Postmodernism and the Void
It's fascinating to watch the blind watchmakers at work. Everyday, I see people, I read people, I hear people say very proudly how good it would be if people would just accept that there is no God.
The thing about this is that we think there's meaning. That bugs me. If thinking that meaning must exist is just a random chemical phenomenon, then intellectually speaking, I shouldn't be irritated about my thinking, which is a concerted process that will achieve nothing. Yes, it's like spontaneous order-generation, which happens in limited anti-entropic circumstances. But it's not meaning, it's just a complex process issuing from simple rules, like a Mandelbrot set.
If there's nothing that thinking is for, then why do we say suicide is a crime, or that democracy is good, or that ice-cream is wonderful, or any of a multiplicity of sensations and experiences, catalogued, filed, named, defined, outlined, silhouetted, engraved... Why?
Why bother to write something extolling atheism of all things? It's like saying, "(meaningless term denoting individuality, 'I') (meaningless state of meaningless activity, 'am writing') (meaningless identifier implying meaning despite entire argument of meaninglessness, 'a book') (meaningless preposition implying relationship, likewise a meaningless concept, 'about') (meaningless string of meaninglessness words all of which contain too many concepts, which are of course meaningless too, 'why you shouldn't believe in God')."
I mean, what is it to an atheist that he should write any books? Why not let the rest of us get on with our sequence of pseudorandom events? After all, what can be done about the fact that there is no script, no plan, no director or producer to this appalling film? Why go around yelling?
Postmodernism is a void. It says nothing useful, but argues a lot. It is like something so black that you see everything and nothing in it, all at once. And it goes nicely together with atheism, which in effect is the same thing.
The thing about this is that we think there's meaning. That bugs me. If thinking that meaning must exist is just a random chemical phenomenon, then intellectually speaking, I shouldn't be irritated about my thinking, which is a concerted process that will achieve nothing. Yes, it's like spontaneous order-generation, which happens in limited anti-entropic circumstances. But it's not meaning, it's just a complex process issuing from simple rules, like a Mandelbrot set.
If there's nothing that thinking is for, then why do we say suicide is a crime, or that democracy is good, or that ice-cream is wonderful, or any of a multiplicity of sensations and experiences, catalogued, filed, named, defined, outlined, silhouetted, engraved... Why?
Why bother to write something extolling atheism of all things? It's like saying, "(meaningless term denoting individuality, 'I') (meaningless state of meaningless activity, 'am writing') (meaningless identifier implying meaning despite entire argument of meaninglessness, 'a book') (meaningless preposition implying relationship, likewise a meaningless concept, 'about') (meaningless string of meaninglessness words all of which contain too many concepts, which are of course meaningless too, 'why you shouldn't believe in God')."
I mean, what is it to an atheist that he should write any books? Why not let the rest of us get on with our sequence of pseudorandom events? After all, what can be done about the fact that there is no script, no plan, no director or producer to this appalling film? Why go around yelling?
Postmodernism is a void. It says nothing useful, but argues a lot. It is like something so black that you see everything and nothing in it, all at once. And it goes nicely together with atheism, which in effect is the same thing.
Labels: Atheism, Post-Modernism
etched with acid at 10:01:00 pm
2 Comments:
Sir, that's seriously a brilliant post. I believe that the atheists know that, its just that they don't want to admit it. Here is an interesting conversation between Justin Brierley and Richard Dawkins:
JB: When you make a value judgement don't you immediately step yourself outside of this evolutionary process and say that the reason this is good is that it's good. And you don't have any way to stand on that statement.
RD: My value judgement itself could come from my evolutionary past.
JB: So therefore it's just as random in a sense as any product of evolution.
RD: You could say that, it doesn't in any case, nothing about it makes it more probable that there is anything supernatural.
JB: Ultimately, your belief that rape is wrong is as arbitrary as the fact that we've evolved five fingers rather than six.
RD: You could say that, yeah.
You're very welcome! :) And that conversation does capture the essence of the silly atheist argument. Any atheist who argues that religion (not meaningful to an atheist) is evil (also not meaningful to an atheist) is not only dumb but inconsistent.
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