The Absurd

The absurd is a philosophical concept which points out the paradox between human nature’s need to find some meaning or intrinsic value to life, but being unable to find one. I have chosen this topic for this month’s post as the idea of life’s meaning has been playing on my mind recently. As an atheist I cannot turn towards a divine power for a solution; however I do not find that a negative thought. It is in my rationalist nature to deduce that truth does not come from a false idea. It would be wrong of me to accept something as truth simply because I want it to satisfy the problem.

The absurd originates with the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard, when he is writing of the absurd, does not necessarily state that there is no meaning to life. He simply makes the observation that humans have not found any meaning. It goes on to conclude that there is a good level of futility in us searching for “meaning in a meaningless world,” as any real value that life has is “humanly impossible” to find due to the extraordinary amount of unknown information.

According to Kierkegaard there are 3 ‘solutions’ to the problem of the absurd:

• Suicide – To escape reality and henceforth the absurd entirely.  To leave existence.
• Religion – Belief in a higher being used to give meaning in a way that transcends the absurd. Kierkegaard makes a point of the irrationality behind this belief but recognises that the “leap of faith may be necessary as a solution.” Camus, another major absurdist philosopher states that acceptance of an unprovable being is nothing short of philosophical suicide.
•  Acceptance – Being aware that the absurd is simply a fact of life and possibly even embracing the fact that we will never know why we’re here or even if there is a reason at all, Camus believes this path to be the only true way to overcome the absurd as it leads to the truest form of freedom. However Kierkegaard regards this idea as “daemonic madness”.

Kierkegaard is also considered the founder of existential philosophy; the belief that meaning must originate from individual experience regardless of culture or context. That a person’s idea on the meaning of life should come from within themselves rather than looking to the external world and that by living in a certain way and making choices that have outcomes affecting the world, which give us meaning.  Kierkegaard states that one’s life can be meaningful in the pursuit of a goal, even if the goal is finite, as in that devotion one finds a drive that is a form of meaning.

God and meaninglessness - I should make a point that not all theists find life’s meaning from the idea of God. The naïve believer will see that God is the only way to derive meaning and that acceptance of God, and meaning in life are in a direct relationship. Camus and I would agree here that this is not the case, unless one finds a way of separating these two ideas one is living a false reality. For even within scripture there is regard to the hollow existence: “Meaningless! Meaningless! Says the Teacher. Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” (Ecclesiastes 1:2). The wise believer will acknowledge that there is no ontological meaning, but will instead take their own form of life to be one that derives meaning from Christ, but does not necessitate his existence within their definition of meaning, as in this way they are living for themselves.

Nietzsche and nihilism – Nietzsche says first in the gay science “God is dead” however he continues this sentiment throughout his works. It is a common misconception that this phrase is said in an anti-realist fashion to mean that society as a whole has no need for God anymore. Nietzsche is actually referring to a crisis in value. He maintains that through the rationalism of Enlightened philosophy we have reached a point where we can no longer accept God as a form of value. This leads many people to think that Nietzsche was a nihilist; (the belief that life has no intrinsic value or meaning whatsoever and that all things are meaningless) however Nietzsche uses nihilism as a starting point rather than his conclusion, he aims to rescue us from a Godless, meaningless existence. He then goes on to make a point that we need something new, which is more than human. He believes that this Übermensch is a true free spirit and a creator of new value in the world. 

Meaning through legacy – Some people live the meaningless life in the hope of having a meaningful death, this comes from the thought that the only meaning people find, is the legacy they leave to the world after they are dead. For example the graphomaniac; someone who experiences the compulsive need to write and have their work published, similarly with the need of the artist to paint. These things come from a need to leave a mark on the world, as they have come to realise that once they are forgotten, they never really existed. What they themselves do not realise is that all things will eventually cease to exist. As Nietzsche says in human, all too human “To think of writing as one’s life’s profession should by rights be considered a kind of madness.”

Dysteleology -Or in other words ‘optimistic nihilism’. This is the philosophical doctrine that life has no purpose, or more specifically, no final cause. It is however more a perspective of scientific philosophy. It is a school of thought followed by Richard Dawkins, the late Christopher Hitchens, Stephen Hawkins and much of the global scientific community. The position is one that accepts that life is intrinsically meaningless, but rationalises meaning through the wonder of the universe. Rather than becoming overwhelmed with the meaninglessness of existence, be unendingly blissful that, by an impossibly unlikely sequence of events you are here to see the universe for this fraction of time that you inhabit it as a conscious being. 

“The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness” – Carl Sagan 

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was an 18^th century enlightenment philosopher from Königsberg and is well known for his study of epistemology, metaphysics and political theory. However Kant is arguably most well renowned for his doctrines on ethics and Christian morals.

Kant believed very firmly that that the action one takes, is moral or immoral based on that act rather than the consequences thereof, this is the ethical theory known as deontology and was Kant’s radical change from the contemporary belief of consequentialism. Kant followed deontology as he believed it was the best way to follow Jesus’ teaching of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Even if the consequence of the action is overall worse, or the person has acted out of immoral reasons, the action is still of itself a moral one.

Kant also wrote that all moral actions were either intrinsically good or evil and that there was no grey area in between the two, this is known as Kant’s categorical imperative, from this he established the three formulations or Maxims:

Maxim one: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction.”

Here Kant states that all actions must have universality, that if a moral action is wrong in one circumstance it is therefore always wrong, he believes that an action can only be moral if it would be acceptable for everyone to do all of the time.

Maxim two: “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.”

Kant says here that it is our moral duty to treat all human beings as an ends rather than a means, and that we should not deceive or manipulate others in order achieve our own goals. Kant claimed that all humans were an end in themselves and that they have a right to their own free will.

Maxim 3: “every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxim always a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends.”

In the third formulation Kant believes that all human beings are their own moral agents in the world and must all act as if they were the supreme moral authority of the entire universe. This maxim is essentially a stage to apply the previous two maxims, Kant uses this Maxim to give the categorical imperative a social context to which it can exist in the world.

Although Kant was highly sceptical of the philosophical reasoning of the existence of God after studying the work of David Hume, he did however believe God to be a universal law maker and believed that humans were made in Gods image and thus we reflected God’s moral judgement, this was Kant’s moral argument for the existence of God based on practical reason.

"Two things awe me the most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me." - Immanuel Kant

René Descartes

The feedback on the last post relating to David Hume was so positive that I decided to continue summaries of the works of philosophers, in particular one that was mentioned last month and that I have had requests to do in more detail, so without further ado here is Descartes.

René Descartes was a 17^th century French philosopher who is credited with the Cartesian line graph, indices and the law of conservation of mechanical momentum. However throughout his life Descartes battled with with epistemological nihilism, which lead to his own principle of methodological scepticism, essentially Descartes disregarded everything that he thought he knew and tried to think about what he could categorically state that he knew. Descartes came to the startling realisation that there was basically nothing that could be said to be true, as all knowledge we have comes from the senses which are fundamentally fallible, therefore everything we believe we know actually requires a varying level of belief. However Descartes concluded that even if nothing he observed was real, he himself must be in some sense real as he was asking the questions about what is real. This he summed up with “I think therefore I am.”

Descartes progressively added more to the index of knowledge with mathematical axioms such as a square, Descartes concluded that no matter how deluded someone was it is impossible to deny that a shape with four sides of equal length and four angles of the same degree exists and that thing we call a square, he used this idea of basic principle to argue the existence of God. He stated that the definition of a square necessitated its existence, the same can be said of God. He proposed that existence is a perfection: it would be more perfect to exist than not to exist. Thus, if the notion of God did not include existence, it would not be supremely perfect, as it would be lacking a perfection. Consequently, the notion of a supremely perfect God to not exist is simple incomprehensible. Therefore, according to his nature, God must exist. This is known as the ontological argument for the existence of God. Hume and Kant are both strongly opposed to this idea, Hume disagrees with the principle as it lacks empirical ground and that nothing can exist with any necessity. Kant's criticism is based on the idea of characteristics within the argument, Kant stated “Existence is not a predicate” and thus could not be the starting point of an argument to prove God as it adds nothing to the essence of a being.

“I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.” - René Descartes.

Hume's philosophy

My last two posts have been on the topic of theology, so it thought it was time for a refreshing breath of philosophy, specifically atheist philosophy from David Hume.

Hume is credited with the ontological thought known as bundle theory, bundle theory states that every (at least) tangible thing in existence is nothing more than a sum of its properties and that the actual object does not really exist. This at first glance this position seems completely nonsensical however Hume then challenges us to think of an object without its properties, his example was an apple, but the activity works with any object. Hume therefore arrived at the idea that no object really exists. This also stretches beyond the inanimate and can be directly applied to a human being such as yourself (unless of course my blog has a much wider audience than I expect!) this means that you don't exist other than as a set of senses that you are made up of, Hume concluded from this that there is no sense of self. This was Hume's way of telling René  Descartes that he was wrong in his position which he summed up by saying “Cogito ergo sum” or to those of you who aren't familiar with Descartes (or Latin) “I think therefore I am”, Descartes believed that the world around us might be an illusion or that we might be dreaming of our world, but at least if we are seeing the illusion or dreaming we are thinking, ergo we exist. Both have strong arguments however I feel obliged to go with Descartes otherwise I must concede that I do not exist, however Nietzsche would argue that I am accepting Descartes truth because it comforts me to believe it, rather than its actual truth or falsehood.

Hume also believed in sense data, a branch of John Locke's empirical scepticism, stating that all knowledge is meaningless unless it originates from human experience and that the real world (if there even is one!) is unknowable, as in empiricism the only knowledge we can truly have is derived from the senses as this as close as we can ever get to what we call “truth”, this is why Hume was an atheist as he believed it was impossible to arrive at God through this process of sense data. Although Hume believed in sense data he found himself constantly puzzled by the problem of induction, this is the idea that all scientific method is based on a logical fallacy, as just because we observe something we can't assume it's going to happen again, no matter how many times it appears to happen, so essentially all the laws of physics are unreliable. For example if you live your whole life only seeing white cups, you might find it logical to assume that all cups are white until someone gives you a handful of multi-coloured cups to which you would have to draw into question all you think you know about ceramics. Although Hume may have been confused by this defective induction modern scientists don't seem too bothered about it because it seems to work, and if it doesn’t we can always change it later.

"That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise." - David Hume.

Reformed Epistemology

Reformed epistemology is a unique justification for the belief in God as it, fundamentally requires no need for justification. The reformed epistemologist position is that the belief in God is “properly basic” and does not need to be inferred from other truths in order to be reasonable. To a reformed epistemologist, the existence of God is as obvious to them as my existence is to my friends and family. The core of the belief comes from a branch of Calvinism in which he called sensus divinitatis or sense of divinity, this ‘sense’ allows people to have an external knowledge of God’s presence.

Some people argue that everyone has this sense of divinity, this is used to argue that there are no true atheists, Calvin himself believed there was no reasonable non-belief. However reformed epistemologists believe that atheists are, in a realist sense wrong. They would also agree that other religions are also wrong or at least less right. This is because they believe that only they have their noetic structure (noetic structure here means “the sum total of a person’s belief”) properly ordered, and that others who do not share their belief do not, either because they refuse to see the truth or their view of the world has been tainted by sin.

Critiques of this position are that almost all religions claim that they alone have the ultimate truth, all religions can argue that they have their noetic structure properly ordered, what makes a reformed epistemologist different from an orthodox Jew or a militant Islamist? Who all claim that they alone have the ultimate truth of God.

One can take this point further still; I could claim that I believe that my dog is in fact the son of the creator dog of light and that all those who believe in him will receive eternal life and that only I have my noetic structure in the correct order as I am the only one who can see the divine truth in Noodle, son of Dog.

Other arguments against reformed epistemology are that it claims that there is an ultimate truth, but makes no reference or justification for it, which if one accepts makes the difference between justified and unjustified obsolete. Christians who prefer natural theology are often cynical of reformed epistemology as they believes that it undermines what they consider to be a rationally inferred realist God.

While non-believers and Christians who disagree with the position would maintain that reformed epistemology stands on flimsy grounds, a reformed epistemologist would see no reason to make a counter claim as that would involve justifying their belief which is fundamentally wrong.

“A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.” – C.S Lewis.

The nature of the Divine

I'd like to start this post with an analogy; say you are speaking to a friend who cannot comprehend the idea of a prime number, he is smart in many other aspects, but simply does not get what a prime number is. So you try to explain it to him, you may use examples to prove prime numbers, but he believes them to be non-existent things invented by mathematicians. After a long conversation he asks you to take him to a prime number, to show him one. This is obviously impossible so he concludes that he is right in believing prime numbers don't exist, however we know that prime numbers do exist, this proves only that he has not understood the concept of a prime number.

As you may have guessed, the analogy was of God, I used the analogy here because it shows God as a concept, something to be understood, like the equator, which can be said to both exist and not simultaneously. Many theologians would argue it is impossible to understand God, even through via negativa, as God is so different to everything else in existence, for example our universe is spacial, temporal and variable to change. Whereas God is timeless, spaceless and immutable, (These ideas about God seen in the Christian theology are derived from Plato's “Forms”) It is therefore impossible to describe God within the restrictions of our language as all words meanings change when referring to God.

For example the two statements:

1) Joe is Good

2) God is Good

These two statements completely differ from each other, and not only because of extent, they are good in completely different ways, Joe may be good but his goodness is limited and not pure, whereas God's goodness is not only perfect and everlasting but abstract in a way we cannot possibly understand.

A good way of looking at this is by taking the two statements;

1) A watchmaker is good

2) His watches are good

The watchmaker's watches are good because they are shiny and durable, whereas these traits are not what makes the watchmaker good.

When we accept this point we can then ask to what extent does God ‘exist’, if we take God to be outside time, he doesn’t exist in the real world and can therefore not truly be considered existing. However if we take the traditional Catholic view that God is everlasting, as in living within time but living forever, this brings the question of where time came from, as God is within time and time existed before the universe, so God did not create time, and is therefore subject to it.

Many Christian’s view of God is more of a Super-human, especially as in the bible, God is very  Anthropomorphic, in the old testament he shows; anger, jealousy, regret, and even has his mind changed by his prophets.This goes against what we should consider a God, the God of the bible seems hardly worth worshipping, God in the true sense of the word should be a being of total actuality and perfect in every way.

"O Sovereign Lord, you have begun to show to your servant your greatness and your strong hand. For what God is there in heaven or on earth who can do the deeds and mighty works you do?”

Deuteronomy 3:24

Friedrich Nietzsche part 1

Friedrich Nietzsche philosophised that morality was a doctrine invented by the inferior to restrain the superior, this point can be broken into two sections, which must be individually dealt with. The first is that morality, is in fact a concept, which I believe it is, as everyone has a different interpretation of what I considered “moral”. I also find it difficult to believe that people would behave in an upstanding and ethical way if the thought to do so has not imposed on them by a higher power, through both positive and negative reinforcements, which could be anything from a parent putting a disobedient child on the naughty step, to an almighty entity promising eternity in paradise as a reward for following a set of guidelines. I believe that if we were still under the laws of natural selection many of us, if not all, would gladly murder a rival in order to survive, fortunately evolution has dictated that humans work better as a community, where it became necessity to ensure each others safety, even if it was for our own self-interest.

The second point of this we must consider is that there is, as Friedrich put it “Übermensch” or Superhuman, many historians believe that this lead to Hitler's “Master race.” However Nietzsche himself was critical of both anti-Semitism and German nationalism. He stated that beyond humanity was ascertainable and should be the goal of every individual and collective. I agree that there are some who are superior to others, for example Carl Segan compared to the cast of Jersey Shore. However if it were to come to a point where everyone had the mental power of the great minds of our era, that would be considered normal or average, and if we continue along this path of intellectual evolution it would come to a point where we became creatures of pure consciousness at a sentient level and thus achieved a state of Übermensch.

If we put these ideas together we conclude that in order to achieve this god-like grandeur we must cast off the shackles of morality, to through away our concepts of good and evil, to do not what is right, but what is logical.

“Fear is the mother of morality.” - Friedrich Nietzsche  

A thought about books.

While in conversation with a colleague about the tragedy that is the death of the written word, with things like e-readers and Amazon kindles it won't be too much of a surprise that within a few years book retail will be a dead business. This is for two main reasons, one is that "E-books" are often much cheaper especially with copyright expiration on dead authors, meaning many classic novels are now free. The second reason is that books take up quite a bit of space in the tangible world, where as on a database they become layers of compressed information, meaning that whole libraries can be condensed into just a few gigabytes. This gives us the choice between dedicating lots of shelf space to our favourite reads and simply keeping them stored as information on a tablet which more than makes it's money back when compared to high-street prices of books. However one might argue that this is not the 'death of the written word' to which I agree, more of a reincarnation into the digital era, where if anything they'll be further immortalised. Although with things like Audible, and Librivox where one can simply download a book and have it read to them. Which is cheating frankly, it takes all the effort out of reading the book and the soul is stripped from the novel, as well as making literacy redundant. But if the technology is available, why should I take the effort of lifting up a big, heavy copy of Harry Potter and risk straining my eyes on reading the words on the page when I can fall asleep to the soothing voice of Steven Fry reading "the goblet of fire". My solution, get people with annoying voices to read the books, then people won't find it so easy to put up with. 


"books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory." Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Intro:

First off, introductions, I'm Dane, or RexDane as you know me. The "Rex" part of my name comes from the Latin for King, but is mainly a memorial to my Father, Rex Harrison, who died when I was 9 years old. This is the reason for not only my Atheism, but the beginning of my quest for knowledge. My blog is a haven for those seeking intellectual fulfilment, I will cover a wide range of topics from philosophy, science, history, English language and even theology, as even though I am an Atheist I am fascinated by people's interpretation of scripture. (Not in a condescending way, simply as an outsider looking in.) My hope is that everyone who reads my posts learns something they didn't know before or finds a new perspective on something that they had previously dismissed.

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. 

"We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves." - Buddha.