RE: Questions about Belief and Personal Identity
June 4, 2021 at 8:04 am
(This post was last modified: June 4, 2021 at 8:07 am by Belacqua.)
I found a nice paragraph about how many modern atheists reproduce Christian thinking without realizing it. This is from a biography of Lou Andreas-Salomé (friend of Nietzsche, lover of Rilke, student of Freud):
The idea is that when atheists give up belief in a saving god, because they prefer to be devoted to a cruel but undeniable truth -- called "truth" -- they are taking the values of Christianity a simple step further. For them, there is a transcendent truth about the world, perhaps unknowable but undeniable, and to turn away from this is not only mistaken but morally wrong. There is one and only one way to know it (science), and if we turn to other methods (e.g. revelation) we are committing a modern blasphemy to the one true way. And they'd rather face this depressing truth than be cheered up by a falsehood.
Of course Nietzsche described this, and said that complete atheism -- atheism taken to its logical end -- would also deny all of it. He said there is no truth, it's made up just like God is, and until we face this we are not free of religion.
This is an example of how structures of belief work, I think. Even if you don't quite agree with the Nietzscheans. The structure of the belief remains even when the particulars change, and it's very hard to imagine people who hold to a different structure.
Quote:The best religions, she pursued, have simply enabled men to face life and love life, so that to transcend religion is to fulfill it by embracing "the naked truth," a god more jealous than even its Semitic forebear in that "it blesses only those who come to it at the price of being damned by it" -- and she wound up quoting a Catholic poetess against the saints' intercession: "For rather Thou shouldst damn me / Than another save me."
The idea is that when atheists give up belief in a saving god, because they prefer to be devoted to a cruel but undeniable truth -- called "truth" -- they are taking the values of Christianity a simple step further. For them, there is a transcendent truth about the world, perhaps unknowable but undeniable, and to turn away from this is not only mistaken but morally wrong. There is one and only one way to know it (science), and if we turn to other methods (e.g. revelation) we are committing a modern blasphemy to the one true way. And they'd rather face this depressing truth than be cheered up by a falsehood.
Of course Nietzsche described this, and said that complete atheism -- atheism taken to its logical end -- would also deny all of it. He said there is no truth, it's made up just like God is, and until we face this we are not free of religion.
This is an example of how structures of belief work, I think. Even if you don't quite agree with the Nietzscheans. The structure of the belief remains even when the particulars change, and it's very hard to imagine people who hold to a different structure.
