JLAfan2001 writes at UD:
If there is no God and there’s just naturalism, materialism:
• No objective, absolute, inherent meaning in life or the universe
• No objective, absolute, inherent purpose in life or the universe
• No objective, absolute, inherent value in life or the universe
• We are the cobbled together Frankensteins of billions of years of trial and error
• No objective, absolute, inherent morality in life or the universe. No good, no evil, no right, no wrong
• No objective, absolute, inherent truth in life or the universe
• No objective, absolute, inherent knowledge in life or the universe
• No objective, absolute, inherent logic in life or the universe
• We have no free-will, mind, consciousness, rationality or reason. They are illusions and our very personhood, identity and humanity are not real.
• The emotions we express are just chemicals in our brain. The very things we seek in life like happiness, peace, contentment, joy are just chemicals reducing us to nothing more than chemical addicts.
• We are no more important than other animals. A dog is a rat is a pig is a boy.
• There is no after life. Once we die, we fade from existence and all our memories, experiences, knowledge etc goes with it. In time, we are forgotten.
• All the things we do in life are just for survival. Learning, loving, seeking, being positive, eating, relating, having fun are created for the sake of ignoring the real reason we are here and that’s to live as long as we can.
• There is no help coming to save humanity as a species or as individuals. We are all alone and on our own. If you can’t survive, you die.This is reality if there is no God. I don’t give a rat’s ass what Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens or what other atheist wrote a book says. Nihilism is the truth and atheism is a noble lie just the same as theism would be. Survival and reproduction. THAT”S IT. All other things are made up bullshit for survival and reproduction. The atheists of old knew this. The new atheists are trying to say that you can have your cake and eat it too but there really is no cake.
I assumed it was satire; KF assumes not. Be that as it may, it seems usefully wrong:
• No objective, absolute, inherent meaning in life or the universe
We are alive; we mean things. This is self-evidently false.
• No objective, absolute, inherent purpose in life or the universe
Not being created to serve the purpose of another being does not mean we cannot generate our own purposes, and serve others. And we clearly do. And which is better? To be created to serve the purposes of another being (as farm animals are) or to discover our own purposes, and fulfill them?
• No objective, absolute, inherent value in life or the universe
Sure there is inherent value in life; it is intrinsic to life that we value it.
• We are the cobbled together Frankensteins of billions of years of trial and error
Suits me; I don’t mind how we arose – handsome is as handsome does. Life is beautiful.
• No objective, absolute, inherent morality in life or the universe. No good, no evil, no right, no wrong
Of course there is. It’s inherent in our status as social animals, capable of understanding the thoughts and feelings of others, and valuing them.
• No objective, absolute, inherent truth in life or the universe
This makes no sense. We can explore reality just fine without assuming, or without there being, a God. And as similar explorations give similar results, we can infer an underlying reality.
•No objective, absolute, inherent knowledge in life or the universe
We know stuff; ergo knowledge self-evidently exists.
• No objective, absolute, inherent logic in life or the universe
We carry out logic operations successfully; ergo logic self-evidently exists.
• We have no free-will, mind, consciousness, rationality or reason. They are illusions and our very personhood, identity and humanity are not real.
We will stuff; we think things; we are conscious; we are rational, we reason. Therefore these things are not illusions.
• The emotions we express are just chemicals in our brain. The very things we seek in life like happiness, peace, contentment, joy are just chemicals reducing us to nothing more than chemical addicts.
Clearly untrue. A whole is more than the sum of its parts, and its properties are not the properties of its parts. Our goals are not “chemicals” just because chemicals are involved in the processes by which we set and seek our goals.
• We are no more important than other animals. A dog is a rat is a pig is a boy.
We are more important to each other than pigs are. Although for a pig, we may be less so.
• There is no after life. Once we die, we fade from existence and all our memories, experiences, knowledge etc goes with it. In time, we are forgotten.
True.
• All the things we do in life are just for survival. Learning, loving, seeking, being positive, eating, relating, having fun are created for the sake of ignoring the real reason we are here and that’s to live as long as we can.
Confusion of levels; our own purposes do not have to be congruent with the processes that enabled us to have them.
• There is no help coming to save humanity as a species or as individuals. We are all alone and on our own. If you can’t survive, you die.
We can help each other, and do.
This entire satire, if satire it is, is a satire on the assumption that without some external “objective” agent who sets the rules of existence for its own purposes, existence can have no rules or purpose. It’s a massive non-sequitur. It’s a bit like saying that because a rock is composed almost entirely of empty space, it can’t be hard. The properties of a system are not the properties of its parts. As systems we are volitional agents, capable of estimating value, including the value of each other’s lives and happiness as well as our own; of appreciating beauty and creating it; of living purposeful lives; of seeking to make the world a better place. This would be as true if we came about by a colossal cosmic accident than if we were created by some divinity with some ulterior purpose of his/her own. Actually, more so. I’d rather be free than a farm animal.
Literary nitpick:
Frankenstein’s monster may have been cobbled together, but he was designed, not evolved.
So who created god’s purpose?
Another day, same infinite regress.
I agree with that, though I think it silly.
Meaning is inherently subjective.
I could comment similarly on some of those other “no objective, absolute” claims.
I don’t agree with that one. And, in a way, it’s the same point. Our meanings of “free will”, etc., are subjective. People who assert their is no free will are attempting to apply an objective requirement and assert that the requirement cannot be met. But if meaning is subjective, then that whole line of argument is dubious. If people who assert that they are acting of their free will are successfully communicating something with that choice of words, then free will exists in the sense that they are communicating.
Liz,
Your rebuttal fails on two counts. First, and most obviously, you assume the consequent – that materialism is capable of producing a quality because we have it, such as this statement:
Because it exists doesn’t mean materialism created it, and that is JLA’s point: materialism cannot produce it.
Second, using the same example, there is gulf between JLA’s terms, and what you address (using the same term) in your response. JLA says:
Then you respond, as if in response to the same concept of logic JLA is employing:
This completely ignores the categorical difference between JLA’s logic, which is absolute and objective, and whatever it is that you are using the term “logic” to describe. No, materialists do not have access to JLA’s logic because, under materialism, absolute, objective logic doesn’t exist; the only thing that exists that is called logic is a certain relative system of thought that a culture happens to consensually refer to as “logic”.
Those are two completely different concepts about what “logic” is, and have entirely different inferential consequences. As I would say, they are each part of two entirely different gestalts, and the term is not interchangeable from one to the other.
You make these two errors throughout your rebuttal. Materialism may be capable of producing what you mean when you use the various terms that JLA employed; materialism is incapable of producing what JLA means when JLA uses those terms. Because you use the same term when you rebut an argument doesn’t mean you are using the same concept.
Significantly, JLA used the very term that should have alerted you to the conceptual difference between what JLA meant and what you mean, and he used it over and over: absolute.
If your morality, logic, etc. are not assumed to originate from an absolute, objective source, it cannot mean the same thing that JLA – and theists – mean when they use those terms.
Also, Liz – do you have a Ph. D. or some lesser degree in philosophy?
Oh no, not again!.
Lizzie: “Not being created to serve the purpose of another being does not mean we cannot generate our own purposes, and serve others. And we clearly do. And which is better? To be created to serve the purposes of another being (as farm animals are) or to discover our own purposes, and fulfill them?”
Can you explain what serve means? Can you define “others”?
(pet peeve)
No, no, no, no, and NO! Frankenstein was the Doctor!! His creation was either called Adam or “The Creature”. Even “Demon”, “Retch”, “Thing”, “Being”, or “Ogre” is acceptable.
(/pet peeve)
First, Barb’s comment immediately after JLA’s I think is more damning as a criticism than anything we are likely to see here:
I don’t doubt that’s true for many Christians in addition to Barb.
Second, I don not understand the use “just” and “mere” in these contexts. I understand the rhetorical appeal — saying the brain-and-body are “merely” an “organic computer” expresses some kind of revulsion to the idea, but if the body-and-brain are, in fact, an organic computer, there’s nothing “mere” about it. It would be hard to come up with something less “mere” than that system, I suggest.
JLAfan2001 complains that our:
If the electro-chemical systems in the human body are the source, medium and governing controls for human emotions, then there’s nothing “just” about it.
I know, well, as a former Christian, the concept of supernature or spirit as a “higher form” over matter, over flesh. God is spirit, etc. This underwrites the Christian contempt for the flesh, flesh being intrinsically “fallen” since Adam.
Christians, having these beliefs, are perfectly capable of thinking in hypotheticals, though, and that’s why this continually confuses me. If there is no God, no supernatural whatever-it’s-supposed-to-be, and materialism obtains, then, for the Christian considering this scenario, there’s nothing “just” about the physical manifestations of our emotions. It’s something approaching a numinous experience to consider from a materialist standpoint in that case.
Then, JLA does not have access to JLA’s “logic” either. Our concept of logic is actually the same as JLA’s, only we “materialists” don’t tell make-believe stories about its source. We don’t attempt to fool ourselves as JLA (and you, and others) do, that xis ability to conceive the phrase “absolute objective logic” means that xe has conceived of a thing-as-such that actually exists beyond the space and time of the physical universe, or as the ground-of-being of the physical universe, or before the universe was instantiated, or wherever.
If JLA is hallucinating that some “absolute objective logic” exists somewhere as a separate thing from the logic we all have access to, then we have two ways of responding. Some choose to directly attack the subject’s hallucination “You don’t have to do what the voices tell you.” Some, like Lizzie, choose to focus on our mutually-agreed-upon reality “I’m here with you. We’re sitting on this bench together. We’re talking about what you see in your mind.”
Or, the other possibility which we have politely ignored till now is that JLA doesn’t believe, in any sense, in a separate “absolute objective logic” above and beyond the normal logic we all have access to. Rather, that JLA has deliberately lied about such a belief, the way preachers lie to their sheep. But that is a much less charitable interpretation than Lizzie’s; don’t ascribe JLA’s post to malice (lie) when stupidity (delusional belief) is a sufficient explanation.
William J. MurrayNo, materialists do not have access to JLA’s logic because, under materialism, absolute, objective logic doesn’t exist; the only thing that exists that is called logic is a certain relative system of thought that a culture happens to consensually refer to as “logic”.,
False. There’s no good reason to suppose they’re not just facts about existence. You seem to think that without god, for example, there would be no law of non-contradiction. In other words, if god didn’t exist and make the world, then there could be some possible world where A could be both A and not A at the same time.
Unfortunately, believers and unbelievers alike simply have to assume them. As in, we’d all be unable to even have meaningful discussions, on any subject, if we didn’t begin by supposing at the very first step that logic holds. The believer has no more reason to think their god would choose to “make” a logically coherent world, than the unbeliever has to think the laws of logic hold regardless.
In point of fact, the believer has to assume that their god is itself subject to the laws of logic and cannot violate them, otherwise the believer has no grounds on which to use logical arguments for the existence or will of their god.
I have PhD, but like most PhDs it’s not actually in Ph 🙂
I am not attempting to “rebut” non-materialism. What I am attempting rebut is the argument that IF there is no God, then the things that JLA claims follow, follow.
I don’t see that they do (apart from the afterlife thing).
The idea that if there is no God, nothing has no meaning, seems self-evidently wrong to me. This post has meaning whether or not there is a God.
The get-out clause of course is “objective, absolute, inherent” whatever.
Those adjectives don’t seem to do anything for the concept. It’s possible that none of the things I think we have: meaning, purpose, morality, etc are objective, absolute or inherent”, but I will happily settle in that case for “subjective, provisional, or acquired”. Or approximate, relative, probabilistic. Those things are fine with me.
I do have a PhD in Ph, if that counts for anything in this context.
JLA makes some pretty major mistakes and non sequiturs here, most of which Lizzie has cataloged nicely for us. The only one I’d like to call further attention to is JLA’s conflation of “objective” and “absolute”. I believe that a great deal of misunderstanding and confusion arises from the inability to draw the right distinction here. (I also believe, for what it’s worth, that nihilism is itself a consequence of this conflation — if the correct distinctions are drawn, then nihilism does not follow from naturalism.)
To be quick about it: a claim is objectively true (or false) if the truth (or falsity) does not depend on the psychological conditions of any particular subject. (Example: that the Sun is about 149,600,000 km from the Earth is objective knowledge; that I’m no longer in love with my ex-girlfriend is subjective knowledge. This could be refined significantly but I take it the basic point is clear.)
By contrast, a claim is absolutely true (or false) if the truth-value of the claim cannot be revised in light of rational reflection. (Example: the law of identity is usually regarded as absolutely true, and for the most part, the laws of the excluded middle and of non-contradiction are regarded as absolutely true, though both have come under criticism by recent developments in 20th-century logic.)
One big advantage of making this distinction, between objective and absolute, is that it dispels the illusion of contradiction that appears when we say that scientific knowledge is both objective (and reliable) but not absolute (because it is fallible, corrigible, and revisable). But once this distinction is firmly in place, there is no problem at all with saying that knowledge, values, meanings, purposes, and so on are objective but not absolute. And that is quite enough to cut off the slippery slope to nihilism, even if there is no God.
Put 1000 people in a room who claim to have access to an “objective X” system, get them to interpret X and you’ll get 1000 results back.
This result causes one group of people to conclude that there is no such thing as objective X.
Another group concludes that there is but “interpretation” has caused there to be 1000 results instead of 1.
And they call evolution a “just so” story based on wishful thinking…
JLA writes:
Clearly I disagree with JLA’s deductions from his premise. I do agree with him that accusing theists of “delusion” is weak, and mostly silly.
I think we all construct models of reality, and, as William appears to say (I’m not going to risk assuming a paraphrase) we choose the “beliefs” (or as I prefer “models” that best allow us to make sense of the world. Some of these survive emprical testing better than others, but my own view is that the only meaningful test of a model is whether it is useful.
The nihilist model outlined in the OP, even if it made sense, would be pretty useless. That doesn’t mean that we should invent a delusional God to kid ourselves it isn’t true. It’s just that there are lots of other models that are much more useful, some of which invoke a “God” concept, and some which invoke something much more abstract. But an abstraction is not a delusion.
And, in any case, I don’t think the model JLA outlines actually makes sense. Or rather, it only does if we think there is any meaning to the words “objective, absolute, and inherent” when applied as as he does to the concepts he applies them to. I don’t think there is. I think that thinking there is is, shall we say an “illusion” – rather like the “illusion” that because “married” is an adjective, and “bachelor” a noun, that “married bachelor” must have a coherent referent. it doesn’t.
“Objective, absolute and inherent” when applied to the word “meaning”, I suggest, makes no more sense than “square circle”. Same with “morality” and “purpose”.
Meaning, morality and purpose are all perfectly good concepts, and do not depend for their reality on the existence of God. Perhaps “objective, absolute and inherent” meaning/morality/purpose do, but I’m not going to miss them any more than I miss square circles or married bachelors 🙂
If you read this, JLA, can I just say you’d be most welcome to respond here!
Hurray!!!
Lizzie,
Yes, those things are fine! Since they’re all we’ve got (objectively, that is, according to the currently available non-subjective evidence of reality) they should be fine for everyone. Since reality is what it is, it’s not as if we actually have any other choice than to accept that our ideas/ideals are provisional/approximate. We might as well be happy with that; being unsatisfied with that isn’t going to change it 😀 I feel sorry for the folks who have to fool themselves into feeling like there is some ultimate meaning, something absolute/objective/good/godly, because they can’t be at peace with “mere” reality. How sad!
That some (many/most/all) theists are broken in a way that makes them desire more-than-reality is a shame. Really, too bad their supposed god supposedly created them broken. Too bad their supposed god supposedly created them to be dissatisfied with “mere” humanity, somehow requiring the crutch of belief in absolute, objective, inherent whatever to give “meaning” to their pitiable lives.
Folks, I got news for you: if you want a happier world, you’re going to have to stir your stumps and go make our world happier. Same as we humans have always done, ever since we first used fire to push back the darkness, before we were even fully human.
My first impression was that it was satire. The reason I thought this was because it was a rather complete compilation of the characterizations that fundamentalists use to demonize “others” who don’t hold specific sectarian beliefs or who learn about certain secular ideas.
This is another way to recognize the sectarian roots of ID/creationism; “materialists” are characterized as having beliefs that lead to hopelessness, despair, and evil behavior.
I have in my files a number of letters to the editors of our local newspaper during the peaks of ID/creationist assaults on public education. The following is a typical example – from an earlier peak in local sectarian activity against evolution in 2006 – of the angst that is being generated in a number of churches. The woman who wrote this letter to the editor apparently was led to believe that some subjects in public education ruin children’s lives. (My apologies for the length of the quote.)
JLA
Folks becoming aware of their own agnosticism (which I take to mean lack of certainty/knowledge regarding god) often find their own mental process distressing. Realizing for the first time as an adult that you have to accept your ideas/ideals as provisional/approximate can be upsetting. I don’t know that personally, since for me agnosticism is a genuine blessing – but I hear others including my parents going through a depressive phase of “if no god, then Nietzsche”.
JLA – it gets better! I don’t ask you to take that on faith. Faith would be the worst thing for you right now, even if faith were still possible for you. Take it on evidence. Look around. The evidence is that the least religious countries in the world are the happiest. Lack of god-certainty is a positive good.
I don’t understand the seductiveness of Nietzsche; I don’t understand why people including you see the implications of “no god = horrible”. But I know that other people, with nothing more than the healing passage of time, do get past that and do get better. You will, too, in all likelihood.
We are our own better angels. We have to be, since there have never been any other angels in reality. Nothing wrong with accepting that.
JLA
Such sad, false reductionism.
Atoms. Oxygen and hydrogen. THAT’S IT. Water, wetness, ice, thirst, satisfaction of thirst, all other things are made up bullshit.
Or even worse:
Quarks. THAT’S IT. Matter and visible energy, all other things are made up bullshit.
Huh, that doesn’t sound right? Correct, it doesn’t sound right because it isn’t right.
It always amazes me that theists don’t see “levels” of phenomena and of explanation of phenomena.
Yes, it’s true that at one level we can explain humankind’s very existence, our human behaviors which keep us alive and reproducing, as merely the results of genes’ survival down through time. It’s not a trivial insight, either, the “selfish gene” is a useful concept. But reduction to gene survival is useless for understanding how we are supposed to live like humans. And it’s fundamentally incorrect, just as it’s incorrect to reduce us to mere piles of oxygen and hydrogen or quarks.
As Lizzie says:
The properties of a system are not the properties of its parts.
JLA – don’t get angry, don’t despair. Just look around you at your fellow humans who evolved to be nurturing, protective of the weaker members of their tribes, playful, witty, inventive, artistic … that’s good enough!
It seems, then, that you are happy to draw philosophical conclusions from a position of ignorance.
I don’t know what you mean by “get-out” clause; those terms are essential to the case that JLA is making. You treat them like they are irrelevant and simply ignore them. You haven’t rebutted JLA’s argument – you’ve addressed a straw man.
That’s a lie.
Granted, you can weasel out of standing behind your lie by claiming that “it seems” but you must be conscious, as every moral human being would be, that you are deliberately slurring Lizzie – and that you are lying about both halves of the clause, that she’s “happy to do so” and that she’s doing it from “ignorance”.
You should retract and you definitely owe Lizzie an apology.
I’m happy to attempt to critique a philosophical argument to the best of my ability.
My point is that those words themselves represent a concept of straw.
Yes, I agree that they are essential to his argument.
My point is that they don’t actually mean anything.
As I said immediately following:
And without those words, as you say, his argument no longer holds. They are critical to it.
Goodusername at UD makes a similar point:
But see KN above – and he does have a PhD in philosophy 🙂
Where was your indignation when Liz said to me, in another thread:
in reference to my admission that my level of knowledge about science and math is non-professional when I make and critique arguments?
We have both admitted to a lack of professional training in areas we are engaging in arguments about. Why do I get attacked for presuming to make and critique such arguments to the best of my ability, and in the case of philosophy, Liz – and everyone else here without degrees in philosophy who are making philosphical arguments and conclsions – get a pass?
There’s a word for this, isn’t there?
You can look them up in the dictionary. They mean something.
Perhaps what you mean is that they don’t mean anything to you in the way they are used – which is hardly surprising. Which is why you constantly erect straw men. You don’t understand the concept (as it is meant); you replace the concept with another concept available to your schema (yay! thanks), and then argue against or using that concept.
No, I meant what I said quite explicitly here:
“Square” has a perfectly good dictionary definition. So does “circle”. But that doesn’t mean that “square circle” must be a coherent concept.
But I’m glad you appreciate “schema” 🙂 Piaget was good.
At the risk of being moved to the Sandbox, that excerpt from Goodusername reminded me of this bit from Louis CK:
Speaking for myself, I have not attacked you for presuming to make and critique scientific arguments. What I’ve found frustrating is your refusal to engage with counter-critiques, on the grounds that you don’t have the relevant expertise!
I’m perfectly sure you are capable of engaging in an argument about the validity of CSI or FSCI/O, but you yourself bow out, saying that you adopt beliefs on the basis of whether they serve your purpose, not on the basis of the science. At least that was my understanding.
As far as I know, I’ve never bowed out of any argument for that reason.
hotshoe,
Where does Nietzsche say that the idea of no God is horrible?
William J. Murray,
Modesty comes to mind. Not everybody is in the habit of waving their credentials and experience in order to impress.
Perhaps you grossly underestimate what others know. Did that thought ever cross your mind?
In the case of ID/creationism, the egregious errors in understanding occur before the high school level. Ignorance at this level is serious if you presume to critique science and those who know science. Attempting to cover up that ignorance with a barrage of pseudo-philosophy is dishonest.
You can’t stand in the middle of a room with your eyes closed and presume to be invisible.What makes you think that other people won’t know?
Are you presuming that I must have read every reply in every thread? Don’t play the fool.
A far more charitable explanation of my lack of “indignation” is that I didn’t happen to read that page, or even that I read it but only after the conversation had moved on making any reply irrelevant.
I will state outright, however, that one of the things I detest about your persona is that you literally never have a charitable explanation – so it’s not as if I expect to be an exception to your no-charity rule.
Both, who? You and Lizzie? Then that’s a false equivalence. Lizzie is one of our world’s genuine heroes (who are legion), having gone back to university as an adult to get the necessary education, now contributing to reaserch, and dedicated to finding truth- not the Truth with a capital T – but as close as we can get given our human-brain-based limits. You, not so much.
Why? Because honest people agree that science – the usual topics of discussion where your lack of training gets criticized – is the field where factual accuracy is both possible and necessary for productive discussion. Failure to educate yourself about the 99% consensus in any current science field does, in fact, disqualify you from being taken seriously in the discussion. Only dishonest or deluded people pretend that science is a level playing field where everyone is entitled to an equal turn to play.
Meanwhile, back in the realm of philosophy – and especially theology, which is the subject matter under discussion with regards to JLA’s cry of despair – there is no evidence to support your implication that there exist authorities who should be presumed to have a better right than Lizzie to post a response and be taken seriously. Nor is there evidence that further formal education in philosophy would have altered Lizzie’s answer to JLA. So your whole implied argument from authority is revealed as the fallacy it is (whereas others’ arguments against your scientific ignorance may appear to be arguments from authority but are not fallacious.)
You don’t get a pass because you are willfully ignorant about common facts. We – specifically Lizzie in this case – get a pass because we are NOT ignorant about sophistimacated theology.
However, your behavior invites censure not for being a foolish fallacy, but because you deliberately tried to slur LIzzie, and she does not deserve any of your backstabbing.
Her nearly-constant impeccable conduct here gives her the benefit of the doubt if she does happen to slip up once. You, not so much.
No. Just no.
I refuse to play your underhanded guess-what-I’m-thinking-of gotcha game.
I don’t think that Nietzsche did say that. Sorry if something I wrote was unclear; I intended to address JLA’s beliefs, not Nietzsche’s.
It does seem that JLA feels:
no god = Nietzsche has the correct idea = Nihilism is the only truth to follow = horrible implications.
See Lizzie’s quote of JLA’s comment from UD
If anyone feels that Nietzsche is relevant, they have SHURELY read Nietzsche (hic), and thus should be engaging with the doctrine of eternal recurrence, and/or perhaps the Appollonian/Dionysian dichotomy, not nihilism.
😯 I don’t think I want to know …
heh. But now I’m at the point that I automatically convert that into: “William has not bowed out of that specific argument for that specific reason but this does not preclude him having bowed out of that specific argument for a different reason”.
What is your current reason for not wanting to talk about the things you yourself said with regard to FSCO/I, or examine FSCO/I in the company of some people who really want to help you understand it?
William,
That may be true. However I understand that words are essentially “islands of function” and as such it is difficult (impossible!) to get from “here” to “there”, where “there” is the word you are thinking of and “here” is, well, here.
So it would probably be better if you reached up into that cosmos sized pile of possible words and pulled out from it the single needle that represents the word you are thinking of and just say it yourself. As there’s literally no chance of finding out otherwise, right?
Intelligent design me just one more word William. I really want to know what that word is.
davehooke,
Yep. In short, Nietszche was not a nihilist. He took up the subject of emerging nihilism — this is point of his ‘God is dead’, the problem of the cultural embrace of nihilism after the collapse of theism as the organizing principle of modern culture — but Nietzsche was averting nihilism. Nietzche was a nihilist in the sense that he welcome and relished the fall of Christianity as a hegemon, and he even affirmed what WJM embraces, that without an absolute, transcendent authoritative source of morality, there aren’t any real moral values at all (in the traditional sense). Nietszche’s philosophy was full of meaning and moral valuations, though, making charges of nihilism an indication of a very shallow reading of the man.
I’ll tell you anyway.
The doctrine of eternal recurrence, stated simply, is the idea that the universe, and so your life, will recur over and over and over and over and over… eternally.
One notable interpretation is the advice to be of good humour, learn to play the piano, engage with others, and treat your producer like a human being. Then she will sleep with you.
Nietzsche said a great human being is one who loves everything about life and would not want it to be different. Embrace suffering, death, loss… everything. I think he envisages the great human as having a deep aesthetic appreciation of the whole tomale.
Nietzsche’s aesthetic is Dionysian, at least in his younger and final years. That is to say, he is all for approaching life as an ecstatic ritual. Though life is chaotic, there is a unity to it, the universe being one by definition.
Apollo represents reason and appraisal at a distance. In human beings, and so in our aesthetic appreciation, Apollo and Dionysus are in conflict.
“Others” tend to define themselves.
One of the most blatant pot/kettle remarks I’ve ever read here.
Maybe, just maybe, the difference is that unlike you, professional training aside, Lizzie makes a genuine and focused attempt to actually learn about the topic she’s critiquing.
WJM,
Suppose there are two gods, equally responsible for creation, though with different morals. Specifically, one claims that only absolute pacifism is morally acceptable, the other is nuanced and claims a contingent pacifism, and both reject the other. (In practical terms, one forbids war with Nazi Germany under any circumstance, the other demands war to stop the genocide).
Given this scenario, it would be impossible to determine absolute truth by any method imaginable. Would you agree?
Now suppose there is just one God but differing interpretations of scripture lead to different views re: God’s Pacifism. How could logic alone determine the correct answer?
Alongside the Martin Luther quotation should be one from Samuel Johnson:
“I refute it thus…”