Bruce Charlton's Notions

Although I managed to evade admitting the fact and avoided contemplating its consequences for more than 40 years, the fact should be acknowledged that atheism provides zero guidance for life.

Atheists ought be man enough to suck-it-up (although I did *not* do so - and so I am here asking others to be more honest and rigorous that I myself managed to be).

Consider: What does atheism not do?

Atheism provides no basis for being 'good' or virtuous rather than evil (indeed atheism is squeamish about the reality of evil precisely because it cannot conceptualize good).

Atheism provides no basis for preferring altruism over selfishness, no basis for aesthetic judgement and preferring beauty over repulsiveness, no basis for seeking and telling the truth rather than propagating lies.

For atheists, such matters are – at root – arbitrary and unjustifiable personal preferences – since if they are justified in terms of their consequences (as leading to outcomes like peace, prosperity or ease), then any preference of consequences is merely an arbitrary and unjustifiable personal preference (i.e. the preference for happiness, peace, prosperity and ease over misery, war, poverty and hardship is for an atheist itself merely subjective – merely ‘my opinion’ or ‘my gang’s opinion’).

Expediency is merely an unsupported subjective preference.

Atheism provides no basis for respecting individuals, since individuals are regarded as a minority of one - insignificant and short-lived organisms compared with a planet full of powerful nations, societies, cultures, ideologies and gangs. Expediency will always sacrifice the individual to the ‘greater good’.

(By contrast, a Christian will – or should - regard nations, societies, cultures, ideologies and gangs as utterly insignificant and short-lived by comparison with a single potentially-immortal soul.)

Atheism provides no reason for rejecting a focus on short term, selfish pleasure – if that is what happens to appeal; nor for rejecting cowardice, parasitism and victimization. Atheism provides no reason, except expediency, to consider other humans as anything other than something to be exploited or evaded according to our spontaneous – or acquired – impulses and urges.

Yet atheism also provides no reason why we should follow, or reject, our evolved impulses and urges.

Atheism cannot combat demotivation and alienation – since it undercuts and destroys any attempt to discover or provide purpose and meaning to life. Even a simple hedonism of seeking pleasure and avoiding suffering is rendered utterly pointless for mortal creatures in the infinite context of time and space.

An atheist life is intrinsically incoherent – suck it up!

If there is no God, and this world is a merely-determined/ accidental and purposeless happening; then life is also purposeless.

If life has no external and shared meaning, then all that matters is how we feel about it - so life reduces to psychology.


Our innate psychology includes all kinds of instincts including loyalty, courage, appreciation of beauty, natural virtue... but with atheism these are accidental and contingent consequences of our past evolutionary history - and their meaning is in-the-past; and that meaning was only to enhance our differential genetic replicative success (because people are organisms, and organisms are only disposable contingent gene-controlled robots that exist to promote gene replication).

We may feel the pull or push of natural ethics or 'higher instincts' but they have no validity for 'my' actions, 'here-and-now'.

Therefore psychology reduces to the pleasure-suffering axis.


In other words; the only psychology that can be justified (for me, here, now) is my feelings, now = hedonism (the principle that the axis of my pleasure-suffering is the only 'ethic').

Current - here-and-now - feelings are the only relevant factor; because the future cannot be reliably predicted and the past may be forgotten or memories may be false.

Hedonic feelings are the only self-justifying feelings, because (by circular definition) feeling good is better than feeling bad. And because (with atheism) nothing else matters.

So with atheism hedonic feelings are the only thing left-standing.  


And when short-term pleasure/ happiness, gratification is the only bottom line; then as soon as it is absent, life is worthless.

If we come to believe that our own personal happiness is in decline or impossible - or simply currently insufficient: too weak or too infrequent - then we shall (we realise) despair - sooner or later. And there can be no reassurance against this despair, because such despair is rational.

Under such circumstances, only the deluded manic or the manipulative psychopath can be consciously happy with life - and even they are vulnerable to downswings.


What happens then? Look around.

We see a society incrementally being overwhelmed by a tidal rise in despair; caused by atheism and the ethic of hedonism.

Amping up the pleasure is ineffectual - unless it could be made overwhelming and continuous (which is the false promise of transhumanism - a world of engineered permanent euphoria). And all pleasure is (apparently) subject to 'habituation' - pleasure fades unless there is novelty, or increased dose. This seems to be a biological built-in.


(This is why atheism so quickly devolves from pleasure-seeking - like the middle 1960s radical-leftist, libertine hippie ethic of promiscuous sex, hedonic drugs, and rock & roll... To the 1970s-and-onwards ethic of suffering-avoidance - with its hopes of a 'therapeutic' totalitarian world government that will prevent any kind of personal, social, planetary suffering. The change is from pleasure-seeking to pain-avoidant: from stimulant and euphoriant abuse to mass mediation with tranquillisers, mood-stabilisers, and antidepressants; from aiming-at a positive and pleasurable socialist utopia - to a society structured-around preventing the angst caused by global warming, microaggressions, racism, sexism, unbiological sexuality and sexual identity etc.)


Atheism, as it becomes mainstream, then mandatory (in public life) leads to rational and increasing  despair; from which there can be no escape while atheism prevails.

The solution should be, but isn't, obvious: to re-examine our arbitrary and evidentially-unfounded assumptions regarding the fundamental nature of reality.

(These ultimate assumptions concerning the nature of reality are termed metaphysical.)


But once a person, or a society, is already-in the depths of atheism-induced despair; then it becomes increasingly difficult to make the metaphysical effort to escape, because real escape seems impossible, hence effort is futile and (here-and-now) counter-productive. 

Despair is the fruit of atheism, and despair is perhaps the worst of sins; because it destroys the belief that escape is possible.

Hence mass human despair is the sin most deeply desired by the devil. 


Note: In psychiatry - the highest rate of suicide - and of death from refusal of drink and food and lack of self care - is among the severely depressed: i.e. those who are in the grip of self-fulfilling despair. Captive animals in despair cease to reproduce despite protection from predators and adequate provision of food and shelter - precisely analogous to the modern atheist populations of The West. 

Further note: If you join the same dots in a different way; you can see why atheism tends strongly to supporting the demonic agenda of subversion all good values; and opens the atheist to the ultimate demonic goal of value inversion (evil is virtue, ugliness is beauty, lies and fakes are truth) - in the sense that when value inversion becomes socially-expedient (as it is now) there is no strong reason to resist it, and many reasons to embrace it. 

Any suggestions?


The question was prompted by this:

http://www.scifiwright.com/2015/11/being-a-bright-darkens-the-intellect/#more-14843


My answer: The best argument for atheism is the null hypothesis that: There Is No God. 

If it is assumed that there is no God unless proven otherwise - then it is difficult honestly to avoid being an atheist - because it feels like there never can be enough 'proof' for such a massive assertion.


The reason that atheism is at such high prevalence in the modern West is that this culture inculcates the assumption that there is no God as if it were common sense, necessary - and perhaps even the only sane assumption.

The reason that the majority of humans alive now, and pretty much all of them in the past, were theists is that the natural, spontaneous, inborn assumption of human beings is apparently something along the lines that god/s is/are real, important, influential in the world and in each person's life.

So atheism is one aspect of modern nihilism - the modern failure to assume, to asumme the non-validity-of (to 'problematize) what is spontaneous and natural to Man; and therefore to disbelieve in the objective reality of truth, beauty, virtue; purpose, meaning and relatedness; faith, hope and love; the need for Men to live in, and as, a family...


Our fundamental assumptions about life dictate pretty much everything else - these fundamental assumptions are termed metaphysical - and modernity teaches us that there is no such thing as metaphysics, that it is deceptive nonsense.

By thereby rendering modern metaphysical assumptions invisible, modernity renders atheism (etc) apparently unchalleangeable.

When humans accept, as they mostly do, their inbuilt knowledge and awareness of god/s - then theism is natural, and indeed undisproveable.

It is all a matter of assumptions. So the proper question moves onto considering what are the proper and valid grounds for such assumptions... 


Yep! - the inbuilt, invisible prior assumption of the validity of atheism is certainly the strongest 'argument' for atheism.

Are They insane - or are They evil?...

Readers of this blog must have asked themselves this question with increasing frequency throughout 2020; but it has been looming ever larger over the past half-century. 

 

For instance; the trans-agenda activists are certainly insane; but in psychologically abusing, poisoning and mutilating children by official diktat, they have also attained a world-historical level of evil. 

And much the same applies to the other litmus test issues - bizarre insanity and purposive evil are at the same time extreme and interwoven. 

Why? What is the causality here? 

 

The root is atheism*.

Rudolf Steiner made some wise and deep comments to the effect that atheism (not to believe in a god) was in fact an actual sickness, which takes the form of insanity. 

In the past, all through human prehistory and history up until the past few generations in TheWest; society was structurally religious, and everyone (including atheists) was brought-up in a religion.

In the past, atheists were individuals, living in a religious society - so although they were insane, they could nonetheless be good. 

But now we live a world where insane atheists are ubiquitous, and insane atheist values are everywhere. For the first time ever we have atheists who were raised by atheists (who were raised by atheists) and living in a public discourse that assumes the validity of atheism. 

In these current conditions, atheists are not only insane, but also evil - because... why not? 

Atheism is rootless relativism; which reduces to a 'morality' of expediency; dictated by an un-moored society that is ripe for demonic manipulation, and helpless against demonic inversion of values.  Hence the trans-agenda etc.

The atheists do not originate societal evil - that comes from the powers of purposive evil working upon sinful Men. But atheists have no reason Not to go along with the strategies of Satan (who is not real to them). 

In an evil world, atheists will be evil. 

 

So, generalised atheism is the reason for co-occurrence of insanity with evil in modern societies. 

 

*It is my assumption is that a large majority of self-identified Christians, and Christian churches, are in truth atheist - since they accept in practice all the core atheist assumptions, and follow all the mainstream atheist ideologies. 

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Having a high IQ is not always good news

Mensa Magazine June 2009 pp 34-5

Bruce G Charlton

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There are so many advantages to having a high IQ that the disadvantages are sometimes neglected – and I don’t mean just short-sightedness, which is commoner among the highly intelligent. It really is true that people who wear glasses tend to be smarter!

High IQ is, mostly, good for you

First it is worth emphasizing that high IQ is mostly very good for you.
This has been known since Lewis Terman’s 1920s follow-up study of Californian high IQ children revealed that they were not just cleverer but also taller, healthier and more athletic than average; and mostly grew-up to become wealthy and successful.

Professor Ian Deary of Edinburgh University has confirmed that both health and life-expectancy improve along with increasing IQ. So that, remarkably, a single childhood IQ test done on one morning in Scotland in 1932 made significantly-valid statistical predictions about when people would die many decades later.
And other studies have shown that higher IQ people tend to be less violent, so smarter people usually make less-troublesome neighbours.

Indeed, Geoffrey Miller has put forward the idea that IQ is a measure of biological fitness. Since it takes about half of our genes to make and operate the brain, most damaging genetic mutations will show-up in reduced intelligence. So it would have made sense for our ancestors to choose their mates on the basis of intelligence, because a good brain implies good genes.

Sidis and the problems of ultra-high IQ

However, high IQ is not always beneficial. Terman’s study of the highest IQ group among his cohort revealed that more than one third grew up to be ‘maladjusted’ in some way: for example having significant problems of anxiety, depression, personality disorder or experience of ‘nervous breakdowns’.

This applied to William James Sidis (1898-1944), who is often considered to have had the highest-ever IQ (about 250-300). Sidis was a child prodigy, famous throughout the USA as having enrolling at Harvard aged 11 and graduated at 16. Yet he was certainly ‘maladjusted’, and had a chaotic, troubled and short life. Indeed, Sidis was widely considered to have been a failure as an adult – although this failure has been exaggerated, since it turns out that Sidis published a number of interesting books and articles anonymously.

In fact, there seems to be a consensus among psychometricians (and among the possessors of ultra-high IQ themselves) that - while an IQ of about 120-150 is mostly advantageous - extremely high IQ levels above this may prove to be as often of a curse as a benefit from the perspective of leading a happy and fulfilling life.

On the one hand, the ranks of genius are often recruited from amongst the more creative and stable of ultra-high IQ people; but on the other hand there are also a high proportion of chronically-disaffected ultra-high IQ people that have been termed ‘The Outsiders’ in a famous essay of that title by Grady M Towers
( www.prometheussociety.org/articles/Outsiders.html )

Socialism, atheism and low-fertility

Sidis himself demonstrated, in exaggerated form, three traits which I put forward as being aspects of high IQ which are potentially disadvantageous: socialism, atheism and low-fertility.

1. Socialism

Higher IQ is probably associated with socialism via the personality trait called Openness-to-experience, which is modestly but significantly correlated with IQ. (To be more exact, left wing political views and voting patterns are characteristic of the highest and lowest IQ groups – the elite and the underclass - and right wingers tend to be in the mid-range.)

Openness summarizes such attributes as imagination, aesthetic sensitivity, preference for variety and intellectual curiosity – it also (among high IQ people in Western societies) predicts left-wing political views. Sidis was an extreme socialist, who received a prison sentence for participating in a May Day parade which became a riot (in the event, he ‘served his time’ in a sanatorium).

Now, of course, not everyone would agree that socialism is wrong (indeed, Mensa members reading this are quite likely to be socialists). But if socialism is regarded as a mistaken ideology (as I personally would argue!), then it could be said that high IQ people are more likely to be politically wrong. But whether correct or wrong, the point is that high IQ people do seem to have a built-in psychological and political bias.

2. Atheism

Something similar applies to atheism. Sidis was an atheist, and it has been pretty conclusively demonstrated by Richard Lynn that increasing IQ is correlated with increasing likelihood of atheism. The most famous atheists – like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett – are ferociously intelligent individuals.

Again, whether atheism is a disadvantage is a matter of opinion (to put it mildly!) – but what is not merely opinion is that religious people are on average more altruistic in terms of measures such as giving to charity, giving blood, and volunteering time for good causes.

So, higher IQ may be associated with greater selfishness. In other words, smarter neighbours may be less troublesome on average, but they may also be less helpful.

3. Fertility

However the biggest and least-controversial disadvantage of high IQ is reduced fertility. Again Sidis serves as an example: as a teenager he published a vow of celibacy, and he neither married nor had children.

Pioneer intelligence researchers such as Francis Galton (1822-1911) noticed that (since the invention of contraception) increasing intelligence usually meant fewer offspring. Terman confirmed this, especially among women – so the group of the highest IQ women had only about a quarter of the number of children required for replacement fertility.

This trend has, if anything, increased in recent years as ever-more high IQ women delay reproduction in order to pursue higher education and professional careers. Indeed, more than 30 percent of women college graduates in the UK and Europe have no children at all – and more than half of women now attend college.

Since IQ is highly heritable, this low fertility implies that over time high IQ will tend to select itself out of the population.

The bad news and the good news

So much for the bad news about high IQ.

The good news is that while the advantages of high IQ are built-in; the disadvantages of high IQ are mostly a matter of choice.

People can potentially change their political and religious views. For example, Sidis apparently changed from being a socialist to a libertarian, indeed many adult conservatives went through a socialist phase during their youth (declaration of interest: this applies to me).

And religious conversions among the high IQ are not unknown (declaration of interest: this applies to me). For instance, GK Chesterton and C.S Lewis being famous examples of atheists who became the two greatest Christian apologists of the twentieth century.

Indeed, although it does not often happen, smart people can also choose to be more fertile. One example is the Mormons in the USA, whose average IQ and fertility are both above the national average, and where the wealthiest Mormons also have the biggest families. Presumably - since wealth and IQ are positively correlated - this means that for US Mormons higher IQ leads to higher fertility.

So, on the whole it remains good news to have a high IQ - although perhaps not too-high an IQ. But perhaps the high IQ community needs to take a more careful look at the question of low fertility. It may be that, under modern conditions, high intelligence is stopping people from ‘doing what comes naturally’ and having large families.

Human reproduction could be one situation where the application of intelligence may be needed to over-ride our spontaneous emotions or the prevailing societal incentives.

Or else at some point in the future, high IQ could become very rare indeed.

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For more on IQ see:

http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/

**

 There have been innumerable books and articles on the causes of the current literal insanity. But The underlying cause is simply Atheism.

To explain a little, the cause is atheism - de facto atheism and its consequences.

De facto, because nearly all 'religious' people nowadays are Not; are actually materialists, even in their religion. 

And the consequence is that most religious people are as bad atheists as the explicit, strident variety.

Atheism is a Spiritual state, more than a belief. It is very difficult and unusual Not to be a spiritual atheist... To think and live on the basis that there is No God, and that this world and life are Not an ongoing creation.

And That is The problem we should be working on...

This is adapted from a comment I wrote at William Wildblood's blog in answer to his question - Are Atheists Bad People? 

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I think many people can grasp that ultimate belief is ultimately a matter of choice (I mean, belief is not compelled).

But the dispute is about the stance from which choice is made.

Three possible stances are modern, natural, metaphysical.

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1. From where modern society places people, in a world where the public and professional arenas are thought systems which assume that all explanations are materialist, then atheism is the rational choice.

People simply believe what their job, the media, the law, what everybody assumes - that everything is to be explained with material causes and consequences.

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2. But if we start from the natural man, who has not been raised in a modern society - we get to the various kinds of natural religion ('paganism') from where Christianity is - if not compelling - very appealing.

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3. Or, if we start from a genuine engagement with metaphysics (true philosophy - that is, reflection on the basic nature of the world) then also we get fairly close to Christianity - to a place, at least, where Christianity is a plausible continuation.

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Modern man is in an unique position from which the choice of Christianity seems arbitrary - since this position already assumes the irrelevance of natural religion and basic metaphysics.

What modern man fails to recognise is that skepticism about the relevance of both natural religion and metaphysics leaves no ground for knowledge.

Modern man is therefore a nihilist, and by choice; but without realising that he is a nihilist - he has no possibility of rational knowledge, by his assumptions, yet he will not accept that his assumptions destroy all possibility of knowledge, and he continues to claim and act upon his assumptions as if they were obvious knowledge - so obvious that he is incredulous that anyone can think otherwise.

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This is the predicament: that modern man is a nihilist, but does not recognise the fact. Modern man believes he has grounds of knowledge for his beliefs, yet by his own assumptions he has no grounds.

Modern man thinks himself a realist above all other things, yet he denies that reality is real.

All that modern man means by 'reality' is that which he believes would, if contradicted, cause him suffering.

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The modern choice of atheism is not perceived to be a personal choice - it is perceived to be merely an acceptance of 'reality' as reality is expressed through all of the powerful modern social institutions.

All of the powerful modern social institutions rule-out Christian explanations (indeed rule-out all non-materialist explanations).

The actual evaluations, the grammar of modern society is non-religious.

This is why it is absurd to imagine it is necessary or desirable to separate Christianity from Secular society.

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When the explanations of politics, social administration, law, science, education, the military, the mass media etc all implicitly assume the irrelevance of Christianity - then why is it surprising that Christianity is perceived to be irrelevant?

Why is it then surprising that God is perceived to be an unnecessary hypothesis, when God is as (a matter of fact) an excluded hypothesis in all the public domains of modern society?

Modern society has placed us, as individuals, in this situation - God is excluded from the social bloodstream, atheism is active at a minute, capillary level.

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Atheists and Libertarians are both on the side of the mainstream of public discourse; that is, on the side of the Global Establishment, the mass media, and the interlinked bureaucracy - with their agenda of a single, totalitarian System of value-inversion.

Taken seriously, atheist assumptions would lead to paralysing despair - perhaps as the terminus of a brief phase of psychopathic hedonism.

But atheism never is taken seriously in public discourse; because all atheists are hypocrites - at root, because that there is no such thing as the sin of hypocrisy from an atheist perspective. In sum, there are no sincere atheists.

(Any atheist that did take atheism seriously would not participate in public discourse, would - indeed - keep his atheism secret; and would soon be dead. So we would never know about him.)

This is the same as libertarianism: there are no sincere libertarians. All libertarians are either hypocritical and self-contradicting; or else (usually, nearly always) they sell-out, as soon as it is expedient for them to do so. Why not?

(Libertarianism is just a career strategy - a bit like forming a start-up company in hope that you will become successful enough to be bought-out by one of the industry giants.)  

I think these facts are widely known - but come up against the question If Not, Then What? It seems that most modern people have pre-decided the answer must be 'Anything but Christianity' then they have painted themselves into a corner.

Until they recognise that Christianity is the answer, and set about finding out just how it is the answer; they are stuck in a hopeless trap, forever.

Note: I have been both an atheist - most of my life; and a libertarian - late 90s to mid-2000s.

THE challenge of this time, in this place (the modern West) is that unless our Christian faith is conscious and active; it will not survive.

In the past and in other places, a socially-inculcated, immersive Christianity - just accepted and rejoiced in - was sufficient. Here and now it isn't. Other times and places the Christian could be 'once born' - now he must be twice-born*.

When I became a Christian, declared myself a Christian - I was at first once-born. My Christian faith was a gradual, seamless transition from prior atheism and materialism. It was only after a few months, in response to the challenge of first finding myself in a 'liberal' (ie fake) church and then in a real (in this instance evangelical) church that I was 'born again' and recognised the qualitative break in my perspective on everything that Christianity meant.

(Much credit for this must go to the way that the best protestants emphasise the theme of 'salvation by faith' - it was exactly what I needed at that point.)

It is my belief that our society, England, Albion - The West - was divinely intended to transition between a once-born Christianity (socially implemented and inculcated, passive, unconscious, taking it for granted) to the twice born state. However, the only path from once to twice is via the recognition and inner experience of atheism, doubt, nihilism - and despair.

Ideally, the phase of atheism is a brief transition. But The West, by failing to resist demonic temptation - especially in relation to sex (the second-most powerful human instinct, after religion), but also from pride-resentment and more general this-wordly hedonism, backed by pervasive dishonesty - got stuck in the atheist, materialist, sceptical phase. the phase became 'permanent' - having lasted and increased and accelerated over about nine generations so far - except that it is self-destroying. 

So, our starting point is atheism, materialism, nihilism - fuelled by hedonism and reinforced by dishonesty. That is where we are. That is where we start from - and things are still getting worse.

The fact that many individuals are Not in this state (are once-born Christians) - is fortunate for them (until they get corrupted) but we should not be distracted from the essence of our predicament. We cannot return to the once-born situation, because that depends-upon society being organised such that Christianity is natural, spontaneous, instinctive and pretty much just-happens. Insofar as our Christianity relies upon a Christian milieu, upon passive absorption, it will be corrupted, sooner or later.

From where we are, we can only move forward to a deliberate, conscious, chosen Christianity - such as has never existed in the past except among a few individuals.

That is the special challenge of these times - for individual, not for 'society' because society is lost, gone, destroyed. So, we must rely upon individuals, one at a time, finding their own path. Which includes finding for themselves - with invisible divine help, no doubt, once intent is established - but not being fed, the help they need. 

The key word is agency. It is not about 'individualism' but about agency - which is 'free will', but free will of the real (and divine) self. It is getting our-selves to the situation of recognising the deepest and most important issues and assumptions, and taking personal responsibility for our choices, our faith, our beliefs, our motivations.

We must first become agents (which is not a spontaneous thing - but an achievement) and then exercise our agency. Of course, people may choose wrongly, but where we are now is that people are not even choosing. They are once-born evil! We need to be twice-born - even if we are already once-born Christians.

It is a huge risk; but that risk is unavoidable in going from once- to twice-born; and that is The risk which is characteristic, definitive, of this time and place.


*The distinction of once- versus twice-born comes from William James's book The Varieties of Religious Experience. 

There are no plans to remove the regulations on 'social-distancing' - the laws by which every person must (with a handful of exemptions) treat every other person as if ritually unclean.

And there is little apparent desire from people that this should change. People are self-policing at all times, including in private and outdoors.

I went on a walk in Northumberland during which I saw just six people in two hours - two of them were coming along the path towards us; and they laboriously stopped and stepped-back a couple of yards to let us pass without breaching regulations.

This was in the middle of a forest, in the middle of nowhere, with nobody else around; and the attitude of the interaction was clearly one of being polite and considerate - as if this was the proper way for human beings to interact, and as if anything else would be rude, aggressive and reckless.

You see how a Godless people are helpless putty in the claws of evil? They have (we British have) long-since embraced evil in our hearts; by our solid belief in the meaninglessness and purposelessness of life - and consequently the mass of people experience very little friction when asked to treat themselves and each other as plague rats.

As Steiner correctly said a century ago; atheism is a disease, a sickness, a disability (albeit chosen, self-inflicted) - and it is no stretch at all for a society of atheists to live by their belief that sickness is primary and disease is universal.

The lesson? There is no resistance to evil when evil is regarded as good.

If we are (personally, socially) to escape the universal self-damnation of actively preferring this demon-administered totalitarian world; awakening must come first. There can be no positive change without motivation and courage for the Good.

As I have been saying for a decade - atheism is not viable, atheism is despair and death; religion is essential, non-optional.

The primary task for everyone who has not already done it, is to

Choose Your Religion.

Note - I would add that CYR is only a beginning; and having chosen, one must strive (daily, hourly) to put it first. The birdemic crisis has revealed that merely-self-identified religion (such as that of Bishops) is merely-atheism - indistinguishable in practice and under stress. 

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This quotation from the theologian Alister McGrath is a variant of the Dostoevsky quote translated as "Without God all things are permitted".

McGrath focuses on the effect of atheism on morality or Virtue, Dostoevsky's applicability would embrace the othe transcendental Goods of Beauty and Truth - in the sense that without God then there is no final restraint on either dishonesty (lies, hype, spin, propaganda) or beauty (ugliness, horror, banality).

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The evidence that McGrath and Dostoevsky are correct is quite simple:

The Twentieth Century.

The 20th century witnessed several enormous atheist political regimes in The Soviet Union, Germany and China - where the implementations of evil were of a scale and thoroughness and of a duration never before seen in human history.

In other words, the removal of God can be seen to have eliminated the final restraint on human brutality. 

Of course this is not sufficient 'proof' for those who deeply wish to deny the link; but that is the case for all forms of evidence for anything and without any exceptions.  

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But to focus exclusively upon ethical aspects of religiously-unrestrained immorality is to miss the fullness of catastrophe which atheism has visited upon humanity - by removal of final restraint because these societies were equally societies of unprecedented institutional dishonesty and ugliness.

In sum, atheism enables the denial of natural law - of all spontaneous ('natural') human acknowledgments of truth, beauty and virtue - and denial implies inversion.

Atheism enables denial of natural law - it does not compel this denial, but it enables the denial to happen when this is expedient. 

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Because humans always take sides, always exhibit a prefernce, are unable to be neutral.

So when natural law is denied primacy, it is not merely ignored, but reversed.

So we get societies - such as our own - that celebrate the destruction of good, for its own sake; societies that actively will evil - and this is the particular horror of the twentieth century into the twenty-first.

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The particular horror of the twenty-first century is that because we are still atheists (indeed, even more so) we have learned nothing from the twentieth century (or, mislearned irrelevant lessons), and have gone a long way towards replicating its specifically modern evils; 'restrained' from doing so only by what appears to atheist modernity as irrational, unenlightened residual conditioning from the bad-old-days.

So the only things keeping modern societies from un-restrained evil are precisely those things which modernity regards as most dangerously evil; and which it is striving so zealously to eliminate.

And it is clear that elimination of 'restraint' is not the worst of things; the worst is that, without God, restraint inverts into its opposite: coercive advocacy of that which was previously restrained.



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The correct answer is Communism. And this is a matter of fact.

But the chances are you may think that you disagree, or regard them as equally bad, or that it is too close to call.

However, if so, you are mistaken, and for one of two reasons:

1. Most likely, almost certainly, you do not know enough about Communism. Even I, who am no friend to Communism, continue to be surprised by what I did not know about the evils of the USSR. It has only been during the past year I have begun to appreciate this, and even in the past week some major new horrors have come to my attention. But don't take my word for it, find out for yourself.

2. The Texas Sharpshooter fallacy

I described the TSF here: http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2010/06/measuring-human-capability-moonshot.html

The way it work in this instance is that Nazism is defined as the ultimate evil - then other evils are measured according to how closely they resemble Nazism. Naturally, when this is done to Communism, it seems less evil than Nazism.

*

The relationship between ideologies (over the past couple of thousand years in the West) is as follows:

1. First came Christianity: primary sin = pride; primary virtue = love (i.e. the type of love which is agape/ charity). These defined ultimately in terms of spirituality, transcendentals, other worldly factors.

2. With leftist/ progressive atheism (e.g. Communism) the primary sin became selfishness; the primary virtue = unselfishness (a.k.a. altruism). These being defined in this worldly and materialistic terms - as 'worldly goods' ('goods' including all valued materials factors such as money and also socially-defined factors such as status).

Unselfishness is operationalized as altruism on behalf of others - e.g. other classes, other races, other sex, animals, climate, the planet...

3. Rightist/ reactionary atheism (of which Nazism is a type) reacts against the self-hatred and suicidal effects of leftist altruism on behalf of others, by reversing the morality of unselfishness to regard this-worldly materialist selfishness (under some communitarian description) as a virtue rather than the primary sin.

(In this sense, Nietzsche was indeed the philosopher of Nazism.)

Selfishness is operationalized by right-wing atheism as distributing worldly goods to one's own class, nation, empire, race, sex or whatever.

To be paradoxical about it, Nazism is aggressive altruism on behalf of oneself!

*

Both Communism and Nazism are relativistic/ nihilistic - they do not aim at a specific state of affairs, but a permanent revolution in a particular direction - secular leftists aim at continually increasing altruism to others, secular rightists aim at continually increasing selfishness.

Hence atheist ideologies of both right and left are capable of unrestrained evil, so their regimes are the worst in human history - but atheist leftism is capable of attracting vastly more widespread and sustained support and idealistic zeal by its pseudo-morality of un-selfishness.

Hence Communism has spread almost everywhere and accomplished (and is accomplishing) vastly more evil than Nazism - which was a narrow and unsustainable product of unique circumstances.

*

So - Christianity promotes transcendental love, Communism promotes worldly unselfishness on behalf of others, Fascism promotes worldly selfishness.

Leftists and progressives therefore regard Communism as intrinsically superior to Nazism - in a way that takes no account of evidence, since they see Commuinism as having the highest possible human aspirations - albeit they are usually corrupted.

Leftists regard Nazism (and other forms of secular rightism) as intrinsically evil because its advocates openly  promote their own interests: its primary morality is selfishness. Since this is the exact opposite of leftism - indeed, an exact inversion of leftist morality - it is the ultimate evil.

*

(Note: Leftists also regard supernaturalist Christianity as intrinsically evil because it promotes non-worldly goods, which do not exist; thereby ignoring or neglecting the moral centrality of enforcing the altruistic distribution of worldly goods.

But, for leftists, Christianity is not the ultimate evil, since it is not the exact opposite of leftism. Rather, orthodox Christianity is seen as a hypocritical mask for secular rightism - which is seen as primary. Christians are therefore seen as promoters of selfishness who cleverly disguise it under a cover of nonsensical transcendental aspirations.

Explicit, open, un-ashamed secular rightism is the primary enemy.

So, Communists fear Nazis - because they understand and respect them, but despise Christians - who are seen as fools and cowards.

Communists want to fight real Nazis (if they think they can win), but want to exterminate Christians (as mere vermin.)

*

So, for leftists, the difference between the mainstream secular right and Nazis is merely that Nazism is more honest and brave: the secular right with the gloves-off. Mainstream rightists are seens as nothing more-than - or other-than - feeble Nazis.)

*

There is an answer, and the correct answer is Communists.

But the chances are you may think that you disagree, or regard them as equally bad, or that it is too close to call.

However, if so, you are mistaken, and for one of two reasons:

1. Most likely, almost certainly, you do not know enough about Communism. Even I, who am no friend to Communism, continue to be surprised by what I did not know about the evils of the USSR. It has only been during the past year* I have begun to appreciate this, and even in the past week some major new horrors have come to my attention. But don't take my word for it, find out for yourself.

2. The Texas Sharpshooter fallacy

I described the TSF here: http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2010/06/measuring-human-capability-moonshot.html

The way it work in this instance is that Nazism is defined as the ultimate evil - then other evils are measured according to how closely they resemble Nazism. Naturally, when this is done to Communism, it seems less evil than Nazism.


The relationship between ideologies (over the past couple of thousand years in the West) is as follows:

1. First came Christianity: primary sin = pride; primary virtue = love (i.e. the type of love which is agape/ charity). These defined ultimately in terms of spirituality, transcendentals, other worldly factors.

2. With leftist/ progressive atheism (e.g. Communism) the primary sin became selfishness; the primary virtue = unselfishness (a.k.a. altruism). These being defined in this worldly and materialistic terms - as 'worldly goods' ('goods' including all valued materials factors such as money and also socially-defined factors such as status).

Unselfishness is operationalized as altruism on behalf of others - e.g. other classes, other races, other sex, animals, climate, the planet...

3. Rightist/ reactionary atheism (of which Nazism is a type) reacts against the self-hatred and suicidal effects of leftist altruism on behalf of others, by reversing the morality of unselfishness to regard this-worldly materialist selfishness (under some communitarian description) as a virtue rather than the primary sin.

(In this sense, Nietzsche was indeed the philosopher of Nazism.)

Selfishness is operationalized by right-wing atheism as distributing worldly goods to one's own class, nation, empire, race, sex or whatever.

To be paradoxical about it, Nazism is aggressive altruism on behalf of oneself!


Both Communism and Nazism are relativistic/ nihilistic - they do not aim at a specific state of affairs, but a permanent revolution in a particular direction - secular leftists aim at continually increasing altruism to others, secular rightists aim at continually increasing selfishness.

Hence atheist ideologies of both right and left are capable of unrestrained evil, so their regimes are the worst in human history - but atheist leftism is capable of attracting vastly more widespread and sustained support and idealistic zeal by its pseudo-morality of un-selfishness.

Hence Communism has spread almost everywhere and accomplished (and is accomplishing) vastly more evil than Nazism - which was a narrow and unsustainable product of unique circumstances.


So - Christianity promotes transcendental love, Communism promotes worldly unselfishness on behalf of others, Fascism promotes worldly selfishness.

Leftists and progressives therefore regard Communism as intrinsically superior to Nazism - in a way that takes no account of evidence, since they see Communism as having the highest possible human aspirations - albeit they are usually corrupted.

Leftists regard Nazism (and other forms of secular rightism) as intrinsically evil because its advocates openly promote their own interests: its primary morality is selfishness. Since this is the exact opposite of leftism - indeed, an exact inversion of leftist morality - it is the ultimate evil.

**

Leftists also regard supernaturalist Christianity as intrinsically evil because it promotes non-worldly goods, which do not exist; thereby ignoring or neglecting the moral centrality of enforcing the altruistic distribution of worldly goods.

But, for leftists, Christianity is not the ultimate evil, since it is not the exact opposite of leftism. Rather, orthodox Christianity is seen as a hypocritical mask for secular rightism - which is seen as primary. Christians are therefore seen as promoters of selfishness who cleverly disguise it under a cover of nonsensical transcendental aspirations.

Explicit, open, un-ashamed secular rightism is the primary enemy.

So, Communists fear Nazis - because they understand and respect them, but despise Christians - who are seen as fools and cowards.

Communists want to fight real Nazis (if they think they can win), but want to exterminate Christians (as mere vermin.)


So, for leftists, the difference between the mainstream secular right and Nazis is merely that Nazism is more honest and brave: the secular right with the gloves-off. Mainstream rightists are seen as nothing more-than - or other-than - feeble Nazis.

**

Note added: The inferiority of Soviet Communism to German National Socialism can be seen in their military.

Perhaps it is unfair to compare any other nation with Germany in terms of military prowess - but the German army (and most of the people) apparently loved their leaders and fought for them with absolutely remarkable tenacity and effectiveness until utterly defeated. (The way in which the Allied invasion was held-up in Italy for a year and a half from autumn 1943 was evidence of the Germans' man-for-man supremacy.)

By contrast, from the beginning of the Bolshevik revolution, the government waged permanent war upon its own nation. In WWII the Soviet officers *drove* their cowed troops into battle from behind - guns aimed at their own men. On the Eastern Front I have read that the Russians lost ten men for every German killed. 

*The above is reposted from this blog in 2011. I stumbled across it today, and thought it still interesting, and increasingly topical - as (superficially repackaged) communism is making a mainstream comeback.

There is in Man an inclination to know the Divine.

The second inclination in him - that is, in the Man of this era - is to know the Christ.

The third inclination in Man is to know what is usually called the Spirit, or also the Holy Ghost.

*

1. Where a Man denies the Father God - denies a Divine Principle in the world as such - there is an actual physical defect, a physical sickness, a physical flaw in the body.

To be an atheist means to the spiritual scientist to be sick in some respect... an actual sickness in a man who denies what he should be able to feel, through his actual bodily constitution. If he denies that which gives him a healthy bodily feeling, namely that the world is pervaded by Divinity, then he is a sick man, sick in body.

2. There are also many who deny the Christ. The denial of the Christ as is denial of something that is essentially a matter of destiny and concerns man's soul-life.

To deny God is a sickness; to deny the Christ is a calamity.

3. To deny the Spirit, the Holy Ghost, signifies dullness, obtuseness, of a man's own spirit.

*

So - atheism denotes an actual pathological defect. Failure to find in life that link with the world which enables us to recognise the Christ, is a calamity for the soul. To be unable to find the Spirit in one's own inmost being denotes obtuseness, a kind of spiritual mental deficiency, though in a subtle and unacknowledged form.

Edited from: https://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/atheism-is-actual-physical-defect.html 
Entire text at: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/FndChr_index.html#sthash.ddQ5kd7d.dpuf

Leftism (in its modern Western form of the New Left/ Political Correctness of Social Justice Warriors) is essentially atheism - hence strictly insane.

I shall term it PC insanity.

Atheism leads (inevitably, albeit by stages, incrementally) to a species of insanity - and it is important to understand the nature of this endemic madness.

Atheism leads to insanity because it entails a denial and rejection of that which is intrinsic to Man: an awareness of the divine and universal. Hence there is an assertion of existential isolation - consequently futility. Despair and a suicidal self-hatred is the outcome.

However, on the way to this outcome there is the PC insanity, a pervasive psychosis, that we see all around us. Political Correctness is not identical with any specific psychosis known to mainstream psychiatry - but has elements of all four of the primary types: schizophrenia, mania, melancholia (depression) and the delusional disorders.

With schizophrenia PC insanity shares 'paranoia' - i.e. delusional self-awareness, persecutory ideas and the belief that everything is about 'me'; also an underlying existential fear.

With mania PC insanity shares aggression, irritability, interfering querulousness, extreme (but brittle) grandiosity and pride, indiscriminate and fickle physical lust; and a frantic and distractible energy.

With melancholia PC insanity shares guilt, despair and the yearning for escape into suicide (in the belief that death is the end of all consciousness).

With the delusional disorders (e.g. delusional jealousy, persecution, erotomania) PC insanity exhibits resentment and projection: attributing to others that which is most powerfully experienced and feared in oneself; and sometimes 'dysmorphic' somatic delusions of bodily abnormality - the fixed and false belief that something is physically 'wrong' that needs to be surgically 'corrected'.

Please do not imagine I am joking about this! The modern mainstream West really is insane, and this is reflected in widespread beliefs and behaviours that truly are delusional in their nature, conviction and intensity.

Fortunately PC insanity is curable. And the treatment is available to anybody and everybody, free of charge. And is instantaneously effective (although it may take a considerable time, perhaps longer than a mortal lifetime, to make a full recovery).

But the cure is available only from a single provider, who has a monopoly on production and distribution: His name (make a note of it) is Jesus Christ.

*

...is that Christianity is a ridiculous fairy tale when compared with the real problems of life such as war, starvation and disease.

And that to preach the gospel to people suffering from w, s & d is therefore insulting, disgusting and obscene when what these people need is peace, plenty and health.

*

And yet Christianity arose, grew and has reached astonishing levels of devotion in situations of human fear and suffering far beyond anything suffered by modern atheists, or indeed by anyone alive in the modern world (except for certain diseases).

Many of the greatest works of Christianity (by the Disciples, the Apostle Paul, Boethius...) were actually written under conditions of imminent torture and death; many others under conditions of extreme voluntary ascetic deprivation - fasting, freezing cold or parching heat, isolation...

*

What really is insulting, disgusting and obscene is to preach atheism, and therefore nihilism, to people living under conditions of war, starvation and disease - because this is to preach that their lives have been, are and will be meaningless and purposeless; and that they and everyone who they know and who ever have lived exist alone in a universe of pain from which any relief is partial and evanescent; and then they and everything they value will be annihilated leaving no trace.

*

Atheism is merely an indirect way of preaching the necessity of immediate despair and urgent suicide.

Nihilism may clear the path to a wider range of gratifications and diversions for healthy but jaded hedonists living trapped inside abstract fantasies and under conditions of peace, prosperity and comfort...

But atheism is not just stupid but indeed is pure poison - existential torment - for people living in contact with the real world - with war, starvation and disease.


*

Of course there is another common, and opposite, atheist criticism of Christianity - which is that people are Christian only because of war, starvation, disease and other extreme hardships - and this is why they invent and cling-to such nonsense. But that when you get intelligent and knowledgeable people living in peace, prosperity and comfort and with leisure to reason and critique; only then do they become able to reject self-gratifying fantasies, and can at last see through the illusions of religion, and perceive the meaninglessness and purposelessness of reality. 

In one view Christians are seen as avoiding harsh reality by fantasy; in the other view Christians are seen as overwhelmed by harsh reality and therefore unable to be rational.  

In one view atheists are self-perceived as braver than Christians in terms of honestly facing-up to the horror of reality; in the other view atheists are self-perceived as more rational than Christians precisely because their reality is much pleasanter and they are not required to be brave. 


Atheists will often oscillate between these two opposite criticisms.


*

*

In relative terms, and biologically speaking; the answer would be stable, complex agrarian societies - the Roman Empire, Medieval Europe, the cultural peak of Islam, China or Japan in the centuries before the modern era etc.

Because in these societies - or so it seems - the intellectual classes usually have the highest reproductive success, which is probably due to lower child mortality, which suggests that they are doing better than almost any other class.

Consequently, average intelligence seems to rise (relative to baseline) in these complex agrarian societies.

*

But since the industrial revolution, the intellectual classes reproductive success plummeted, at first relatively (compared with the lower classes) then absolutely as fertility dipped further and further below replacement levels.

Although intellectuals have high levels of health, life expectancy, prosperity, comfort and so on - the fact that their reproduction has collapsed, strongly implies that intellectual are maladapted to industrial (and 'post-industrial') societies - since reproductive suppression is evidence (in general) of severe stress, a seriously hostile environment.

*

Yet, of course, it was intellectuals that created the industrial revolution.

So, intellectuals made a new kind of society which is biologically-lethal to intellectuals.  

And as the effects of collapsed reproduction continue to work through ('dysgenesis') then the industrial revolution will stop then reverse; and (probably) revert to the kind of complex agrarian society which is - again - beneficial to the reproductive success of intellectuals.

*

What was the Achilles heel of the intellectuals in industrial societies?

Atheism - since the only known antidote to reproductive suppression among intellectuals in post-industrial revolution societies is devout traditional religion.

*

(That is, even in modern societies, traditionally religious intellectuals will - on average - have fertility above replacement levels.) 

*

And atheism is the root of Leftism; and Leftism destroys traditional religion; and Leftism also destroys modern industrial societies.

But whose fault was atheism/ Leftism?

Why - the fault of the intellectuals, of course!

Bad choices- choices of bad; multiplied by hundreds, thousands, millions.

*

It is easy to show, following many different lines of argument, that atheism is psychotically-incoherent; and has led to mass personal misery and despair, and civilizational collapse. 

But any amount of argument, evidence, experience (and sheer common sense) - is casually and effortlessly 'refuted' (to the satisfaction of atheism) by variations on the theme of: 

Yeah yeah yeah - yadda, yadda, yadda... 

But none of that heavy stuff matters, because at the moment I feel fine. 

I am quite satisfied with myself as I am. (And insofar as I am not - I'm working on it.) 

And anyway (unlike Christians and other religious) I can believe anything I feel like believing - even scraps and shavings of spiritual nonsense - so really there is No Problem. 

It's all a pointless fuss made by simple-minded, dogmatic, crazed and/or retarded zealots; whose real purpose is to get inside my head; spoil my pleasures and sense of self-satisfaction; fill me with guilt about made-up problems (like sin); and thereby control and exploit me for their own purposes.

I know this because I was exactly like this for most of my adult life. 

I also knew that my position was incoherent, weak, and amoral; and therefore opened me to exactly the kind of exploitation and manipulation of which I accused Christians. 

But as adolescence shaped-into a kind-of adulthood, and proceeded through the years - I became more and more selfish and short-termist (to as great as a degree as I thought I could get-away-with), and I wanted to stay selfish; and I resented anybody trying to enlist me for any other project than my own self-satisfaction, here-and-now. 

The problem (and what saved me, literally - from deliberately chosen damnation) was that my short-termist selfishness and self-indulgence as also opposed by some strong impulses or instincts (as I thought them) - that did not make sense in my plan to become ultimately smug: indestructibly self-satisfied. 

I could not help but value love, honesty, beauty and several other things that made my life more difficult; albeit I kept working against these 'obstacles', and was able to become more self-gratifying (at least in my inmost, guarded thoughts). 

From a Christian perspective, I had taken the side of the devil in the spiritual war; and was engaged in a long-term war of attrition against my own natural goodness - which was in me as a consequence of being part of God's creation. 

And the devil's side was winning because my atheism meant that there was no compelling reason to resist the trend towards the implicit goal of Total Smugitude.  

Eventually the increasingly official and cultural evil of Western Society - as well as personal events - made the stark choice clear. 

Eventually, my own inmost attitudes - absorbed from the great and the good, from the self-styled and publicly-acclaimed socio-ethical experts of our time - began to sicken and disgust me, more-and-more sharply.

Eventually a commitment to self-gratification was instead leading towards a solid and corrosive conviction of existential hope-less-ness and despair.  

Either I would have to hand-over my mind and motivations to The System; and try to enjoy being taken wherever that was trending; and to build and strengthen my smugness as having made such a wise and self-gratifying choice...

Or else I would need to become a Christian (of some kind).