God and Contradiction

[Jim B.]

"Reason' doesn't have to be one big generic thing. It could work good in some contexts and be terrible (purely rationalization) in others. I think, from an evolutionist POV, it seems reasonable that we could reason most effectively about 'how to get stuff', or 'how to have more progeny' -- more effectively so than 'what we are' or 'why we want what we want' or 'why there is anything anyway'....

My point is related to those raised by psychoanalytic thinkers like Freud and Jacques Lacan who (basically) say that our technical acheivements do little but obscure the fact that our motivations are still essentially that same, old "primitive" stuff...ie 'the 4 F's' (and most esp the 4th of those!

Freud's thought, looked at in a certain way, is actually quite funny....

But why couldn't our transcending ourselves as propagation machines to become, in some ways, understand the universe machines, simply occur as an Event? Because clearly we have done so at least provisionally...Our cognitive apparatus is clearly limited in many ways but much less limited than our imagination/desire apparatus.

What I'm saying is that it could only occur as an 'Event', Jim, and otherwise if it is 'more of the same', its judgements (particularly in psychological/motivational areas) are far more suspect....

I prefer "emergence." It doesn't seem parsimonious to have to take on this whole worldview just to assimilate emergence/

[met]

Well, you just used 'Event' yourself, as quoted right up above in your very own post! ... and this is the QM/continental thread anyway (even tho I'm not sure I've actually seen the word "event' in his writing. But its definitely his teacher, Badiou's thing, so....he's a bit associated with it, too.)

I dunno, I've only skimmed both Badou's book 'Being and Event' and Chalmer's articles on 'strong emergence' ... but it seems like we need something kinda like one of those (in this current naturalist context, at least) ... or else we have to start talking about phallueses and/or joissance, or maybe "touch," or something? ....

Btw, as QM goes on after the last quote I posted, he switches to a basically ethical discussion, so maybe I should fix you up with the article to critique? More your turf than mine....

[Jim B.]

Well, you just used 'Event' yourself, as quoted right up above in your very own post! ... and this is the QM/continental thread anyway (even tho I'm not sure I've actually seen the word "event' in his writing. But its definitely his teacher, Badiou's thing, so....he's a bit associated with it, too.)

I dunno, I've only skimmed both Badou's book 'Being and Event' and Chalmer's articles on 'strong emergence' ... but it seems like we need something kinda like one of those (in this current naturalist context, at least) ... or else we have to start talking about phallueses and/or joissance, or maybe "touch," or something? ....

Btw, as QM goes on after the last quote I posted, he switches to a basically ethical discussion, so maybe I should fix you up with the article to critique? More your turf than mine....

Yeah, I was wondering why you wouldn't suppose our becoming understand-the-cosmos-machines wouldn't be an Event. Maybe that's what you were saying to begin with. Sur-contingency negating itself?

[met]

Sorry, me no comprehend! How does sur-contingencey negate itself there for you?

[Jim B.]

Sorry, me no comprehend! How does sur-contingencey negate itself there for you?

We're just contingent beings contingently produced by these deeply contingent processes (in part, evolutionary) so that our knowledge and the means we have of gaining knowledge would be completely shaped by these conditionals. If we were to "break through" that frame to understand some deep truths, even if we are creating those truths in the act of appropriating them as knowledge, that could be seen as a Meillasouxian Event that would negate the conditions that gave rise to it, if that makes any sense....I'm not sure if I understand it

[met]

Yes, that's it; he sees it as entirely an event .... another 'World' (in the language he uses) superimposed on the former. So he sees Worlds of Matter, Perception, and Thought already in existence - and arising from entirely different events. That's exactly it. Next, he goes on to speculate - and this is the speculative part of 'speculative materialism', I guess - on the possible rising of a Fourth World, the "World of Justice" as he calls it (ie the indefinitely-spanned resurrection of all humans - he seems to avoid saying 'eternal' or forever' here to avoid the contradiction we already pointed out on another thread)

Here is a fairly long and convoluted paragraph (or two) taking shape as an an ethically-tinged argument...

Humans acquire value because they know the eternal. But humans do not take their value from the object of their knowledge: that is to say, from the eternal itself. It is not the eternal which has value, for the eternal is only the blind, stupid, and anonymous contingency of each thing. Value belongs to the act of knowing itself; humans have value not because of what they know but because they know. And this knowledge is plainly the theoretical and absolute knowledge of logical and ontological truths, and the worried and attentive knowledge of our mortality. Certainly, classical humanism can already affirm in banal fashion that humans gain value through their knowledge, and notably through knowledge of their own mortality. But this knowledge by humans of death is thus assimilated to the lucid knowledge of their own limits and insufficiency. If the knowledge of death were nothing but such a negative knowledge, it could not establish the intrinsic value of humans. On the contrary, it could only establish the value of that which is not human and which answers to their essential dissatisfaction: namely, the divine consoler. The factial shows on the contrary that our capacity to think our own death refers to our power of envisaging the real nature of contingency as a possibility of each thing: of all disappearance as of all appearance. The negative knowledge of our mortality thus refers to the positive knowledge of our possible rebirth. It is a knowledge that ceases to designate the sad consciousness of our limit in order to reaffirm the jubilant possibility of its future transgression.
If we can demonstrate the value of the human in its own right, this is of course because we have affirmed the eternal at the same time that we have de-reified it. If the eternal were (as a thing, or a being), then we would have the Greek knowledge of a determinate and eternal being (a Good, or a God) surpassing the human in worth. If there were no eternity at all, we would have the modern knowledge of a clever animal whose pseudo-value would be consecrated only by the fact of a superior and essentially technical power. The factial allows us to affirm that there is an uncircumventible knowledge of the eternal, but it removes all value from this object of knowledge by identifying it with the prosaic contingency of each thing. Value thus amounts to the necessarily insuperable fact of the mortal knowledge of eternal contingency.

Then, later...

But we must go even further in the refutation of fatalism; indeed, not only can rebirth be legitimately aimed at only on the basis of the advent of the World of justice, but it is also necessary to maintain that the World of justice is itself possible only on the condition that it should be desired in action in the present World. We contend that passive awaiting of the universal is precisely not an awaiting of it, because this makes the universal into a reality foreign to the thought that requires it. Namely, it is to make of the universal something that it is not, and in this way to render its advent impossible. Indeed, the whole point is that if rebirth occurred in such a way that no act of justice had awaited it, it would contain nothing of the universal; we would be dealing only with a blind recommencement imposed anonymously on our humanity. The occurrence of the fourth World requires that it should occur qua object of hope, and thus in response to an await-ing that effectively existed beforehand. For even if this awaiting cannot bring about the ultimate advent, awaiting alone lends it the status of a novel advent: that is to say, an advent of justice hoped for by humans rather than a simple repetitive return of life. In other words, the universal can arise only on the condition that it be awaited as such in the present. It must be actively anticipated by acts of justice marked by fervent commitment to the radical requirement of universality, and by the discovery of the non-absurdity of such a requirement. This amounts to affirming that the final World can commence only on the condition that it be a recommencement.

ETA... (a bit more...)

[The Fourth World] will therefore be beautiful, in the sense in which Kant speaks of natural beauty as the non-necessary encounter of phenomenal mechanisms and our rational ends, even while passing in the midst of the beautiful configuration as if the world had been created in conformance with such moral ends: 'as if', because nothing can demonstrate the effective existence of a suprasensible divine will at the origin of such a conformity of fact. According to Kant, it is precisely the contingency of such an accord that occasions the feeling of surprise and rapture when the beauty of a landscape or sunset is revealed: manifestations of an order of the world appearing to agree of their own accord with our own requirement of meaning.

It is the desire of the believer who only wants justice and the universal in so far as these values do not stop with the human, but signal toward a transcend-ence that both founds and exceeds ethics, a desire that therefore cannot outlast the perspective of a World of justice essentially sufficient in itself. The ethical scission thus poses the immediate question of the distinction between religious desire and an immanent desire for resurrection, since only the latter is in a position to escape from the despair of a rebirth that would only open on to the reliving of a life in the world here below.

[met]

Snips from Concluding Section....

How can we think the unity of the egalitarian messianism of the Jews that breaks with the cyclical time of the pagans (a time that is inegalitarian since it is devoid of promise) and the rational, mathematical, and philosophical eternity of the Greeks? It is a search for the unity of religion and philosophy without there being a third term to unify them. All the richness of the problem consists in the fact that East and West have received these two heterogeneous 'truths', and no others. The response, in general fashion, thus obeys the following strict (Hegelian) alteriative: we will have either a religious unity of religion and philosophy, or a philosophical unity of religion and philosophy. In both cases the unity obtained is all the more powerful, since it achieves a maximal conservation of the subordinated term: the most rational religion, the most egalitarian and messianic reason. The Middle Ages are entirely consecrated to the elaboration of the religious unity of philosophy and religion. But the factial, for its part, proposes a new means of achieving philosophical unity. Namely, Jewish messianism no longer thwarts the eternity of mathematical truths, since the latter cease to designate the real eternity (which is thus without a future) of this world order and refers instead to the eternal contingency of this world (which is thus full of promise). The hope of justice supplied by the promise of Jewish time can be nourished on the mathematical eternity provided by the immanence of Greek reason.

In this context the term 'God' does not designate one of the camps, that of religion, but names the battlefield where the two camps confront one another. The word presses together the two truths that are to be combined, since as a Latinized Greek term that designates the God of the Jews ... The Greco-Roman 'Dies' is translated as 'day' rather than 'sky', the day that fuses light and warmth, meaning knowledge and hope.

The atheist, in reserving such a name for the object of faith, shows that he has already confirmed his own defeat. For him the struggle against religion has to occur through the expulsion of any divine remainder; nothing that resembles the divine should be allowed to reside in the homeland of the rational. Philosophy thus appears to him to be nourished by religion, as a form of reason that preserves in inertial fashion an irrational and archaic remainder of which a consistent atheism ought to be able to rid itself. But in this way the atheist remains blind to the fact that the very borders of his own territory are religious. For the atheist claims that all that exists is the world inherited from the priest: a finite and limited world, submitted to fixed laws, appalling once left to its own devices. The philosopher speaks of God because he refuses these borders, because he does not confirm the partition between immanence and transcendence to which the atheist fully and truly submits.

'God' is the name given to the stakes of the struggle between immanence and transcendence: either the revealed God of religion, or the God of the philosophers.

[met]

All religion is thus parcelled out between two basic attitudes. There is the sanctity of those who follow Elder Zossima and see in God only love because they believe in him. And there is the superstitious mysticism of the ascetic Father Ferapont, who sees in God only power because they believe in his existence. And where the first God is only a violent good, the second God is nothing but maledictions, threats, and obscurantist magic.

Humans can establish four different links with God, of which only three have been explored so far:

• 1. Not believing in God because he does not exist. This is the atheist link, which occurs in countless variations that all lead to the same impasse: sadness, tepidity, cynicism, and the disparagement of what makes us human.
  
  2. Believing in God because he exists. This is the religious link, in countless variations, all leading to the same impasse: fanaticism, flight from the world, the confusion of sanctity and mysticism and of God as love and God as power.
  
  It is the religious form of hope.
  
  3. Not believing in God because he exists. This link, which is not confined to a specific doctrine, expresses all the various forms of revolt toward the existent God. It is the Luciferian position of rebellion against the Creator which expresses a reactive need to hold someone responsible for the evils of this world. This demoniacal revolt in the face of all the disasters of existence would rather hate God than declare him inexistent. This vision of the world encompasses the position of subtlest indifference toward God: 'even if God exists, he does not interest me; he is of no interest as regards the pleasures and struggles that occupy all finite existence.' It is a superb indifference that mixes apathy towards God (and all displays of indifference are nothing but hatred trying to be as hurtful as possible) with classical atheism, whose impasse it aggravates to the limit: cynicism, sarcasm toward every aspiration, hatred of self.
  
  4. Only the fourth link, the philosophical link and immanent form of hope - believing in God because he does not exist - has never been systematically defended.
  
  It has now been done.
  
  The four possible links of humans with God are henceforth known.
  
  One must choose.

[The Pixie]

How can we think the unity of the egalitarian messianism of the Jews that breaks with the cyclical time of the pagans (a time that is inegalitarian since it is devoid of promise) ...

I am curious how a messiah promised to God's chosen people can be considered egalitarian.

Also, why does no "promise" necessarily imply inegalitarian?

The atheist, in reserving such a name for the object of faith, shows that he has already confirmed his own defeat.

The vast majority of theists also reserve the word "God" for the object of faith. Does that then confirm the defeat of theism? I am sure the author would say no, and thus exposes his double standard, and thus confirms his own defeat!

What this quote shows is that the author has a strong bias against atheism, and that bias is stronger than his rationality. I.e., he allows his bias to override reason. We can see that bias here too:

1. Not believing in God because he does not exist. This is the atheist link, which occurs in countless variations that all lead to the same impasse: sadness, tepidity, cynicism, and the disparagement of what makes us human.

Any evidence atheists are sadder than theists? Consider Christianity, which posits each and every one of us is a miserable sinner, and humanism, which celebrates humanity... Which is the sadder perspective? Which perspective disparages mankind?

As for cynicism, better that that the naive unquestioning trust of authority that Christianity promotes.

[met]

I am curious how a messiah promised to God's chosen people can be considered egalitarian.

cf Is2

Here is a vision that Isaiah, the son of Amoz, saw about Judah and Jerusalem.

2 In the last days

the mountain where the Lord’s temple is located will be famous.
It will be the highest mountain of all.
It will be raised above the hills.
All the nations will go to it.

3 People from many nations will go there. They will say,

“Come. Let us go up to the Lord’s mountain.
Let’s go to the temple of Jacob’s God.
He will teach us how we should live.
Then we will live the way he wants us to.”
The law of the Lord will be taught at Zion.
His message will go out from Jerusalem.
4
He will judge between the nations.
He’ll settle problems among many of them.
They will hammer their swords into plows.
They’ll hammer their spears into pruning tools.
Nations will not go to war against one another.
They won’t even train to fight anymore.

Also, why does no "promise" necessarily imply inegalitarian?

... strongly inegalitarian political realities already existed.

The vast majority of theists also reserve the word "God" for the object of faith. Does that then confirm the defeat of theism? I am sure the author would say no, and thus exposes his double standard, and thus confirms his own defeat!

Oh, it's not that easy - he ain't a world famous pholosopher for nuthin'! What he's basicaly saying --as is often said-- is that atheism has no 'positive' identity, so nothing positive to say. But really he considers the "despair" of atheism and the "projecting" of theism to be equally bad. He recommends believing in a God who doesn't exist --option 4-- as was noted on another thread.

Repeated from just above....

If we can demonstrate the value of the human in its own right, this is of course because we have affirmed the eternal at the same time that we have de-reified it. If the eternal were (as a thing, or a being), then we would have the Greek knowledge of a determinate and eternal being (a Good, or a God) surpassing the human in worth. If there were no eternity at all, we would have the modern knowledge of a clever animal whose pseudo-value would be consecrated only by the fact of a superior and essentially technical power. The factial allows us to affirm that there is an uncircumventible knowledge of the eternal, but it removes all value from this object of knowledge by identifying it with the prosaic contingency of each thing. Value thus amounts to the necessarily insuperable fact of the mortal knowledge of eternal contingency.