Sporadic theological and historical musings by Edgar Foster (Ph.D. in Theology and Religious Studies and one of Jehovah's Witnesses).
Friday, November 11, 2011
More on the Logical/Moral Consequences of Atheism
While introducing Dostoevsky's classic work Brothers Karamazov, Charles Guignon reasons that "if God does not exist [as Ivan Karamazov believes], then the picture of the universe formulated by mechanistic materialism must be true. But, in this case, given the point of view of modern science (what Ivan calls 'Euclidean reason'), the universe consists of nothing but meaningless material objects in causal interaction, effects follows cause according to the laws of physics, people are determined to do what they do, no one is guilty of anything, and so there are no such things as right or wrong, good or bad. Or, more precisely, the ideals of justice, goodness, benevolence, dignity, and so on turn out to be purely human inventions, the results of projecting our needs and wishes onto brute, meaningless matter, and so they are illusions lacking any basis in the order of things" (Dostoevsky: The Grand Inquisitor with Related Chapters from The Brothers Karamazov, page xxx).
Hi Edgar,
ReplyDeleteWhy bother writing about this stuff in the first place? Worse yet, why would I even care to read about such quibbles and nuisances of thought? Really, why should matter-in-motion care to ask or want to answer? It's utterly pointless!
This is the kind of bone-headed, vacuous and asinine twaddle that we must revert to if everything amounts to cogs ex machina. Such a view is a serial killer's delight and those who should know better are feeding them more than their last meal, so to speak.
It seems to me that living in such a way is existentially impossible, anyhow. Who could possibly live devoid of all value? Yet, to believe that we have been deceived by our genes into thinking that certain values matter, when nothing really does, is to admit that there is such a thing as deception. If deception is truly real then morality must also be real. It is simply bizarre to say that our genes have hood-winked us while in the same breath argue that there is no such thing as morality... Bah!
By the way, if any materialist is reading this, please don't criticise what I’ve written. My genes made me write it.
Yb,
Nathan
what makes an illusion illusory is its resemblance to some known an accepted reality.In other words if the spectre in question conforms to no known or at least plausible reality it will only produce bewilderment not deception so even the use of the term illusion begs the question.So basically we are back to square one with this line of reasoning.How can an unconscious,Amoral cause produce a conscious,moral effect?
ReplyDeleteThose are all good points, aservantofJehovah.
ReplyDelete