Love Is Not An Illusion. Rebutting Nihilism and Other Superstitions of Disembodied Atheism

[rug]

July 23, 2013
By Daniel Fincke

Sometimes when atheists dismiss the value of historically religious techniques for forming communities, identities, values, and beliefs, and react viscerally against ever adopting anything that resembles such techniques for themselves, I fear that a superstition, one eerily and ironically related to characteristically religious ones, is implicitly in play. In a strange sort of way, anti-religious atheists, like the religionists they oppose, can be susceptible to treating human minds as capable of magically functioning in a disembodied way.

When many religious and superstitious people talk about “spirituality” or about how they are personally “spiritual”, they mistakenly describe their supposed spirit as something curiously non-physical and immaterial. Ironically, even though they are insistent that it must be non-physical and radically different than the “crudely material stuff” that comprises the world of inanimate physical things, they implicitly seem to think of it as some sort of a “stuff” nonetheless. The “spirit” or the “soul” is misconceived as some sort of a ghostly ethereal intangible substance different and separable from hard tangible physical substance. But it is nonetheless a substantial thing which they imagine. So even though they feel like their conscious experience must be of a different kind of being than the material, they are still, in spite of themselves, quite often still materialists of a sort–just ones who believe in at least two different kinds of material existence. One natural, inanimate, perceptible to the senses, hard, and governed by mathematically understandable laws, and another one supernatural, ethereal, ungoverned by laws, ultimately untethered to this universe and known only introspectively and qualitatively.

In responding to these superstitions and philosophically confused reifications, there are several mistakes I think materialistic atheists are prone towards. When confronted with claims about immaterial spiritual souls or spiritual lives or practices, the first mistake is to imply that people’s experiences that they call “spiritual” are not “real”. “Spiritual” experiences are real events that happen in the real world. Superstitious reifications are just hastily (and with all sorts of cultural and religious encouragement) naively misinterpreting them as somehow evidence for something otherworldly or something which puts them in touch with otherworldly things. It is useless and sounds woefully psychologically ignorant to question whether they refer to something real when they talk about spiritual experiences. We do much better to engage them about what their real experience really indicates.

The parallel superstition among some atheists is a tendency to conceive of people as minds that respond to reason alone and that can only reason well if they are not being influenced bodily. The overly skeptical atheist mistakenly thinks that if she can understand the physiological processes that make an experience happen that somehow that experience is not only demystified as not supernatural, but is even proven to be an “illusion”. So if oxytocin is the chemical that causes me to feel trust then my feeling of trust is an illusion; it’s not really trust but a chemical tricking my brain! If participating in a ritualistic behavior in a group creates a feeling of psychological bond between me and my group then this feeling of closeness is an illusion. If lovers staring into each others’ eyes feel closer, they are tricking themselves into feeling an illusory closeness, etc., etc.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/camelswithhammers/2013/07/rebutting-nihilism-and-other-superstitions-of-disembodied-atheism/

[edhopper]

1. He has no idea what he is talking about.

Portraying atheist as emotionless automatons that don't understand or appreciate human interaction is laughable.
I love my wife, she loves me back ( at least all evidence, including her telling me confirms it)

People can have a great love for God. Atheist just understand that there is no God to love them back. The feelings are real.

[rug]

3. He's referring to "anti-religious atheists". He's an atheist himself.

More particularly, he's describing those that consider "people as minds that respond to reason alone".

[edhopper]

5. Though as an atheist and free thinker

I would like nothing better than for humanity to respond to reason.
There isn't a person I can think of who would consider that in any way true.

As i said, he has no idea what he is talking about.

[rug]

6. Reason does not preclude anything elkse he's said.

His criticism is of reason used as a jail cell.

[edhopper]

9. His characterization of how atheists regard emotion

is simply not true.
The whole basis of his essay is based on a false assumption.

[rug]

10. He's describing a particular subset.

[edhopper]

11. A subset I have never

heard or seen.
Strawman if you ask me.

[rug]

12. I see it here quite frequently.

I'll let you know next time it pops up.

[skepticscott]

14. If you see it here frequently

why not just link to 4 or 5 examples? Assuming that you can even define what it is he and you are talking about, which I doubt. As I also doubt that you can prove that reason functions as a jail cell for anyone based simply on the tiny little segment of their lives that you see here. But go ahead...be as predictably banal as we know you can be...

Just another "I'm an atheist, but..." hack. You must have a divining rod for them ruggie...or nothing else to do with your day.

[rug]

16. I'd rather not go through your old posts.

[skepticscott]

20. As predicted..right on cue.

Banal and without substance. Just like your OP, ruggie. Do you really live your life searching this stuff out? Please say you don't...

[rug]

21. Tell me, scottie, how long have you objected to reading articles by atheists?

You really should break out of your narrow, doctrinaire world view. It really takes no time.

[edhopper]

22. Maybe he just objecys to reading

articles by idiots.

[rug]

23. I doubt it. Water seeks its own level.

[skepticscott]

25. Wow...profound

But I'm sure your audience of one loves it...

[Jim__]

31. An idiot? Here's Fincke on an FtBConscience panel on critical thinking:

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="

?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


What is FtBConscience:

FtBCon is a free, online conference organized by the Freethought Blogs network. It will take place on July 19-21 and will focus on social justice, technology, and the future of the freethought movement. Without travel, registration, or hotel costs, FtBCon will be accessible to freethinkers around the world. Conference sessions will be held through Google+ hangouts, and attendees will have the opportunity to interact with each other in chat rooms and to submit questions to moderators.

We are currently assembling our schedule. If you or your organization are interested in participating, submit your session ideas for consideration by e-mailing PZ Myers with a proposal.

[edhopper]

32. It was wrong of me to call him an idiot

based only on this one essay, since i am not acquainted with other things he has said.
I should have said what he wrote here is idiotic, keeping my comments to the inane article at hand.

[mr blur]

30. Of course he does, even his fan club knows that.

What else can he do - post loads of stories about how the RCC is so "progressive" and in touch with modern reality? Even rug can't spend his life trying to defend the indefensible. Much easier to attack the people who don't share his delusions. Tedious, of course, but popular round here.

[edhopper]

17. Please do

I have never seen anyone claim humans respond to reason alone ans emotions are nothing but illusions.
Reason is a very good tool to engage people about the supernatural, but the premiss he lays out is ludicrous.

[rug]

18. Deal.

[skepticscott]

19. Strawmen up the wazoo

When confronted with claims about immaterial spiritual souls or spiritual lives or practices, the first mistake is to imply that people’s experiences that they call “spiritual” are not “real”.

Horseshit. And cited without a single concrete example...just pulled out of his ass. Telling someone that their near death experience is just a consequence of how their brain reacts under certain stresses is NOT the same as telling them that the "experience" wasn't real or that it cannot possibly be "spiritual" for them.

The parallel superstition among some atheists is a tendency to conceive of people as minds that respond to reason alone and that can only reason well if they are not being influenced bodily.

More horseshit...also flung at the wall without a single concrete example. I defy him to point to any atheist who conceives of people "as minds that respond to reason alone".

Hack. Hack. Hack. Too much horse puckey in this article to trash it all...but some are predictable in their fawning and uncritical praise.

[Champion Jack]

2. I thought love was like oxygen, You get too much, you get too high, Not enough and you're gonna die.

[rug]

4. Love is a battlefield.

[napoleon_in_rags]

7. It raises some really good points, I think the answers are in philosophical reform.

The whole matter vs. spirit/numina thing is a big problem. The materialist world view often makes a mistake related to determinism: While there is no logical inconsistency in assuming a world made of material, there is a logical inconsistency in assuming we see it as it is.

For instance, look at something by your screen, like a cup. Assume a material world view, what is happening? What's happening is that waves reflected from the cup are being translated into your nervous system, which are creating a brain state correlated with the cup. You experience this correlated brain state, not the actual cup.

So we need a set of assumptions that speak to reality as we experience it, a language comprehensive enough to describe the realm of numinous human experiences, but in no way contradictory with scientific reality. I'm convinced the right foundation is a philosophy that looks at the world in terms of information, but such thinking is in its infancy. Eventually though, we'll have a foundation powerful enough to look at the world in a new and more inclusive way.

[rug]

8. You're right. Existence is far from binary.

[backscatter712]

28. Fair point. I consider myself to be a physical materialist. I do not believe in the supernatural.

But yeah, there's the assumption that when a human being sees something, that in the person's head it's "What you see is what you get."

No. All sensory input is subject to interpretation by the mind. Two different minds getting images from the eyes of the same object will interpret that sensory input differently.

Is it a chair? Or is it a recliner? Is it red, or is it maroon? Is that a chair at all, or do you throw out the concept of "chair", and instead see it as a very large collection of molecules?

Is the Daily Show mere comedy? Or does it provide better news than the "real" news outlets (like FOX)?

If you want a mind trip, try reading Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation.

I googled, expecting to find an Amazon link, but I found the entire book in PDF.

https://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/baudrillard-simulacra_and_simulation.pdf

Here's the Amazon link anyways.

http://www.amazon.com/Simulacra-Simulation-The-Body-Theory/dp/0472065211

Then for an extra mind trip, rewatch the Matrix. As Neo would say, Whoa!

Welcome to the desert of the real!

[napoleon_in_rags]

29. Good stuff.

I think I've seen The Matrix like 24 times. Love it.

The tough part is this: Suppose we are both looking at a table, and I see a cup on it, and you see a hamster on it. One of us is hallucinating.

The less informed first response is for each of us to start lecturing the other on how he is wrong. But once awake to this universe of information, the first response is to acknowledge that we are both having different experiences of the same thing, which is actually a very important fact. (might one of us have been drugged, or is a magic trick at play?) But its not a fact that implies anything about what happens next: We can choose to start arguing with each other about how we are right, or we can treat it in a collaborative matter, as a mystery, and try to get to the bottom of it, or do many other things.

The new perception doesn't imbue us with any uncertainty, it just multiplies our options. We are stronger than before.

That's a point I'm making because that's a point that has to be made. Intelligence is having all those options the new view gives, and choosing the action to follow most likely to pay off. The dumb guy makes mistakes because he doesn't see all those different options.

PEace

[cbayer]

13. Fascinating, but complex, analysis.

We've ad this discussion here previously.

Clearly we all proceed with non-rational beleifs or filters or distortions being driven by things that can not be easily explained. Emotions may be able to be localized neurochemically, but the complexity and how each individual experiences and responds to this is so unique.

Do we want a world of Dr. Spocks? I don't.

[skepticscott]

15. Why am I not surprised

that you would find this fascinating, and fall down on your knees to worship it?

[okasha]

24. That was quick.

A "Burn the heretic!" post with the very first rsponse.

[skepticscott]

26. Typical of you to react that way

Last edited Fri Jul 26, 2013, 05:43 AM - Edit history (1)

But it was a really a "don't take this guy seriously because he's spouting nonsense" post. "Heresy" has nothing to do with it, unless you consider blatant falsehood "heresy". Who knows...maybe you do.

[backscatter712]

27. I wouldn't describe love as an "illusion". Maybe at the physical level, an information state.

But that doesn't make love unreal. Love and trust and all the things that form consciousness and the human condition are very real, and very powerful.