Brainpolice : Religion, Atheism

Judeo-Christian Morality vs. The Free Society

Brainpolice — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 02:21:00 GMT

I'd like to explain why I think that traditional judeo-christian morality does not synch up very well with the principles of liberty and does not provide a beneficial cultural framework for a free society. In many ways, I'm not going to be saying anything particularly new here, as this criticism has essentially already been made by both Friedrich Nietzsche and Ayn Rand in their own respectively unique ways, although of course I'm going to be putting this into my own words and expressing it from my own perspective which is both similar to that of Neitzche and Rand and altogether my own. Unfortunately, most people and most libertarians for that matter are not particularly familiar with the substance of this kind of criticism of judeo-christian morality or at least do not entirely grasp what the meat of the issue is.

The Devaluation of the Earthly

To start off, let's consider the implications of the general concept of an afterlife in judeo-christian tradition. According to this view, this life is only a test or a transitional stage. What ultimately matters is that which allegedly lies beyond. As a consequence, the life and time that we have on this earth in the now is devalued. The concept of the afterlife basically posits that the only real purpose of life in the here and now is to prepare for the afterlife. In the grand scheme of things, earthly matters are more or less characterized as meaningless or insignificant. The earthly may even be construed as immoral. Salvation is construed as lieing outside of material existance and consequentially material existance starts to lose its meaning and significance.

The picture gets even more gloomy when we introduce the concept of original sin, which is basically a sweeping declaration of ancestral guilt for all of mankind. Apparently everyone is guilty from birth and "the flesh" is somehow inherently bad. And the most fundamental feature that makes us human, I.E. free will, is characterized as the source of evil in the world. Yet while a free willing agent most certainly is capable of evil, free will is neutral to morality and could also lead to good. Furthermore, morality as such couldn't exist without free will, as without agency there is no responsibility for one's actions. Interestingly, the fatalistic implications of the notion of god as the first cause and watchmaker contradicts the concept of free will. The notion that god has a "divine plan" that will inevitably pan out throughout the course of history cannot be reconciled with the notion that human beings have some kind of free will.

Leaving the meaning and implications of free will aside (I'm leaning towards some kind of compatibalism on the general free will question at the moment), the implications of the concept of original sin and the afterlife are fairly silly. What's implied is that since we are all inherently sinners, we must spend our entire lives paying off this debt we have allegedly incurred. Hence, we have a whole slew of unchosen positive obligations. We are supposed to feel guilty for being "of the flesh" and for having biological drives and psychological motivations. Allegedly it is an imperative that we strive to deny or suppress much of the fundamental characteristics of what makes us human in this life as a path to a gauranteed ticket to the afterlife.

The Seven Deadly Sins

Consider the 7 deadly sins: pride, avarice, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth. Before I go into an analysis of these individually, consider this: has there ever been a point in your life when you did not feel any of these emotions at all? No, these are all traits that pretty much describe some fundamental aspects of what it means to be a human. And that leads us to another realization: most of these are emotions or feelings, ones which all of us experience at some point or another, although of course they can be manifested in terms of agency. In either case, quite clearly the implication of this is that it is essentially impossible for us to exist as humans qua humans without "sinning". Furthermore, all of these "sins" have one thing in common: avoiding them constitutes self-denial or self-sacrifice. It's all meant to imply that that which has to do with the self is somehow evil.

Why is pride considered a sin? If anything, is self-esteem not a good thing? What is wrong with being proud of one's accomplishments? Putting forth pride as a sin is a rather sweeping declaration that ignores the positive side of pride, I.E. individual self-esteem based on one's actual merits. Pride as such is not necessarily the same thing as narcissism. The narcissist is not proud of their actual self or their actual merits and accomplishments. Rather, they have created a fantasy world in which they have merits and accomplishments that aren't really theirs. The narcissist does not hold themselves up, they push everyone else down. But should we therefore abandon pride altogether out of the fear of narcissism and essentially propose that all self-esteem and pride-driven self-improvement is evil?

What about avarice, which may be substituted with the term "greed"? We must first note once again that by itself it's just a motivation or emotion, I.E. the desire to have more of something or to keep the plentiful amount that one already has. As realized in agency, it would mean the pursuit of more or the pursuit of holding on to what one already has. It is easy to see how the more socialistic interpretations of christianity may draw from this. But once again it is far too sweeping to consider this inherently immoral. Why is wanting to keep what you have immoral? Why is pursueing more immoral? Does the actual means by which one does this irrelevant, or should distinctions be made between various ways of obtaining plenty or hoarding what one has? Is there no distinction between claiming that which is others and merely pursueing more for yourself in a voluntary or mutual way? And by what standard does one determine how much is too much? Once again, this sin reduces to the notion that the self and its gratification is somehow evil.

What about lust, which is usually meant to imply sexual desire? Why is it immoral to have sexual desire, and how can one possibly be a human being without experiencing this in some form or another, especially when one is young? Is sexual desire not a fundamental biological drive within us? It certainly seems far to sweeping to consider all sexual desire immoral. While rape may be immoral, voluntary sexual interactions between adults isn't. While promiscuous sexual interactions may be unhealthy for the individual in the long-term, it hardly makes any sense to proclaim it to be inherently evil. In either case, if everyone lived their lives as total prudes then the human race would slowly start to die off. There is, afterall, a connection between sex and the propogation of the species. On an interesting note, this sin contradicts the dictim "be fruitful and multiply", so obviously victorian prudism isn't the only possible interpretation.

Why is anger considered a sin? Perhaps anger can be misdirected or lead to immoral behaviors, but it need not be so. Anger is an emotion that everyone experiences in one form or another at some point in their life. And how can one possibly not be angry at injustice or immorality? There are times when anger can be a rather good thing, a way for one to release pent up energy or frustration without necessarily hurting anyone else. It would be absurd to expect people, especially people that are in rather dire situations, to go through life smiling and being slap-happy all the time. And sometimes anger goes along with honesty. Sometimes the alternative to expressing anger or frustration is to lie to people just to keep a facade going. I'd rather be both angry and brutally honest to someone then to perpetuate a false sense of comfort which merely enables what is actually a bad situation.

Why is gluttony considered a sin? I find this to be perhaps the most silly of the 7 deadly sins, since at face value it has to do with nothing but food, although of course it can be construed to imply that one shouldn't take recreational drugs (although I've always thought that food is a drug in a sense). As a motivation or desire, gluttony simply means to want another cookie from the cookie jar. While eating or drinking too much can obviously lead to obesity and some major health problems, it hardly makes any sense to make minimalism in eating and drinking habits a moral imperative. Are we really going to call fat people immoral? I'd rather live in a free and prosperous society full of fat slobs who munch on junk food all day than an unfree and unprosprous society where everyone is surprisingly physically fit.

The case of envy is a bit more complicated then the others. Envy may be characterized as the desire to have something that someone else has. It is often used interchangably with jealousy, but there is a bit of a distinction. Once again, taken simply as an emotion or desire to have something that someone else has, I don't necessarily see anything wrong with envy. I want an extremely talented group of musicians to play with and lots of studio equipment and I don't have it but Steve Vai does, therefore I suppose I envy the guitarist Steve Vai. That doesn't mean that I'm going to try to steal his band or his studio equipment. It's simply that he has something that I want and that I probably will never have. Should that stop me from pursueing my dreams and trying to obtain those things for myself? I think not.

What about sloth? Sloth may be another word for laziness or leisure. Of course I can easily see how this can be a bad thing in that a lazy person may be dependant on others and do little or nothing for themselves, hence showing a lack of responsibility and ability, but I would hardly consider it immoral. For one thing, some people are this way due to their nature, sometimes because of a very real mental or physical handicap. And even when a perfectly capable person chooses to be lazy, that is their perogative. I'm not going to consider someone immoral for wanting to take a long break from working and spend their time in leisure instead. Surely it would be absurd to consider it a moral imperative that people be working and productive at all times. We're human beings, not robots. I can envision a slave-master cracking a whip at a slave and calling them slothful for taking a break from the hard physical labor that they are forced to do.

All of these alleged sins can be and have been propogated in negative ways. Pride as a sin can be used to crush people's self-esteem. Avarice or greed as a sin can be used to keep people poor or to discourage economic mobility. Lust as a sin can be used to keep the women for oneself or as a method of population control. Anger as a sin can be used to perpetuate dishonesty and to enable bad relationships. Gluttony as a sin can be used to keep people hungry, to essentially starve people. Envy as a sin can be used to discourage people from pursueing their dreams. Sloth as a sin can be used to foster compulsory labor. When they are taken to their logical conclusion and consistantly applied, they amount to the total denial of self-interest, desire and personal well-being. Taken as absolutes, they would require people to be mindless automatons with no trace of humanity.

Altruism As Slave Morality

Let's take a look at the concept of altruism. Altruism is posited in one form or another by most organized religions. It essentially proposes that the individual has an unchosen positive obligation to serve others and that their fundamental purpose in life is to serve others. On the flip side, self-interest is essentially demonized as immoral. This is a very warped view when broken down rationally. Unfortunately, criticism of altruism is often misunderstood because in most people's minds altruism is the same thing as benevolence and empathy, but nothing could be further from the truth. Altruism as an ethic implies unchosen positive obligations. If an individual does not live up to this positive obligation they are viewed as immoral rights violators and they are supposed to be compulsed to live up to the obligation. Afterall, an ethical theory without imperatives wouldn't be functional. In either case, actually choosing to be kind or giving to other people is not fundamentally altruistic because it still involves agency and a genuine desire on the part of the person to benefit another. In true acts of kindness and giving, the emphasis is not on denying oneself but to benefiting another, and the benefit may even be mutual.

Altruism actually leads to nihilism, and the problem of nihilism is something that both Nietzsche and Rand were trying to avoid in their own unique ways (and while Nietzsche was in some ways an immoralist while Rand was quite clearly a moralist, Nietzsche nonetheless essentially proposes a form of egoism as his personal morality). The logical end of altruism is the total devaluation of the self to the point of absolute selflessness. Your life, your values and your property are deprived of value and meaning and you're expect to act as if they don't exist or don't matter. Of course, from my perspective selflessness is impossible both ontologically and psychologically. The self follows from one's very existance as an individual human being and a human beong's fundamental psychological motivations are inward and personal. However, the attempted implementation of altruism as an ethic does have very real effects.

The notion of unchosen positive obligations, whether it be to a deity, a family or an entire society, is inherently incompatible with negative rights and individual sovereignty. Every positive obligation, to the extent that it is not chosen or not a genuine debt, implies a negative rights violation as soon as it is enforced. The result is that people are coerced to associate with other people and to provide goods and services for other people. The individual is forced to sacrifice their own values, their life and their property, regaurdless of their circumstances and regaurdless of their consent. Altruism is at the heart of both communitarianism and dictatorship. In communitarianism, the individual's life and values and property is sacrificed to "the community" or "the majority". In dictatorship, the individual's life and values and property is sacrificed to the dictator and more people can potentially be effected. In either case, in all cases altruism is the morality obligatory upon what amounts to slaves, sometimes subtley and sometimes quite blatantly.

It's important to note that all of this self-sacrificing, self-denying morality has historically been encouraged by people in political and religious power to get the masses to be complacent or obedient. The masses are discouraged from pursueing their own values and bettering their own lives. What largely goes unnoticed is that this is used to benefit the values and lives of various groups of elites. The masses are encouraged to follow a morality of servitude, and when there are servants there are masters. This is what Nietzsche meant when he drew a distinction between "slave morality" and "master morality". Slave morality functions as an ideology that masters or rulers can propagate on to get the masses to accept their enslavement to them as a moral imperative. The masters or rulers, of course, don't actually follow slave morality. They are its beneficiaries. It is just a convenient mentality to propogate to the masses, an apologetic device meant to make it so that servitude seems like a moral imperative. In practise, the masses engage in self-denial to the benefit of a small group of rulers and associated elites. Hence, it's a parasitic relationship.

If the principle of altruism were universally applied to all human beings, and of course it never is and it would be impossible to do consistantly enforce it in the real world, the implication is that everyone is eachother's slave. Since this cannot be realized in practise, since it defies fundamental facts about human existance, motivation and behavior, what one ends up with is at least two distinct classes of people: the masters and the slaves. Quite likely, the attempt to implement altruism will lead to more of a plural latticework of master-slave relationships while still not reaching the consistant extreme of enslaving everyone to eachother. But usually the slaves outnumber the masters by far or a select elite of people function as masters to a much greater degree than anyone else does, and therefore altruism most often leads to some kind of oligarchy, even if it is a mildly democratic oligarchy. Altruism has historically been an apologetic and enabler of both religious and political tyranny.

Master morality, as I interpret it, amounts to hedonism and "might makes right". Master morality should not be construed as the proper alternative to slave morality, nor is it necessarily the polar opposite of slave morality in a certain context. While master morality is not altruistic, master morality is most certainly not any kind of rational egoism. It is anomie or lawlessness, since the masters are not subject to their own rules. Master morality entails an outwardly oriented sense of self that justifies imposing oneself onto others, sometimes using altruism as a ruse or a mask to hide behind. Rational egoism involves an inwardly oriented sense of self that merely justifies being free from the imposition of others, being at liberty to voluntarily pursue one's self-interest and values without restraint. The rational egoist proclaims that noone else may rule over them, but simultaneously they do not claim to rule over anyone else. Rulers don't believe this or function in this way. They claim the right to rule over others while superficially and hypocritically trying to demand that noone else rule over them.

Judeo-Christian morality essentially proposes slave morality as a solution to master morality. In its zeal to oppose hedonism and anomie, it provides a false alternative that only enables the hedonism and anomie of certain people while devalueing everyone else. A society that is dominantly filled with people who accept slave morality will not have the necessary mindset or attitude to resist the yoke of tyranny. It provides the perfect atmosphere for rulers to arise and dominate the naive masses. The cultural framework of a free society must contain the personal sense of value and purpose necessary for people to actively free themselves, otherwise their lack of confidence and their lack of any genuine sense of self-worth and personal value will enable tyranny. It's time to reject both slave morality and master morality to persue some meaningful alternatives.

Walter Block: Wrong on Religion

Brainpolice — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 15:13:00 GMT

Walter Block recently wrote an article at LewRockwell.com on the topic of religion and state. He critisizes what he considers to be an irrational hatred of religion that many libertarians have apparently inherented from Ayn Rand. While he is an atheist himself, he defends the premise that religion is a bulwark against the state. He has a tendency to occasionally make very counter-intuitive claims. Block writes:

"Why pick on religion and the family? Because these are the two great competitors – against the state – for allegiance on the part of the people. The Communists were quite right, from their own evil perspective, to focus on these two institutions. All enemies of the overweening state, then, would do well to embrace religion and the family as their friends, whether they are themselves atheists or not, parents or not.

The main reason religion sticks in the craw of secular leaders is that this institution defines moral authority independently of their power. Every other organization in society (with the possible exception of the family) sees the state as the source of ultimate ethical sanction. Despite the fact that some religious leaders have indeed bowed the knee to government officials, there is a natural and basic enmity between the two sources of authority. The pope and other religious leaders may not have any regiments of soldiers, but they do have something lacking on the part of presidents and prime ministers, greatly to the regret of the latter."

While he certainly has a valid point in that religion and the family have the potential to be competitors against the state, I think that he neglects important aspects of what the libertarian strong atheist's criticism of religion really is. Firstly, we see a very clear ideological relationship between the two. Statism and theism tend to rest on very similar if not identical premises: that without a "higher power" or "higher authority" (either god or the state) there can be no order or morality, that human society must have been and must be deliberately planned by a designer, that knowledge must be held and selectively passed down from an elite (either the clergy or intelligence bureaucrats) who are exclusively able to properly interpret relevant texts, that floating abstractions (either a deity, a society or a nation) really do exist and that one must sacrifice their values and lives to them, that self-interest is a sin, and so on.

In short, as far as I can tell, statism is a religion in and of itself. Does this vindicate the other religions? No, it doesn't. If anything, it shows how close the relationship between the two really is, a relationship that is much closer than your "Christianity is the historical source of liberty in the west" claiming libertarian would be willing to aknowledge (I find that claim to be disingenuous and misleading nonsense, by the way). I see a very clear relationship between most of traditional religious morality and the morality put foreward by most brands of statism. It's precisely what Nietzsche called "slave morality" or what Ayn Rand identifies in her own unique way as "altruism". One's own values, general well-being and happiness is de-emphasized while servitude to an ideal and to others is put foreward as being the greatest virtue. The moral themes of traditionalist Christianity and much of statism are clearly interwoven.

Statism relies in large part on the exploitation of the religious impulse, both directly and indirectly. If anything, a country full of extremely devout religion people are good pickings for state recruitment and obedience. Indeed, not only do states rely on rituals and symbolism that may dupe even the most atheistic zealot, but sometimes they rely directly on the rituals and symbolism of certain religions. Many if not most politicians put themselves foreward as being devoutly religious and pander to the religious community all the time, and in large part the religious masses fall for it, especially in America. Religious institutions are in large part in patronage with the state, despite the thin veneer of separation of church and state that exists in America. In terms of what is being said at the pulpit, American Christianity in particular has become increasingly political, whether preachers function as cheerleaders for militarism and neoconservatism or conduits for the message of state-socialism.

Another issue, a historical issue, has to do with the rise of the state as an institution in relation to the family and organized religion. The fact of the matter is that these two institutions are historically at the root of state power. The state grew out of them in more primitive times. In some cases, they were literally the same institution. The earliest governments were familial and hereditary. Out of the family comes the tribe (an extended family) and out of the tribe comes the most primitive forms of government, which paved the way for monarchy. Furthermore, many of the earliest political leaders were simultaneously religious leaders. In the most primitive form the shaman served this function. Much of organized religion itself can easily be seen as creations of the state in the first place, particularly with respect to the judeo-christian religions. In the case of Christianity, I see it as a construct of the Roman state to gain obedience and unity.

Historically, and even in contemporary times, religion most definitely has not functioned as a competitor of the state, and even to the extent that it has it has most often been a statist competitor in and of itself. The state and organized religion have had a synergetic relationship from the very beginning, and even when religious institutions are more independant they have the potential to become states in and of themselves. Competition between authoritarianisms isn't a good kind of competition. As any anarchist should be aware of, substituting one form of authoritarianism with another doesn't really solve anything. Substituting the church for the secular state doesn't necessarily imply an increase in freedom. I see no reason why what may very well amount to a church-state, even if comparatively small, is an improvement over a secular state. I think what Block fails to see is that the primary issue is with arbitrary authority, and religion is included under this general umbrella.

As Stefan Molyneux has brilliantly argued (although the argument is not entirely his own; it's not as if he invented this concept), the psychology of the family is directly linked to the psychology of the state. People's ideological support for the state can in many ways be linked to a subconcious attachment to their parents, an imposed feeling of guilt and fear, a sort of unchosen positive obligation for life to one's parents. The psychology of the typical citezen in relation to the state can in some ways be seen as representative of the psychology of the person who is abused by their family and yet enables their own abuse. The exact same sentiments of servitude and obligation that many people hold with respect to the family is merely blown up on a larger scale with respect to the nation, society and state. The problem of statism can be seen as the inevitable outgrowth of family-worshop.

Reading further into the article, Block goes on to write this howler (italics mine):

"Such is my own position. I reject religion, all religion, since, as an atheist, I am unconvinced of the existence of God. Indeed, I go further. I am no agnostic: I am convinced of His non-existence. However, as a political animal, I warmly embrace this institution. It is a bulwark against totalitarianism. He who wishes to oppose statist depredations cannot do so without the support of religion. Opposition to religion, even if based on intellectual grounds and not intended as a political statement, nevertheless amounts to de facto support of government."

Surely you cannot be serious in your claim that "opposition to religion...amounts to de facto support of government", our dear Mr. Block? Surely you jest? This is utter nonsense, and you know it. You can't seriously be trying to pull the wool over our eyes to this extent. An ideological opposition to religion in and of itself has nothing to do with government. And neither does an activist and yet apolitical opposition to religion constitute support of government. My own opposition to religion is entirely apolitical in its means; it's not like I'm lobbying the government and encouraging it to shut down churches and burn Christians at the stake. To assert that an atheist anarchist is a defacto supporter of government for being passionate about atheism is downright silly on its face. I'm frankly insulted by this statement. I also wonder how Block, who says that he is an atheist himself, can not see how he would be a "defacto supporter of government" according to his own statement here.

As a side note, despite Block's intention to connect all or much of this anti-religious sentiment to Ayn Rand, I myself did not gain my anti-religious perspective from Ayn Rand and did not enter libertarianism through Objectivism. I've had a distrust of religious authority long before I had even heard of libertarianism. Furthermore, I think that Block is being misleading in implying that the people he is critisizing make hatred of religion a fundamental principle. No, the dislike of religion is merely an implication of a broader principle against arbitrary authority and in favor of reason. Opposition to religion is not a first-principle for anyone in question here. On the contrary, it follows from something much more fundamental. Hell, even opposition to the state is not necessarily a first principle. In either case, the implication the opposition to religion is the primary focus of any of the people in question is simply false, including in the case of Rand herself. It was never the primary focus, only an implication of a much more fundamental philosophical framework.

I have a lot of respect for Walter Block, in fact he's one of my favorite contemporary libertarians, but occasionally when he writes a piece like this I lose a bit of that respect.

Politics Is The Opiate Of The Masses

Brainpolice — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:38:00 GMT

Theism is not the only kind of mysticism. Collectivist and political ideologies are also forms of mysticism. The nature of politics involves blind faith in a "highest essence". The abstractions of these "highest essences" function as arbitrary authorities to appeal to. The most common of these arbitrary and rhetorical authorities are "society", "nation", "state", "humanity", "race", "class" and "gender". In political ideology, these concepts function precisely in the same way as a deity. As a consequence of faith in these abstractions, individual human beings and/or certain collections of human beings are given the status of a deity. These concepts also all have one thing in common: they obscure the individual and turn the individual into a sacrificial peon to collective abstractions. In all cases, belief in something that doesn't exist (at least in the way concieved) functions as a mechanism to provide a plastic sense of meaning or identity.

While theism assigns a non-existant entity with rights not possessed by human beings, statism assigns certain human beings with rights not possessed by everyone else. While religious ideologies conflict over who rules the universe and how they do it, political ideologies conflict over who rules over other human beings and how they do it. In electoral politics, certain human beings are deified and people conflict over which deifed human being should rule over everyone else. For many people, the election rallies and political holidays are just as much of a "spiritual experience" as any religious ceremony at a fundamentalist christian church. People literally have faith in politicians, bureaucrats, nations, and states and they use that which is attributed to them as a way to legitimize their personal biases and their actions. The health of political power relies in large part on the exploitation of the religious impulse in the broadest sense through the use of rituals, symbolism, illusions, grandios promises, bread and circuses.

Many political assumptions are essentially forcibly inherented from parents and cultural norms, just like in theism. While religions tend to promise a utopia after death, political ideologies tend to promise a utopia during life. Both make use of fear and guilt and exploit the pessemism within people to elicit obedience. The morality of politics is based on arbitrary authority rather than reason. "The law" has the same functionality as a deity's alleged words or religious texts. The individual must submit in spite of their rational evaluation. Furthermore, politics provides a mechanism by which people can enforce their personal preferances and their incorrect conceptions of morality onto innocent bystanders. Politics is more dangerous than religion is by itself, since it is only through the mechanisms of politics that religion can be tyrannical on a large scale. Politics is the opiate of the masses.

Secular Deities and the Problem of Humanism

Brainpolice — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 04:17:00 GMT

An atheist criticism of contemporary secularism

Most atheists and agnostics still have a religious mindset, only they have replaced the formal concept of a god with other concepts. In the absence of faith in an all-knowing and all-loving god outside of the universe, they have substituted faith in other artificial constructs that are considered to be inside of the universe. They rely on faith in an abstraction to be confident in the existance of order and morality. They act as if the non-existance of such abstractions, or at least the lack of them as a rationale, would lead to chaos and immorality. The abstraction worshiped may be the state, the nation, humanity, the planet or environment. These things are treated as if they were spirits or geists and are used as an appeal to authority.

To be sure, abstractions can be sensible and useful insofar as they are derived from reality by reason. But most secular people either do not derive their abstractions from reality or treat certain things that exist in reality as if they were deities. Collective concepts such as nations are treated holistically as if they were sentient entities in and of themselves and are used as an authority for justification of goals and actions. But strictly speaking a nation does not exist, at least in the manner it is being viewed by the nationalist, as an individual entity or actor. And for an example of the adoption of things in reality as deities, radical environmentalists tend to treat the planet itself as if it were a diety with intrinsic value. The planet most certainly does exist in reality, but it does not have intrinsic value and is not a sensible source of morality.

The vast majority of contemporary secularists still believe in things that do not exist, particularly collective constructs. They refer to specific groups of people, such as races and economic classes, as if they existed as singular concious actors. But realistically speaking, there is no race or economic class as a whole that one can point to as being responsible for anything. Nor can an individual reasonably claim to be acting on the behalf of such collective abstractions. "The white race" or "the proletariet class" cannot rationally be used as a reason justifying one’s actions. Racists merely use the abstraction of a race as a diety. Classists merely use the abstraction of a class as a diety. Statists merely use the abstraction of a state as a diety. In all cases, the functionality is the same as a diety. All deities in formal religions, of course, originated from the anthropromorphisization of elements that people interpreted from around them in the world. The contemporary atheist, while they may have abandoned the formal concept of a god, is merely repeating this process in reverse.

It is unfortunate but most atheists are statists, and usually of the "left" variety. I think this is partially due to the cliche way in which contemporary cultural politics is framed in public discourse. Since it is assumed that the "right" is for religious people, the secularist has more of a tendency to flock to the "left". Of course, I reject the notion that the "right" is necessarily any less statist then the "right", but that’s beside the point. The overall point is that while many atheists don’t worshop a god external to the universe, they nonetheless still worshop human beings or leaders or rulers. They treat certain human beings in positions of power as if they were a god anyways. But in my view atheists should reject the state and other such worldly "geists" for some of the exact same reasons that they reject the concept of a god. If you reject the concept of a god, you should have no more reason to treat humans as a god. Human beings should not be treated as gods. Noone deserves to be worshoped. Noone deserves to be a ruler. You have no more reason to consider rulers worthy of your respect then any non-existant deity. While the rulers might actually exist in reality, they nonetheless don’t necessarily deserve your respect any more then a deity.

While I’m not the biggest fan of Max Stirner and I think that he uses very odd language to get his point across, in his writting "The Ego and His Own" he pointed out the problem of secular people deifying either humanity as a whole as an abstraction or certain other human beings in general. Allow me to leave you off with a quote from "The Ego and His Own" that touches on this:

Atheists keep up their scoffing at the higher being, which was also honored under the name of the " highest " or être suprême, and trample in the dust one " proof of his existence " after another, without noticing that they themselves, out of need for a higher being, only annihilate the old to make room for a new. Is " Man " perchance not a higher essence than an individual man, and must not the truths, rights, and ideas which result from the concept of him be honored and—counted sacred, as revelations of this very concept ? For, even though we should abrogate again many a truth that seemed to be made manifest by this concept, yet this would only evince a misunderstanding on our part, without in the least degree harming the sacred concept itself or taking their sacredness from those truths that must " rightly " be looked upon as its revelations. Man reaches beyond every individual man, and yet—though he be " his essence "—is not in fact his essence (which rather would be as single* as he the individual himself), but a general and "higher," yes, for atheists "the highest essence."† And, as the divine revelations were not written down by God with his own hand, but made public through " the Lord’s instruments," so also the new highest essence does not write out its revelations itself, but lets them come to our knowledge through " true men." Only the new essence betrays, in fact, a more spiritual style of conception than the old God, because the latter was still represented in a sort of embodiedness or form, while the undimmed spirituality of the new is retained, and no special material body is fancied for it. And withal it does not lack corporeity, which even takes on a yet more seductive appearance because it looks more natural and mundane and consists in nothing less than in every bodily man,—yes, or outright in " humanity " or " all men." Thereby the spectralness of the spirit in a seemingbody has once again become really solid and popular.

Sacred, then, is the highest essence and everything in which this highest essence reveals or will reveal itself; but hallowed are they who recognize this highest essence together with its own, i. e. together with its revelations. The sacred hallows in turn its reverer, who by his worship becomes himself a saint, as likewise what he does is saintly, a saintly walk, saintly thoughts and actions, imaginations and aspirations, etc.

It is easily understood that the conflict over what is revered as the highest essence can be significant only so long as even the most embittered opponents concede to each other the main point,—that there is a highest essence to which worship or service is due. If one should smile compassionately at the whole struggle over a highest essence, as a Christian might at the war of words between a Shiite and a Sunnite or between a Brahman and a Buddhist, then the hypothesis of a highest essence would be null in his eyes, and the conflict on this basis an idle play. Whether then the one God or the three in one, whether the Lutheran God or the être suprême or not God at all, but "Man," may represent the highest essence, that makes no difference at all for him who denies the highest essence itself, for in his eyes those servants of a highest essence are one and all—pious people, the most raging atheist not less than the most faith-filled Christian.

In the foremost place of the sacred,* then, stands the highest essence and the faith in this essence, our "holy† faith."

-- Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own, Pages 48-50

Anarchism and Atheism, Theism and Statism

Brainpolice — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 00:25:00 GMT

Anarchism and atheism are both defined in negative terms. As general paradimes they do not actually advocate any particular belief or system of organization. They represent the lack of a belief. Atheism is a lack of belief in deities and religions, while anarchism is a lack of belief in governments and political groups. The literal meanings of the words are "without gods" and "without rulers". Both reject the alleged need for these things to exist and go even further in denying that they even exist as anything but concepts inside of people's heads.

While it may be objected that there is a difference between the two in that atheists deny the existance of gods, while anarchists do not deny the existance of governments, rational anarchists in fact do deny the existance of governments insofar as they are concieved of as anything but an aggregation of particular individual human beings. Anarchists are fully aware that the state is not an individual entity in itself so much as a particular organization made up of certain people. It could be said that the anarchist is not interested in abolishing the state so much as abolishing people's belief in the state as a sovereign individual entity and the need for such an entity. For the state is fundamentally based on the ideological support of the populace, albiet in a passive and brainwashed manner. The state cannot be abolished in a meaningful or permanent way without a change in the ideas of people.

Both theism and statism share the belief in a need for a higher authority in order for the world to keep running and make people act morally. They contain a fundamental fear of what may happen in the abscence of governments and gods. In the same way that statists believe that in the abscence of government there would be absolute chaos, theists tend to believe that in the absence of deities, or at least their particular deity, morality ceases to exist and there is nothing to keep the clockwork of the universe running. In other words, both statism and theism share the belief that must society be planned in some way. In a religion, the planner is a diety, while in a political party or statist ideology, the planner is a state.

Religion and statism are also similar in that they bring forth the existance of multiple ideological groups that conflict with eachother, with each group claiming a monopoly on morality and truth. Religious groups have historically battled eachother to the death in the name of what they percieved to be virtue. Likewise, statism, especially as manifested in modern democracy, involves multiple political parties and political ideologies battling for the power of the state in order to force their preferances onto eachother in the name of what they percieve to be virtue. The Hobbesian war of all against all is in fact a description of contemporary political democracy rather than anarchy.

In some ways, polytheism could be said to be somewhat less incompatible with anarchism than monotheism. Monotheism, the belief that there can only be one god, could be thought of as being similar to proclaiming there can only be one government, while polytheism, the belief that there can be or are multiple gods, could be thought of as being similar to proclaiming that there can be multiple governments. Therefore, polytheism could be considered more decentralized and tolerant in a sense, while monotheism is comparatively monopolistic. But of course polytheism still proclaims the alleged existance and need for deities, so the fundamental problem still stares us in the face.

It could easily be argued that organized religions came about directly as a result of attempts by states to control the gullable populations of times past. The Christian religion in particular could be viewed as a construct of the Roman state in order to more easily control the population by uniting them under one religion. The Jewish religion could likewise be seen as an attempt to unite the more decentralized tribes of anchient Judea into one political unit. In either case, the history of the state as an institution is clearly linked at the hip to religion. The most primitive and early rulers were literally thought of as being gods themselves or the descendants of gods. Furthermore, primitive deities in tribal societies were in fact family members who were ritualistically killed and eaten. This may give one reason to pause at the Christian notion of drinking Jesus's blood and eating his flesh symbolically for the communion ritual. Even when this notion and practise had worn threadbare, states used religious beliefs and institutions to bolster their power through the union of church and state. In some respects religious institutions used to be states in themselves.

Even in our comparatively secular modern age, political leaders are often treated almost as if they are gods capable of doing miraculous things. In the same way that religious people may pray to a deity in the hopes of their wishes coming true, political leaders are often looked at as people who can be relied on to do things that private citezens cannot do for themselves. In both cases, people are distracted from taking the responsibility necessary to persue their desires themselves while expecting some higher authority to magically fulfill their desires for them. And when things happen to go their way, they always priase the higher authority for making it happen. Or when they actually do manage to do things for themselves, instead of taking pride for their accomplishments they act as if a higher authority is what made it happen.

To clarify, there are plenty of anarchists who are not atheists and plenty of atheists who are statists. I do not mean to imply that it is impossible for an anarchist to be an adherant of a religion. It would most certainly be self-contradictary for an anarchist to oppose voluntary and non-violent religious expression. But I do mean to imply that there is cognitive dissonance involved in simultaneously holding onto anarchism and theism in one's mind. For it does not make sense to reject the need for human rulers while maintaining that there is a need for a deity to function as a ruler. There is also cognitive dissonance involved in simultaneously holding onto statism and atheism in one's mind. For how can one deny the existance of and need for gods while still believing that there is a need for a state to function precisely as a god and while thinking of the state as a soviereign individual entity in itself?