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Tuesday, 26 May 2015
Cardinalis cardinalis
Tuesday, 19 May 2015
Polysporus squamosus
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| Polysporus squamosus- Photo: www.earnestlyseekingthereal.com |
Pluteus longistriatus
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Friday, 1 May 2015
Against the Christian nihilist
Against the accusation that non-believers are inconsistent by enjoying life rather than despair that their lives are meaningless without God or an afterlife.
Recently a friend challenged me thus: "Do you not act inconsistently, or not understand the full implications of atheism, when you fail to appreciate the import of a life that has no meaning, that will cease to be forever, whose works will all come to naught? It seems to me that atheists should be a much more despairing group of people."
This, as I have mentioned elsewhere, is a very religious understanding of atheism. It already takes God as its starting point, a ground from which to make comparisons. For believers in God atheism is a negative, a subtraction. For non-believers it is no such thing, for there is nothing to subtract their perspective from. One must already have the existence of a God in order for his non-existence to draw the meaning of life away. For this reason one should be careful to see through the supposed argument to its root, what the interrogator is really saying: "I can't imagine life without God. My life would have no meaning without God, therefore yours shouldn't either." But this says little more than for this one, God has meaning. I can accept the first part of this argument, but not the second. I find it strange that a Christian would try to convince me life is meaningless because I do not believe in eternal life or a deity. In essence they are trying to convince me my hermeneutic of death is mistaken and that a proper atheist interpretation would see death as a meaning-vacuum, or a meaning-destroyer, and thus my life should consistently reflect the implications of this meaninglessness, i.e. I should hold a nihilistic attitude toward life. Fundamentally then we see the idea of God simultaneously sets up the possibility of a thoroughgoing nihilism.
Regarding death, even a cursory glance at the writings of antiquity reveals alternative views to the one held by my skeptical friend. For example, Lucretius: "Do you not know that in real death there will be no second you, living to lament your death and standing by your corpse?" From Seneca: "Life itself is neither a good nor an evil: life is where good or evil find a place, depending on how you make it for them." And from Montaigne (in the guise of Nature): "Truly imagine how much less bearable for Man, and how much more painful, would be a life which lasted for ever rather than the life which I have given you. If you did not have death you would curse me, for ever, for depriving you of it."
Why must I view death in the morose and nihilistic way my friend was convinced I should see it? Why not rather "eat and drink, for tomorrow we die" (St. Paul)? What I know is that I live. I have this life right before me. My friend, however, does not have even this evidence in support of her beliefs and ideas. If there is inconsistency, surely it lies with the notions of a God or eternal life, things that cannot be found anywhere in the world or nature, but merely as two of many ideas regarding supernatural matters. One might add, why are there not more Christians taking out full page ads in the paper, paying for multiple blocks of radio and television time, to warn people of eternal hell (no matter how the host of its cultured defenders would like to interpret it)? Perhaps the charge of inconsistency could function here as a mirror into which my friend should gaze intently, and with care.
Recently a friend challenged me thus: "Do you not act inconsistently, or not understand the full implications of atheism, when you fail to appreciate the import of a life that has no meaning, that will cease to be forever, whose works will all come to naught? It seems to me that atheists should be a much more despairing group of people."
This, as I have mentioned elsewhere, is a very religious understanding of atheism. It already takes God as its starting point, a ground from which to make comparisons. For believers in God atheism is a negative, a subtraction. For non-believers it is no such thing, for there is nothing to subtract their perspective from. One must already have the existence of a God in order for his non-existence to draw the meaning of life away. For this reason one should be careful to see through the supposed argument to its root, what the interrogator is really saying: "I can't imagine life without God. My life would have no meaning without God, therefore yours shouldn't either." But this says little more than for this one, God has meaning. I can accept the first part of this argument, but not the second. I find it strange that a Christian would try to convince me life is meaningless because I do not believe in eternal life or a deity. In essence they are trying to convince me my hermeneutic of death is mistaken and that a proper atheist interpretation would see death as a meaning-vacuum, or a meaning-destroyer, and thus my life should consistently reflect the implications of this meaninglessness, i.e. I should hold a nihilistic attitude toward life. Fundamentally then we see the idea of God simultaneously sets up the possibility of a thoroughgoing nihilism.
Regarding death, even a cursory glance at the writings of antiquity reveals alternative views to the one held by my skeptical friend. For example, Lucretius: "Do you not know that in real death there will be no second you, living to lament your death and standing by your corpse?" From Seneca: "Life itself is neither a good nor an evil: life is where good or evil find a place, depending on how you make it for them." And from Montaigne (in the guise of Nature): "Truly imagine how much less bearable for Man, and how much more painful, would be a life which lasted for ever rather than the life which I have given you. If you did not have death you would curse me, for ever, for depriving you of it."
Why must I view death in the morose and nihilistic way my friend was convinced I should see it? Why not rather "eat and drink, for tomorrow we die" (St. Paul)? What I know is that I live. I have this life right before me. My friend, however, does not have even this evidence in support of her beliefs and ideas. If there is inconsistency, surely it lies with the notions of a God or eternal life, things that cannot be found anywhere in the world or nature, but merely as two of many ideas regarding supernatural matters. One might add, why are there not more Christians taking out full page ads in the paper, paying for multiple blocks of radio and television time, to warn people of eternal hell (no matter how the host of its cultured defenders would like to interpret it)? Perhaps the charge of inconsistency could function here as a mirror into which my friend should gaze intently, and with care.
Ὁ θάνατος οὐδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς· τὸ γὰρ διαλυθὲν ἀναισθητεῖ· τὸ δ’ ἀναισθητοῦν οὐδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς
(Death is nothing to us. For what has been dissolved feels nothing. While what feels nothing is nothing to us.- Epicurus)
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