Torture

   (We earlier featured a portion of a dialogue between Starchild and M.D..  In this installment, the dialogue is contined.)

Starchild:  We were discussing the notion of the soul and personhood previously.  Do you have something to add?

M.D.:  I wanted to discuss an analogue to ideas.  Starchild, obviously as biological creatures, we consume food and beverages.

Starchild:  Certainly.

M.D.:  But these food and beverages are more than mere physical things.

Starchild:  M.D., I am amazed that you would admit such a thing.

M.D.:  I readily admit such a thing.  For example, a home-cooked meal lovingly prepared by my wife--this is not just a physical substance--it has meaning.

Starchild:  I see we have a point of agreement.

M.D.:  None the less, when my wife prepares a meal, notwithstanding its meaning, I invariably consume it.  The food then undergoes a process of transformation, until as such at a later time as I excrete it.  When it invariably acquires a new meaning.

Starchild:  I'll say. 

M.D.:  Thus we can see an analogue to the causal powers of ideas we discussed earlier.  We receive an idea, it has some sort of discernible meaning, the idea undergoes a process of transformation, until we excrete a new idea as a result our digesting the previous ideas.

Starchild:  (Speechless.)

M.D.:  Of course you are aware that we have certain metabolic propensities to certain kinds of foods.  Some agree with us, some cause indigestion.  Some foods we consume for pleasure, some from necessity.  Likewise, the same for ideas.  Some ideas we are attracted to, some concepts we master from necessity.  Thus we can understand our brains not as the seat of reason, but really analogous to the alimentary canal.  The anthropon is the animal that feeds on the meaning excreted by others only to excrete new meanings.  Thus, human beings are distinct from other animals principally in the waste products that we excrete and consume: the true power of ideas to change the world.

Starchild:  That sounds simplistic to me.

M.D.:  Starchild, you are always seeking complexity where there is simply biological fact.  I believe this stems from your irrational attachment to the notion of the soul.  You want to believe that you are special, that you are better from the animals.  And in fact, you are:  you produce and consume a special manner of excrement.

Starchild:  No, not at all.  In fact, sometimes I wish I had been born a simple animal and not a man.

M.D.:  Well, that is perfectly understandable, given the additional weight that human beings carry as a result of having two active alimentary canals.  But this takes me back to my point about the soul.  It is clear from science when you dissect a person there is no vital substance.  What we have is simply a complex set of organic chemical compounds.  Even if there was some kind of amorphous nonphysical soul or mind or something, it could not operate as a cause on matter.  Matter can only act on matter.  Thus, I propose replacing the concept of personhood with the concept of clock.

Starchild:  Is this important?

M.D.:  Yes.  It is the path of liberation.

Starchild:  How so?

M.D.:  European civilization has been snared for centuries by a set of false and related concepts.  First and foremost is the concept of God:  God is the true, the good and the beautiful.  Next, the idea that human beings bear the image and likeness of their Creator, God, and they possess an immortal soul.  Next invariably follows the bondage of religion.

Starchild:  But you said that ideas have no power to influence matter.

M.D.:  Starchild, you are being obtuse.  The animal seeks food, that is, physical objects of physical nourishment.  The human being seeks ideas, meanings, that is, ultimately, physical objects of mental nourishment.  But going to a restaurant to seek edifying fare is not distinct from going to church to hear an edifying sermon.  It is all a simple matter of operant conditioning.  Ring a bell and the dog will salivate.

Starchild:  Again, this seems too simplistic.

M.D.:  We been through this before.  All that exists are efficient causes.  Physical entities can only act on other physical entities.  The meaning of a physical entity is irrelevant to its power to act.  Meaning, to the extent that it can be said to exist, is merely an epiphenomenon of matter.  Otherwise, we are bogged down in the incoherent notion of final causes.  An idea cannot act on a physical thing.  The future cannot act on the present.

Starchild:  Well, why can't ideas act on matter and why can't there be final causes.


M.D.:  Starchild, you are clearly too dense to understand.  I think it is time to move on, leaving you in your ancient superstitions.  I want to get back to the soul.  Human beings have a soul which they receive from God.  Human beings are allegedly created in the image and likeness of God.  That is to say that they are the icons of God.  They are called to truth, goodness and beauty.  In cultivating these qualities, they manifest the light of God on Earth.

Starchild:  And this is bad, why?

M.D.:  Because it leaves organized religion in charge of this process of transformation and organized religion promotes hatred, narrow-minded bigotry and conservatism.  In addition, it is irrational, as God does not exist.

Starchild:  But I still don't understand.

M.D.:  Let me put it differently.  I capture a random person, hold them ransom in my basement and torture them.  If I have a soul, then I turn away from the good that I am called to. . . I turn away from God himself.  Further, in damaging the icon of God, I blaspheme God and his creation.

Starchild:  Indeed.

M.D.:  So I prefer the analogy of a clock.  If I am a clock, and I damage torture or harm another clock, I cannot be said to do anything morally wrong can I?  My actions are explainable through a series of efficient causes stemming from the Big Bang.  Furthermore, the person I supposedly "hurt"--all they are is a complex aggregation of organic compounds.  My actions don't really matter do they?

Starchild:  As you say, the clock may be broken or fixed but it matters not.  But why would you want to say and do these things?

M.D.:  Because I want to free people from irrational delusion, most importantly, the atheists.

Starchild:  But you are an atheist yourself?

M.D.:  Yes, but a gathering disease afflicts the growing legion of atheists.

Starchild:  How so?

M.D.:  Atheists fail to realize what is at stake.

Starchild:  But you said nothing was at stake.

M.D.:  Indeed, a delusion is nothing but then it is real nonetheless--a real nothing.  Many atheists remain only partly awakened.

Starchild:  In what sense?

M.D.:  Simply that they deny the God of monotheism, yet they don't understand the God of monotheism, and they do not understand the implications of their non-belief.  Thus they cling to garbage like "personhood" and "ethics" and other nonsense.

Starchild:  And what do you understand the God of monotheism to be?

M.D.  God is the objectively True, the objectively Good, and the objectively Beautiful. God does not exist.

Starchild:  But atheists agree with you that no such being exists.

M.D.:  Indeed, they say they do, but then they continue talking about the Good, the True and the Beautiful.  Some of them are even naive enough to believe that simply rendering these concepts in lower case somehow addresses the problem.  As if to speak of a god with a lack of reverence while remaining mired in his rites and customs is truly a rejection of his cult.

Starchild:  But what is the problem?

M.D.:  Starchild, are you familiar with the game of chess?

Starchild:  Yes.

M.D.:  Then you know in the game of chess that the King is the piece which holds ultimate value and which is the ultimate end of the game of chess.

Starchild:  Yes, I do.

M.D.:  And if we played a game of chess, and out of consideration for you inviting to me your blog, I let you play white, you would agree with me that my goal would be to capture your white king.

Starchild:  Certainly.

M.D.:  Starchild, imagine we played a game on a chess board with chess pieces, but in this game, none of the pieces were defined to possess any intrinsic value.  The players were free to value each chess piece as they chose.  Further, this game had no ultimate purpose or goal.  If we beheld two people playing this game, we might believe at first that they were actually playing chess.  But after awhile, we would be forced to conclude that they were not playing chess at all, but rather acting like two children (who didn't understand the game of chess) "playing as if" they were playing chess.  For this game, despite its superficial similarities to chess, in fact has no true relationship to chess.

Starchild:  Obviously not.

M.D.:  Starchild, the concept of truth, goodness and beauty are derived in Western Culture from theology.  God is the true, the good, and the beautiful.  He is the white king we seek to capture.

Starchild:  M.D., not to be personal, but I sense you seek to capture the black king.

M.D.:  You are entirely wrong.  I seek to play the black king with the intention of destroying the white king.

Starchild:  I see.

M.D.:  But to return to my example, the king is the piece of ultimate value in chess and the ultimate end of chess.  Without a king, there can be no game of chess.  Likewise, without a God, there can be no goodness, no beauty, and no truth.

Starchild:  I agree.

M.D.:  You agree, but I believe that I have staked out a minority position in the atheist community.  In fact, the greatest minds of the past century have wasted their lives trying to explain how a game that is played with chess pieces, but in which no piece serves in the role and function of the king, can through rational explanation, be made analogous to the game of chess.

Starchild:  I see.  How can this be?

M.D.:  Because like you, Starchild, with your final causes, these persons insist on clinging to ancient superstitions derived from the middle ages:  truth, goodness and beauty.

Starchild:  And how do you hope to change their view?

M.D.:  Well, clearly, now that they have acquired a mild taste for atheism, they may be able to tolerate the full dish.  Atheism is somewhat akin to spicy food after all.  The results can sometimes be troubling at first or when consumed in large quantites. But it is clear what must transpire for atheism to truly prevail.

Starchild:  What is that?

M.D.:  The destruction of the concepts of goodness, beauty and truth.  The total eradication of these concepts from our language.  We must totally reform the conceptual language of human beings.

Starchild:  That is a tall order.

M.D.:  But in fact, it goes further.  In order to destroy these concepts, we must destroy their manifestation in the physical world.  We must eradicate good, true and beautiful actions.  Some atheists today extoll the exceptional morality of atheists as if this were a positive development.  As if atheists, by more fully instantiating the reality of God on Earth, were serving the cause of atheism.

Starchild:  Well, that doesn't sound like a bad thing.  Many of the theists I have met certainly could use some encouragement and competition in this regard.

M.D.:  You would view it positively.  But the atheist is the person who stands on solid ground and chooses to jump off into the abyss.  The point of jumping off an abyss is to fall to your probable destruction.  What could be more pathetic than jumping off an abyss and then pretending that you are not in fact falling to your doom?

Starchild:  What do you propose?

M.D.:  Obviously, it doesn't matter that you are falling to your doom.  We must cultivate apathy.

Starchild:  But aren't you rendering a moral judgment on your fellow atheists?

M.D.:  You fail to understand me.  Of course not.  What I propose is therapeutic.  I must address a point taken from Augustine's Confessions.  As you recall, Augustine underwent an intellectual conversion to Christianity.

Starchild:  Indeed.

M.D.:  Yet even after his intellectual conversion, he discovered something was missing.  That is to say, he intellectually assented to Christianity, but his praxis, his way of life, did not comport with his intellectual viewpoint.  He initially believed that the issue was merely a matter of intellectual belief, but in fact, as it developed, he discovered that his deficiency was not only intellectual but volitional as well.  Both his intellect and his will were defective. 

Starchild:  I don't see how this relates.

M.D.:  I think that the majority of atheists are akin to Augustine after his intellectual conversion but prior to his true conversion.  Atheists deny the existence of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful yet they fail to make their lives comport with the denial of the True, the Good and the Beautiful, other than refusing to capitalize these concepts.  Our praxis must be devoted to the destruction of truth, goodness and beauty on Earth.

Starchild:  And how would that be carried out?

M.D.:  Quite simply.  God is the principle by which all things in the universe possess being, goodness and intelligibility.  We must act in a way that is unintelligible, evil, and insures non-being.  That is to say, true atheism necessitates heinous and inexplicable crimes intended to maim, destroy and pervert life-itself.

Starchild:  I don't understand.

M.D.:  Starchild, do you have conscience?

Starchild:  Yes I do.

M.D.:  Does your conscience not advise you between wrong and right?

Starchild:  It does.

M.D.:  If God is the Good, then is not the voice of your conscience, when you are able to exercise clear discernment, nothing less than the voice of God?

Starchild:  Well, now that you mention it, that would seem to be so.

M.D.:  And given that the existence of God is a delusion, then you would agree that the voice and authority of your conscience is delusional?

Starchild:  I don't agree.  I think that the existence of God must be asserted as a logically primitive concept in our philosophy.

M.D.:  You are completely hopeless.  However, if you concede the premise, do you agree with the conclusion?

Starchild:  I am not certain.  You seem to be insisting that the voice of my conscience is the voice of God, yet I may not even have a concept of God and I might not even believe in God and still rely on my conscience.

M.D.:  But I defined God as the objective Good.  The source of the good, and the good, the end of human life.

Starchild:  Yes.

M.D.:   So if God does not exist, then there is no objective good, and there is no objective end of human life.

Starchild:  Yes.

M.D.:  So if my conscience is reliable, and reveals to me what is good, my conscience in some sense reveals to me the nature of God?

Starchild:  I suppose that follows.

M.D.:  Furthermore, what could reveal the nature of God to the human heart--if not God himself.

Starchild:  I suppose that is sensible.

M.D.:  This is not a time for puns.  You would agree with me that it is possible for something to happen to person without that person understanding or recognizing the source of the occurrence.  For example, you could receive a package in the mail, but not know who the package was from?

Starchild:  I could.

M.D.:  You could also receive a package in the mail from someone you believed (erroneously) had died.

Starchild:  I could.

M.D.:  Likewise, God could reveal his nature to you, even if you had no concept of God or even if you did not believe in God.

Starchild:  I suppose that is possible.

M.D.:  So I must return to my assertion:  the conscience is the voice of God.

Starchild:  I must agree.

M.D.:  Because God does not exist, then the "truth" of our conscience is, in fact, a lie, a delusion.

Starchild:  But your reasoning suggests that in fact God does exist, as manifested in his revelation in conscience.

M.D.:  Nonsense Starchild.  I told you that only efficient causes exist.  The True, the Good, and the Beautiful cannot be a physical entity and cannot act on another physical entity.  Its preposterous.  Further, there can be no valid proof of the existence of God.

Starchild:  I disagree.

M.D.:  That is because you are delusional.  But I will return to my therapeutic process.  We hear delusional voices that induce delusional beliefs in a so-called right and a so-called wrong.  How can we defeat a delusion?  Clearly, we can only defeat a delusional voice by denying the voice and defying the voice.  Thus, rationally speaking, we must embrace those things that our conscience revolts against, until slowly, over time, the voice of our conscience is silenced altogether.  In this way, we can give birth to a new humanity, free of God.

Starchild:  What you propose is horrific.

M.D.:  Starchild, let us not mince words.  As an atheist, as a matter of social convention, I must, of course, condemn the holocaust as an atrocity against humanity.  But as a scientist, I must recognize that what we conventionally consider to be millions of lives annihilated senselessly represents nothing more than the breakdown of a significant quantity of organic materials.  Furthermore, I have to consider the positives that the holocaust accomplished.  What theist who truly considers the horror and the anguish and the senselessness of the holocaust cannot in their hearts begin to question the existence of God?  Atheists have argued and inveighed against theism for centuries but have any of those arguments had more persuasive impact then the mere reality of Hitler's atrocious gesture.  Obviously, genocide is wrong, but can you imagine the numbers who would waiver in their faith or abandon religion altogether if in this new century a genocide on the order of one hundred million people could be brought about?  Consider the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church.  What are we talking about-some multiple of thousands of children in a world of billions--and yet millions have left the church as a result.  As an atheist, I would never publicly call for a genocide or for infiltrating religious institutions and perpetrating and covering up unspeakable acts against children.  Yet I would be remiss in not commenting on their utility to our cause. . .

Starchild:  You seem to be speaking out of both sides of your mouth.

M.D.:  Perhaps I should be clearer.  As a political program, non-being should be of the first priority.  The promotion of non-procreative sexual acts, abortion, and state-sanctioned suicide.  Perhaps an "ethical" argument could be made for euthanizing defective infants.  More ambitious goals will have to wait.  On the personal dimension, there must be personal growth.  You can see that senseless cruelty, torture, and murder are the keys to liberation.  We may be wretched clocks trapped in a meaningless universe, but we can become free of our conscience if we are willing to undertake the struggle.

Starchild:  I find your ideas completely repellent.

M.D.:  If you do, then I think you need to closely re-read Nietzsche.  Hume took atheism to one level.  Nietzsche took it to the next.  This century requires a new philosopher, one ready to take us beyond Nietzsche, one ready to articulate heroic immoralism.  Otherwise, atheism remains conceptually in a quagmire, trying to explain how a game which denies the existence of a king can ultimately be conceived as analogous to the game of chess.

Starchild:  But if you reject the notion of the good, how can you discover this therapeutic imperative?

M.D.:  I can say two things.  If we remain committed to the true, the good, and the beautiful, then we remain trapped in the performance of a liturgy devoted to the one God.  Our atheism remains only theoretical and, ultimately, false and hypocritical.  We claim we believe one thing but we live another way.  I offer the only true path for the liberation from slavery to God, which can be nothing less than the destruction of the true, the good and the beautiful.

Starchild:  But you speak of an imperative, and end of human life.  Is this not also a contradiction?

M.D.:  Starchild, as you know, absolute evil is impossible--it is a state of total non-being.  It is unfortunately impossible to manifest absolute evil and thus there can be no absolutely evil imperative in the world.  But the Good is the path that leads to God.  Thus, in order to refute God, we do not deny the good, we seek to pervert and corrupt the good.  We need a moral imperative, but a moral imperative informed by the rejection of God.  Thus, I can speak of an imperative, but the imperative is of one who seeks to supplant God, who seeks to be a god in himself or herself.  That is to say we must use the good as the means for the destruction of good, just as we must use lies to destroy the truth.  This statement is itself a true statement but it is stated with the intention of destroying truth itself.

Starchild:  But you speak of science as if it had the authority of truth behind it.  You clearly believe that science is based on some kind of objective truth.

M.D.:  Starchild, that is certainly something I might say in an appropriate context.  But let's consider the importance of science and technology in the accomplishment of the holocaust.  Would the holocaust have been possible without German engineering and science?  Could human beings eradicate themselves off the planet without nuclear weapons?  We can bracket out the question of truth, the question of God, and still see that science and technology provide us with a means for imposing our will on the world, just as we can use the language of morality to persuade others of our point of view.  But obviously, ultimately there remains only the fact of the will--and this is not a scientific fact, but a grammatical one.  And the only question is the orientation of the will:  toward something greater than itself, or defiance of a false authority.  And so you see that these grammatical artifacts--while not being somethings--certainly not empirical somethings--cannot ultimately be nothings either.  So we cannot truly say that something is at stake or that nothing is at stake.  At best we can say that our grammar is at stake.

Starchild:  I suppose on this last point I agree.  Yet even though "what is at stake" is ultimately beyond logical expression,I  should be inclined to say that something is at stake.

M.D.:  That comes as no surprise.  Likewise, I shall maintain that nothing is at stake.