Materialistic pseudoskeptics hold a ethical belief-system known as "Secular Humanism". It's basically a negation of religious values, the restatement of a negation of religion (especially, of Christian religion). As many of them are obssesively fixed with God and Christian religion, their entire philosophy of life includes a self-appointed mission to debunk any kind of concept directly or indirectly related with God or religion (including the concepts of an afterlife, free will, etc.). It's a way to rationalize their anti-religious atheistic delusions, fixed ideas and obsessions.
For many of these atheistic ideologues, propagandists and believers, God, afterlife and free will are fantasies in the same or similar category than fairy tales, Santa Claus or the Blue Unicorns. However, what kind of individual would dedicate his entire life to defend the idea that Santa Claus doesn't exist?
Just imagine an individual who believe that Santa Claus doesn't exist. But when you go to the house of that individual, he has an entire library on Santa Claus; his room is full of photos of Santa Claus; he has t-shirts with the printed words "I'm a debunker of Santa Claus"; or "Santa Claus is a myth" or "Say NO to Santa Claus", or "My name is John, but my friends call me anti-Santa"; he creates a website dedicated to expose Santa Claus; and most of his friends (he has very few of them, he's mostly lonely and he's widely considered as socially inept) share his mission of debunking Santa and preaching its nonexistence to "believers" (in Santa).
Obviously, you could reasonably think that individual has some sort of weird obsession with Santa Claus (presumibly, while being a child, he was abused by someone dressed of Santa; and now, he'll make Santa to pay for it). If Santa exists or not is besides the point: That individual seems to be obsessed with the "nonexistent" Santa. And you're justified in asking why a person dedicates so much time to a nonexistent thing like that.
An atheistic-materialistic believer reading this would think "But God is different; He belongs to the same ontological category than Santa, i.e. both of them are nonexistent; but God is widely believed to exist and that belief is socially negative, bad and evil; therefore, attacking that false belief is rationally and ethically justified"
However, such thought is inconsistent with the materialist and "secular humanist" worldview, because according to this ideology, you are no free to choose between "bad" and "good" alternatives. In other words, you have no free will because:
1)Every kind of behaviour (including the religious one) is fully determined by antecedent causes. As consequence, being religious or anti-religious, rational or irrational, is not a question of free choice: It's a question of physical determination beyond of human control.
2)Given that free will doesn't exist and every human behaviour is fully determined in advance, then calling "good" or "bad" to any belief or behaviour is misleading. The world simply IS (whatever other moral or normative consideration is a pure fiction based upon the illusion that morality, normativity and freely chosen moral acts actually exist)
Therefore, "fighting" against God is not more justified than non-fighting Him; or that fighting Santa-Claus or poverty. In fact, the normative epistemic concept of "justification" makes no sense in this context, because whatever is "justified" or "unjustified" is fully determined by factors beyond of your control. You can't freely to choose being rational over being irrational, or viceversa. The same is valid to being moral or immoral. (Your "choice", whatever is it, is fully determined by impersonal forces)
The destiny of the world and of your behaviour is FIXED in advance. And this proves the deep inconsistency, irrationality and morally destructive nature of secular humanism and the potential effects that such beliefs could cause on its believers.
This point is made clear in neuroscientist Jeffrey Schwartz's book "The Mind and the Brain": "More often than not, to believe that we have such freedom is also to believe that, without it, the moral order is in danger of collapse. If the human mind is not in some sense an unmoved mover, one cannot reasonably assign personal responsability, or ground a system of true justice. In this sort of world, the person who kills or robs or steals is in the grip of an inexorable mechanical process, and there is no rational basis for belief in taking responsability for one's actions and choices... Carried to its logical limits, a system in which no one has a choice about what action to take is unworkable" (pp. 302-303)
I'll add that such belief is not only unworkable, but destructive. Just imagine this conversation between a CONSISTENT believer in materialism and his son:
Son: Dad, I like to beat up my buddies, but my teacher says it's bad.
Dad: Don't listen to her. In this universe, there is no evil, no good, no purpose, no design. Therefore, it's impossible that beating up your friends be bad (after all, such behaviour is part of this universe, isn't it?)
Son: Are you telling me that is good to beating them up?
Dad: No, it's neither bad nor good.
Son: Then should I beat them up or not?
Dad: Science cannot decide that question (because science doesn't deal with ought statements) and, as you know, I'm a scientific minded man. Science tells us that, whatever you do, it's what you was determined to do from the beginning of this universe.
Thus, it's not to you to decide what you're going to do.
Son: But I feel I can choose if I beat them or not.
Dad: It's an illusion.
Son: But that illusion seems to me to be true.
Dad: Some illusions are convincing. But they're illusions.
Son: And if I want to take drugs, what would you say to me?
Dad: Nothing, taking drugs is not good or bad either (remember that in this universe, such things as "bad" or "good" don't exist).
Son: So, could I take drugs if I want?
Dad: Again, your behaviour doesn't depend of you; you're determined from the beginning of the universe by mechanical, impersonal factors.
Son: Thanks dad, I love you, you're so smart and intelligent.
Dad: And you're a good boy. But I'd prefer that you simply call me "rational".
Son: I love my rational daddy!
You can imagine how that kind of consistent materialistic-based fatalistic-deterministic "teaching" would destroy society (if it gets widely believed, assumed and consistently practicized).
No concept of morality and rationality is possible if you destroy the idea of free will and, therefore, the idea that free (non-fatalistic determined in advance) choices between alternatives actually exist.
Therefore, justifying anti-God-like obsessions as morally valid or justified is impossible given the own philosophical premises of materialism, secular humanism and metaphysical naturalism.
But not all materialists are so consistent; many of them avoid the implications of their own assumptions. They assume a set of premises (like determinism), but realizing the weird and destructive nature of their implications for daily life, try to avoid them. In other cases, their inconsistency is caused by an unability to think logically: they simply cannot see the full logical implications of their own position. And thus, trying to explain this to them will be nonefficacious.
In those cases, you're dealing with irrational people who hold a irrational philosophy of life. But their irrationality prevents them to realize this.
Links of interest:
-My post on "Secular Humanism"
-My post on the "Cosmic Authority Problem"
0 comments:
Post a Comment