JANUARY 1998 DECLARATION OF ATHEISM



I: Introduction
Introduction ... Resignation from Federal Government
A Review of 1996-97 & The Mirror

II: Atheism
Introduction & The Madman ... Reason & Self ... The Poison as the Cure
God is a State of Self-Imposed Exile ... The Autonomy of Man
An Alternative Angle ... Summary

III: Famous Quotes on Atheism
Page 1 ... Page 2 ... Page 3 ... Page 4
Does It Matter Whether Theism Is Reasonable?

IV: Confucianism
Page 1 ... Page 2 A Treatise On Death ... Page 3

V: Friedrich Nietzsche
Quotations

VI: Ayn Rand
Article: Philosophy and Sense of Life

VII: Closing Comments
Closing comments




Section I: Introduction

January 12, 1998

Re: A Resume … To Life!

Dear Gary,

Once again I pick up my electronic pen and set out to write the year in review! I started something with my last letter to you, -- I don't think I could manage not to concretize months twelve through twenty-eight as the first letter proved to be such a valuable summary and self-written guide for me during year two. It's been one hell of a ride -- fiery and tempestuous, bittersweet at times -- and yet, now I can reflect upon it all with a kind of silent satisfaction. … T minus 8 months, and counting …

This third year of adventure back on North American soil has begun with me shifting into overdrive -- financially and intellectually. I must admit, I am still somewhat stunned at how things have progressed, especially with my Paper -- as the opening "An Argument for the Existence of God -- Deleted September 21, 1997" so candidly reveals.

An abstract of Year Two: Paper Two has been retired, and Paper Three has been born. Atheism has me in firm grasp, with that hold getting tighter as days push into weeks -- no more running to the poison for the cure. A two page Letter of Resignation written, condemning the Canadian Bill of Rights and Canadian concept of government. Internet romances flourished, but could not survive an August first deadline. The North American Indian lifestyle acknowledged, evaluated, and criticized by me for the first time in seven years. Nathaniel Branden takes over from Ayn Rand as representative of the ideal human being -- a clear case, in my mind, of a pupil surpassing the teacher. Two pterodactyls killed, a new line of work, and the model resume being written. Stock market woos and woes, -- what a rage! And is Bangkok, Hong Kong, or Seoul to be the first Asian destination en route to introducing and enticing Chinese intellectuals to embrace Laissez-faire Capitalism? Smith for England, Mises for Austria, Rand for America, Wade for China! To impregnate the Confucian rationalist with individualism. Ah, yes … China's rebirth, i.e., Renaissance, long overdue …

I need to live life
Like some people never will …

Spread before me is my soul
I'm learning to live
I won't give up
Till I've no more to give.

Through nature's inflexible grace
I'm learning to live.


Resignation

I'll start the history as it is recorded, at the beginning of Journal 53, and stuck smack dab in the suffocating goo of the Federal government ranks. It had taken me only a month from my hiring on with Public Works and Government Services Canada (August 6, 96) to write the first explicit entry (September 10) detailing the conflicts of conscience I came to have with my employment. By mid-November, my first Letter of Resignation had been drafted. It was to sit on my shelf until February 97. By February I had exhausted all my energies in the attempt to gain a value, my wages, at the expense of a value, my mind. The only logical resolution to this most malicious form of denial: acknowledging and asserting, once again, the supremacy of Self. My Resignation opens with an Ayn Rand excerpt (69-70, The Virtue of Selfishness):

"A "compromise" (in the unprincipled sense of that word) is not a breach of one's comfort, but a breach of one's convictions. A "compromise" does not consist of doing something one dislikes, but of doing something one knows to be evil. …
The excuse, given in all such cases, is that the "compromise" is only temporary and that one will reclaim one's integrity at some indeterminate future date. … But … one cannot achieve the victory of one's ideas by helping to propagate their opposite. … If one found it difficult to maintain one's loyalty to one's own convictions at the start, a succession of betrayals -- which helped to augment the power of the evil one lacked the courage to fight -- will not make it easier at a later date, but will make it virtually impossible.
There can be no compromise on moral principles."

and continues:

For months, slowly discerning the true nature of this arrangement (Crown employee housing), I have sat in a state of suspended judgment, viciously torn between not wanting to relinquish my income (and the achievement of my future ambitions) for the sake of an idea -- which is: Justice. But now, seven months later, I have come to realize, at this stage of my intellectual development, that I cannot achieve that which I value at the expense of that which I value. In other words, I cannot achieve my life's goals and happiness at the cost of my mind and self-esteem. I cannot achieve that which I hold as the right while doing that which I understand to be the wrong. I cannot achieve the good with evil. The end does not justify the means.
Yes, it is true that I value the money I earn while working -- but money can only be a legitimate value to me when I am convinced that what I am doing is right; when the money is, figuratively speaking, clean. I find that many men and women can live with a murky philosophy of life -- ideas which are never to be defined -- thoughts which are never to be pursued to their 'logical terminus'. I cannot live this way. I cannot suspend my judgment -- I cannot turn off my mind -- I cannot live in a state of moral agnosticism -- and expect to enjoy my life as a rational, responsible, and dignified human being. I cannot lobotomize myself in the attempt to achieve my life ambitions. I refuse to sanction what I know to be an evil -- and Crown Housing, this arrangement and violation of individual rights by law, is such an evil.

In sum (an August 97 letter):

The "conflicts" I had with my Public Works job finally came to a close February 26, 1997. This was the day when I said to myself, and stated publicly, that my integrity (to my concept of what is Right) is worth more to me than my bankbook and job security; that nothing is more sacred to me than an idea -- which is, in this case, Justice (i.e., individual rights). I handed in my resignation that day, with the explanation that I could no longer continue to work in the position without having to live in a state of 'moral agnosticism,' i.e., suspending the use of my rational faculties (my mind). I resigned on the grounds that housing provided for Crown employees is an illegitimate function of government and a violation of the individual's rights to his/her own life. As this low-cost housing is predominantly operated on taxed money, I think it to be wrong. In essence: No man or woman has the right to live at another human being's expense. The State does not have the right to re-distribute individuals' wealth as politicians and government workers see fit.

On March 11 I walked out of a job and a paycheck, hit the streets of Yellowknife, began rummaging through the want ads in the newspapers, doing resume / interview research in the library, and making phone calls. Upon my second interview, I began working full time, being hired on with a company that provides cable television services. I am pleased with this shift in employment, glad to have left the demoralizing environment of Canadian government. While I have the tendency to be anti-union (this has yet to be put in explicit terms), and I am astonished at the extent the Federal government regulates the communications industry, at least I can justify the organization and it's services as legitimate, one that does not amount to a dishonorable violation of my personal philosophy. So, on the professional front, things have settled somewhat for me. I began my new job on April 4, 1997, … and I think I will be staying with this position until my time expires here in September 98.


A Review of 1996-97 & The Mirror

As for my Paper and intellectual pursuits, a downtrend in overall enthusiasm began immediately after my departure from the department of Justice. Having reached a new height in the presentation and organization of my Paper at the end of July 96, once the move to Public Works occurred I no longer had all the wonderful office toys (i.e., copiers, printers, programs) to continue the upward, exalted synthesis. In place of a much needed and desired growth developed a frustrating recession; a disintegration of spirit; listlessness.

Lacking a creative release (August - December 96), the moral conflicts of my new job (August 96 - March 97), combined with stock market pursuits (April 96 - July 97), the idle hours spent on the Internet (October 96 - July 97), and sterile alcohol ventures (March 97 - July 97) -- by mid-summer I knew I needed some serious revitalizing.

So come July, with my energies spread way too thin, I decided to shut everything down and return to complete solitaire. Selling off my stocks, shutting down the Internet, and slamming the door on the social scene, … I began rebuilding.

"I'm expending too much energy on external items … items that are external to my reading, writing, and thinking. In short, it's time to pull all my attention back unto myself."

"… no more Internet … no more 'going out,' … no more stock market … no more 'friends'. Just me."

And the musical composition that nursed me back to health? Nothing less than Dream Theater's The Mirror. A masterpiece symphony and my inspiration for 1997 …

Temptation
Why won't you leave me alone?
Lurking Every Corner, everywhere I go
Self Control
Don't turn your back on me now,
When I need you the most.
Constant pressure tests my will,
My will or my wont.
My Self-control escapes from me still

Hypocrite
How could you be so cruel,
and expect my faith in return?
Resistance
Is not as hard as it seems,
When you close the door.
I spent so long trusting in you,
I trust you forgot,
Just when I thought I believed in you
It's time for me to deal,
Becoming all too real,
living in fear …
Why did you lie and pretend?
This has come to an end,
I'll never trust you again.
It's time you made your amends,
Look in The Mirror my friend …

(voices --)
male: "I haven't behaved as I should"
female: "Everything you need is around you. The only danger is inside you"
male: "I thought you could control life, but it's not like that. There are things you can't control"

Let's stare the problem right in the eye,
It's plagued me from coast to coast.
Racing the clock to please everyone,
All but the one who matters the most.
Reflections of reality
Are slowly coming into view.
How in the hell could you possibly forgive me?
After all the hell I put you through.
It's time for me to deal,
Becoming all to real,
Living in fear …
Why'd I betray my friend?
Lying until the end,
Living life so pretend,
It's time to make my amends,
I'll never hurt you again …!

Dream Theater (Album: Awake, 1994)


Section II: Atheism

Introduction & The Madman

Without hesitation, or a doubt, the most exceptional change in my philosophy (world view) since my last letter to you is the denial of a God. And when I look back on it now, the inclination towards such a move had been an event waiting to happen for many, many years. I knew it was to take place; but I did not know by what means, by what reasoning. And so I kept with theism until I could refute it through the timely maturation of my intellect. Even when I had discredited my Argument For The Existence of God, it wasn't until a few weeks later that it became vividly clear to me I had severed the only legitimate reason (in my mind) to propose and be convinced of the God-as-reality idea. At this point, for purpose of explaining myself, it might be of interest to introduce a segment from one of Friedrich Nietzsche's books, The Gay Science. The idea of 'having done it themselves,' yet being ignorant of what they have done and how they have done it (the full implications of their thoughts and actions), sums up my development perfectly. Here it is -- The Madman

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!" -- As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? -- Thus they yelled and laughed.
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him -- you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us -- for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto."
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars -- and yet they have done it themselves."
It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?" (181-182)


Reason & Self

It would be the definition of reason itself that would bring me to the final and conclusive denial of a God.

Here, of course, the concept reason must be determined, and this is where I turn to Ayn Rand (who, I am sure, borrowed heavily from Aristotle): "Reason is the faculty of man which identifies and integrates the material (i.e., data) provided by his senses." Based on this definition, none of my senses provide me with decisive evidence of a God, a Creator, an 'unmoved mover'.

It is true that throughout the history of western philosophy there have been several entertaining arguments for the existence of such a being (The Ontological Argument, The Cosmological Argument, The Teleological Argument, Degrees of Perfection [The Henological Argument], Arguments from Religious Experience, Common Consent Arguments, and Moral Arguments), however -- all of them are discernibly inconclusive, misleading, and false.

None of my senses -- be it sight, smell, hearing, touch, or taste -- taken individually, or collectively organized by my faculty of reason -- verify, conclusively, that a God exists. Thus, until additional evidence is introduced -- and I doubt it will be at this stage of civilized society's intellectual development -- it is well beyond the bounds of reason to be convinced of a God.

In other words, once a properly defined context of reason is established, the acknowledgment of a God is not logically permissible; since no proof of the existence of God exists, the concept is an untenable invention.

For a God to create man and not provide him with a conclusive way to prove his Creator's existence and the validity of his God's 'divinely inspired' religion, in whatever form the religion may present itself, is so riddled with contradiction and foolishness that only a man who is continually pumped full of a blind and thoughtless faith could tolerate it.

If I accept Rand's idea of reason being man's only means of perceiving reality, his only means of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival -- as I do -- then what room is there in my philosophy, my life, for a God? Absolutely none.

In the simplest terms I can put it: I don't believe in a God because I believe in my Self.


The Poison As The Cure

The questions which open my Argument For The Existence of God are:

"How much do my (and other's) beliefs bring about violence? In other words, and more specifically, does my belief in the necessity of Armageddon (def'n: Jehovah's direct intervention in the affairs of mankind) create additional violence -- and, if it does, is such violence justifiable?"

The answers: Yes, the belief in the necessity of Armageddon does create additional violence (as I admitted to in the argument conclusion) -- and no, such violence as caused by this conviction of God-Armageddon is not justifiable -- because this Argument of mine is not for humanity, but against it. The Argument is the product of a once elusive, but now obvious, misunderstanding.

The Argument's credibility came into serious doubt when I asked myself: could man survive his current situation without the intervening aid of a God? The reply was:

The argument is based on the idea that mankind, being so fractured and fragmented, cannot constructively integrate no matter the potential beneficial self-criticism and / or fierce pounding it may give to itself; that integration, by means of its many individual parts, with no 'outside help' -- is an impossibility. Key word here: impossibility.
So, the question is: is integration possible, or impossible? Is the human species, with multiple foundations, capable of reaching a common understanding? Will the sparks and fires of a world-wide civil war -- caused by conflicting visions of man's nature -- fuse or cripple mankind? Could a human resolution, not a God Armageddon, give birth to 'the millennium'?
In answer to the last question: yes. I mean, to say a human-inspired resolution is a ridiculous possibility would itself be ridiculous. To say "no" to the possibility of man saving himself would be the equivalent of declaring that man does not have the ability, intellectually, to grasp his situation and actually, physically, rise up to help himself; -- I would be tying my own hands
How, then, do I counter "the horrific forces arrayed against man"? On the basis that a rational man, no matter the seemingly overwhelming odds against him, will triumph. Why? Because no destroyer can tap, nor touch, nor harness -- by himself -- the discipline, focus, and power that a creator can. The only means for a destroyer to defeat the creator is if the destroyer, consciously or unconsciously, utilizes the creator to break and butcher his/her own self. And herein lies the nature of the battle I must fight …

In the past, I was of the tendency to think that my Argument for turning God against world religion and its underlying ideas was spectacular in scope, as well as somewhat amusing. Imagine, manipulating the concepts of God and Armageddon to scheme and advance the extermination of the 'Old Religion'. However, in time (after losing my sense of humor), I came to see that my Argument was merely another deadly manifestation of peddling 'the poison as the cure'; that is, promoting irrationality as mankind's antitoxin to the infections, diseases and convulsions created by irrationality. The notion contained in the song Quicksand Jesus came to accommodate, for me, 'Quicksand Jehovah'. One influence in helping me to overcome my faulty Argument reasoning was this Internet excerpt:

Many human beings believe, for some inexplicable reason, that the universe is here for them and that we will not be destroyed because there is some 'divine purpose'. This abrogates responsibility. In order for our species to survive, and personally I think that this would be a good eventuality, we must realize that the universe is as ignorant of us as any other piece of space dust and cares naught whether we propagate and fill the universe or extinguish in a nuclear blaze. We are responsible for our own survival. We cannot look to some all powerful Daddy to come in -- when we have sufficiently stuffed it up -- for us to learn our lesson, and make it all right again. Once we stuff it up, it's stuffed up.


God is a State of Self-Imposed Exile

Here I was, with so much of mankind's energies being devoured by 'the other world' mentality, suggesting that we look to a 'new, radical concept of God' to save us from the earth-denying, human-hating, mind-despising, supra-natural religions. It is apparent to me now that I have been diverting valuable energy away from the reality of men constructing their own peace and understanding (self-responsibility) while giving authority (mere acknowledgment) to a 'God', an external force / idea, in the endeavor to settle the questions and conflicts of human nature / relations.

Imagine what men and women could achieve if all their individual energies were devoted to the cultivation of their Self and this earth -- instead of storing our hopes, dreams, and precious aspirations of self-actualization in a non-existent 'God' and 'heaven'? The advance in human knowledge and understanding of the universe would literally thrust us up to the dizzying and intoxicating heights of Gods. What could we not do then? What barriers could we not break down? What distances could we not travel? Existence pierced, and mastered, by the human mind …

On this note, I no longer want to construct external to myself an idea I myself should be. There is no safeguard, no safety-net, no socialistic-mystic God-fearing guarantee of existence. It's you … and it's me … and the only thing to aid us on our journey through existence is the degree of rationality you and I exercise as individual human beings.

To all those who still do not understand, I say: 'God' is that which we are afraid to own within ourselves -- a state of self-imposed exile; let 'him' go and you yourself will become a God. Let go the crippling anxieties and self-doubt, and grasp the inexhaustible possibilities, the sacredness and the reverence, that is your Self.

No longer is my formula for human existence to be put in terms of 'if God wills it', but as: if I will it. What the Christian says of God, I say in the same words of the Ego, namely: 'Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever.'

A tremendous violence unleashed against mankind through the concept of God is its asphyxiating perfection over and above the human being. As God is "a being than whom no more perfect is even conceivable" (Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, 1033-1109), the end result of such a belief is the devaluation of man. As man can never be that perfect, he comes to be seen and marked as lowly and imperfect, a 'second best' at most. And, "with no possibility of another reality beyond God to which 'he' (God) is inferior or subordinate and which would thus be an even more worthy recipient of man's devotion," the way is opened up for individuals to bleed and empty their life-energies into an external holy, bypassing, ignoring, and even condemning their own magnificent potential.


The Autonomy of Man

(Tracing the move from theism to atheism: additional thoughts, alternative angles)

Another avenue toward undermining the Argument came from what I recognize to be an inseparable part of man's nature: his autonomy. I had for some time considered any acknowledgment or adoration of the Jewish God JHVH (Jehovah) to be a secondary detail -- a consequence -- of a man's Self-worship (sincerely cultivating one's earthly nature). To explain this idea, think of a human being -- or its Ego -- saying this about itself: "Yearn for me, love me, adore me … ; if you worship me, you honor the One who has created me …"

From this seemingly flawless design of self-responsibility and self-exaltation (fault: the concept of a 'higher' and 'greater' being still looms over man), reaching a proper, more consistent definition of man's autonomy was only a matter of time and investigation …

"Autonomy: the quality or state of being self-governing; especially: the right of self-government. Self-directing freedom and especially moral independence."
Is it right to say that a man is free from serving any other being except himself, and then assert that another being will radically alter the course of his existence? No. "Divine Intervention" in the affairs of mankind is unacceptable. Still further, it is illogical.
You do not create a being with autonomy and then override and negate that autonomy -- be it through revelation, prophecy, a savior, or a war of Armageddon. You don't create an autonomous being and then set out to externally rule him. You let autonomy take its course, no matter the effect, no matter the cost. You let him live his life, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health. This so-called "God's Plan", in my eyes, is man as an autonomous being, not man as an ignorant, incompetent wimp-slave.
As I wrote in Iran, disagreeing with its external form of discipline: "I agree that individuals must have their freedom of choice, even if they choose to kill themselves with it …"
Jehovah will not interfere. This, too, is an idea that must be exposed for what it is. "Divine Intervention" is of the Old Religion; -- one more vice and deception that is mutilating our planet and starving its creatures.


An Alternative Angle

Having removed the fancy of 'Divine Intervention' from the Man-God relationship, the idea of a Creator who indirectly formed man from the earth -- that is, who provided the elementary conditions for man to eventually come into existence -- and simply left him alone to conceive and govern his own destiny, now became appealing.

In this view, with God as Creator of an evolving universe -- and consequently man -- God takes a 'behind the scenes' role in existence. No longer is 'he' conceived of as a direct player in man's affairs (interfering with man's autonomy, saving man from himself, 'divinely inspiring' religions of disorientation and death, etc.), but still a presence to be pondered as 'he' had set the stage and the parameters -- i.e., the foundation, the nature -- for all elements, objects and creatures to be brought into existence. In other words, God created and initiated an infinite potentiality -- the universe -- in which new entities are continually evolving, and once these new entities are existing, they are self-regulating, with no external forces or 'divine law' being imposed on them from without. Rather, 'divine law' is built into all entities and organisms, which constitutes their various natures.

Having indirectly determined the 'self' of each and every entity in the universe, God takes a neutral position, that is -- non-participating, non-partisan, inactive, disengaged, uninvolved -- respecting the autonomy, i.e., self-government, of each segment of creation -- for better or for worse. The universe, ultimately, is conceived as both self-regulating and self-propagating, with no need whatsoever for a God to maintain it. The universe itself is an autonomous entity with the potential for further creation being a seed contained within its nature; -- an evolutionary creation of new life and new energy signatures through the interactive and intermingling play of existing entities and forces.

For a while I set out to change my idea of a God with this new vision in mind and began slashing away large segments of my previous God-concept (who did get involved in man's affairs), … but this methodical slash and burn didn't last long. For, at this point, with my former conception tattered and mangled from deletions, I stopped and asked myself: What reason do I have to propose the idea of a God altogether? To what purpose? I can't prove 'its' existence, … and to spend so much time and energy formulating a concept that I can't prove doesn't make any sense …

What tells me a God is 'back there', in the shadows of existence, at all? Not a damn thing …

… further, it's a waste of time. As the only reason I did have for proposing the existence of a God was now exposed and discredited, the impetus to make a 'reasoned' 'leap of faith' had evaporated. Hence my judgment on the controversy of a God is now: atheism.


Summary

(In summary) -- (1) By means of a particular definition of reason, 'God' proven unreasonable and absurd; (2) the transfer of energy and worship from Man to 'God' is self-debilitating and degrading -- and thus, immoral; (3) Presenting a more consistent definition of Man's autonomy, 'God' put 'behind the scenes,' an alternative concept as opposed to the more popular intervening 'God' -- however, even this lacks foundation; (4) no more ideas or reasons to be convinced of a 'God': atheism embraced.


Section III: Famous Quotes On Atheism

Page I


Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet (1792-1822): "If God has spoken, why is the world not convinced?"

Stephen F. Roberts (to the monotheist): "I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

Theists think all gods but theirs are false. Atheists simply don't make an exception for the last one.

Faith is deciding to allow yourself to believe something your intellect would otherwise cause you to reject -- otherwise there's no need for faith.

George Seaton: "Faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to."

Ambrose Bierce, American satirist, short-story writer, and journalist (1842-1914?): "Faith, n. -- Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel."

Galileo Galilei, Italian physicist and astronomer (1564-1642): "I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use."

Zlatko: "If the lord had meant us to have faith, he'd have given us lobotomies."

Edward J. Greenfield, NY State Supreme Court Justice: "Faith is the antithesis of proof."

Benjamin Disraeli, British writer and prime minister (1804-1881): "Where knowledge ends, religion begins."

Albert Hubbard: "A mystic is a person who is puzzled before the obvious but who understands the nonexistent"

F.M. Knowles: "Faith is often the boast of the man who is too lazy to investigate."

Dewey Henize: "Being unable to reason is not a positive character trait outside religion."

Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "What is more, it appears to be generally realized that some of the world's foremost philosophers, scientists, and artists have been avowed atheists and that the increase in atheism has gone hand in hand with the spread of education."

Victor Hugo, French poet, novelist, and playwright (1802-1885): "There is in every village a torch -- the teacher; and an extinguisher -- the clergyman."

Catherine Fahringer: "We would be 1,500 years ahead if it hadn't been for religion dragging science back by its coattails and burning our best minds at the stake."

Abu'l-Ala-Al-Ma'arri, Syrian poet (973-1057): "The world holds two classes of men -- intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence."

Sigmund Freud, Austrian physician and pioneer psychoanalyst (1856-1939): "In the long run, nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction religion offers to both is palpable." Freud certainly regarded belief in God as an illusion that mature men and women should lay aside. The idea of God was not a lie but a device of the unconscious which needed to be decoded by psychology. A personal God was nothing more than an exalted father-figure: desire for such a deity sprang from infantile yearnings for a powerful, protective father, for justice and fairness and for life to go on forever. God is simply a projection of these desires, feared and worshipped by human beings out of an abiding sense of helplessness. Religion belonged to the infancy of the human race; a … stage in the transition from childhood to maturity. … Now that humanity had come of age, however, it should be left behind.

Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, educator, mathematician, and social critic (1872-1970): "I myself am a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that every kind of religious belief will die out."
"Religion is based … mainly on fear … fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand … My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race."
"Throughout the last 400 years, during which the growth of science had gradually shown men how to acquire knowledge of the ways of nature and mastery over natural forces, the clergy have fought a losing battle against science, in astronomy and geology, in anatomy and physiology, in biology and psychology … Ousted from one position, they have taken up another. At each stage, they try to make the public forget their earlier obscuration, in order that their present obscuration may not be recognized for what it is."
"We may define 'faith' as the firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. When there is evidence, no one speaks of 'faith'."
"It is not up to the skeptic to disprove the proposition of a God; rather, it is up to the person making the claim to offer evidence in favor of the proposition."
"Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do."
"The irrational separates us, the rational unites us …"



Page II


Albert Einstein, German born American theoretical physicist, (1879-1955): "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God - and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

P.W. Atkins (from The Limitless Power of Science): "Religion closes off the central questions of existence by attempting to dissuade us from further inquiry by asserting that we cannot ever hope to comprehend. We are, religion asserts, simply too puny. Through fear of being shown to be vacuous, religion denies the awesome power of human comprehension. It seeks to thwart, by encouraging awe in things unseen, the disclosure of the emptiness of faith. Religion, in contrast to science, deploys the repugnant view that the world is too big for our understanding. Science, in contrast to religion, opens up the great questions of being to rational discussion, to discussion with the prospect of resolution and elucidation. Science, above all, respects the power of the human intellect. Science is the apotheosis of the intellect and the consummation of the Renaissance. Science respects more deeply the potential of humanity than religion ever can."

Henry Louis "H.L." Mencken, American journalist, editor, and critic (1880-1956): "Since the early days, (the church) has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was an apologist for the divine right of kings."
"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. … A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass: he is actually ill."
"God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set them above their betters."
"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration -- courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth."

Thomas Alva Edison, American inventor (1847-1931): "I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious ideas of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God."

Robert Green Ingersoll, American lawyer and lecturer (1833-1899): "… to argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead."
"I have little confidence in any enterprise or business or investment that promises dividends only after the death of the stockholders."
"Religion supports nobody. It has to be supported. It produces no wheat, no corn; it ploughs no land; it fells no forests. It is a perpetual mendicant. It lives on the labors of others, and then has the arrogance to pretend that it supports the giver."
"Nothing is so pleasing to these gods as the butchery of unbelievers. Nothing so enrages them, even now, as to have someone deny their existence."
"One good schoolmaster is worth a thousand priests."
"I have always noticed that the people who have the smallest souls make the most fuss about getting them saved."
"The history of intellectual progress is written in the lives of infidels."
"Our ignorance is God; what we know is science."
"If the account given in Genesis is really true, ought we not, after all, to thank this serpent? He was the first schoolmaster, the first advocate of learning, the first enemy of ignorance, the first to whisper in human ears the sacred word liberty, the creator of ambition, the author of modesty, of inquiry, of doubt, of investigation, of progress and of civilization."

Paul Churchland, Professor, UofC, San Diego: " … the almost universal opinion that one's own religious convictions are the reasoned outcome of a dispassionate evaluation of all of the major alternatives is almost demonstrably false for humanity in general. If that really were the genesis of most people's convictions, then one would expect the major faiths to be distributed more or less randomly or evenly over the globe. But in fact they show a very strong tendency to cluster: Christianity is centered in Europe and the Americas, Islam in Africa and the Middle East, Hinduism in India, and Buddhism in the Orient. Which illustrates what we all suspected anyway: that social forces are the primary determinants of religious belief for people in general."

Richard Dawkins: "I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world."
"Out of all of the sects in the world, we notice an uncanny coincidence: the overwhelming majority just happen to choose the one that their parents belong to. Not the sect that has the best evidence in its favor, the best miracles, the best moral code, the best cathedral, the best stained glass, the best music: when it comes to choosing from the smorgasbord of available religions, their potential virtues seem to count for nothing, compared to the matter of heredity. This is an unmistakable fact; nobody could seriously deny it. Yet people with full knowledge of the arbitrary nature of this heredity, somehow manage to go on believing in their religion, often with such fanaticism that they are prepared to murder people who follow a different one."




Page III


Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza, Dutch philosopher (1632-1677): "Whatever is against Nature is against Reason, and whatever is against Reason ought to be rejected as absurd."

Brett Lemoine: "If you don't think that logic is a good method for determining what to believe, make an attempt to convince me of that without using logic. No one has even bothered to try."

E. Haldeman-Julius: "Commonly, those who have professed the strongest motives of love of a God have demonstrated the deepest hatred toward human joy and liberty."

Chris Matthew Sciabarra on author and philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982): "Religion, for Rand, divorces ideals from life on earth, by viewing "this world (as) of no consequence." An evangelist in (her play) Ideal proclaims: "Whatever beauty (the world) offers us is here only that we may sacrifice it -- for the greater beauty beyond." Religion tells people that beauty is unreachable and that nobility emerges from the sacrifice, not the achievement, of values. It condemns people for not achieving unreachable ideals, ideals they do not really wish to attain because their very realization would demand self-annihilation."

Barbara Branden on Ayn Rand: "(Ayn) remained a lifelong atheist. She was not, she would often say, "a militant atheist"; the belief in God seemed to her so patently irrational that it did not deserve to be fought. It was not the concept of God that she would battle throughout her life; it was what she saw as its source, its wider meaning: the rejection of reason. … Man's mind -- his reasoning faculty, his power to grasp logical connections -- is his basic tool of survival, she would contend throughout her life; and mysticism, the anti-rational, the anti-logical, is the instrument of death."

Francois Marie Arouet, "Voltaire", French writer and philosopher (1694-1778): "Ecrasez l'infame." … he meant that Christianity must be wiped out root and branch; the whole structure -- not only the Roman Catholic hierarchy with the Pope at its head, but the belief in Biblical revelation and "the Christ-worshipping superstition" upon which organized Christianity was based, without which it would be nothing. To tear down the superstructure only, while leaving the foundations unassailed, would be an act of half-heartedness and folly.
"As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities."

Steve Allen: "Ideas have consequences, and totally erroneous ideas are likely to have destructive consequences."
"It is not hardness of heart or evil passions that drive certain individuals to atheism, but rather a scrupulous intellectual honesty."

John Locke, English philosopher (1632-1704): "I find every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, 'It is a matter of faith, and above reason!'"

Ferdinand Magellan, Portuguese navigator (first European to cross the Pacific Ocean and the first person to circumnavigate the globe, proving that the world was round) (1480?-1521): "The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church."

GJW, Canadian philosopher, explorer, and adventurer (1970-present … heh heh …): The problem with a Christian, a Muslim, or a Hindu looking at other religious faiths is that they use their own scriptures as authority in determining what is and what is not 'Truth'; it is of little wonder then why the things that they accept are so reasonable, and foreign ideas so repugnant.
"How am I to reason with that which claims itself to be 'beyond' man's reason? I cannot reason with what is not of this earth … I cannot reason with what is non-man and non-mind. I cannot reason with un-reason." Faith is not beyond reason, it is without reason, -- and thus, in terms of importance and excellence in evaluating and producing human values, it is beneath reason.
One cannot reason with a religious person. As soon as you deal with any religion, you must give up reason and accept faith. The 'Divine Word' as opposed to human reason. The 'other world' vs. this world, earth and man. The whole structure of any religion begins with the renunciation of reason and the acceptance of 'God's word' (some collection of scripture). Religion begins here. You either submit to faith, or you don't; however, once faith is accepted, anything goes.
"I am of sect A of religion X; you are of sect B of religion X; and you are of sect AS of religion AGD; and you are of sect 1.A3 of religion 4B-2C. Now … all our religions are based on supernatural revelations. Come, let us prove to one another, by means of reason, whose religion is right." -- who here sees the futility of all this ??
The man of faith and his 'intellectual superiority': It's my supernatural revelation against yooooouuuuuurs! … na na na boo boo !!
If you pursue reason -- sincerely and severely, to every facet and hidden corner of your life -- to establish your chosen faith, ultimately you will become an atheist.
Man unmasked: a God.




Page IV


Isaac Asimov, American writer (1920-1992): "We owe it to ourselves as respectable human beings, as thinking human beings, to do what we can to make humanity more rational … Humanists recognize that it is only when people feel free to think for themselves, using reason as their guide, that they are best capable of developing values that succeed in satisfying human needs and serving human interests."

Gene Roddenberry, American television scriptwriter, director, and producer (1921-1991): "I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will -- and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain."

On Existence and Man: Several thousand years ago, a small tribe of ignorant near-savages wrote various collections of myths, wild tales, lies, and gibberish. Over the centuries, these stories were embroidered, garbled, mutilated, and torn into small pieces that were then repeatedly shuffled. Finally, this material was badly translated into several languages successively. The resultant text, creationists feel, is the best guide to this complex and technical subject.

Dr.Pepper@f241.n103.z1.fidonet.org: "Geology shows that fossils are of different ages. Paleontology shows a fossil sequence; the list of species representing changes through time. Taxonomy shows biological relationships among species. Evolution is the explanation that threads it all together. Creationism is the practice of squeezing one's eyes shut and wailing "does not!"."

Lemuel K. Washburn: "Priests will pardon thieves but not philosophers."
"People who rely most on God rely least on themselves."
"The man who gets on his knees has not learned the right use of his legs."
"No man was ever yet canonized for minding his own business."

Robert Heinlein: "God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent -- it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills."

Samuel Clemens, "Mark Twain," American writer and humorist (1835-1910): "It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."
"Mr. Clemens was once asked whether he feared death. He said that he did not, in view of the fact that he had been dead for billions and billions of years before he was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."
"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."

Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh, English author (1903-1966): "It is a curious thing that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste."

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, American feminist and writer (1860-1935): "… [Let us inquire] what glory there was in an omnipotent being torturing forever a puny little creature who could in no way defend himself: would it be to the glory of a man to fry ants?"

W.T. Root, Professor of Psychology at University of Pittsburgh, after examining 1,916 prisoners: "Indifference to religion, due to thought, strengthens character"

Kenneth Hare: "The Puritan through Life's sweet garden goes, To pluck the thorn and cast away the rose."

Religious fundamentalism: a disease whose symptoms include diarrhea of the mouth and constipation of the brain.

Robert Carr, Lamprey Systems http://members. aol.com/lampreysys/index.html: "That's why the religious people are so freaked out about the Internet, not because of the smut but because no religion can stand up to access to information."

John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, British geneticist (1892-1964): Haldane was engaged in discussion with an eminent theologian. "What inference," asked the latter, "might one draw about the nature of God from a study of his works?" Haldane replied: "An inordinate fondness for beetles."

Baron Paul Henri T. d'Holbach: "Theology is but the ignorance of natural causes reduced to a system."

… or, as Emo Phillips puts it: "Oh god, please bend the laws of the universe for my convenience."

Philip K. Dick: "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away".

Bart Simpson saying grace: "Dear God. We paid for all this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing."

Richard Davisson: "There are no physicists in the hottest parts of hell, because the existence of a "hottest part" implies a temperature difference, and any marginally competent physicist would immediately use this to run a heat engine and make some other part of hell comfortably cool. Thus, the whole scenario is obviously impossible."

James Watson, American biochemist and Nobel Laureate (1928-present): "I don't think we're for anything, we're just products of evolution. You can say "Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don't think there's a purpose," but I'm anticipating a good lunch."

Israel Zangwill, English writer (1864-1926): "Let us start a new religion with one commandment, 'Enjoy thyself.'"


Does It Matter Whether Theism Is Reasonable?

Someone might say, "I agree with everything you have written. I shall go further and ignore your occasional slight qualifications: I say, flatly, theism is absolutely irrational. I don't care. I shall go on believing."
A friend has objected to my discussion of mystical "arguments," and especially to my saying in one place that if the mystic said such-and-such, "that would not be playing the rational game." "For," said my friend, "mystics don't argue; they haven't any interest in 'playing the rational game.'"
No doubt this is true, of some mystics at least. And if anyone says, "Don't argue with me, arguments are of no interest to me," why, it is only good manners to be quiet. In this book, however, we are discussing doctrines, not individuals, and the question of manners does not arise.
Well, what can be said to someone who explicitly rejects reason? One might point out that very likely he does not reject it altogether; he wants evidence that the house he plans to buy is not infested with termites, he wants his sick children treated by competent physicians rather than by quacks, etc.; hence he is inconsistent in accepting rational canons in all spheres of interest save one. But this will not do, for the obvious retort is that consistency is a rational criterion, which is just what he is rejecting.
The situation is a queer one. It appears that there is no possibility of proving to the irrationalist that he should not be irrational, because any proof we might offer would, if cogent at all, presuppose canons of logic and evidence, and in consequence would be circular. You cannot checkmate a man who refuses to play chess.
But refusals to be rational, or to play chess, have consequences, and it is legitimate to point them out. One consequence of a refusal to play chess is that whereas the non-player, if he likes, may make disparaging remarks about the futility of chess, he is in no position to take the haughty line that the players "don't know what real chess is like," and that the loser in the last game "wasn't really checkmated at all." And a consequence of refusal to play the rational game is that the irrationalist is in no position to claim access to a "higher truth." The rules of the rational game … are the only procedures we have to get at the truth, just as the rules of chess are the presuppositions of checkmating.
I shall not pursue this analogy any further, however, because reasoning, after all, is not a game. We do not make up the rules; they are imposed on us by the nature of things. Reason does not need to be defended by a circular piece of reasoning; it is sufficient to point out that the abandonment of reason is the abandonment of truth. One who finds food generally distasteful and often unwholesome is not well advised to give up eating; he will starve, and no "higher nourishment" will sustain him.
If, then, someone says that theism is irrational, but that he does not care, in a sense there is nothing to say to him. We may ourselves think that he should care, but there can be no question of proving to him that he should. On the other hand, it is quite proper to point out to him that he is obliged to accept the consequences, one of which is that his belief must remain a private conviction; he has no warrant to recommend it to anyone else on grounds of truth. (From The Existence of God, by Wallace I. Matson, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, C.1965, pages 242-244.)


Section IV: Confucianism

Thinking on the ideas and arguments that have contributed to why I no longer believe in a Deity over and above Man, I recalled something a few weeks ago, and smiled as it came to me. Of the five most significant influences in my life, three were strongly atheistic -- Confucianism, Nietzsche, and Rand; Voltaire, although a Deist, was vigorously man-inclined; and, while Judaism has its God-conception, along with many other miscalculations, I continue to openly admire and applaud its earthly definition of man.

(Definition: Deism -- (1) belief in the existence of God on the evidence of reason and nature only, with rejection of supernatural revelation; (2) belief in a God who created the world but has since remained indifferent to it; (3) Belief in a personal Divine Being, but with the denial of those beliefs in the supernatural and the miraculous which characterize Christian and other forms of theism. While agreeing in the attempt to establish so called natural religion on a rational basis, the English and continental advocates of deistic belief assumed various attitudes toward the prevalent theistic doctrines of their time.)

This section is a small sampling of the three atheist influences in my life, an extension of the last letter written to you, beginning with …

Confucianism, … undeniably, has had a strong impact on me with its humanist approach. This philosophy's main focus was never given over to 'spirits,' 'other worlds / realities,' or an almighty deity -- but to man's existence and the universe in which he lives. The following excerpts reveal, if only partially, why I stand where I do today, as well as project where I am to … travel … tomorrow (for example, a naturalistically explained universe):

11:11 Chi-lu (Tzu-lu) asked about serving the spiritual beings. Confucius said, "If we are not yet able to serve man, how can we serve spiritual beings?" "I venture to ask about death." Confucius said, "If we do not yet know about life, how can we know about death?" (A most celebrated saying on humanism.) (The Analects)

12:22 Fan Chih asked about humanity. Confucius said, "It is to love men." He asked about knowledge. Confucius said, "It is to know man." (The Analects)

19:6 Tzu-hsia said, "To study extensively, to be steadfast in one's purpose, to inquire earnestly, and to reflect on what is at hand (that is, what one can put into practice) -- humanity consists in these." (The Analects)

The Master's frequent themes of discourse were -- the Odes, the History, and the maintenance of the Rules of Propriety. On all these he frequently discoursed.
The subjects on which the Master did not talk, were -- extraordinary things, feats of strength, disorder, and spiritual beings. (The Analects)

Tsze-lu asked what constituted the superior man. The Master said, "The cultivation of himself in reverential carefulness." (The Analects)

13:3 Tzu-lu said, "The ruler of Wei is waiting for you to serve in his administration. What will be your first measure?" Confucius said, "It will certainly concern the rectification of names." Tzu-lu said, "Is that so? You are wide of the mark. Why should there be such a rectification?" Confucius said, "Yu! How uncultivated you are! With a regard to what he does not know, the superior man should maintain an attitude of reserve. If names are not rectified, then language will no be in accord with truth. If language is not in accord with truth, then things cannot be accomplished. If things cannot be accomplished, then ceremonies and music will not flourish. If ceremonies and music do not flourish, then punishment will not be just. If punishments are not just, then the people will not know how to move hand or foot. Therefore the superior man will give only names that can be described in speech and say only what can be carried out in practice. With regard to his speech, the superior man does not take it lightly. That is all." (The Analects)

15:28 Confucius said, "It is man that can make the Way great, and not the Way that can make man great." -- Humanism in the extreme! Commentators from Huang K'an to Chu Hsi said that the Way, because it is tranquil and quiet and lets things take their own course, does not make men great. A better explanation is found in the Doctrine of the Mean, where it is said, "Unless there is perfect virtue, the perfect Way cannot be materialized." (The Analects)

6A:10 Mencius said, "I like fish and I like bear's paw, but if I have to choose between them, I will let go of the fish and take the bear's paw. I like life and I like Justice. But if I have to choose between them I will let go of life and take Justice. I want life, but there are things more important to me than life. Therefore there are things that I won't do just to live. I hate death, but there are things that I hate more than death, and thus there are certain kinds of suffering that I won't avoid.
"If you teach a man to value nothing more than life, then what means will he not use in order to save his life? If you teach people to hate nothing more than death, then what will they not do, in order to avoid death?
"But there are some things that people will not do to save their lives and some things that people will not do to avoid death. This means that there are things more important to them than life, and more hateful to them than death. It is not only the worthy who have this capacity. All people have it, but the worthy are able to be consistent in it. (Book of Mencius)

7B:21 Mencius said to the disciple Kao, "If mountain trails are well used, then they will become like roads. But if they are not used for a while, they become overgrown with weeds. Now weeds are overgrowing in your mind. (Book of Mencius)

7B:32 "… The Superior Man concentrates on the cultivation of his own character. The common error of people is that they forget about their own garden and try to cultivate the other man's garden. They expect much from others and little from themselves." (Book of Mencius)

22. (f) Only those who are absolutely sincere can fully develop their nature. If they can fully develop their nature, they can then fully develop the nature of others. … It is only he who is possessed of the most complete sincerity that can exist under heaven, who can give its full development to his nature. Able to give its full development to his own nature, he can do the same to the nature of other men. Able to give its full development to the nature of other men, he can give their full development to the natures of animals and things. Able to give their full development to the natures of creatures and things, he can assist the transforming and nourishing powers of Heaven and Earth. Able to assist the transforming and nourishing powers of Heaven and Earth, he may with Heaven and Earth form a union. (Doctrine of The Mean)

25. Sincerity means the completion of the self, and the Way is self-directing. Sincerity is the beginning and end of all things. Without sincerity there would be nothing. Therefore the superior man values sincerity. Sincerity is not only the completion of one's own self, it is that by which all things are completed. The completion of the self means humanity. The completion of all things means wisdom. These are the character of the nature, and they are the Way in which the internal (it is not clear whether this refers to sincerity, the character of the nature, or the Way) and the external are united. Therefore whenever it is employed, everything done is right. (Doctrine of The Mean)

… People say there is no death. But what is the use? Not only does the physical form disintegrate; the mind also goes with it. (The Chuang Tzu)

On the surface, Tung Chung-shu (c.179-c.104BC) seems to be of only minor philosophical interest, but historically he is one of the utmost importance. He was chiefly instrumental in making Confucianism the state doctrine in 136BC. This supremacy excluded other schools, and lasted until 1905. But a closer examination of his philosophy reveals some extremely significant developments. In the Yin Yang School, the universe is conceived of as a well-coordinated system in which everything is related to everything else. In the Book Of Changes (I Ching) this order is conceived of as a process of transformation. In Tung Chung-shu, however, both ideas took a step forward: the universe is treated as an organic whole. In his belief, not only are things related generally, but they are so in exact detail; and not only do things change but they activate one another. The theory that things of the same kind energize one another presupposes an organic structure and a pre-established harmony. The correspondence of man and nature is now reduced to numbers. Nature can always influence man through portents because the same material forces of yin and yang govern them both. In fact, to Tung man is the universe in miniature; man is the microcosm, nature the macrocosm.


A Treatise on Death (by Wang Ch'ung)

People today say that when men die they become spiritual beings (kuei, ghosts), are conscious, and can hurt people. Let us try to prove by means of the species of creatures that the dead do not become spiritual beings, do not possess consciousness, and cannot hurt people. How shall we prove this? We do so by means of other creatures. Man and other creatures are all creatures. When other creatures die, they do not become spiritual beings. Why should man alone become a spiritual being when he dies? If people can make a distinction between man and other creatures as to which cannot become a spiritual being, they will still find it difficult to make clear why (man) becomes a spiritual being but (other creatures) do not. If they cannot make a distinction, then how do they know that men become spiritual beings (inasmuch as other creatures do not)?
Man can live because of his vital forces. At death his vital forces are extinct. What makes the vital forces possible is the blood. When a person dies, his blood becomes exhausted. With this his vital forces are extinct, and his body decays and becomes ashes and dust. What is there to become a spiritual being?
If a man has neither ears nor eyes (senses), he will have no consciousness. Hence men who are dumb and blind are like plants and trees. When the vital forces have left man, is it simply like a man without ears or eyes? (The whole body) decays and disappears. It becomes diffused and invisible, and is therefore called a spiritual being (kuei-shen, earthly and heavenly spirits). When people see the shape of spiritual beings, they of course do not see the vital forces of the dead. Why? Because the very name "spiritual being" means what is diffused and invisible. When a man dies, his spirit ascends to heaven and his flesh and bones return (kuei) to earth, and that is why an earthly being (kuei) and a heavenly spiritual being (shen) are so-called. To be an earthly spiritual being (kuei) means to return (kuei) ... To be a heavenly spiritual being (shen) means to expand (shen). When the expansion reaches its limit, it ends and begins again. Man is born of spiritual forces. At death he returns to them. Yin and yang are called kuei-shen. After people die, they are also called kuei-shen.
The vital forces produce a man just as water becomes ice. As water freezes into ice, so the vital forces coagulate to form a man. When ice melts, it becomes water. When a man dies, he becomes spirit again. He is called spirit just as melted ice changes its name to water. As people see that its name has changed, they say that it has consciousness, can assume physical form, and can hurt people. But they have no basis for saying so.
People see ghosts with the form of living men. From the fact that they appear in the form of living men, we know that they are not spirits of the dead. How can we show that to be true? When a sack if filled with rice or a bag with millet the rice will stay in the sack or the millet in the bag. It will be full and firm, standing up and visible. When people look at it, they know that it is a sack of rice or a bag of millet. How? Because the contents of the sack or bag can be clearly discerned from the shape. If the sack has a hole and the rice runs out, or if the bag is torn and the millet is lost, the sack or bag will either be thrown away or folded up. When people look at it, it can no longer be seen. The spirit of man is stored up inside the body in the same way as the millet is in the bag or rice in the sack. At death the body decays and the vital forces disintegrate like the sack having a hole or the bag having been torn and the rice running out or the millet being lost. When the rice has run out or the millet is lost, the sack or bag no longer keeps its shape. How can the vital forces of man still possess a body and be seen by men when they have disintegrated and become extinct?...
Since the beginning of the universe and rulers of high antiquity, people who died according to their allotted time or died at middle age or prematurely have numbered in the hundreds of millions. The number of men living today is not as great as that of the dead. If everyone who dies becomes an earthly spirit, there should be an earthly spirit at every pace on the road. If men see spirits when they are about to die, they should see millions and millions filling the hall and crowding the road instead of only one or two ...
Now, people say that a spiritual being is the spirit of a dead man. If the earthly spirit is really the spirit of a dead man, then when people see it, they ought to see the form of a nude, for there is no reason why they should see any garments. Why? Because garments have no spirit. When a man dies, they decay along with his body. How can they be worn by a spirit? ...
Man is intelligent and wise because he possesses the forces of the Five Constant Virtues (of humanity, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and faithfulness). The five forces are in him because there are the five internal organs in the body (namely, heart, liver, stomach, lungs, and kidneys, which correspond to the five virtues). If the five organs are unimpaired, he is wise. If they become diseased, he becomes hazy and confused. Being hazy and confused, he becomes stupid and foolish. When a man dies, the five organs rot and decay. As they rot and decay, the Five Constant Virtues will have nothing to attach to. What embodies wisdom will be destroyed, and what exercises wisdom will be gone. The body needs the vital forces in order to be complete, and the vital forces need the body in order to have consciousness. There is in the world no fire burning form itself. How can there be a spirit in the world that has consciousness from itself but is without a body? ...
Before a person dies, his wisdom and spirit are calm. When he is sick, he is dull and confused, because his spirit is disturbed. Now, death is sickness much intensified. Since in sickness, which is but a mild form of death, one is already dull and confused, how much more would he be when it is intensified? When the spirit is disturbed, one loses consciousness. How much more when the spirit disintegrates? Man's death is like the extinction of fire. When a fire is extinguished, its light shines no longer, and when a man dies, his consciousness has no more understanding. The two cases are the same in reality and properly so. If people still maintain that the dead has consciousness, they are all deluded. What is the difference between a sick man about to die and the fire about to be extinguished? After the fire is extinguished and the light disappears, only the candle remains. After a man dies, his vital forces become extinct but only his body remains. To say that a man has consciousness after death is to say that a fire still has light after the fire is extinguished...
After a man dies he does not become a spiritual being, has no consciousness, and cannot speak. He therefore cannot hurt people. How can we prove it? When a man gets angry, he utilizes his vital forces. When he hurts people, he has to apply strength. In order to apply strength, his sinews and bones must be strong. If they are strong, he can hurt people. ... After a man dies, his hands and arms decay and can no longer hold a blade. His teeth have all fallen and he can no longer bite. How can he hurt people? ... (SPPY, 20:9a-14a)
Comment: In arguing against the existence of ghosts, Wang Ch'ung has offered more reasons than has any other Chinese thinker. For almost two thousand years now no one has been able to refute him, although some of his arguments sound very naive.


Principle: Everything is natural and does not know why it is so. The further things differ in physical form, the further they are alike in being natural. … Heaven and earth and the myriad things change and transform into something new every day and so proceed with time. What causes them? They do so spontaneously. … What we call things are all what they are by themselves; they did not cause each other to become so. The ten thousand things are in ten thousand different conditions, and move forward and backward differently, as if there is a True Lord to make them do so. But if we search for evidences for such True Lord, we fail to find any. We should understand that things are all natural and not caused by something else. (ch2, 1:22b-23a)
Comment: Taoism -- the evidence for God -- none.

If we insist on the conditions under which things develop and search for the cause thereof, such search and insistence will never end, until we come to something that is unconditioned, and then the principles of self-transformation will become clear. … There are people who say that the shade is conditioned by the shadow, the shadow by the body, and the body by the Creator. But let us ask whether there is a Creator or not. … before we can talk about creation, we must understand the fact that all forms materialize by themselves. If we go through the entire realm of existence, we shall see that there is nothing, not even the shade, that does not transform itself behind the phenomenal world. Hence everything creates itself without the direction of any Creator. Since things create themselves, they are unconditioned. This is the norm of the universe. (ch2, 1:46b-47a)
Comment: The denial of a Creator is complete. Whereas Chuang Tzu raised the question whether there is a Creator or not, Kuo Hsiang unreservedly denied its existence. Given the theory that all things come into existence by themselves and that their transformation is also their own doing, this is the inevitable outcome. Thus Taoist naturalism is pushed to its ultimate conclusion.

Like other Neo-Confucianists, Chang Tsai (Chang Heng-ch'u, 1020-1077) drew his inspiration chiefly from the book of Changes. But unlike Chou Tun-i (Chou Lien-hi, 1017-1073) according to whom evolution proceeds from the Great Ultimate through the two material forces (yin and yang) and the Five Agents (Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth) to the myriad things, and unlike Shao Yung (1011-1077) according to whom evolution proceeds from the Great Ultimate through the two material forces and other stages to concrete things, Chang Tsai identifies material force (ch'i) with the Great Ultimate itself. He discards both yin and yang and the Five Agents as generative forces. To him, yin and yang are merely two aspects of material force, and as such are basically one. As substance, before consolidation takes place, material force is the Great Vacuity. As function, in its activity and tranquillity, integration and disintegration, and so forth, it is the Great Harmony. But the Great Vacuity and the Great Harmony are the same as the Way (Tao), the One. As contraction and expansion, the two aspects of material force are kuei-shen, or negative and positive spiritual forces. Here Chang replaces the traditional theory of spiritual beings or spirits of deceased persons and things with a completely rationalistic and naturalistic interpretation, and establishes a doctrine from which later Neo-Confucianists have never deviated. Also, believing existence to be perpetual integration and disintegration, he strongly attacked Buddhist annihilation and Taoist non-being. In this process of perpetual integration and disintegration, certain fundamental laws of the universe follow. Evolution abides by definite principles and has a certain order. Nothing is isolated. And yet everything is distinct from others.
The universe is one but its manifestations are many. This is a fundamental idea in Chang Tsai, an idea that exercised a tremendous influence over his contemporaries and later Neo-Confucianists.

'All rotating things,' says Chang Tsai with reference to the heavens, 'have a spontaneous force and thus their motion is not imposed on them from outside'; and in the I Ching we read: 'the natural laws are not forces external to things, but represent the harmony of movement immanent in them.'

… while Chang Tsai (1020-1077) conceived material force to be perpetual contraction and expansion, to the Ch'eng brothers each operation is new. This is a new note in Chinese philosophy, a note more strongly struck by Ch'eng I (1033-1107) than by his brother, Ch'eng Hao (1032-1085). Again and again he underlines the fact that in each new production fresh material force is used. Thus as the universe is a perpetual process of production and reproduction, new material force is perpetually generated by Origination. But exactly how this process works has never been explained.

One must investigate one item today and another item tomorrow. When one has accumulated much knowledge he will naturally achieve a thorough understanding like a sudden release. (Ch'eng I)

Question: What about people who devote all their attention to seriousness in order to straighten the internal life but make no effort to square the external life? Answer: What one has inside will necessarily be shown outside. Only worry that the internal life is not straightened. If it is straightened, then the external life will necessarily be square. (Ch'eng I)

… the master of the body it is called the mind … (Ch'eng I)

We Confucianists are engaged in putting the world in order … (Lu Hsiang-Shan)

The mind is that with which man rules his body. It is one and not a duality, is subject and not object, and controls the external world instead of being controlled by it. (Chu Hsi)

24. Throughout a person's handling of affairs and dealing with things, there is no point at which moral principles are not present. Although one cannot know all of them, in all likelihood he has heard the great essentials. The important point is to put into action vigorously what he has already known and make efforts to go beyond it. In this way he can go from the near to the far and from the coarse to the refined, methodically and in an orderly manner, and observable effect can be achieved every day. (Chu Hsi)

29. There is no other way to investigate principle to the utmost than to pay attention to everything in our daily reading of books and handling of affairs. Although there may not seem to be substantial progress, nevertheless after a long period of accumulation, without knowing it one will be saturated (with principle) and achieve an extensive harmony and penetration. Truly, one cannot succeed if one wants to hurry. (Chu Hsi)

30. To investigate principle to the utmost means to seek to know the reason for which things and affairs are as they are and the reason according to which they should be, that is all. If we know why they are as they are, our will will not be perplexed, and if we know what they should be, our action will not be wrong … (Chu Hsi)

84. The mind is the principle of production. … This is because man is born with the mind of Heaven. The mind of Heaven is to produce things. (44:14a)(Chu Hsi)
Comment: The Ch'eng brothers' doctrine that the character of Heaven and earth is to produce is here applied to the character of the mind. This concept underlies all Chu Hsi's ideas about the mind. It is this creative force of the mind that makes it the master of the universe, unites principle and material force, and enables consciousness to function without end in its activity and tranquillity.

125. Question: How was the first man created? Answer: Through the transformation of material force. When the essence of yin and yang and the Five Agents are united, man's physical form is established. (Chu Hsi)

127. Heaven and Earth have no other business except to have the mind to produce things. The material force of one origin (the Great Ultimate including principle and material force) revolves and circulates without a moment of rest, doing nothing except creating the myriad things. (29-23b-24a) (Chu Hsi)


Section V: Friedrich Nietzsche

… I never failed to sense a hostility to life -- a furious, vengeful antipathy to life itself …; Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life's nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in "another" or "better" life. Hatred of "the world," condemnations of the passions, fear of beauty and sensuality, a beyond invented the better to slander this life, at bottom a craving for the nothing, for the end, for respite, for "the sabbath of sabbaths" …; -- at the very least a sign of abysmal sickness, weariness, discouragement, exhaustion, and the impoverishment of life. For, confronted with … (Christian … morality), life must continually and inevitably be in the wrong, because life is something essentially amoral -- and eventually, crushed by the weight of contempt and the eternal No, life must then be felt to be unworthy of desire and altogether worthless. (22-23, The Birth of Tragedy)

During the longest and most remote periods of the human past, the sting of conscience was not at all what it is now. Today one feels responsible only for one's will and actions, and one finds one's pride in oneself. All our teachers of law start from this sense of self and pleasure in the individual, as if this had always been the fount of law. But during the longest period of the human past nothing was more terrible than to feel that one stood by oneself. To be alone, to experience things by oneself, neither to obey nor to rule, to be an individual -- that was not a pleasure but a punishment; one was sentenced to "individuality." Freedom of thought was considered discomfort itself. While we experience law and submission as compulsion and loss, it was egoism that was formerly experienced as something painful and as real misery. To be a self and to esteem oneself according to one's own weight and measure -- that offended taste in those days. An inclination to do this would have been considered madness; for being alone was associated with every misery and fear. In those days, "free will" was very closely associated with a bad conscience; and the more unfree one's actions were and the more the herd ... rather than any personal sense found expression in any action, the more moral one felt. Whatever harmed the herd, whether the individual had wanted it or not wanted it, prompted the sting of conscience in the individual -- and in his neighbor, too, and even in the whole herd … (175, The Gay Science)

A dangerous resolve. -- The Christian resolve to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad. (185, The Gay Science)

Architecture for the search of knowledge. -- One day, and probably soon, we need some recognition of what above all is lacking in our big cities: quiet and wide, expansive places for reflection. Places with long, high-ceilinged cloisters for bad or all too sunny weather where no shouting or noise of carriages can reach and where good manners would prohibit even priests from praying aloud -- buildings and sites that would altogether give expression to the sublimity of thoughtfulness and of stepping aside. The time is past when the church possessed a monopoly on reflection, when the vita contemplativa always had to be first of all a vita religioso; and everything built by the church gives expression to that idea. I do not see how we could remain content with such buildings even if they were stripped of their churchly purposes. The language spoken by these buildings is far too rhetorical and unfree, reminding us that they are houses of God and ostentatious monuments of some supramundane intercourse; we who are godless could not think our thoughts in such surroundings. We wish to see ourselves translated into stone and plants, we want to take walks in ourselves when we stroll around these buildings and gardens. (227, The Gay Science)

the desire for intellectual cleanliness -- what separates the higher beings from the lower. (288, The Gay Science)

Peoples were the creators at first; only later were individuals creators. Indeed, the individual himself is still the latest creation.(85, Thus Spoke Zarathustra)

… I live in my own light, I drink back into myself the flames that break from me.(129-f, Thus Spoke Zarathustra)

And truly, to learn to love oneself is no commandment for today or tomorrow. Rather is this art the finest, subtlest, ultimate, and most patient of all. (211-f, Thus Spoke Zarathustra)

I regard Christianity as the most fatal seductive lie that has yet existed, as the great unholy lie: I draw out the after-growth and sprouting of its ideal from beneath every form of disguise, I reject every compromise position with respect to it. -- I force a war against it. (117-f, The Will To Power)

One should never forgive Christianity for having destroyed such men as Pascal. One should never cease from combating just this in Christianity: its will to break precisely the strongest and noblest souls. One should never rest as long as this one thing has not been utterly destroyed: the ideal of man invented by Christianity, its demands upon men, its Yes and its No with regard to men. The whole absurd residue of Christian fable, conceptual cobweb-spinning and theology …
… What is it we combat in Christianity? That it wants to break the strong, that it wants to discourage their courage, exploit their bad hours and their occasional weariness, convert their proud assurance into unease and distress of conscience, that it knows how to poison and sicken the noble … until their strength, their will to power turns backward, against itself -- until the strong perish through orgies of self-contempt and self-abuse … (145-146-f, The Will To Power)

Has it been noticed that in heaven all interesting men are missing? -- Just a hint to the girls as to where they can best find their salvation. -- If one reflects with some consistency, and moreover with a deepened insight into what a "great man" is, no doubt remains that the Church sends all "great men" to hell -- it fights against all "greatness of man." (467-f, The Will To Power)

… the socialist ideal … the residue of Christianity … in the de-Christianized world … (525-f, The Will To Power)

The world exists; it is not something that becomes, not something that passes away. Or rather: it becomes, it passes away, but it has never begun to become and never ceased from passing away -- it maintains itself in both. -- It lives on itself: its excrements are its food. (548-f, The Will To Power)

And do you know what "the world" is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy …; a firm, iron magnitude of forces that … transforms itself; as a play of forces and waves of forces, at the same time one and many, increasing here and at the same time decreasing there; a sea of forces flowing and rushing together, eternally changing, eternally flooding back, with tremendous years of recurrence, with an ebb and a flood of its forms; … (550-f, The Will To Power)

Everything hitherto called 'truth' is recognized as the most harmful, malicious, most subterranean form of the lie; the holy pretext of 'improving' mankind as the cunning to suck out life itself and to make it anaemic. Morality as vampirism … He who unmasks (such a) morality has therewith unmasked the valuelessness of all values which are or have been believed in; he no longer sees in the most revered, even canonized types of man anything venerable, he sees in them the most fateful kind of abortion, fateful because they exercise fascination … The concept 'God' invented as the antithetical concept to life -- everything harmful, noxious, slanderous, the whole mortal enmity against life brought into one terrible unity! The concept 'the Beyond', 'real world' invented so as to deprive of value the only world which exists -- so as to leave over no goal, no reason, no task for our earthly reality! The concept … 'immortal soul', invented so as to despise the body, so as to make it sick -- 'holy' -- so as to bring to all the things in life which deserve serious attention, the questions of nutriment, residence, cleanliness, weather, a horrifying frivolity! Instead of health 'salvation of the soul' -- which is to say a folie circulaire between spasms of atonement and redemption hysteria! … In the concept of the 'selfless', of the 'self-denying' the actual badge of decadence, being lured by the harmful, no longer being able to discover where one's advantage lies, self-destruction, made the sign of value in general, made 'duty', 'holiness', the 'divine' in man! Finally -- it is the most fearful -- in the concept of the good man common cause made with everything weak, sick, ill-constituted, suffering from itself, all that which ought to perish -- … an ideal made of opposition to the proud and well-constituted, to the affirmative man, to the man certain of the future and guaranteeing the future -- the latter is henceforth called the evil man … And all this was believed in as morality! -- Ecrasez l'infame! (133-134-f, Ecce Homo)


Section VI: Ayn Rand

Philosophy is the science that studies the fundamental aspects of the nature of existence. The task of philosophy is to provide man with a comprehensive view of life. This view serves as a base, a frame of reference, for all his actions, mental or physical, psychological or existential. This view tells him the nature of the universe with which he has to deal (metaphysics); the means by which he has to deal with it, i.e., the means of acquiring knowledge (epistemology); the standards by which he is to choose his goals and values, in regard to his own life and character (ethics) -- and in regard to society (politics); the means of concretizing this view is given to him by esthetics. (107, The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution)

I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows. This -- the supremacy of reason -- was, is and will be the primary concern of my work, and the essence of Objectivism. (The Objectivist, September 1971)

The Middle Ages were an era of mysticism, ruled by blind faith and obedience to the dogma that faith is superior to reason. The Renaissance was specifically the rebirth of reason, the liberation of man's mind, the triumph of rationality over mysticism -- a faltering, incomplete, but impassioned triumph that led to the birth of science, of individualism, of freedom.

Philosophy and Sense of Life

Since religion is a primitive form of philosophy -- an attempt to offer a comprehensive view of reality -- many of its myths are distorted, dramatized allegories based on some element of truth, some actual, if profoundly elusive, aspect of man's existence. One of such allegories, which men find particularly terrifying, is the myth of a supernatural recorder from whom nothing can be hidden, who lists all of a man's deeds -- the good and the evil, the noble and the vile -- and who confronts a man with that record on judgment day.
That myth is true, not existentially, but psychologically. The merciless recorder is the integrating mechanism of a man's subconscious; the record is his sense of life.
A sense of life is a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and of existence. It sets the nature of a man's emotional responses and the essence of his character.
Long before he is old enough to grasp such a concept as metaphysics, man makes choices, forms value-judgments, experiences emotions and acquires a certain implicit view of life. Every choice and value-judgment implies some estimate of himself and of the world around him -- most particularly, of his capacity to deal with the world. He may draw conscious conclusions, which may be true or false; or he may remain mentally passive and merely react to events (i.e., merely feel). Whatever the case may be, his subconscious mechanism sums up his psychological activities, integrating his conclusions, reactions or evasions into an emotional sum that establishes a habitual pattern and becomes his automatic response to the world around him. What began as a series of single, discrete conclusions (or evasions) about his own particular problems, becomes a generalized feeling about existence, an implicit metaphysics with the compelling motivational power of a constant, basic emotion -- an emotion which is part of all his other emotions and underlies all his experiences. This is a sense of life.
To the extent to which a man is mentally active, i.e., motivated by the desire to know, to understand, his mind works as the programmer of his emotional computer -- and his sense of life develops into a bright counterpart of a rational philosophy. To the extent to which a man evades, the programming of his emotional computer is done by chance influences; by random impressions, associations, imitations, by undigested snatches of environmental bromides, by cultural osmosis. If evasion or lethargy is a man's predominant method of mental functioning, the result is a sense of life dominated by fear -- a soul like a shapeless piece of clay stamped by footprints going in all directions. (In later years, such a man cries that he has lost his sense of identity; the fact is that he never acquired it.)
Man, by his nature, cannot refrain from generalizing; he cannot live moment by moment, without context, without past or future; he cannot eliminate his integrating capacity, i.e., his conceptual capacity, and confine his consciousness to an animal's perceptual range. Just as an animal's consciousness cannot be stretched to deal with abstractions, so man's consciousness cannot be shrunk to deal with nothing but immediate concretes. The enormously powerful integrating mechanism of man's consciousness is there at birth; his only choice is to drive it or to be driven by it. Since an act of volition -- a process of thought -- is required to use that mechanism for a cognitive purpose, man can evade that effort. But if he evades, chance takes over: the mechanism functions on its own, like a machine without a driver; it goes on integrating, but integrating blindly, incongruously, at random -- not as an instrument of cognition, but as an instrument of distortion, delusion and nightmare terror, bent on wrecking its defaulting processor's consciousness.
A sense of life is formed by a process of emotional generalization which may be described as a subconscious counterpart of a process of abstraction, since it is a method of classifying and integrating. But it is a process of emotional abstraction: it consists of classifying things according to the emotions they invoke -- i.e., of tying together, by association or connotation, all those things which have the power to make an individual experience the same (or a similar) emotion. For instance: a new neighborhood, a discovery, adventure, struggle, triumph -- or: the folks next door, a memorized recitation, a family picnic, a known routine, comfort. On a more adult level: a heroic man, the skyline of New York, a sunlit landscape, pure colors, ecstatic music -- or: a humble man, an old village, a foggy landscape, muddy colors, folk music.
Which particular emotions will be invoked by the things in these examples, as their respective common denominators, depends on which set of things fits an individual's view of himself. For a man of self-esteem, the emotion uniting the things in the first part of these examples is admiration, exaltation, a sense of challenge; the emotion uniting the things in the second part is disgust or boredom. For a man who lacks self-esteem, the emotion uniting the things in the first part of these examples is fear, guilt, resentment; the emotion uniting the things in the second part is relief from fear, reassurance, the undemanding safety of passivity.
Even though such emotional abstractions grow into a metaphysical view of man, their origin lies in an individual's view of himself and of his own existence. The subverbal, subconscious criterion of selection that forms his emotional abstractions is: "that which is important to me" or: "The kind of universe which is right for me, in which I would feel at home." It is obvious what immense psychological consequences will follow, depending on whether a man's subconscious metaphysics is consonant with the facts of reality or contradicts them.
The key concept, in the formation of a sense of life, is the term "important." It is a concept that belongs to the realm of values, since it implies an answer to the question: Important -- to whom? Yet its meaning is different from that of moral values. "Important" does not necessarily mean "good." It means "a quality, character or standing such as to entitle to attention or consideration" (The American College Dictionary). What, in a fundamental sense, is entitled to one's attention or consideration? Reality.
"Important" -- in its essential meaning, as distinguished from its more limited and superficial uses -- is a metaphysical term. It pertains to that aspect of metaphysics which serves as a bridge between metaphysics and ethics: to a fundamental view of man's nature. That view involves the answers to such questions as whether the universe is knowable or not, whether man has the power of choice or not, whether he can achieve his goals in life or not. The answers to such questions are "metaphysical value-judgments," since they form the base of ethics.
It is only those values which he regards or grows to regard as "important," those which represent his implicit view of reality, that remain in a man's subconscious and form his sense of life.
"It is important to understand things" -- "It is important to obey my parents" -- "It is important to act on my own" -- "It is important to please other people" -- "It is important to fight for what I want" -- "It is important not to make enemies" -- "My life is important" -- "Who am I to stick my neck out?" Man is a being of self-made soul -- and it is of such conclusions that the stuff of his soul is made. (By "soul" I mean "consciousness.")
The integrated sum of a man's basic values is his sense of life.
A sense of life represents a man's early value-integrations, which remain in a fluid, plastic, easily amendable state, while he gathers knowledge to reach full conceptual control and thus to drive his inner mechanism. A full conceptual control means a consciously directed process of cognitive integration, which means: a conscious philosophy of life.
By the time he reaches adolescence, a man's knowledge is sufficient to deal with broad fundamentals; this is the period when he becomes aware of the need to translate his incoherent sense of life into conscious terms. This is the period when he gropes for such things as the meaning of life, for principles, ideals, values and, desperately, for self-assertion. And -- since nothing is done, in our anti-rational culture, to assist a young mind in this crucial transition, and everything possible is done to hamper, cripple, stultify it -- the result is the frantic, hysterical irrationality of most adolescents, particularly today. Theirs is the agony of the unborn -- of minds going through a process of atrophy at the time set by nature for their growth.
The transition from guidance by a sense of life to guidance by a conscious philosophy takes many forms. For the rare exception, the fully rational child, it is a natural, absorbing, if difficult, process -- the process of validating and, if necessary, correcting in conceptual terms what he had merely sensed about the nature of man's existence, thus transforming a wordless feeling into clearly verbalized knowledge, and laying a firm foundation, an intellectual roadbed, for the course of his life. The result is a fully integrated personality, a man whose mind and emotions are in harmony, whose sense of life matches his conscious convictions.
Philosophy does not replace a man's sense of life, which continues to function as the automatically integrated sum of his values. But philosophy sets the criteria of his emotional integrations according to a fully defined and consistent view of reality (if and to the extent that a philosophy is rational). Instead of deriving, subconsciously, an implicit metaphysics from his value-judgments, he now derives, conceptually, his value-judgments from an explicit metaphysics. His emotions proceed from his fully convinced judgments. The mind leads, the emotions follow.
For many men, the process of transition never takes place: they make no attempt to integrate their knowledge, to acquire any conscious convictions, and are left at the mercy of their inarticulate sense of life as their only guide.
For most men, the transition is a tortured and not fully successful process, leading to a fundamental inner conflict -- a clash between a man's conscious convictions and his repressed, unidentified (or only partially identified) sense of life. Very often, the transition is incomplete, as in the case of a man whose convictions are not part of a fully integrated philosophy, but are merely a collection of random, disconnected, often contradictory ideas, and, therefore, are unconvincing to his own mind against the power of his subconscious metaphysics. In some cases, a man's sense of life is better (closer to the truth) than the kind of ideas he accepts. In other cases, his sense of life is much worse than the ideas he professes to accept but is unable fully to practice. Ironically enough, it is man's emotions, in such cases, that act as the avengers of his neglected or betrayed intellect.
In order to live, man must act; in order to act, he must make choices; in order to make choices, he must define a code of values; in order to define a code of values, he must know what he is and where he is -- i.e., he must know his own nature (including his means of knowledge) and the nature of the universe in which he acts -- i.e., he needs metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, which means: philosophy. He cannot escape from this need; his only alternative is whether the philosophy guiding him is to be chosen by his mind or by chance.
If his mind does not provide him with a comprehensive view of existence, his sense of life will. If he succumbs to centuries of concerted assaults on the mind -- to traditions offering vicious irrationality or unconscionable nonsense in the guise of philosophy -- if he gives up, in lethargy or in bewilderment, evades fundamental issues and concerns himself only with the concretes of his day-by-day existence, his sense of life takes over: for good or evil (and, usually, for evil), he is left at the mercy of a subconscious philosophy which he does not know, has never checked, has never been aware of accepting.
Then, as his fear, anxiety and uncertainty mount year by year, he finds himself living with a sense of unknown, undefinable doom, as if in expectation of some approaching judgment day. What he does not know is that every day of his life is judgment day -- the day of paying for the defaults, the lies, the contradictions, the blank-outs recorded by his subconscious on the scrolls of his sense of life. And on that kind of psychological record, the blank entries are the blackest sins.
A sense of life, once acquired, is not a closed issue. It can be changed and corrected -- easily, in youth, while it is still fluid, or by a longer, harder effort in later years. Since it is an emotional sum, it cannot be changed by a direct act of will. It changes automatically, but only after a long process of psychological retraining, when and if a man changes his conscious philosophical premises.
Whether he corrects it or not, whether it is objectively consonant with reality or not, at any stage or state of its specific content, a sense of life always retains a profoundly personal quality; it reflects a man's deepest values; it is experienced by him as a sense of his own identity.
A given person's sense of life is hard to identify conceptually, because it is hard to isolate: it is involved in everything about that person, in his every thought, emotion, action, in his every response, in his every choice and value, in his every spontaneous gesture, in his manner of moving, talking, smiling, in the total of his personality. It is that which makes him a "personality."
Introspectively, one's own sense of life is experienced as an absolute and an irreducible primary -- as that which one never questions, because the thought of questioning it never arises. Extrospectively, the sense of life of another person strikes one as an immediate, yet undefinable, impression -- on very short acquaintance -- an impression which often feels like certainty, yet is exasperatingly elusive, if one attempts to verify it.
This leads many people to regard a sense of life as the province of some sort of special intuition, as a matter perceivable only by some special, non-rational insight. The exact opposite is true: a sense of life is not an irreducible primary, but a very complex sum; it can be felt, but it cannot be understood, by an automatic reaction; to be understood, it has to be analyzed, identified and verified conceptually. That automatic impression -- of oneself or of others -- is only a lead; left untranslated, it can be a very deceptive lead. But if and when that intangible impression is supported by and unites with the conscious judgment of one's mind, the result is the most exultant form of certainty one can ever experience -- it is the integration of mind and values.
There are two aspects of man's existence which are the special province and expression of his sense of life: love and art.
I am referring here to romantic love, in the serious meaning of that term -- as distinguished from the superficial infatuations of those whose sense of life is devoid of any consistent values, i.e., of any lasting emotions other than fear. Love is a response to values. It is with a person's sense of life that one falls in love -- with that essential sum, that fundamental stand or way of facing existence, which is the essence of a personality. One falls in love with the embodiment of the values that formed a person's character, which are reflected in his widest goals or smallest gestures, which create the style of his soul -- the individual style of a unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable consciousness. It is one's own sense of life that acts as the selector, and responds to what it recognizes as one's own basic values in the person of another. It is not a matter of professed convictions (though these are not irrelevant); it is a matter of much more profound, conscious and subconscious harmony.
Many errors and tragic disillusionments are possible in this process of emotional recognition, since a sense of life, by itself, is not a reliable cognitive guide. And if there are degrees of evil, then one of the most evil consequences of mysticism -- in terms of human suffering -- is the belief that love is a matter of "the heart," not the mind, that love is an emotion independent of reason, that love is blind and impervious to the power of philosophy. Love is the expression of philosophy -- of a subconscious philosophical sum -- and, perhaps, no other aspect of human existence needs the conscious power of philosophy quite so desperately. When that power is called upon to verify and support an emotional appraisal, when love is a conscious integration of reason and emotion, of mind and values, then -- and only then -- it is the greatest reward of man's life.
Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. It is the integrator and concretizer of man's metaphysical abstractions. It is the voice of his sense of life. As such, art is subject to the same aura of mystery, the same dangers, the same tragedies -- and, occasionally, the same glory -- as romantic love.
Of all human products, art is, perhaps, the most personally important to man and the least understood -- as I shall discuss in the next chapter. (February 1966) (25-33, The Romantic Manifesto)


Section VII: Closing Comments

'God' is but one more delusion crushed by my yearning and thirst for Rationality …
My Rage to Order

Paper I: Christian, all too Christian …
Paper II: Theist, all too Theistic …
Paper III: Man-worship.

Where does the battle for reason, in my life, now direct me? In the words of J.D. McCoughey:
"God is dead, but fifty thousand social workers have risen to take his place."

The future? To continue examining and breaking down the five fields of philosophy -- Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, Politics, Esthetics -- as I want to understand how the exceptional and productive names of western philosophy and civilization approach and define each major and minor issue of man's existence. Rand, of course, has taken the early lead in influence and provided me with a framework to think and study with. No doubt Aristotle will be exquisitely interesting to dissect … as well as Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Plato, Hobbes, Paine, Darwin, Descartes, Galiani, Smith, Acton, Bastiat, Mises, Branden, Kelly, Freidman, Reisman, Seven of Nine … !? … ahem … ouch.

What I mean to say is: seven years later, I am done with religion in all its seemingly endless variations. Now, I contemplate earth … and Man … full time, with every fiber of my being. The foundation to build my 'empire' has been laid -- … and that foundation is Me

Are you the victor, the self-conqueror, the ruler of your senses, the lord of your virtues? Thus I ask you.
You should build beyond yourself. But first you must be built yourself, square-built in mind and body.
You should propagate yourself not only forward, but upward …
... in order to grow big, a tree wants to strike hard roots into hard rocks!

(and now -- the regional news … final statements … yadda yadda …)

A tentative departure date from Yellowknife is scheduled for early September '98. Planning a few days to say hello to my grandparents (Evansburg), Michelle-University (Edmonton), my sister (Calgary), … I should be greeting Vancouver in the last week of September or so. I tell you, the idea of going in 'reverse motion' the way I came into Canada is thrilling! To see the same Vancouver hostel, eat pancakes and hashbrowns in the same corner restaurant, mingle with the street-crowds along Denman and Robson, visit the same outdoor / travel stores as I did in '93 to buy all those neat gizmos I saw while traveling last … all of it to be done with Paper Three in the palm of my hand -- triumph! Mind you, we will have to top Doug and the Slugs this time around … any ideas? … heh heh heh …

And, with that said, until all this should come to pass and our paths cross again my friend, extend sincere Vulcan greetings to those of your household and universe …

… and take care of yourself ...





"I stormed through life; first powerful and great,
But now with calmer wisdom, and sedate.
The earthly sphere I know sufficiently,
but into the beyond we cannot see;
A fool, that squints and tries to pierce these shrouds,
And would invent his like above the clouds!
Let him survey this life, be resolute,
For to the able this world is not mute.
Why fly into eternities?
What man perceives, that he can seize."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Faust










Return to Letters & Poems




Website & Webpage January1998 are
Copyright of VamKam Inc.
URL: http://www.oocities.org/tsiktsikcd/january1998.html