On the one hand, you can’t know and can never know. On the other hand, c’mon, man: who else could it be? What does it take to convince you that physics is not, and can never be, complete or consistent, let alone self-explanatory. The cosmos is not -- word of the day -- autochthonous. Universes don’t just spring into existence out of nothing. Nevertheless,
It is easier to convince the fool of what is disputable than of what is indisputable.
No one says you have to believe in the Christian God, but at least acknowledge that massive God-shaped hole in your metaphysic.
Last night I caught a bit of a conversation between Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris, and even he turns out to be a poor excuse for an atheist -- rather, more of an unaligned vertical dabbler who is intelligent and affluent enough to go it alone without getting into too much trouble. For example, his wiki page says
Harris holds that there is "nothing irrational about seeking the states of mind that lie at the core of many religions. Compassion, awe, devotion, and feelings of oneness are surely among the most valuable experiences a person can have.
However,
Everything of value that people get from religion can be had more honestly, without presuming anything on insufficient evidence.
Really? Show me all those radically anti-theist saints, civilizations, cathedrals, and works of art. Our universities have all descended into theophobia. How’s that working out? Art has become drained of divinity. Must be fantastic!
Or maybe not:
When religion and aesthetics are divorced from each other, we do not know which is corrupted sooner.
And
We do not know whether in another world the devil punishes an irreligious society. But I see that here it is soon punished by aesthetics
I didn’t know much about Harris prior to hearing him last night, but like most popular atheists, his favorite debating tactic is to compare the worst of religion to the best of science, and also detach science from its Christian roots. The other tactic, like all liberals, is to hold religion responsible for things that result from human nature. Which is in turn a consequence of the denial of our fallenness, and of the rather pathetic material with which religion and grace have to work with.
Now, I myself have issues with some of the ins & outs of original sin, and we will hopefully straighten this out in the coming weeks. But irrespective of its cause, the empirical evidence is overwhelming that there is something wrong with human beings which they themselves cannot cure. Imagining otherwise has resulted in catastrophes that dwarf anything caused by "religion."
For example, imagine if all those secular monsters of the 20th century had based their political philosophies on a conception of man’s fallenness instead of an insane pride.
This is very much in contrast to America’s founders, who were all extremely skeptical of man and his works, to such an extent that they designed a government that would frustrate him at every turn. This is, of course, the very government the left has been undermining and trying to get around for the past 110 years.
Harris suggests building a civilization based on tangible things upon which we can all agree, which ends up being only those things immediately accessible to the most vulgar among us. Reptiles unite!
Just imagine, if you can stand it, if we were to hold a constitutional convention today in order to frame a new government. The horror. Being devoid of wisdom, the left does not know that
Political wisdom is the art of invigorating society and weakening the state.
Conversely, the political tyranny of the left is the ceaseless project of invigorating the state and abolishing man, the family, and civilization. For which reason my son has never set foot in a government indoctrination center.
But it’s remarkable how intelligent one can be and not know that
Men are divided into two camps: those who believe in original sin and those who are idiots.
Yes, intelligent idiots. Like ice cream with only a tincture of rat poison.
Modern history is the dialogue between two men: one who believes in God and another who believes he is a god.
Going back to what was said at the top, one needn’t even say “God,” rather, just recognize that one is displacing that God-shaped variable and attributing it to oneself, which is cosmic narcissism on stilts made of steroids. For in reality -- speaking of empiricism --
Mysticism is the empiricism of transcendent knowledge.
But
Man calls “absurd” what escapes his secret pretensions to omnipotence.
Naturally, Harris also doesn’t recognize the existence of free will:
the idea of free will "cannot be mapped on to any conceivable reality" and is incoherent. Harris writes that neuroscience "reveals you to be a biochemical puppet.”
But he’s a leftist, and as we all know by now,
Determinism is the ideology of human perversion
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