Solzhenitsyn: "The Soul & Barbed Wire"

This is nothing against Solzh, but that excerpt is gassy and vacuous. Solzh had vast ambivalence about most of the things that writer paints him as having been some simplistic exponent of: the rule of law rather than men; democracy; individual rights. (If anyone here hasn't read his Harvard address, you should do so.)

Also, just to return the ball across the net in a completely pre-ordained way: it's utter nonsense to say one can't have a moral, just society and a meaningful human life without "god." That's just a teddy bear superstitious people bring to bed with them at night to make them feel a little better about their increasingly untenable beliefs.

Ossicle. I've heard this claim before but have never seen an example of a just and moral society without God. To be sure, there is not a good historical example of a just and moral society with God which is why we talk about a fallen world and the Kingdom of God. However, it seems that all the officially athiest societies have been horrors visited on humanity. Do you know of some exceptions or is this claim just a teddy bear that you take to bed at night to comfort your superstitious soul in the hopes that you untenable belief may be true?

cossicle,

At the risk of igniting an old debate in response to your contention that morals exist with God, high-level atheist philosophers concede that if you're being an intellectually honest atheist, then you have to admit there's no basis upon which to claim one thing as being "moral" over another. The so-called herd instinct does not suffice, despite assurances we have received that it or DNA explains everything.

If you're going to take the view you've taken, then boldly go forth: If you're being an intellectually honest atheist you must admit that there's nothing actually wrong with raping someone upon the grounds of cold stars peering down at us in a universe where things just happen by blind chance. In fact, as has been pointed out by many people smarter than me, it's conceivable that rape could have evolved as a beneficial action for survival of the species.

Now certainly we can speak of "biological altruism," and it has been explicated. But I do not believe (and I may be wrong; please correct me if so) this is the same as saying someone wishes to be nice in the social sense we think of the word. Biological altruism may certainly apply to prairie dogs raising the alarm about predators, for instance, or human mothers breast-feeding their babies, or even a species sharing food among its fellow members, but it does not prevent prairie dogs from abandoning their young, cannibalizing babies, or from attacking one another.

Moral values cannot simply "exist" on some ethereal plane independently. They have to come from somewhere. And hypothetically, if they did "just exist" in some blank ethereal abstract plane, what obligation would I have to abide by them? Let us say that "justice" just exists. So? Why would I be compelled to be just?

As for living a meaningful life, now that is nonsense if you're being an intellectually honest atheist. Because under that paradigm, there is no meaning: "That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, are but the outcome of accidental collocation of atoms; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins -- all these things, are so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built." ~Bertrand Russell

To which I would add, why does Russell even mention a soul? Under the atheist paradigm there is no soul. So we can read Russell's words in an even more shadowed light if we are operating under an intellectually honest atheistic framework.

Do not misunderstand: Your original point is essentially that atheists can be good. I am not saying that a person cannot be good if they are an atheist. It's quite possible to disbelieve in God and still be a person who acts in moral ways that I, as a theist, will find morally agreeable (Paul Zachary's recent behavior comes to mind as the opposite of this). But while a person can be an atheist and act in good ways, that still does not address where the person gets a sense "goodness" from. From within oneself? But what if another human being has an entirely different definition?

In other words, there's a difference between apprehending the good, and where goodness itself comes from. And that's no fairy tale.

"cossicle" was a typo - sorry. But do read it if you have time. It's "long-winded" because these aren't arguments or discussions one can have with simplistic assertions. Perhaps someone else will come along and actually attempt to rebut what I've said.

Moral values cannot simply "exist" on some ethereal plane independently. They have to come from somewhere.

Moral evolution. Versus moral creationism. If you've seen children grow up, the first is a lot more plausible

And hypothetically, if they did "just exist" in some blank ethereal abstract plane, what obligation would I have to abide by them? Let us say that "justice" just exists. So? Why would I be compelled to be just?

The only choices we have are religionism or sociopathy? Have you actually given sociopathy a fair trial?

As for living a meaningful life, now that is nonsense if you're being an intellectually honest atheist.

Why? 'Meaningful' is easy. 'Ultimately Meaningful' is the tricky one.

I'm not sure that religion guarantees a life of ultimate meaning. If all goes well, you get incorporated into the Godhead. If you disbelieve or whatever, you don't. What's the true difference between the two? You end up a nonentity either way, i.e. any worldly notion of "meaningful" collapses.

Actually it's just as plausible to say that children -- and all humans -- become more aware of the Moral Law, and discover more facets of it as they grow in moral understanding, discovering rather than inventing moral values.

I accept the partial capitulation in what you say, but it is truly strange that The Moral Law (sic) only reveals that slavery, racism, xenophobia, etc. is sinful after millenia.

Ah, but you weren't reading all that carefully. First, let's be clear that your use of the word "religionism" is inaccurate at best, and perhaps an attempt at intellectually dishonest framing. The word means a pretended religious zeal.

No, I meant it in the simplest literal way- the attitude that a particular religion is ideologically true.

Second, by what objective basis can you call any behavior sociopathic? As I understand the term it refers to individuals who seem without conscience, driven to enact criminal, sexual, or aggressive impulses without quarter. Upon what grounds do you see this behavior as wrong?

Because of what it is defined as: destructive of society.

Third, you've set up a false dichotomy. I had already said it is possible for an atheist to know about goodness and act in accord with that knowledge. There's a distinction between knowing the good, the right, the just and so on -- and where goodness actually comes from.

Well, your statement contained the assumption that goodness/justice is only a matter of (religious) obedience or rebellion. That itself was the false dichotomy I expanded upon. It assumes nonautonomy of conscience, that's the fallacy in it.

You're talking about the difference, actually, between subjective meaning and objective meaning. Atheists, in fact any of us, can find subjective meaning -- such as that you're going to be an artist, or doctor, or crusading lawyer, and that's what you'll "do" with your life. But this is truly meaningless in the vast darkness of an intellectually honest atheist's universe. Any subjective meaning you find or build is simply illusory and "destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system."

It's a humble meaning, sure.

Objective meaning or purpose is, in the words of Solzhenitsyn: "Since [man's] body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature.

This is pure assertion. What is there objective about it?

It cannot be unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it."

I'm not sure what an atheist objection to that would be, other than disagreement with the adequacy or particular meaning of the word "moral".

And Solz is referring to this in the context of knowing, loving and being loved by God. Moral growth. Growing into what is already there, and what has already been planted in the heart. Hope for the flowers!

Well, you and "Solz" enjoy the flowers you see for what they are, and the atheist will do likewise for those s/he sees. :-)

Sorry folks, I have a life outside the comboxes, so I'm just coming back to this a bit late.

Yes, John, eat, drink and be merry (in fact, I've had a little wine this evening, so I am indeed merry). Live while you live, huh? Not much of a rallying cry, actually. Live it up! Okay, fine. But what's your definition of living it up? Why is painting a painting any better than, well, let's go back to an older example, stomping on baby ducks? What if someone gets an innate thrill, and feels so gloriously alive by stomping on baby ducks? Why deprive him? How marvelous both paintings and baby duck stomping are in the short time-space frame we live in! For that matter, rape pillage and burn. Isn't that living too? A nebulae or the Newark airport. Same difference in the atheist world view, if you're really being honest.

Jillian, I don't have the time or inclination to get into a protracted discussion about this, but it does seem to me you don't have the stomach for the moral nihilism inherent in unvarnished, completely honest atheism.

"...it is truly strange that The Moral Law (sic) only reveals that slavery, racism, xenophobia, etc. is sinful after millenia."

Yes, I would agree that reality is truly strange and often a mystery to us. It has been called the problem of human finitude. But to your specific point, this isn't even a true proposition. These things have always been wrong under the objective Moral Law.

Your discomfort with the stark moral nihilism that is at the heart of atheism is revealed pretty starkly in your need to resort to the false set up of thinking that your choices are either "religionism" or sociopathy. And incidentally, your "meaning" for life isn't merely "humble" - it's hollow and empty. There is no meaning to it, despite John's fairly hollow attempt to cry back at the black void.

"No, I meant it in the simplest literal way- the attitude that a particular religion is ideologically true."

No Jillian, the primary definitions for that word are exaggerated religious zeal or pretended religious zeal. Now if you're using a tertiary definition of the word I'm not aware of, fine. But you need to be more clear (or less sophistic). I've not brought up any specific religious obedience or any specific religion in this discussion, you have. We were talking about atheism compared to theism, ethics, metaphysics, the question of whether objective moral values can exist without God, and so on. Religion had not entered into it. You brought that into it. The false dichotomy is yours alone.

My use of the Solz quote is indeed an assertion. You are welcome to refute it. You have not. I would say again that we are not free (as much as we might want to rage against this truth) to find our "own meaning." There is an objective means to happiness and there is a path away from it. But on the grounds of no objective moral values (not, let me repeat, values that "just exist") one could argue for a vast array of potential routes to happiness, including raping pillaging and burning.

I also note you have not attempted to rebut any of the comments I've made about the behavior of prairie dogs, the differences between biological altruism (and its limits) versus altruism as we conceive of it among noble humans, how hearts can become hardened against the Moral Law, the true story of "godless societies" already told, the idea that rape could easily be beneficial to the survival of the species, the difference between knowing good and the existence of objective goodness itself, or your brethren (I take it) Bertrand Russell's baldly honest assessment of the frankly bleak world view both of you share.

"I'm not sure what an atheist objection to that would be, other than disagreement with the adequacy or particular meaning of the word 'moral.'"

Then please be more clear Jillian. What did you have in mind besides "moral"? Useful? Efficient? What?

Hope for the flowers is a reference to a fairly well-known book, a bit of a joke. Hoped you might get it.

Finally, since you brought up sociopathy, let's contemplate some serious questions: What do you argue to a person who says "I know that what I do is meaningless. At the end of it, I'm just a meaningless lump of accidentally animated matter on a third rock from a dying star. Nothing I do -- whether I spend my few years of randomly animated consciousness saving lives as, say, a doctor, or whether I choose to take lives as a serial murderer -- matters. So I choose to be a serial murderer. It seems to me a pleasurable thing to do. Slave morality matters not to me."

What would you say to that person to prevent them from carrying through with that course of action, and why would you bother? I'm afraid "destructive of society" doesn't cut it as an adequate argument. What if the sociopath simply disagreed that this particular society had any value, and further that it needed to be destroyed, and that he was prepared to make a better one upon the ashes of the old upon his terms? And by adopting a rape pillage and burn credo that was pleasurable and advantageous to him, could anyone really honestly argue this would somehow threaten the species?

I supposed if a sociopath had nuclear weapons (as Ahmadinejad soon will) one might make the argument that it could potentially threaten the survival of the species. But what if said sociopath simply wanted to threaten destruction for his own gain? How could that possibly threaten survival? And why would it be wrong? Wouldn't he simply be the ultimate alpha male with desirable traits of assertiveness and ambition, etc? If he could contain his urges within a certain framework, would he not indeed ensure the survival of the species in a unique and powerful way, in his way on his terms, and damn yours?

Under your paradigm, I say let's let him have a go at it. After all, that's certainly living it up while living, isn't it? What could be the harm, simply in the sense of meaningless mutations and the progress of particles under the gaze of cold stars? What do you say?

You'll have to do better than it's "destructive" (on whose terms?) or, even weaker, hurtful. Our sociopath superman would simply say, "Too bad."

Posted by: Houghton | August 8, 2008 12:47 AM

Well Houghton, all I can say at this point is that I am relieved that you believe that God exists and that you have an obligation to live as He commands.

I shudder to think what crimes and atrocities you might be committing without that restraining influence.

But on the grounds of no objective moral values (not, let me repeat, values that "just exist") one could argue for a vast array of potential routes to happiness, including raping pillaging and burning.

A nicely succinct statement of the Stalinist categorical imperative. Solzhenitsyn addresses this in his Prussian Nights, composed and memorized in the Gulag.

the idea that rape could easily be beneficial to the survival of the species

Not merely an idea. The Roman state was founded on the rape of the Sabine women. Fratricide and Rape as foundational myths.

The moral vacuum of nihilism and atheism Baudelaire depicts in his De profundis clamavi

J'implore ta pitié, Toi, l'unique que j'aime,
Du fond du gouffre obscur où mon coeur est tombé.
C'est un univers morne à l'horizon plombé,
Où nagent dans la nuit l'horreur et le blasphème;

I implore thy mercy, Thee, the only one I love,
From the bottom of the black abyss where my heart has fallen
It is a bleak universe with a leaden horizon
Where horror and blasphemy swim in the night.

De profundis clamavi (Psalm 129)

Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD.
Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.
If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?
But [there is] forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.

We need God because we need to be forgiven. And to forgive.

"Regarding the sociopath who wants to destroy and remake society, the members of existing society, again, will restrain that individual and prevent these schemes."

And if they don't have the power do so so, a la, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Ceaucescu, Hoxha.....?

And if they don't have the power do so so, a la, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Ceaucescu, Hoxha.....?
Posted by: Rob G | August 8, 2008 9:55 AM

Then it would be advisable to leave that person's area of control and find someplace else to live.

The point is precisely that the moral nihilism of atheism has no adequate argument either to tell someone to be good, or to tell someone to stop being bad.

Sure we do - living in a 'good' way benefits society. You seem to find that argument inadequate. I don't.

"In a society where serial murder is held to be a bad thing..."
But why is it held to be a bad thing. Upon what objective grounds do you make that delineation?

Serial murder de-stabilizes society. Again, you've rejected the argument of social benefit. I think it is adequate to justify restrictions on serial murder.

And in your second response, you reveal the only thing moral nihilism can conceivably come up with to stop bad behavior (even though you still haven't been able to answer why it is "bad") - namely, a physical struggle for power.

I will counter that physical struggle for power is, in practice, how religiously - based societies stop bad behavior.

The problem with this is obvious: a group of people may surround the sociopath (in fact this has happened) and decide his vision is correct. In which case, it will come down to whichever side has a combination of luck and the bigger arsenal.

You are correct. And what was it that determined whether the Iberian peninsula would be Islamic or Christian? Competitive prayer?

If the sociopath and his minions win or lose, you still haven't shown why they were bad.

I wasn't aware that I was required to do so.

And the black void of space continues to stare down upon you.
Posted by: Houghton | August 8, 2008 9:55 AM

Yes, magnificent, isn't it?

And if one hasn't the means or wherewithal to do so, what, tough shit?

Well, yeah, pretty much. How much 'means' does it take to pick a direction and start walking?

John, you're being either evasive or dense. The question is, how do you even know what "good" is, given a materialist, determinist universe?

"Good" is that which leads to the survival of humanity concomitant with the greatest amount of freedom for individual humans, balanced with the need for a stable society.

Why is the destabilization of society an evil? On what grounds do you even make that determination?
Posted by: Rob G | August 8, 2008 10:59 AM

It is self-evident. Or, if you prefer, axiomatic.

I know this is going to come as a shock, but there are some people who might disagree with that definition.

I don't want to sound flippant, but all I can say in response to that is "okay, so what?"

"Are you saying that a stable society is self-evident as a good, or that " the good" itself is self-evident?"

A stable society balanced with individual freedom is a self evident good.

Houghton, you are making up a straw man, calling it 'the atheistic world view' and knocking it around.

I hope it is good exercise for you, but I don't think you are accomplishing anything very productive.

You sound like a thoughtful individual who has perhaps embraced ideas from the "virtuous pagans." I don't know for sure, obviously, but the tagline of "agnostic stoic" would seem to indicate that.

Well, yes, I like to think so.

Here is what I find frustrating about your arguments - a disinclination to acknowledge that a person or society can be disinclined to believe in an ultimate, external source of morality, but yet can hold axiomatic beliefs that lead, by reason, to behavior that is functionally identical to that based on 'revealed morality.

Here is an example:

And John, I'm not sure upon what grounds you decide freedom is somehow necessary in your definition. It isn't at all necessary to humanity's survival. Neither, frankly, is a stable society.

It is my axiom that freedom is better than non-freedom and stability is better than instability.

I use reason to argue that people live longer and have healthier lives in stable societies (acknowledging that I've implied another axiom - that long, healthy lives are to be preferred over short, unhealthy lives).

I also use reason to argue that in a free society, people have a vested interest in society's stability and society does not have to expend resources that would be required to control an un-free populace.

Under the atheist paradigm, humans have no intrinsic value. We are just animated meat, an accidental lump of something no different from a pile of cattle dung.

Here is another reason why I suggest that you are making straw-man arguments about the atheistic world view. There is only one thing you can say for certain about an atheistic world view - that there is a belief that there is no Deity. These these other statements you've made are simply your claims about what you believe must necessarily derive from an unbelief in Deity.

One can choose axioms, such as a secular humanistic world view, that is compatible with atheism, but still gives intrinsic value to humans.

Under the atheistic world view (perhaps your world view?) WWII - the struggle between evil fascism and good democracy - was nothing more than the struggle between two ant hills. It matters little in the materialist universe whether the red ants win or the black ants win.

Again, another example of your assertions about atheism that are not inherent in the definition of atheism. One can disbelieve in a Deity, but still prefer that the Allies defeat the Axis Powers. One could make that decision based on national chauvinism or a preference for democratic government.

As someone who also used to be an atheist, then an agnostic stoic (a great admirer of Marcus Aurelius), then later a theist, I know you'll find Truth, because you're already on the road toward it. Keep on that road.
Posted by: Houghton | August 10, 2008 12:18 AM

Thank you.