From: Loki100l00@aol.com
Date: Thu Jan 31 2002 - 01:03:25 MST
^This subject line feels ripe^
>From time to time the CoV becomes a little heavy on the atheist agenda, at
which point I hear my cue to pipe up. Yes, Yes, I KNOW that the word
"atheist" occurs in the web pages for this list. Actually "atheist
religion", which to my mind sets up about as much of a cognitive
contradiction as would can achieve in contemporary culture. I feel certain
that whenever one reads those two words together like that, the person in
question tends to resolve on one of them to the exclusion of the other. Now
of course all of the stigma on the site will tend chase away the true
believers, leaving us with the atheists. And so most of us generally assume
that the problem resolves itself, but of course it doesn't. We simply forget
that part which doesn't, and the UTism dynamics generally ensure which one
this group will forget. Generally of course. . . but not always. Because
people like me shall remind you that this Church revolves more around the
issues of memetics rather than religion vs. atheism. Or at least to remain
true to its ostensible intent it should.
Of course we shall always run through these issues from time to time, and we
definitely should. But what eventually has to go, I see as this truculent,
don't surrender an inch, kind of thought policing that goes on. And I don't
mean here intolerance toward each other so much, though that may predictably
crop up as a byproduct from time to time. But more especially I mean the
intolerant thought policing that an individual self-imposes. I think that if
you seek support for this kind of orthodox atheism within yourself, you will
probably find more solace in many other atheist niches in the Internet
inclined to just this kind of atheist thought discipline.
Why do I choose a potentially loaded word like "intolerance"? Because
atheists and believers have the same kind of brain, share the same kinds of
cultural environments, and hence share the same cognitive capacities. So why
the difference? I think the problem lies in recognizing the actual smallness
of the difference in cognitive terms. Now I know of course that this
difference, however small, often leads to much larger
emotional/cultural/social consequences for the individual in question (not
forgetting, however, that for some people, these consequences likewise remain
relatively small as well depending on their own peculiar circumstances).
It all comes down to explicit belief. And this, I assert, remains a much
smaller cognitive phenomenon than many would guess. The only way I can
really make this point however, comes down to pointing out the things it
doesn't include. It doesn't include understanding. I can explicitly
disbelieve a religious program, but I can nevertheless understand it.
Frequently I think many of the more orthodox atheists overstate their lack of
understanding for religious concepts and thinking. This I think results from
too much self-thought-policing, and hence I use the word "intolerant". It
also doesn't include entertaining beliefs or religious. Here I mean a sort
of going-through the motions mentally "if I believed this, then this would
make me feel a certain way about X situation." I can even rehearse the
feelings and the situations mentally, and even do this for beliefs that I
might actually find rather absurd, like transubstantiation. While I don't
take communion, and indeed do not remotely consider myself part of the
Catholic program, I could imagine the feelings that actually eating the body
and drinking the blood of Christ might have upon the truly faithful. Indeed,
I could probably do a better job imagining and "feeling" it, than many
explicit believers might on their usual communion. And yet at the end of the
day, my explicit beliefs haven't changed a bit. However, I think that many
of our more orthodox atheists deny or at least avoid their own capacity to do
likewise, and so I again use the word "intolerant" to describe this attempt
overly self-regulate their thinking.
These issues represent some of the stuff that we can drag into our conscious
stage rather easily, but a lot remains below the radar, so to speak. And
here I suggest implicit beliefs. These represent those beliefs that remain
so strong between people that they actually need no mention whatsoever. In
fact we usually even forget that they exist at all in our cognitive matrix,
making them all the more powerful and important.
To return again to Atheism and the Church of the Virus - an "atheistic
religion", while clearly a contemporary contradiction, our job lies in
transforming it from a mere contradiction into a full blown paradox, and to
do this we must move beyond explicit belief. This becomes easier when we
realize how much more exists in our cognitive universe, and how much of it we
all share in common despite the relatively small afterthought that our
differences in explicit belief present. The challenge of attaining this
realization presents us with the heavy lifting and investigative journey that
our understanding of memetics must perform. Let us get to work.
Amen,
-Jake
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