STEVE PULASKI'S FOREWORD TO "EVERY WHICH WAY ATHEISM CAN'T EXIST:" I've repeatedly said that Miles Santiago, also the director of "I'm Tired of God," the short film I have a small role in, is the most brilliant and thoughtful young writer I know and "Every Which Way Why Atheism Can't Exist," his latest thinkpiece, further goes to show that love him, hate him, or no matter what you think of his opinion, he leaves you with an enticing commentary on something that you may or may not have contemplated in the past. Once more, I'm honored to feature what might be his deepest piece yet; enjoy.
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EVERY WHICH WAY ATHEISM CAN’T WIN.
AKA: THE NADIR OF
PHILOSOPHY
I’m not an atheist. I’m not part of any church. Don’t form
a rebuttal to this essay without reading the final three reasons. Don’t assume
I advocate for anything other than what’s written.
##
REASON 1: SEMANTICS: What
is atheism? Is it dissecting a religion? To justify it in such a manner,
prominent examples of religious philosophy being examined by its own parties
cannot exist. Given that multiple canonized scholars within the Catholic faith
have dissected and/or reformed it, St. Augustine being the most prominent, that
qualification is quickly rendered null.
Is it criticizing religion? This
question is answered with another question: are atheists ready to deem the
massive pool of Protestants (and Hitler the Lutheran by extension) atheists?
Is it secularity? The exclusive
quality I find for secularity is not directly concerning religion. “I like pie”
is, literally and irrefutably, a secular statement.
Is it uncertainty or indifference?
Agnosticism precisely defines that (and if that’s what the reader is, this
essay is a waste of time for them). This is the only exclusive quality to be
discovered for atheism: rejecting theism and the ensuing edifices. Secularity
and atheism overlap but are not mutually inclusive.
This essay concerns its troubles
against theism of the Christian orientation.
REASON 2: RELIANCE ON
NOTHINGNESS:
‘God isn’t real,’ one says. Rejection is a negative
sentiment. Negative sentiment denotes ‘no’. ‘No’ denotes nothing. What can one
do with a nothing? Nothing.
An atheist can use Nathaniel
Hawthorne or some other post-Enlightenment author for moral situations, one
says. Belief in Hawthorne strictly denotes belief in Hawthorne.
Atheism,
indeed, in itself, with no external factors attached, denotes a void. ‘I’m
an atheist, thus I’m Hawthornean’ is not objectively justifiable by rigorous
linguistic standards. They’re not mutually inclusive.
Atheism’s exclusive quality exists
for counteracting theism. Being an atheist is not contingent on believing in
the ethical merits of authors used in AP English courses, as a theist is
capable of the same.
Moreover, a secular statement isn’t
any more or less true because its preceding counterpart comes from the Bible. Descartes
being an apt student of Augustine of Hippo doesn’t render Descartes any more
credible just because he was born 1300 years later.
##
This also pertains to the nihilistic
idea that nothing we do will be of any consequence to the universe. Firstly,
this is inapplicable in the physical sense: if it physically exists, then it’s possible for it to be physically
affected. There are no two ways
about it. A pebble won’t stop a freight train, but does that mean that the
train is impossible to stop?
Know the difference between infeasibility
and impossibility. Also: the term comprehension.
Philosophically speaking, if nothing we do matters to the
‘universe’, then suicide can be performed without a pounding heart or second
thought. Sorrow won’t be necessary either; it’s just an absurd mixing of juices
of no lasting consequence, isn’t it? Nothing you do matters, so why give
yourself the opportunity to do anything? This should be nothing to you.
I apologize for the severity of the
suicide notion as shock value, but I won’t apologize for how it pertains to
nihilism.
I don’t understand how such an
intellectual hypocrisy gained any popularity. My suicide notion is always met
with offense (I.e., they don’t genuinely buy it and find reasons to live).
Again, agnosticism is indifference; nihilism is the active assertion of
nothingness.
Reason 8 elaborates further.
REASON 3: POINTING FINGERS: Borrowing
from the previous reason, if atheism
is indeed blameless, then it bears no accountability by principle. If it bears no accountability, then it can’t be given credit for anything.
Thus atheism becomes useless nothingness by the logic of its own apologist.
REASON 4: PRECONCEPTION: Multiple
Popes insisted that condoms will not curb HIV/AIDS issue in Africa. However, since
they’re Popes, they can’t possibly be right about sexual behavior. There’s no way abstinence and reducing
quantity of partners could curb STD epidemics in lieu of an unguaranteed
vaccine.
If one
(daringly) suggests that the Catholic Church condoned any remote consequence of
the World Wars, I invite them to read these encyclicals:
1. Humani Generis Unitas (planned)
2.
Summi Pontificatus
3.
Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum
Encyclicals
are the Vatican’s equivalent to the State of the Union address. I highly
encourage reading these, as one will find how the Catholic Church foreshadowed
WWII by 25 years, even before the National Socialists were elected.
REASON 5: CHURCH AND STATE: Thomas
Jefferson relented from banning church officials from government proceedings.
Religious people have as much right to advocate for their interests as anyone
else provided that they secularize the legal jargon.
The right to advocate is not
contingent on success. If one wants fundamentalists out of office then they
should win their elections. Atheists suffer little here.
REASON 6: SELECTIVE READING:
The South (or at least its aristocratic portion) loved slavery and loved Jesus.
John Wesley, king of lay preaching, over in Britain, hated slavery and loved Jesus, going so far as publishing a
pamphlet expressing his disapproval before the Declaration of Independence was
even written.
This could easily bait dissenters
into claiming the Bible is self-contradictory. This is a faulty outlook, as the
lasting philosophies aren’t contradictory, but self-answering. See: Yin-Yang.
##
In fact, the first person to
establish in 1772 that the trans-Atlantic slave trade had no legal
justification in English law, the first person to use his judicial power to
discharge a black slave, was William
Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, whose alma mater is the Christ Church in Oxford.
The
first organized abolitionist group to be formed in England (mid-1600s) is the
Society of Friends, AKA the Quakers.
It’d
take a while before England adjusted to fully enforcing abolition, but even
that was quicker than the pace at which the separation-of-church-and-state United
States were moving at.
REASON 7: SCIENTISM: Or the
exaggeration/misrepresentation/misunderstanding of empirical science’s
usefulness.
Person
1: Ethical questions can be
answered by science.
Person
2:
Do the Somali pirates have a just cause?
Person
1:
F = Ma.
Though there is no material proof for gravity, we can still formulate it by
evaluating the movement of the tangible objects it affects. Ohm’s law.
Science
explains the chemical operation that occurs when the trigger of a gun is
pulled. That explanation of the chemical operation cannot answer why the
trigger is pulled. I’m also not ignorant of the most intense, unbounded
scientific culture to exist since the scientific method was authored: National Socialist
Germany.
Logical
thinkers will struggle without the nauseating revelation that ethics aren’t
objective (which nihilism specifically argues in favor of). Perhaps they know
they’re happier by repressing such knowledge, I know I sure as hell would be.
Science is
a process, not necessarily the result (results are termed formula, algorithm, principle, invention, etc.).
Science used for evil motivations is still science.
REASON 8: UNSTABLE
LOGIC: Let’s say one says religion poisons everything. Let’s also
say one says that human decency is innate. Because
decency can’t exist without a concept of indecency to counteract, that would
render indecency also innate, thereby removing blame from external sources
(including religion). Therein, whatever you logical model for religion is effectively nullified provided it
involves any resemblance to culture (written/shared expressions). Therein, the
notion of religion poisoning everything collapses under its own weight. Try
better, not harder.
One can
say that holy wars are fought. Does that make the Vietnam War less
controversial because it wasn’t religiously motivated? War is never not defined
by controversy that people would rather not see.
There’s no
logical model for religion where Marxism and Abrahamic religions agree without first establishing the philosophies themselves as not being the issue.
This means Stalin’s (proponent of the Militant League of Atheists, a method for
the extermination of religion to emphasize science and economy) political
career cannot be seriously argued as a Jesus crusade, his seminary schooling
withstanding.
To
summarize, I’ve most often witnessed reversal strategies from atheist camps,
seeking the upper ground in every single point of discussion at the expense of
logical inconsistency.
REASON 9: PSEUDOHISTORY:
See: the conflict
thesis.
Medieval
Christians definitely knew what reasoning was, the significance of witch
hunting is rather minute, a miniscule minority believed the earth was flat, etc.
Don’t use historical dissertations from secondary sources that aren’t peer
reviewed or aren’t stamped with a university press logo. Moreover, read what all
the historical subjects involved wrote themselves before committing to a
secondary source’s sensational opinion.
This arouses the next reason.
REASON 10: OPINIONS ARE
USELESS: Anybody can have an opinion. Therefore, entitlement to an
opinion is not an entitlement to being worthwhile. ‘It’s my opinion’ is an
insufficient reply when working to refute/disqualify/disvalue over a millennium
of history and sociology. Therefore, we have the terms persuasion and dissuasion.
Person
1: I’m an atheist.
Person
2: So?
Reason 19 is why I personally don’t bother with atheism and
am so willing to openly diss it (especially given my generation’s propensity
for agnosticism and atheism).
REASON 11: THE BIBLE ISN’T
CHRISTIANITY: The Bible precedes Christianity but it is not Christendom. Know the difference or
otherwise deal in simultaneous philosophical, sociological, and historical
incoherence.
My
knowledge of Islam is limited, but I nonetheless deem the Syria crisis being because
a book was composed centuries ago as—quite frankly—silly. I’m not removing
accountability from where it belongs, whether they intended the consequences or
not: Soviet and US interventionism, otherwise named the Cold War.
Saudi
Arabia scarcely has a terrorism problem not because it’s atheistic, but because
of government stability.
REASON 12: NORTH KOREA:
Travel to NK and start
lay preaching and passing out scripture as dissent. One should see how far
that’ll get them.
Spare me
the desperate ‘Kim Jong-Un is their God rebuttal.’ Find me a court record where
the Holy Roman Empire, Al-Andulus, Ottoman Empire, and English empires give
their secular ruler physical superpowers and then I’ll take it seriously.
REASON 13: CHINA: Want to challenge the secular government?
Too bad, Stephen Fry.
Reason 19 elaborates further.
REASON 14:
GENERALIZATION: Generalization isn’t the absence of specific examples.
REASON 15: SHAME PARADES:
Harvey Milk didn’t show
up to public conferences to say “you suck.” Same with MLK and same with Malcolm
X post-Mecca. Frederick Douglass gets a pass because he was an
actual slave. Homosexuals are nowhere near being in such a dire
predicament in the UK and the United States.
I’m not
against gay marriage, I’m personally indifferent to marriage altogether. But I
know too much about the pertinence of Christianity to sweepingly disqualify it on
homophobia alone.
I’m
angered that I have slave ancestry, but I’m not so excited as to deem the US as
the worst nation in the world.
This reason’s thesis is compounded by reasons 2 & 3.
REASON 16: EVEN
‘FREEDOM’ NEEDS CONTROL: Unhindered libertarianism is the first thing the United
States committed to after independence. Shays’ Rebellion later, they made the
brilliant decision to write the Constitution, aping heavily the nation they
just splintered from.
REASON 17: RELIANCE ON
HYPOTHETICALS IN HISTORICAL DISCUSSION:
Person
1: Prove that Malcolm X couldn’t
have learned what he did without his trip to Mecca, or that any other religious
person needed religious texts to realize what they did.
Person
2: The only thing that needs to
be said about hypothetical situations is that they don’t exist.
REASON 18: THE
SCIENTIFIC METHOD: Yes, I just listed the scientific method as reason atheism
cannot win. When considering original sources, this is hardly a bold decision.
In case
one is curious of how Sir Francis Bacon, the namesake of the Baconian method, felt
about atheism:
“Therefore, as atheism is in all respects hateful, so
in this, that it depriveth human nature of the means to exalt itself above
human frailty.” —Essay XVI.
“A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism;
but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. As it is in particular persons, so it is in nations.” —Essay
XVI.
“Wherefore
atheism every way seems to be combined with folly and ignorance, seeing nothing
can be more justly allotted to be the saying of fools than this, ’There is no
God’” —MEDITATIONES
SACRÆ (essay 10)
I’m not
sure where this next phrase originates, but I’m
not one eager to speak ill of the people who bought my teeth.
Disagree
with Bacon if you’d like, it doesn’t undo the method scientists hold dear being
the authorship of a God-fearer and promoter of the Qur’an. He’d definitely be sitting opposite to atheists today, which makes me
laugh maniacally.
REASON 19: ENGLAND, THE FIRST
MODERN NATION: This is my first and
last reason for not taking atheism seriously. I could have just let this single
reason be the entire essay if I didn’t feel compelled to add the others to help
in handling rebuttals.
I refuse to view the US as the
leader of the free world for this reason: akin to a moody teenager sulking
because their parents didn’t let them go to that party, the US’s invention of
the separation of church and state is a featherweight compared to the utter
bulk of clauses their mother country constructed for them to plagiarize. Here’s
a list of things that England beat the Home of the Free to:
1. Freedom of discourse within legislative practice (English
Bill of Rights, 1689)
2. Freedom of civil protest against the monarchy (1689)
3. Measures against cruel and unusual punishment (1689)
4. Civilians’ right to arm themselves (1689)
5. Common law (Magna Carta, 1225)
6. Due process (1225)
7. Representative government (Parliamentary system, evolving
from the Magna Carta onwards)
8. Capitalism (Adam Smith)
9. Enforced abolition of slavery (1807, begins vigorous suppression in
1833 & 1843)
10. Habeas corpus (Assize of Clarendon, 1166)
Items 6 and 10 are arguably redundant,
but the chronology point remains. Item 9
refers to national, omnipresent enforcement.
England accomplishes this without
separation of church and state. To this day, Bishops of the
Anglican church sit in the House of Lords as the Lords Spiritual. Western
civilization as it is today, like it or not, was pioneered by sworn protectors
of the Christian religion, first Catholicism and now Protestantism.
Now,
here’s a list of European nations to permanently
issue these clauses before England after Rome collapsed:
1.
And a list of atheists whom
successfully persuaded England to impose such a stance onto paramount English
law:
1.
A
quote from the source in case one performs the mental gymnastics to argue that
the English Bill of Rights is an atheist’s document:
“And the said Lords
Spiritual and Temporal and Commons, seriously considering how it hath pleased
Almighty God in his marvellous providence and merciful goodness to this nation”
##
Person 1: But
England has persecuted atheists.
Person 2: You’re
actually reinforcing their impertinence to paramount English philosophy. And by
‘impertinence’, I mean both definitions.
##
The
rebels behind the Magna Carta, Archbishop Stephen Langton included, called
themselves (verbatim) The Army of God,
led by Robert Fitzwalter, Marshal of the
Army of God. The utter lack of obscurity I encountered in finding this
evidence is remarkable to me.
Person 1: But
Pope Innocent III annulled the Magna Carta.
Person 2: The
same Pope that arm-twisted King John into interdiction? He annulled it at the
persuasion of King John deeming it a threat to the kingdom, a preserved letter
acts as evidence.
THE
EXCEPTION: HERE IS HOW ATHEISM CAN WIN: overthrow the longest running
government system on the planet, a first-world, developed, industrialized nation.
Thereafter, reverse all inklings of its influence literally throughout each
quadrant of the globe. This includes overthrowing the United States, which is
essentially (and literally was)
Britain in America, and the remainder of Europe. Or use a time machine and
intervene with Christ himself.
The modern free world was fostered by a still-active
Christian empire, opinions dictate nothing against the matter.
Person 1: But the East India Company, slavery, and the Berlin
Conference!
Person 2: Reread Reason 3. I’m never in denial of original sources.
##
This essay approaches atheism on
all its succinct logical bases that I’m aware of, not the prolonged syntax of
any particular ‘atheist’. I have nothing else to say. Bibliography:
·
Magna
Carta (British National Library): http://www.bl.uk/magna-carta/videos/800-years-of-magna-carta
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