Because nothing says “Thanksgiving” like a scholarly disquisition on godlessness, I feel now is the right time to return to the subject of atheism.
On this day of family and gratitude I want to draw your attention to the solid and occasionally spectacular Cambridge Companion to Atheism edited by Michael Martin. The contribution of greatest interest to me is “Atheism in Modern History” by the philosopher Gavin Hyman.
Hyman’s article is something of an intellectual thrill ride, interrogating Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Feuerbach, and Marx in the span of 17 fevered pages. Intellectually swashbuckling as the piece is, I hope that Professor Hyman will forgive me for concentrating on just a few aspects of the article.
These help correct widespread misconceptions about atheism, two of which I will list here:
Glaring Misconception 1: Atheist identity is timelessly stable and consistent. There is basically one way to be an atheist and it has been operative since the days of the Athenian polis. We atheists are so cognizant of who we are that we can spot one another in crowds. Much in the way that anonymous bald men on the street feel a sense of solidarity with one another, we atheists can visually bond with our atheist brothers (we note with sadness that we lack for sisters) in public spaces. Also, at the circus our gaze is drawn almost reflexively to the atheist clown.
Glaring Misconception 2: Atheism has no connection whatsoever to theism. We owe those believing bastards absolutely nothing. The atheist worldview was born fully formed like Athena bounding out of the head of Zeus and holding a copy of Atlas Shrugged.
Readers of Hyman’s study would be quickly disabused of such notions. For starters, his analysis helps us to re-think the odd conceit that atheism is one thing and has been one thing for millennia.
Any serious student of atheism understands that this is an absurd proposition and Professor Hyman offers us a good reason why this is so:
[I]f definitions and understandings of God change and vary, so too our definitions and understandings of atheism will change and vary. This further means that there will be as many varieties of atheism as there are varieties of theism. For atheism will always be a rejection, negation, or denial of a particular form of theism.
Atheist identity is dialectical; it develops in relation to the type of theism one is rejecting. That’s why the atheist from a Pentecostal background may share so little in common with the atheist from a Jewish upbringing. These wide divergences in identity, incidentally, might explain the well-known challenges of mobilizing atheists for political action.
Professor Hyman also notes that pre-modern forms of theism differed radically in their basic epistemological assumptions from modern ones. Aquinas’ infinite God, which could not be apprehended by reason or language was dramatically distinct from the God conjured up by Descartes and Locke.
That Modern God was conceived as a “thing” which could be in some way understood through rational analysis, empirical observation, and so forth. Modern God had a “substance, an “identifiable location,” a “function.” And it is this conception of Modern God—which I sense Hyman sees as absurd—that invoked the ferocious dissent of theorists such as Marx and Feuerbach and generations of latter day atheists.
If this is the case—and many other scholars make similar points in different ways—then we must see modern atheism as growing out of modern theism. In Hyman’s words atheism arose “from a revolution within theology itself . . . the origins of modern atheism are ultimately theological.”
24 Responses to A Little Thanksgiving Godlessness
goxewu - November 25, 2010 at 7:11 am
A con man offers me a get-rich-quick scheme. I say, “No, thank you” because I think it doesn’t exist. A preacher offers me a “God.” I say, “No, thank you” because I think it doesn’t exist. I’m saying “No, thank you,” to the “God,” apparently, because I’m actually part of a theological movement. I’m saying “No, thank you” to the con man, then, because I’m apparently part of a “revolution within confidence-gaming itself.” Please.
Professor Berlinerbau should quit sucking up to theology.
11245928 - March 22, 2011 at 4:08 pm
Jeepers. Up north you could always plug cars in. You might have to dig them out of the snowbank, however.
kozirice - March 23, 2011 at 10:34 am
Illinois Institute of Technology is also planning several charging stations on our main campus in Chicago; this is a part of the University’s overall sustainability plan.
5768 - July 8, 2011 at 3:44 pm
Excellent post. Those promoted from within can become the pillars upon which the university rests and upper administration relies, although not without serious drawbacks from a faculty perspective. As repositories of the inner knowledge and secrets of how the local university works and how to get things done (from anything as simple as classroom scheduling to governance issues, policy knowledge, research budget and overhead matters, grants management), unless the accumulated knowledge of those so promoted moves beyond their own persons and circle and is shared with university faculty, it does the latter no good and can in fact cripple the latter. In cases where insider promotion dominates and cards are held too close to the chest, one cannot help but wonder whether a deliberate mechanism of faculty control has not been found.
raza_khan - July 8, 2011 at 4:11 pm
I agree. This can go either way purely dependent on the internal candidate. There are some who I would love to move on but then others who will / do horrendous job at the higher level.
Raza
__________________________
Raza Khan, Ph.D.
Dr.Raza.Khan@gmail.com
schwerdt - July 11, 2011 at 11:35 am
And then there’s the model where the President chooses Deans on an interim basis (to see to what extent they will go along with his orders), and then boots them out (or they quit). I have had 5 Deans in 10 years. It’s absurd.
db_palmer - November 17, 2011 at 4:38 pm
So, does he default on his student loans? That’s the real question.
chemistry_guy - November 17, 2011 at 4:49 pm
Crap. Now the price of pot will go up.
huntbull - November 17, 2011 at 4:52 pm
Yes, but what was his major?
akprof - November 17, 2011 at 4:55 pm
Some people would praise his entrepreneurial spirit and his responsibility in paying his off loan. Come to think of it, I kind of admire him.
guangtou - November 17, 2011 at 5:04 pm
Mr. MV probably did not earn a business degree, because the yield and $80K shows poor finance skills. Let’s leave illegal activities where they belong…with Congress.
blesstayo - November 17, 2011 at 6:12 pm
If growing and selling pot is such a lucrative business that requires no college degree, may be legalizing it would help reduce unemployment and US deficits (they must pay taxes!).
Brian Abel Ragen - November 17, 2011 at 6:36 pm
The headline, “Arrested Pot Grower Gives Lame Excuse” might be more accurate and less tendencious. It would also show what a flimsy peg this incident is on which to hang an education story.
awegweiser - November 17, 2011 at 6:53 pm
Apparently crime in Portland is rather low so the law must keep busy by going after pot growers. This entire part of the bogus “war on drugs” is a waste of time, effort, money and ever more overcrowding of prison space for law violations that should, at the very least, be only restricted to probation, house arrest or (best of all) community service. The operators that make bags of money off badly run private prisons (of course, “corrections” facilities) love it, I’m sure.
perryclark - November 17, 2011 at 7:45 pm
crime doesnt pay
lkvamme - November 17, 2011 at 8:44 pm
Hey, that was my idea! (only kiddin’…don’t get all excited now…)
hmcleaver - November 17, 2011 at 10:03 pm
A few years ago I had a student who was paying his way through college by flying pot across the border from Mexico to Texas. I discovered this the day he came to tell me he had been caught and sentenced to prison and to ask if he could complete his work in my course while there. I, of course, said sure thing. Then we discussed other possible independent study courses he might pursue while locked up.
As it turned out he was incarcerated in a low-security prison near Dallas where he was put to work alongside other prisoners making uniforms for the Contras – the illegal terrorists organized and funded by the Reagan Administration as a part of what later became known as the Iran-Contra Scandal. Bored with sewing, this young fella snooped around the prison – which was located on an old Air Force base - and discovered a still-functioning flight simulator. When he proposed to the warden that he could train other prisoners to fly in the spirit of rehabilitation via learning new skills, he lucked out and got an OK which allowed him to escape what he found to be the odious task of supporting terrorism.
Now, guess who were his most enthusiastic students? You got it, guys who had been caught smuggling pot across the border by truck or boat and who wanted to diversify their transport options! Malcolm X was right, it seems, when he called prison the “university of the working class.”
At any rate, “awegweiser” is quite right that while profitable for the prison industry (and the drug cartels, as it keeps supply down and prices up) the so-called “War on Drugs” is a waste a time and resources – both human and monetary. Better to legalize all drugs and then spend time and money figuring out why so many Americans feel the need to resort to them – from alcohol and caffeine through uppers, downers, painkillers, glue and pot to cocaine, meth and heroin to make it through their days and nights. Of course we don’t want to do that, because it would reveal the alienation and desperation that pervades American capitalist society.
achilton1987 - November 18, 2011 at 10:43 am
so instead of ‘war on drugs’ it will be called ‘war on people who will continue to grow pot but not pay taxes’
amydevid - November 21, 2011 at 8:23 am
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soonerdgs - November 23, 2011 at 4:31 pm
So did the government refuse to take the $80,000 in drug money that he used to pay down the student loans? And if not, maybe they can take the $27,000 they seized from Vivenzio and finish paying off his student loan. That way they won’t have to come after him for defaulting on his payments while he’s in jail…
sstop - March 20, 2012 at 8:24 am
Setting up electric charging stations is a great idea but we need more wireless ones.
Servicing Stop
Digi Solutions(Unni) - March 29, 2012 at 12:07 pm
Many charging out let in Tennessee and Pennsylvania units for Volkswagen is sitting unused.
What is the point in having mores
Volkswagen
Service
Jaguar Service - April 26, 2012 at 6:13 am
Its not only in North also in Down Town. Jeepers be prepared
Porsche Service - April 29, 2012 at 4:52 pm
we all will be using electric cars in the future…. efforts of these universities are appreciable