(March 20, 2022 at 8:23 pm)Istvan Wrote:

(March 20, 2022 at 6:59 pm)Angrboda Wrote: There's room for both, it could be both reassuring and true.  Describing it as comforting doesn't make it untrue.  Personally, I suspect the opposite, that most are afraid of giving up the notion of responsibility that they think determinism entails.

Fair enough. I'm no physicist, so I just assume it boils down to what vision of the universe one prefers: a world of contingency and uncertainty on the one hand, or one of machine-like order and algorithmic inevitability on the other.

Those are fables. Meant to impress little children.

(March 20, 2022 at 8:57 am)Istvan Wrote: I've been all over the atheist blogosphere and it seems like a whole lot of folks don't realize that they've been fed a warmed-over positivism by folks like Dawkins and Harris. The party line seems to be that science tells us how reality is in a completely objective way, our perception-consciousness-free will-yadda yadda are all illusions, all our joys and passions are mere squirts of neurochemicals, and anyone who thinks there's anything but atoms and the void must be a religious nut. I don't consider it unreasonable to question this nostalgic reductionism.

Yes, this has been very frustrating. There are people posting here who take it for granted that religion is just some sort of remnant -- a worthless crust obscuring people's view of a clear and obvious truth, revealed by Science. Which means of course that once the evil crust has been burned away, we will have peace and a steady happy progress toward unquestionable Truth and luxury living. "Reductionism" is a kind word for this. 

People who think they have no ideology generally have the strongest ideology.

(I like your Giacometti, by the way. A wonderful pure artist, and nicely in keeping with the Existentialist vibe.)

Yeah, Giacometti was on one cover of Irrational Man, a popular survey of Existentialist philosophers.

(March 19, 2022 at 9:15 am)Istvan Wrote: Existentialism is basically the concept that our actions and encounters throughout life are what define us.

This makes me wonder about the well-known phrase "existence precedes essence." 

It seems like a really helpful phrase -- Existentialism in a nutshell -- if you sort of squint. But if I think about it carefully it's pretty difficult, simply because "essence" is not a word we use much any more. 

I suspect that to Sartre and de Beauvoir, who had deep training in philosophy (École normale supérieure!) it had a very precise meaning. Just because a lot of those Aristotelian/Thomist words (like "cause") which used to be exact have now become fuzzy. 

So what does it mean that I create my essence, after I come into existence? Is it just my personality? My likes and dislikes? My successes and failures? 

Do I have to decide on some meaning for my life to have an essence ("I am here on this earth to save stray cats"), or can I just sort of fumble along?

(March 21, 2022 at 5:28 am)Belacqua Wrote:

(March 19, 2022 at 9:15 am)Istvan Wrote: Existentialism is basically the concept that our actions and encounters throughout life are what define us.

This makes me wonder about the well-known phrase "existence precedes essence." 

It seems like a really helpful phrase -- Existentialism in a nutshell -- if you sort of squint. But if I think about it carefully it's pretty difficult, simply because "essence" is not a word we use much any more. 

I suspect that to Sartre and de Beauvoir, who had deep training in philosophy (École normale supérieure!) it had a very precise meaning. Just because a lot of those Aristotelian/Thomist words (like "cause") which used to be exact have now become fuzzy. 

So what does it mean that I create my essence, after I come into existence? Is it just my personality? My likes and dislikes? My successes and failures? 

Do I have to decide on some meaning for my life to have an essence ("I am here on this earth to save stray cats"), or can I just sort of fumble along?

I think it's a handy slogan because it describes the thrust of existentialism. Much harm has been done in the name of human nature, essentialism, bad faith and cultural identity. So it's a necessary corrective to the way of thinking that defines us in terms of a pre-existing function or nature; we need to recognize that humans have constructed these functions and natures for their own ends.

Simone De Beauvoir also gets a lot of mileage out of a phrase she attributes to Sartre: Man is a being who makes himself a lack of being in order that there might be being. In other words, the human being needs to realize that we are nothing except what we make of ourselves, so we need to define ourselves in terms of the lack of what we wish to become and thereby disclose Being. And all this deciding and intending is nothing without action.

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(March 20, 2022 at 9:54 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Yeah, Giacometti was on one cover of Irrational Man, a popular survey of Existentialist philosophers.

I've walked next to Walking Man at the Art Institute of Chicago. And I just recently reread Irrational Man, which I consider an excellent summary of the ideas and historical context of existentialism.

(March 20, 2022 at 9:42 pm)Belacqua Wrote: Which means of course that once the evil crust has been burned away, we will have peace and a steady happy progress toward unquestionable Truth and luxury living.

I've never met anyone whose views could be fairly described this way. Sounds pretty foolish.

(March 22, 2022 at 9:20 am)Mister Agenda Wrote:

(March 20, 2022 at 9:42 pm)Belacqua Wrote: Which means of course that once the evil crust has been burned away, we will have peace and a steady happy progress toward unquestionable Truth and luxury living.

I've never met anyone whose views could be fairly described this way. Sounds pretty foolish.

Come now. You've never met anyone in the digital sandbox who thought that eradicating religion will pave the way for scientific progress unrestricted by superstition and lead to a utopia of peace, prosperity, health, freethinking and rationality? It sounds like the norm among village atheists rather than the exception.

Interestingly enough, the majority of the atheists here never give a single thought to eradicating religion. That's just a few of us. I think about it from time to time - though I'm actually a big fan of religion, and while an unimpeded or less impeded scientific march might be a pleasant side effect - I wouldn't consider it the main objective to or benefit of eradicating religion. A religion of nature explicitly based on scientific inquiry is a possibility...so, you know, more than one way to skin a cat.

Existentialism is a handy ally in that objective, though. Rejecting the (purportedly) objective claims made by religion on principle would be the eradication of religion, of any kind, in and of itself.

Broadly speaking, from long personal experience - anecdote at the bottom...and conceeding that this may be a rarified bunch of heathens not in any way representative of atheism at large - this bunch agrees with a ton of existential premises, rejects objectivism in a great many contexts, and understands provisional certifications of knowledge. Trying to save you time and frustration.

(March 22, 2022 at 10:48 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Interestingly enough, the majority of the atheists here never give a single thought to eradicating religion.  That's just a few of us.  I think about it from time to time - though I'm actually a big fan of religion, and while an unimpeded or less impeded scientific march might be a pleasant side effect - I wouldn't consider it the main objective to or benefit of eradicating religion.  A religion of nature explicitly based on scientific inquiry is a possibility...so, you know, more than one way to skin a cat.

Existentialism is a handy ally in that objective, though.  Rejecting the (purportedly) objective claims made by religion on principle would be the eradication of religion, of any kind, in and of itself.

Broadly speaking, from long personal experience - anecdote at the bottom...and conceeding that this may be a rarified bunch of heathens not in any way representative of atheism at large - this bunch agrees with a ton of existential premises, rejects objectivism in a great many contexts, and understands provisional certifications of knowledge.

In fact, the folks here do seem to have a much more mature and realistic perspective on religion than the folks in some Facebook debate group. That's why I implied that if he had never come across a village atheist who spouted rhetoric about religion being a monstrous delusion that needs to be eradicated for the good of civilization and the environment, he must not have traveled far & wide in the old atheist blogosphere.

And you're right that existentialism is a fellow traveler on the heathen highway. Even religious existentialists don't cotton to fundamentalist BS, so there's usually a good amount of self-awareness and resistance to dogmatism anywhere in our ranks.