You might as well, Dawkin argues, call the theory of gravity the ‘God of Gravity’ and Einstein’s relativity theory the ‘God of relativity’. We have effectively supplanted the word ‘God’ with various undisputed observations about the natural world. Scientists may have already found something that links every known bit of scientific truth together. We could call this ‘one rule for all’ as some sort of God – but this might be too ironic, since a scientific explanation does not postulate what we expect to see – rather it explains it. A belief in God explains nothing.

Language

By Nathaniel.

The idea that we are shackled by our language is by no means a modern one. I think it is safe to assume that all of us here speak a language, and all of us at this blog can read English. We use powerful symbols – letters which in turn form words, which in turn form sentences, which in turn form paragraphs, et cetera – which represent almost everything we can conceive.

The mantra of Ingsoc, the oppressive government in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Arguably George Orwell’s most famous work – and a remarkable impact on modern Western civilization, from futurology to linguistics to politics – Nineteen Eighty-Four carries many powerful themes that still resonate with us sixty years from its original writing. Some of the most celebrated themes are the effects of totalitarianism, nationalism and repressed sexuality. But there is one subject that carries the entire work, perhaps more than the idea of a complete totalitarian state.

Do we control language, or does language control us? Is it a natural, if invisible, force that lives within and through humanity? Some would posit that language is what separates humans from beasts. Some would argue that there is sufficient evidence to claim that the animals themselves have their own language.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four there is a new type of devolved English being created by the oppressive government. It is called Newspeak, and is designed to replace our own Oldspeak. The idea is that our thoughts are controlled by language; remove the shades of meaning that fill English and you have a perfect language for controlling the masses. Everyone truly understand what everyone else means, every single time someone speaks.

Is this a good thing? Imagine how much unnecessary conflict would be removed if everyone knew absolutely what was meant by a national leader or an angry lover. There’d still be a difference in thought, yes – while we may think in our language the argument could be placed that neurologically we simply perceive a translation of powerful ideas and thoughts – but it must surely cut out whatever conflicts we may have.

The late and great Robert Anton Wilson, author of The New Inquisition and Prometheus Rising, states that we shouldn’t remove the dichotomies that make English so versatile, but we should clean up the way we perceive language. For one, we should also speak as if something is assumed, and not an instant given: I believe the world is flat, or I believe that religion is the cause of all conflict in the world. All words are, as he agrees, metaphors; what is ‘the’, except as a tool of separation? The blacks, the socialists, the universe…

The universe is an interesting one. We are all, we know, part of the universe (or Multiverse or your alternative cosmic form)… that is the definition of ‘universe’. So why ‘the’? ‘The’ only serves to separate. That is its function as a word. Another good point is raised by Nietzche: could Descarte have said, “I think, therefore I am,” if he didn’t speak an Indo-European language? It is a convention of that language category that a verb needs a substantive noun before it. Why can’t we translate some Chinese words into English? If it’s just a matter of translating ideas, it should be easy. But it isn’t, really… it’s about translating thought-processes.

There is then the idea that all bastions of power and authority, especially those religious sources, create their own words – their own linguistic symbols – to control and to command. Name a religion that has not invented its own term, especially in a case where one is already available… or for that matter, any fascist or controlling cause. Look at Hitler’s regime, or at the socialist manner of naming words after people – anti-revisionism, for example, as Kim II Jungism. Why would they do that if ‘anti-revisionism’ would suffice? And it does suffice. Most people would be able to grasp the meaning of the word. It’s not a particularly difficult one.

Language, then, to the Nazis and the socialists and to, perhaps, us all, can be a vehicle for casting the blame. Language is a thing that forms naturally, organically, and often at a powerful speed… why, then, shouldn’t it be warped by the intentions of the very people it warps? Those who are controlled by language control language… it is an ancient, familiar cycle of power and deception.

Let’s look at the Bible, an ancient book of wisdom – and here I am only saying that it contains wisdom, not that it is infallible or that it doesn’t also contain a lack of knowledge and insight – that contains the story that concerns the well-known Tower of Babel story. In this story, all of humanity spoke one language before God cursed them with a thousand tongues… cursed them with language. Why would those primitive nomads and foragers consider language as a detriment to humanity, especially as in it’s time it would have been vital for the survival of the tribe?

The question I throw at you, then, is this: can we eliminate racism and sexism and all of those other –isms by modifying language? If we can, should we? How far is too far? Is language purely the thing that sets us apart from the ‘lesser’ species, or is it a disease that we have all caught?

Comments on the Supernatural

By Oskar

After around twenty failed attempts to write articles for this blog, I have decided to compile a series of my better paragraphs that can be understood alone, but I feel lend strength to one and other. Most of them are comments on the debate over the existance of the supernatural that has been continually re-raised by Reuben. While I am on that topic, I should mention that I think we should change our sub-heading, as little actual thinking seems to be going on on either side of said debate. This, I feel is a hypocritical situation, given that most of our contributions come from Reuben, supposed champion against political rhetoric. I also feel it is a bit condescending, I personally do not feel qualified to teach anyone as a superior and am equally open to and expectant of, learning from my discussions with those critical of my thoughts.

Essentially what has been repeatedly said during our discussions is that some of us think we know what we currently can’t know , while others think we don’t know what we currently can’t know (thought I’d better express it in clear English). I put myself in the latter category because I make an initial assumption that, while it is impossible to confirm something (with the possible exclusion of some mathematics [I'm up for debate on this]), we should include the most probable scenario, based on our observations of the world, as part of our working model. While this assumption is unfounded, it removes the need to assume a host of other things, so I’m going to stick with it.

Simply claiming that there are things we don’t know is a perfectly valid, even a constructive, thing to do. Claiming, on the other hand, that YOU know what others don’t, should only be done when you have some kind of evidence that makes the probability of your thoughts outweigh the probability of existing thoughts. This is not always a clear cut case, but the most dramatic shifts in our thinking are often accompanied by clear cut changes in evidence.

Claiming that things exist “beyond the material world”, is something that is difficult to substantiate with evidence (keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming article I am writing about how this might even be a paradoxical claim). The person who has come closest to the mark in doing this is, in my opinion, Plato. With this in mind I would like to suggest that any attempts to make this claim could be substantiated by speculative philosophy (still, no philosopher has really gone beyond Plato, in this respect, in the past 2400 years, so good luck with that).

I believe both sides of this argument have made repeated reference to some kind of Darwinian evolution as evidence. I feel this is quite out of place, as that is not a debate on how present biodiversity has occurred, but on the existance or lack of, of the supernatural. This is a common mistake in debates on the existence of a god, because it is often used as evidence against a literal interpretation of the bible, but it is quite removed from the supernatural debate (evolution would not be disproved if the animals being selected for and against had souls or experienced reincarnation, or if they coexisted with any number of supernatural beings). This is accepted by most theists as well and groups such as the Vatican and the church of England have made it clear that they are no longer in conflict with evolutionists.

At one stage during the heated debate in the previous post, Sanders said “we have never seen an ape change into a human”. Indeed this is true in both its literal meaning, and the meaning I believe it is clear he was intending it to have. Like all things in science, we cannot actually prove that Darwinian evolution occurs. There is certainly a very high probability of this being the way biodiversity has occurred, given current evidence, but we have no confirmation that new evidence will not arise. Like our judicial system, we must base what we accept as our reality on evidence we have available to us that proves something ‘beyond reasonable doubt’.

I feel that another point that has repeatedly been causing confusion in these discussions is the idea that logic and evidence will always agree. I believe (and history has shown) that this is not always the case. If I was to base an argument on my own assumptions, I would say that logic is, at least in part. based on our observations (in everyday situations). If we come across a non-everyday situation, the evidence we encounter may not follow our logic. Quantum undeterminism springs to mind as an example. On the other hand, logically applied reason can extend beyond our current evidence based theories and provide answers to questions yet to be evidentially confirmed, or even tried. A successful example of this is the other pillar of modern physics, Einstein’s relativity. A less successful example of applied logic is Xeno’s paradox (I know the paradox is actually based on flawed logic, but I have included it anyway because we do make wrong assumptions in our logical reasoning sometimes).

It should be noted that in the above paragraph I have used the word logic to mean something probably closer to common sense than some definitions of logic.

So there you have it.  A collection of my thoughts on the supernatural and our debate about it. Please debate, disregard, disprove, reinforce and force me to modify them as you like.

Oskar

Determinism and Faith

(Nat)

I propose that an individual cannot be held accountable for their beliefs.

This is because beliefs are typically formed by outside influences beyond the control of the individual; whether dictated by fate or a God or by sheer dumb luck, it is beyond their control. Firstly, though, are my thoughts on belief:

The system of belief – whether it is in God, Allah, Buddha, magic, physics or whatever else – is primarily a tool for the individual to connect to reality in a way where he or she may gain some knowledge over it. To do these through study is the most common method, and the most socially acceptable. To come to your own opinions through your own channels, without first referencing the ‘facts’, is a heresy not much appreciated.

That’s because while the primary nature of beliefs is to support that illusion of control, the secondary nature is another, more insidious trick; to act as a metaphor representing just how the universe works. This is an illusion that drives many seemingly mad, desperate to commit horrible acts in the name of whatever faith they belong to, theistic or otherwise… and it is, naturally, the same illusion that drives fundamentalism. This is reality without studying, without wisdom: this is why the heresy is not appreciated by many.

But these people can’t help it. They are a product of their environment. The Catholic, for example, may derive their beliefs from a much earlier experience: a close relative was very sick, and they prayed as hard as they could, and the relative got better. This is a miracle in the subjective eyes of the Catholic. Regardless of whether or not it was a coincidence, it is interpreted using the Catholicism model as a miracle. A physicist, then, has the luxury of seeing physical results of his reality-tunnel; but these are no more (and no less) convincing then the experiences held by the Catholic. Two models can intersect, naturally, but they clash much more often.

Anyway – enough from me. What do you think?