Reviewing Randal Rauser’s “The Swedish Atheist” Chapter 27
Chapter 27: God Is Dead and You Have Killed
Him, Et Cetera[1]
With only five chapters left to
go I am feeling like it’s off to the races. The only problem is, having covered
over 80% of the book, I’m not expecting any grand revelations (or perhaps I
should say grande revelations).
Sheridan tells Randal that
meaning is, essentially, whatever we make it. Randal says, quite skeptically I
might add, that that’s an interesting perspective to have. Randal then
declares:
“By rejecting God you also reject both goodness and meaning.”
Wait, just wait, he’s getting to it. You picky
readers, always demanding your justification and your substantiation.
Just hold your horses, I say. Randal isn’t one to disappoint either. He comes
up with a lot of excuses to justify not having any real justification in the
first place for the things he says.
Take what he says next, for example.
“In an atheist view of the world, there are no absolute ‘shoulds’ or ‘oughts’: no concerns necessarily take priority over any others. Ultimately all people are free to make their own meaning…”
For some reason, I think Richard Mrvyn Hare would
disagree. Even an atheist could technically derive ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’ from
moral considerations. Hare was a renowned moral philosopher who helped expand
the area of ethics known as prescriptivism. His analyses of the notion of
commendation, and of universalizability in ethics, remain landmarks in how we
think about the nature of moral judgments. It’s worth noting that ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’
are prescriptive in nature, so it would perhaps do us some good to keep Hare’s
form of prescriptivism in mind here.
Although, whether Randal is unaware of Hare or
simply dismisses him as Randal holds to an agent-centered morality, I do not
know. It may be both.
Randal, not one to pass up dramatic flair however,
goes on to add:
“That’s the downside of all your autonomy.”
Really? The downside of atheist autonomy is that we
give meaning to the world? That’s a strange thing to view as a “downside” to
anything, if you ask me.
Randal isn’t done though. Far
from it.
“The crucial question is whether atheism has the resources to provide objective meaning for our lives…”
I would like to stop Randal here
and mention that he is making a categorical mistake of confusing atheism for a
belief system unto itself. It’s not. Therefore it is simply common sense that
it will not be equipped with the resources for providing objective meaning.
That goes without saying.
Instead of defining atheism by
what it’s not, an irony of ironies, we might look to see what else an atheist
may believe apart from their atheism. Are they a humanist? A rationalist
perhaps? A free thinker? In other words, atheists may have the resources to
provide objective meaning for their lives, contrary to what Randal may believe.
Although, atheism not being a belief system, these resources would come from
outside of atheism not from within.
Speaking about atheists, Randal
explains that
“Since you deny a personal cause to the universe, you’re committed to the view that human beings came from nothing, by nothing and, most importantly, for nothing.”
We came from the universe, did we not? But that doesn’t mean we can’t
make much ado about nothing, now, does it?
Really, what Randal is getting at
is the Christian idea that in order to have meaning you have to have a sense of
purpose. And if there is no purpose, how could there be any real sense of
meaning?
This ignores the entire branch of
epistemology that I am concerned with, called constructivism. Basically
constructivism is the idea that we create knowledge and assign meaning to
things as a type of construction. We literally construct our knowledge and
meaning from the ground up.
Now without getting into too much
detail, it seems that constructivism is extremely well supported, especially in
how it relates to modern learning theory. So to even imply that meaning can
only exist with a prior purpose to supply it, one would have to account for the
counter-intuitive discoveries that we have made in the area of constructivism
which seems to show this is not at all the case.
On a different note, why couldn't we
find our own purpose and/or meaning in life?
It seems that our desires could,
in point of fact, supply us with purpose enough. If I love gazing up at the
stars, why couldn’t my desire to see more beautiful stars give me the purpose
of becoming an astronomer. Then as I work toward fulfilling my purpose, based
on what makes me happy, I can find meaning in the joy and contentment of
stargazing and the success of becoming an astronomer. That would be purpose enough,
I should think.
The question is, why wouldn’t
this purpose be good enough to supply meaning to my life if that’s the life I
desire to have?
I don’t think Randal has any good objection here, because in my
experience, most apologists take it for granted that there ought to be an
underlying purpose to life and without this purpose, well, they simply are at a
loss for words—probably because they haven’t given it the necessary amount of
thought it requires to talk about such matters in depth.
Randal quizzes Sheridan on
whether or not we can build a meaning for our lives that is sufficient.
“Is it adequate to say simply that we all ‘write our own stories,’ with the addendum that hopefully not too many of us write stories of cannibalism, rape or serial murder?”
I’d like to think so. The
question is, why wouldn’t an individual narrative that supplies meaning be
adequate? Adequate to whose standards? Randal’s? Some imaginary God’s? Why is
it important to have an objective meaning or purpose? That is not at all clear.
Moving along, Reverend Randal continues to
preach.
“We need meaning in our lives—and if there is none, if ultimate reality is indifferent to our existential plight, then we’ll tend to project meaning onto the universe in an attempt to make meaning where none exists.”
That’s precisely what
constructivists like myself hold, that we do indeed project meaning in an
attempt to make meaning where none exists.
Again, we have to ask, why is that not satisfactory?
Whether we create the meaning ourselves, or it was already there, really doesn’t
suggest either way why we should prefer meaning to have been there beforehand. In otherwords, we must wonder, is it a necessary condition to pressupose meaning?
Randal claims this is a tragic
self-delusion, because either way, “our fate is to be food for worms.”
Actually, he has pulled another
sleight of hand. Creating meaning where there isn’t any is not a form of
delusion.
A delusion is an idiosyncrasy in how we perceive the world—often
arising when we hold a belief that can be demonstrably contradicted by reality
or rational argument (ODE, 2005).
Creating a meaning for ourselves
is an idiosyncrasy in the same way preferring chocolate ice-cream over vanilla ice-cream
is an idiosyncrasy. In other words, writing our own narrative and supplying it
with meaning has nothing to say on whether there is an ultimate meaning apart
from our idiosyncrasies. Let me go back to the ice-cream analogy for a moment
to better clarify. Just because there are different flavors of ice-cream doesn’t
have anything to say on whether or not there is an ultimate flavor of ice-cream,
or more precisely, whether there ought to be. And why should there be?
But idiosyncratic meaning, to
call it that, is not a delusion. In order to say that, we’d have to assume
liking chocolate ice-cream more than any other flavor is a delusion. Or to
think of it another way, putting meaning into the world doesn’t contradict the
fact that the universe may ultimately prove to be without an objective meaning.
Realizing this, we can safely say
that we create meaning where there isn’t any, and that’s not a contradiction
any more than creating a fire to stay warm when it is cold is a contradiction.
Consider that coldness is merely
an absence of heat. The heat of the flame doesn’t contradict the cold, it is merely
a different degree on the same scale because both hot and cold are simply measures
of temperature.
I would argue the same is true
with meaning. We supply meaning, thereby altering the meaningless universe by
making it into a meaningful one—just as the heat of the flame alters the
coldness to make warmth. Meaning and no meaning thus can be viewed as measures
of purpose in the same way hot and cold are measures of temperature.
At least, that’s my take on it.
But Randal obviously hasn’t given it much thought, as he has seemingly already
reached the conclusion he likes best—the “Because God” conclusion which
apologists like to use for every single argument they have. It strikes me as somewhat
an overly lackadaisical bout of thinking. If you don’t understand how it could
be otherwise, simply invoke God.
That sort of thing may be good
enough for the religious apologist, but it shouldn’t be good enough for us
(namely anyone who cares about these issues and wants to give them their best
consideration).
Randal moves onto to discuss one
of my all time favorite philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche. Quoting from Nietzsche’s
The Gay Science (1882), Randal
fixates on the passage that end with Nietzsche pondering:
“Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing?”
Addressing Sheridan, Randal
states:
“That’s the reality of a godless universe as Nietzsche sees it… There is no meaning or purpose in the world to guide our lives or restrict which stories are good ones since there is no ‘good’ to judge our stories beyond our own particular preferences… Without God, everything changes: morality, meaning, everything.”
Well, in actuality that’s more of Randal projecting his understanding onto Nietzsche rather than doing a proper
deconstruction of what Nietzsche might have meant, which is what many
apologists do who have only given Nietzsche a cursory read and haven’t understood
him well enough.
According to professor of
philosophy Robert Wicks of the University of Auckland, regarding the issue of
Nietzsche’s proclamation that God is dead, he informs:
“Nietzsche’s atheism — his account of “God's murder” (section 125) — is a reaction to the conception of a single, ultimate, judgmental authority who is privy to everyone’s hidden and personally embarrassing secrets. His atheism also aims to redirect people’s attention to their inherent freedom, the presently-existing world, and away from escapist, pain-relieving, heavenly otherworlds.”[2]
Contrary to what Randal affirms,
Nietzsche wasn’t saying that things change without God. What Nietzsche was
saying is that things change because
of God. And since Nietzsche didn’t think God existed, he contended that the purpose and meaning of the theist could only be a type of delusion.
Many apologists will claim Nietzsche
was arguing for a kind of nihilism. But this is the opposite of what he was
doing. In his work On the Genealogy of Morals, A Polemic (1887) Nietzsche
maintains that the traditional ideals set forth as holy and morally good within
Christian morality are products of self-deception. He further expounds on his
critique in Beyond Good and Evil.[3]
In Untimely Meditations (1876) Nietzsche informs:
“We are responsible to ourselves for our own existence; consequently we want to be the true helmsman of this existence and refuse to allow our existence to resemble a mindless act of chance.”[4]
Coming back to The Gay Science, Nietzsche informs us
that
“Whatever has value in our world now does not have value in itself, according to its nature — nature is always value-less, but has been given value at some time, as a present — and it was we who gave and bestowed it.”[5]
Perhaps Randal should have read
his Nietzsche more carefully. Of course, this misconstrual of Nietzsche is also stereotypical of the
religious apologist. If you don’t understand Nietzsche, just invoke God!
Randal closes the chapter by reiterating:
“[M]y argument is that atheism can’t provide the metaphysical ground for the objective meaning that we recognize does in fact exist and that imbues our lives with significance and direction.”
As for Randal’s so-called
argument, he really hasn’t made one. All he has done, technically speaking, is
make the unsupported claim that virtue and meaning cannot exist apart from God,
and then he gave a couple of really bad analogies that didn’t get him anywhere.
He then concludes that atheism cannot provide meaning.
Franlky, this has to be one of
the worst arguments I’ve ever heard. But it just goes to show you, if it’s too
difficult to formulate a real argument, the religious apologist will just claim
the other side fails to answer any of their objections while claiming their
position answers all of them, then without giving any explanation as to how
their side answers these objections they preemptively declare victory.
In chapter 28, “What Does God
Taste Like?” Randal declares:
“It’s more important to know whether we’re in relationship with God than to know that we believe the right things about God.”
As you probably have guessed, in
the next chapter we’re going to learn about how to have a relationship with
God! Oh, goody.
[1]
The pedantic in me has to wonder why Randal used the British spelling of
etcetera here. It’s no big deal, but seems slightly out of place, especially
considering how much colloquial American dialog he is using in this book.
[2]
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, retrieved December 8, 2013. Available
online at:
[4]
R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), p. 128.
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