<underfire> Atheism and Peace

[John William Phillips]

I'll have a go with "absolute value," which I don't think is difficult as a concept, though I think we face great difficulties in trying to account for how it arises or why.  Then, to take a privileged example, I'll have a go with "faith".   
 
Absolute Value: 
 
"Absolute" simply means "free from limitations" (the absolute would also therefore be unconditioned and unlimited) but this of course is not so simple.  
 
Value is variously the price one might pay for something, what it is worth, the "good" or "excellence" of something, or what you might get in exchange for something (so price again).  
 
Most concepts of value (perhaps all bar the value of measure itself) are relative (relative shades in painting are values) but if one attributes unlimited value to something, an ideal or a concept perhaps, then in principle nothing, no economy or earthly condition, can limit or reduce it.  
 
Historically, many concepts have been attributed as if with absolute value--for instance, certain concepts of truth and the human, justice, and recently compassion.  Outside relative conditions, these concepts are said to apply universally.  
 
So philosophical distinctions emerge, classically, between "first order" theoretical concepts and "second order" practical applications.  Needless to say, probably, that the distinction first order/second order remains fundamentally incoherent. Before one asks whether there really are absolute values (as Plato did) one might ask how the concepts of "absolute" and "value" emerge in the first place.
 
Faith: it is a peculiarity of faith that it can be limited neither by the religious (Jewish, Christian, Muslim) notions nor by so called atheistic notions (which require it every bit as much).  It cuts right across the distinction (blandly: religious/non-religious).  Faith, rather, cannot be dissociated from, and is fundamental to, the immanent structure of the relation to the other.  This "immanent structure" as far as anyone has ever been able to tell is primordial (e.g., when considered from the point of view of the structure of the individual psyche) and a priori (when considered in philosophical or existential terms).  
 
It is not limited by whatever actual relations (which include every social union and division) might arise or dissolve but rather undergirds them as their a priori condition of possibility.  In order for this to be the case the immanent structure of the relation to the other is absolutely undetermined: there are no a priori, necessary or natural, laws that bind me in advance to "some" particulars while excluding "others."  (Whence perhaps the trajectory from the Old Testament to an expanding field of subjects of what begins as Abraham's God).  
 
We must have faith, for instance (though this is not just any old instance, it is perhaps the key one) that the one who speaks (to me) is telling the truth.  We must have faith because we know that they always might not be telling the truth.  Looking for proof, insisting on evidence, not believing until I can see it with my own two eyes: these seem to be qualifications on or limits to faith; its great strength is that it can easily be ignored or dismissed.  This often extremely mimimal suspension of the knowledge that the other might be lying (or might want to kill me or eat me or steal my things or is just a machine) as far as I can tell is nonetheless one basic condition for what we know as human interaction.  (Edgar Allan Poe dramatizes an absurd aspect of the situation with grim comedy in his poem "The Raven.")
 
Some indications:
Weapons technology since the inception of motorization (i.e., from the beginning) seems dedicated to the eradication of the need for this minimal "faith."
 
We are told that there are those who do not experience this "faith." It is said that some people (those who seem to have a capacity to lie--but everyone has this capacity) are unable to do anything but lie.  Often diagnosed (and now officially) as a part of "psychopathic and narcissitic personality disorders", this inability gives rise to situations where even telling the truth (in those instances where what is said is true) is used in the same way as a lie: to manipulate and to control a situation.  These people (under diagnosis) are often described as having an empty soul.
 
The religious notion of faith would be a limitation on and an appropriation of faith (as an immanent structure) and the strictly scientific rejection of this faith perhaps takes the obverse form of the same gesture.
 
I could talk more on THE absolute value but won't for now.  
 
John
 
                              
 
 
 
    

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From: underfire-bounces at underfire.eyebeam.org on behalf of christopher.w.young at thomson.com
Sent: Tue 11/21/2006 4:18 AM
To: underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org
Subject: Re: <underfire> Atheism and Peace


Mary, Michael and Melani,
 
Thank you for sharing your views and opinions of things so important to so many.  
 
First, can someone define 'absolute value'?  
 
Second, I am hoping that Melani can offer some thoughts around her statement "aren't we invited to do -many- things, from fighting wars to cleaning up the environment, "for the sake of our children." 
 
I am a bit concerned with this statement, as it implies that we (Evangelicals) are obligated by some theological rule to fight in wars....hmmm, I do not get a sense this is really the case- if one was to take a biblical standpoint.  When I hear such things, it actually makes me fall back on another representation you made- "that poor people are being ideologically manipulated by a retrograde state".  Although I am not articulating that poor people are being ideologically manipulated by a state, I am arguing that theological texts have been historically manipulated by the elites, who have changed the inherent meaning of the doctrine to fit their own agenda.  
 
So, when I see Evangelicals praying in supposedly charismatic tongues and worshipping a god, who encourages his followers to fight an illegal war - I am definately taking the position that this group of believers has been manipulated and perhaps their position in society is not physically poor, just spiritually sick.  
 
We are coming to a place in society, where all religions will be resounded to the same position as atheism - a position where meaning is obsolete and belief in a deity is all but gone from history - an "McIntyrean" world....  
 
CY
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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From: underfire-bounces at underfire.eyebeam.org [mailto:underfire-bounces at underfire.eyebeam.org] On Behalf Of Michael H Goldhaber
Sent: Sunday, November 19, 2006 4:06 PM
To: underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org
Subject: <underfire> Atheism and Peace



Mary,  et al., 

Mary Keller wrote:

	From this perspective the a-theist is signifying the significance of their
	location in the world. When someone tells me, as you did, that they are an atheist  I hear "I don't need God. I don't count on transcendentals. I am happy to become worm food. I'm not looking for wings."  From  my perspective the atheist and the theist are both exercising the cognitive desire to  map out the significance of their location in the world.

Mary, I mistook your original position, it would seem, but here you mistake mine, and that of many atheists. [FOOTNOTE: Taken literally, a disbelief in god does not necessitate a disbelief in an afterlife (e.g., the original Buddhism, in which to be released from the cycle of reincarnation was a major goal) nor vice versa (Torah Judaism has "G-d"  but no mention of an afterlife; on the holiest day of Yom Kippur, one prays only "to be inscribed in the book of life for another year," i.e. not to die within the year.) But ignore these subtleties.]
Atheists believe there is no god. This has nothing to do with what they would like. Further, as an atheist, along with many others, I would not be happy to become worm food, in two ways. First, "I" will not exist after death (except in the minds of others). My dead body will not contain not myself; the self will have ceased. 

Second,  the prospect of death does not make me happy, but, no matter what I might want,  heaven does not seem to be available as an alternative.  Many atheists wish to avoid death simply by remaining alive. Some, such as Ray Kurzweil, think that we have reached, or shortly will reach, a time, when, at least for a fortunate few, life expectancy increases by more than a year every year, due primarily to medical advances, so living "forever" may become a scientific possibility. 
Thus, for many atheists, life, at least their own, can become an "ultimate value." Like other ultimate values, if taken alone, this can be dangerous. Some people may ruthlessly harvest others' organs, for example. However, most recognize that acting to prevent murder and against violence can be mutually beneficial. Thus, I think it is no accident that where religion has most waned, in Western Europe, we also find, on the whole, quite little support for war, in comparison with the past. 
The commonplace proverb "there are no atheists in a foxhole," can be taken two ways. The common one, of course, is that being in foxhole under fire leads to prayer. The other is this:  Without religious feeling, why give up your life, the most precious thing you have? 

The fact is that much of western Europe's long history of war and conquest was quite explicitly religious: the "reconquista" of the Iberian peninsula, the various crusades, the eastward expansion of the Teutonic knights, the thirty-years' war, much of the move into Mexico, Cnetral  and South America, the Puritans in New England, the American Civil War, etc.  Perhaps later the religion of "the nation" (the "Motherland" or the  "Fatherland")  or the pseudo-religions of Nazism or Marxism (both of which imposed belief)  to some degree held sway. Now with social democracy, and no imposed religion, nor imposed atheism, Western Europeans seem to have become much more peace-loving. 


Here in the United States, most military recruits and support for the current war come from areas where religion is also strong - chiefly the South and Midwestern and other rural areas. But, implicitly, even Bush recognized, for all his rhetoric that "we are at war," that ordinary Americans are sufficiently atheistic in reality that they do not want to make any personal sacrifices whatsoever in this war.






Best,

Michael