What the Hell is an Atheist?

 

I asked my friend, who is way older and smarter than me, why I get along with Atheists so well, since I like, you know, believe in God and shit. 

I'll quote my friend's emailed response at length: 

I've always tended to like atheism better than religion, because it strikes me as closer to the truth.  The atheist and the truly spiritual person are in deep agreement on at least one thing:  there is no such thing as "a God".  God is not "a being".   Then when one says God is Being, which is true, that is also perfectly consonant with atheism, because being is not a thing, it is nothing.   Both the true spiritual seeker and the atheist throw out all the false constructions and idols.

What's the opinion of my friend worth tho? So here I'll quote Cousin Vivi who has a similar view:

Vivekananda AKA Cousin Vivi

The vast majority of men are atheists. I am glad that, in modern times, another class of atheists has come into existence in the Western world — I mean the materialists. They are sincere atheists. They are better than the religious atheists, who are insincere, who fight and talk about religion, and yet do not want it, never try to realise it, never try to understand it. 

They both are of the opinion that there is "true religion," and then there is the much more common semblance of it. Cousin Vivi goes as far as saying that most men, and he's writing this around the beginning of the 20th century so its really saying something, are so far from true religion that they are in effect atheists. 

The next tricky thing my friend brings up is that "God is not a being." Here is where you're gonna lose most of your Christian friends. The idea with Christianity in practice today is that God was/is a dude, and therefore He is very much a being. If people are being nice to you, they'll say something like "Oh cool... you believe in like a Gaia thing... or something."

I met the Christian Philosopher Ken Boa last year. He said that the current conclusions of modern Quantum Physics will, in the near future, lead scientists to postulate something like a "Gaia consciousness" behind the universe. He clearly thought this was a cute, tho untrue, conclusion. Kind of: "silly scientists, trying to reinvent the wheel when obviously the answer is Jesus." He had philosophical reasons for thinking this Gaia thing was not as good an explanation of the universe as... a Jew with holes in him.

What's funny about guys like Ken Boa is that his faith didn't come from philosophizing, it came from experience. His story goes something like: "Back in the day I hated everything, especially religious people. So one a day me and a friend take a buncha acid with the plan to disprove God once and for all... didn't work. Totally talked to the guy."

I don't really know what a Gaia consciousness means, seems like some James Cameron shit. But stupid seeming or not, I'm not going to decide either way until I see it. Here's Kenny Superpowers on the "mystic experiences" of the Quantum Qrew:

Not many people realize that Erwin Schrödinger, the founder of quantum mechanics, had a deep satori experience. He found that the position that most matched his own was Vedantic Hinduism — that pure awareness is aware of all objects but cannot itself become an object. It’s the way into the door of realizing ultimate reality. Werner Heisenberg had similar experiences. And Sir Arthur Eddington was probably the most eloquent of the lot.

Swami Heisenberg

The experience they're describing isn't Gaia consciousness (which is realizing you can plug your hair into your sky-pony?), but Absolute-oneness, or God-consciousness. But the "God" in God-consciousness isn't a bearded white dude in a toga. It is Non-personal, it does not have personality, which Jesus, as a "Personal God" does. 

That question you hear thrown around: "Do you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?" doesn't really understand itself. The asker usually assumes that people can only have a relationship with something transcending themselves in the form a personal relationship. They think they're asking: "Is it Buddha, Mohammed, your boyfriend, or JESUS???" 

People connect with what can be called "God" in various ways, it can either be in a personal relationship, or an abstract person-less relationship. This distinction is also called God-with-form, and God-without-form. Which one is right? It seems like that's not a genuine question.

The "Ramachillin"

The Ramakrishna Paramahamsa asked a student:

Do you believe in a God with form or in a formless God?"

"In the formless aspect," was the reply.

Then The Master asked: But how can you grasp the formless aspect all at once? When the archers are learning to shoot, they first aim at the plantain tree, then at a thin tree, then at a fruit, then at the leaves, and finally at a flying bird. First meditate on the aspect with form. This will enable you to see the formless later.

So imagining and worshiping "God-with-form" is nothing more and nothing less than a path heading towards seeing God-without-form. Let's ask again: What is the Atheist?

The Atheist already knows that God cannot have form, 'cuz he doesn't believe in Him at all. So he has a major some advantage. But why should he give a shit about God? Well, forget about "God," maybe think about "completion." Perhaps all the Atheist has to do is search his feelings and ask: what do I really want to become? Descartes proof of God rested simply on the perception that he felt inferior to something, he was "lacking" in knowledge, and therefore he had a concept of something that did not lack knowledge. Start with something like that.

Cousin Vivi on "The Necessity of Religion":

None of us have yet seen an "Ideal Human Being", and yet we are told to believe in it... We are always struggling to raise ourselves up to that ideal. Every human being, whosoever and wheresoever he may be, has an ideal of infinite power. Every human beinghas an ideal of infinite pleasure.

 Simple enuf. The enduring presence of archetypes like the boring dude to the left is proof enough that people are obsessed with perfection, even if they have no "God" concepts. What motivates Dawkins to perfectly make the case against bogus concepts if not some sort of ideal for himself, for humanity, towards which he is striving?

Vivi continues:

Most of the works that we find around us, the activities displayed everywhere, are due to the struggle for this infinite power or this infinite pleasure. But a few quickly discover that although they are struggling for infinite power, it is not through the senses that it can be reached. They find out very soon that that infinite pleasure is not to be got through the senses, or, in other words, the senses are too limited, and thebody is too limited, to express the Infinite. To manifest the Infinite through the finite is impossible, and sooner or later, man learns to give up the attempt to express the Infinite through the finite. 

What in the world is he talking about? That's some mystical bullshit if I've ever seen it. But we can unpack it some. So do people desire "infinite power"?

 Well, that'd probably explain this dude.

But weirdly enough Vivi claims that it also explains this chick:

In another essay, "Bhakti or Devotion", Vivi states, without being metaphorical, that the motive force behind all motion is: "Love." What keeps this from being ridiculous is that he really does claim that it's the single agent behind all motion in the universe. He's not trying to turn motion into something prettier, he's saying Love is and always has been identical with motion and attraction. He holds no reservations that Love be reserved for discussing "pleasant things" or even "human things." By this usage, "Love" is essentially energy in its most abstract sense, a few decades later he might have associated it with "Quanta."

What manifests itself as attraction in the sentient and the insentient, in the particular and in the universal, is the love of God. It is the one motive power that is in the universe. Under the impetus of that love, Christ gives his life for humanity, Buddha even for an animal, the mother for the child, the husband for the wife. It is under the impetus of the same love that men are ready to give up their lives for their country, and strange to say, under the impetus of the same love, the thief steals, the murderer murders. Even in these cases, the spirit is the same, but the manifestation is different.

Seeing motion and God as "Love" in this highest sense requires progressing beyond seeing God exclusively as a personal God, or God-with-form. The Ramakrishna says we don't have to completely give up on God-with-form. "Worship God-with-form in the morning, worship God-without-form in the evening," was something he often said.

The difference is between this type of Devotee (that sees God as Love, manifested everywhere in everything, even in evil) and the Atheist is that the Atheist is a Materialist. The Devotee is a Spiritualist. Spirit, from this "God-without-form" perspective, is nothing other than energy and matter, appearing, evolving, transforming into infinite beings and returning back to Nothingness.

God-with-form cannot be eternal, for anything which can be felt with the senses will disappear. Clutch to your cross, to your image of Jesus, as hard as you can, but it will never penetrate to the true depth of your suffering.

The Atheist, as a Materialist, is the same as the God-with-form Theist. They forget to acknowledge the importance of Nothingness, and so the passing of all things into the mysterious realm of Nothingness is a tragedy to them, so horrible that it must be suppressed from consciousness at all costs. Death is a misery incapable of being comprehended to the Materialist and the conventional Theist. 

Nothingness is what the Spiritualist truly worships, for, as my friend said, true Being is Nothingness.  But since everything which we can feel with our senses is not this Nothingness, but only that which springs from it and returns back into it, we must worship Nothingness through those things -- until we don't have to.

But my friend had more to say about Atheists like Dawkins, who wrote "The God Delusion."

...A wonderful young theologian friend of mine ... read Dawkins and Hitchins and agreed with everything they said.  The only problem was, they left God and true religion completely untouched.   But useful books if they help get rid of the imposters that pass for religion and God in the world.   But all the rest has a place too:  human creatures are a varied lot, and have different needs.