johnbc
Full Member
Roman Catholic
Posts: 110
Likes: 63
Religion: Catholic
Philosophy: Anarcho-capitalist, Anti-communism
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Post by johnbc on Oct 11, 2020 4:57:59 GMT
There are two types of atheists: those who do not believe that God exists and those who strongly believe that God does not exist. The former are reluctant to believe what they have no experience with. The seconds do not admit that there may be something above their experience. The difference is the same as between skepticism and the presumption of omniscience.
Above the distinction of atheists and believers there is the difference, noted by Henri Bergson, between open souls and closed souls. I will explain it my way. As everything we know is circumscribed and limited, we live within a dome of uncertain knowledge surrounded by mystery on all sides. This is not a provisional situation. It is the very structure of reality, the basic law of our existence. But the mystery is not a homogeneous paste. Without being able to decipher it, we know in advance that it extends in two opposite directions: on the one hand, the supreme explanation, the first origin and ultimate reason of all things; on the other, the abysmal darkness of the meaningless, the non-being, the absurd. There is the mystery of light and the mystery of darkness. Both are inaccessible to us: the half-light sphere in which we live buoys between the two oceans of absolute light and absolute darkness.
The immemorial symbolism of the “heavenly” and “infernal” states marks the position of the human being at the center of the universal enigma. This situation — our situation — is one of permanent discomfort. It requires an active, difficult and problematic adaptation from us. Hence the soul’s options: openness to the infinite, the unexpected, the heterogeneous, or the self-hypnotic closure in the enclosure of the known, denying the beyond or proclaiming with dogmatic faith its homogeneity with the known. The first gives rise to the spiritual experiences from which myths, religion and philosophy were born. The second leads to the “prohibition to ask”, as Eric Voegelin called it: the repulsion to transcendence, the proclamation of the omnipotence of socially standardized methods of knowing and explaining.
Religion is an expression of openness, but it is not the only one. The simple sincere admission that there may be something beyond the usual experience is enough to keep the soul alert and alive. It is possible to be an atheist and be open to the spirit. But the militant, doctrinal, uncompromising atheist opts for the peremptory refusal of the mystery, delighting in the hatred of the spirit, in the eagerness to close the door of the unknown to better rule the known world.
Dostoevsky and Nietzsche well saw that, when transcendence was abolished, all that remained was the will to power. The one who forbids looking up makes himself the impassable top of the universe. It is a tragic irony that so many nominal adherents of freedom seek to achieve it through anti-religious militancy. Religions may have become violent and oppressive at times, but anti-religion is totalitarian and murderous from birth. It is no coincidence that the French Revolution killed ten times more people in one year than the Spanish Inquisition in four centuries. Genocide is the natural state of “enlightened” modernity.
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Post by Elizabeth on Oct 11, 2020 5:42:46 GMT
Don't a lot of atheists believe on life on other planets and other dimensions and time travel? They may not believe in all 3 but you can find a lot of them who believe in at least one. But doesn't that take faith too? And how can they disregard a concept like God when these other concepts are still on the same level.
Also why do you think some religions became violent over time?
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Post by Eugene 2.0 on Oct 11, 2020 7:22:00 GMT
Yes, in Anthony Flew's classification one are named "negative atheists", while the second are "positive" ones.
According to Tertullian and to Origen's (in minor sense; because of complexity of his theological system? any soul is Christian. That is why each soul is leaning toward God, byt not every person is so brave to admit it, or not every person knows about it to understand his core wishes.
(I want to notify that do you see that as Tertullian's so Origen's views were opposite to modern Freud's. I guess that Freud's interpretation was to spoil and ruin those decent interpretations, because Freud's propagate that each soul has intentions to have sex with family's members that is disgusting and I do not believe a word of such a crap. By the way how Mr. Freud was going to prove his gibberish except for his scientifically weird experiments? Absolutely disgusting.)
So, if a soul is about to return to his chambers (in a version of pre-existence of soul – aka the souls were created by God and before incarnation or the joining with bodies they tasted Heaven's fruits), then it should be clear why each of us, when he's not blinded by this world's fake pleasures, can be saved if he's going to be saved and going to confess in his sins before God.
So, what my thesis was, you can ask? – It was that no negative atheist can exist; there can be no those who have any idea about anything God-like.
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