Genealogy of deicide
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The Heretic
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Deafdyke
Let me explain myself: the "death of god" does not mean people no longer believe in god at all, but that the God concept of the Middle ages and Enlightenment has lost much of its potency and given ground to different ones that are much weaker copies, ghosts that live on beyond the grave. I can't say anything about animals, and neither can you, because that is an argument from ignorance. Agnosticism is the best option in this sense.
For centuries the religious thinkers in Judaism, Islam and Christianity tried to explain that God wasn't another "being" that just existed like the other phenomena we experience. But due to the theologians' attraction for philosophy they chose to talk about God as if he was one of the things that exist. They wasted no time in appropriating the new mechanistic science of the 17th century to prove the objective reality of god as if he could be tested and analyzed like any other particular object. This appropriationn backfired with Diderot, Holbach, and Laplace when they came to the same conclusion as the extreme mystics - there's nothing out there. Then the scientists and philosophers started declaring the death of God.
The advances in science and technology in the 19th century established an autonomous independence of religion - Ludwig Feuerbach, karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud - with their interpretations of reality that did not have a place for God.
Even the poets articulated this shift of culture: William Blake used terms like "innocence" and "experience" in a dialectical way to show how complicated reality really was. His early poems expressed an apocalyptic sense that God was dead - the vision of the enlightenment of synthesiizing truth and the God of Christianity who alienated men and women from their humanity by imposing unnatural laws that oppressed their sexuality, liberty and joy.
My interpretation of this divine death is not a scientific observation, nor is it an atheistic statement, nor metaphysical speculation about ultimate reality, but the diagnosis of modern culture. The death of God has two aspects: the death of the particular god of christianity - even though this God was the major force behind a pathological hatred for the human and the earth, it was a security blanket that safeguarded the human will from theoretical and practical nihilism.
The second aspect is the God of the theologians, philosophers, and scientists - that God guaranteed the universe with structure, order purpose - is no longer.
Now, this death is actually the call to creativity, to invent new structures and fresh ideals. No more cringing in the corner burdened with fictional guilt.
Although the Death of God introduces us to Milan Kundera's Unbearable lightness of Being, we shouldn't let something else take the place of the superannuated God and make us feel humble and insignificant. The guilt is fictional, and so is everything else.
Redfox I will respond to your post later, after work.
Let me explain myself: the "death of god" does not mean people no longer believe in god at all, but that the God concept of the Middle ages and Enlightenment has lost much of its potency and given ground to different ones that are much weaker copies, ghosts that live on beyond the grave. I can't say anything about animals, and neither can you, because that is an argument from ignorance. Agnosticism is the best option in this sense.
For centuries the religious thinkers in Judaism, Islam and Christianity tried to explain that God wasn't another "being" that just existed like the other phenomena we experience. But due to the theologians' attraction for philosophy they chose to talk about God as if he was one of the things that exist. They wasted no time in appropriating the new mechanistic science of the 17th century to prove the objective reality of god as if he could be tested and analyzed like any other particular object. This appropriationn backfired with Diderot, Holbach, and Laplace when they came to the same conclusion as the extreme mystics - there's nothing out there. Then the scientists and philosophers started declaring the death of God.
The advances in science and technology in the 19th century established an autonomous independence of religion - Ludwig Feuerbach, karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud - with their interpretations of reality that did not have a place for God.
Even the poets articulated this shift of culture: William Blake used terms like "innocence" and "experience" in a dialectical way to show how complicated reality really was. His early poems expressed an apocalyptic sense that God was dead - the vision of the enlightenment of synthesiizing truth and the God of Christianity who alienated men and women from their humanity by imposing unnatural laws that oppressed their sexuality, liberty and joy.
My interpretation of this divine death is not a scientific observation, nor is it an atheistic statement, nor metaphysical speculation about ultimate reality, but the diagnosis of modern culture. The death of God has two aspects: the death of the particular god of christianity - even though this God was the major force behind a pathological hatred for the human and the earth, it was a security blanket that safeguarded the human will from theoretical and practical nihilism.
The second aspect is the God of the theologians, philosophers, and scientists - that God guaranteed the universe with structure, order purpose - is no longer.
Now, this death is actually the call to creativity, to invent new structures and fresh ideals. No more cringing in the corner burdened with fictional guilt.
Although the Death of God introduces us to Milan Kundera's Unbearable lightness of Being, we shouldn't let something else take the place of the superannuated God and make us feel humble and insignificant. The guilt is fictional, and so is everything else.
Redfox I will respond to your post later, after work.
Because you are THE Heretic who says that. If God dies, please explain WHY you are still here on the earth?The Heretic said:
The Bible teaches us that ALL of us including YOU are under the Word of God because the Word of God is God.
The Bible is God-speaking. If God dies, the Bible would NOT be here. If the Bible is still here, THERE IS ONLY ONE LIVING GOD whom you MUST worship. The Bible announces about a heretic. That is why you called yourself "THE Heretic" on this forum.
If God dies, all of us under Him, will be GONE promptly.
Titus 3:10-11 (KJV)
A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject;
Knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself.
Is that YOU? You condemn yourself. You need the TRUE repentance toward God and be saved. You can FOOL me or anyone on this forum, but you CANNOT fool the TRUE God. If not, God will not require YOUR blood upon my hands.
Liza
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gnarlydorkette said:Have you shared this with D? Well I am sure you did. Actually I am more interested in how AF (or rather any other Christian), will react to your excerpt.I can think so many people that will fulminate if I suggest that we are pumping in blood and air in the concept of Divine Being because we feel guilty for having blood on our hands. "Out, damn'd spot!"
I have to say that I never thought that a religion was spun off from human's attempts to maintain the concept of a Divine Being as if it is their security blanket. It does make sense-- it is like Trekkies clinging on the concept of Star Treks... and they got a taste of rationality when William Shatner bluntly answered: "Get a LIFE!" Prehaps a similar incident is necessary at a religious convention??
Ah, my apologies for the analogical Star Trek story.
[EDITED:
I had a question but I was worried to ask you since I know you in RL and that you will judge me but I will go ahead and spit it out--
When do you think Man did kill their Divine Being?]
I like the star trek analog!
Spoilers alert: I'm about to ruin the ending of a classic book for everyone!
I was rereading the whole thread to get a better idea - and then something struck me silly.. this topic reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End about humankind's coming of age and change. In an earlier age, human beings relied on the Overlords (aliens with superior knowledge & technology) for help.. but after 50 years of this help, the human beings began to evolve beyond needing the Overlords' help. The civilization as humanity knew it vanished literally into a higher plane as something different.
Perhaps humanity has to die in order to outgrow its "childhood," instead of the way around with deities needing to die for that to happen?
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Excuse me for a moment :topic:Liza said:
Just wanted to say, thanks for the memory.
I remember reading Childhood's End in high school (about 1969). I was a quite a fan of Clarke's works (I liked Bradbury and Asimov, too).Sorry for the interruption.
The Heretic
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Ramblings, part III
Redfox, I finally have the time to address your questions about humanism. But first, thank you for your kind words.
My argument against humanism isn't addressed to a specific type in your wiki entry, but the general theme of humanism. I know this can be criticized on many fronts, so ill leave that for you.
The word "man" in the "death of man is functionally a technical term that takes place at the transcendental levels of the biological and historio-cultural conditions that make empirical knowledge possible. "Man" designates the being who centers the disorganized representations of the classical episteme and who also becomes the privileged object of philosophical anthropology.
However, the era of "man" as a foundational concept, being privileged in the discourses of human sciences, is nearing its end. But nihilism will be overcome if and only if humanity itself is also overcome as well.
Foucault's comments at the end of that seminal work of neostructuralism, Les Mots et Choses, is a testament to the "death of man" concept:
In the book, Foucault's method of historiography, archaeology analyses the discontinuities in the Western episteme and describes the emergence of new paradigms, new sciences, and particularly for Foucault, man as the subject of discourse. According to Foucault, the human sciences first emerged when "man" was simultaneously consituted as the transcendental foundation of knowledge and as the primary empirical object of knowlege. Essentially, "man" is both the subject participating in the sciences and is the very object of the sciences. Yet the problem is that this apparently obliquely self-reflective position of man already undermines the objectivity of the human sciences. Furthermore, once the histories of the various aspects of "man" - language, life, labor - are developed, then "man" is no longer the foundation of history. In order to combat this loss, "man" is given a history, yet, consequently, and inadvertently, his aspects themselves also gain histories of their own. This leads Foucault to conclude that the human sciences are bankrupt: not only are these disciplines false, they cannot even be sciences at all. The human sciences lack objectivity due to the subjectivity of man. Against humanism, Foucault argues that man is neither the transcendental foundation nor the essential object of human knowledge.
How does Foucault accomplish this strategic move? By exposing the commitments of the humanist to the ideology of humanism: Humanists are commited to the human individual, subject as consciousness and will, as the originator of action and undderstanding, and that entails the concepts of freedom and responsibility. Foucault believes this ideology of the philosophy of man to have run its course and is slowly being desposed from the center of culture and modern thought.
Antihumanism focuses on the implicit belief in human autonomy - specifically free will and consciousness - and determines it to be illusory. According to the humanist the subject is a free agent who rationally judges its course of action. This sketch is rather naive for it overlooks/marginalizes/disregards the unconscious. Due to the developments in 19th century german philosophy (Freud & Nietzsche), the role of the unconscious has bumped the conscious from the central role of the human mind and become the dominant force of behavior and thinking. If that is the case then the assumption that human actions are consciously determined is invalid. Ergo the autonomy of the human subject is rejected.
Redfox, I finally have the time to address your questions about humanism. But first, thank you for your kind words.
My argument against humanism isn't addressed to a specific type in your wiki entry, but the general theme of humanism. I know this can be criticized on many fronts, so ill leave that for you.
The word "man" in the "death of man is functionally a technical term that takes place at the transcendental levels of the biological and historio-cultural conditions that make empirical knowledge possible. "Man" designates the being who centers the disorganized representations of the classical episteme and who also becomes the privileged object of philosophical anthropology.
However, the era of "man" as a foundational concept, being privileged in the discourses of human sciences, is nearing its end. But nihilism will be overcome if and only if humanity itself is also overcome as well.
Foucault's comments at the end of that seminal work of neostructuralism, Les Mots et Choses, is a testament to the "death of man" concept:
Foucault said:
In the book, Foucault's method of historiography, archaeology analyses the discontinuities in the Western episteme and describes the emergence of new paradigms, new sciences, and particularly for Foucault, man as the subject of discourse. According to Foucault, the human sciences first emerged when "man" was simultaneously consituted as the transcendental foundation of knowledge and as the primary empirical object of knowlege. Essentially, "man" is both the subject participating in the sciences and is the very object of the sciences. Yet the problem is that this apparently obliquely self-reflective position of man already undermines the objectivity of the human sciences. Furthermore, once the histories of the various aspects of "man" - language, life, labor - are developed, then "man" is no longer the foundation of history. In order to combat this loss, "man" is given a history, yet, consequently, and inadvertently, his aspects themselves also gain histories of their own. This leads Foucault to conclude that the human sciences are bankrupt: not only are these disciplines false, they cannot even be sciences at all. The human sciences lack objectivity due to the subjectivity of man. Against humanism, Foucault argues that man is neither the transcendental foundation nor the essential object of human knowledge.
How does Foucault accomplish this strategic move? By exposing the commitments of the humanist to the ideology of humanism: Humanists are commited to the human individual, subject as consciousness and will, as the originator of action and undderstanding, and that entails the concepts of freedom and responsibility. Foucault believes this ideology of the philosophy of man to have run its course and is slowly being desposed from the center of culture and modern thought.
Antihumanism focuses on the implicit belief in human autonomy - specifically free will and consciousness - and determines it to be illusory. According to the humanist the subject is a free agent who rationally judges its course of action. This sketch is rather naive for it overlooks/marginalizes/disregards the unconscious. Due to the developments in 19th century german philosophy (Freud & Nietzsche), the role of the unconscious has bumped the conscious from the central role of the human mind and become the dominant force of behavior and thinking. If that is the case then the assumption that human actions are consciously determined is invalid. Ergo the autonomy of the human subject is rejected.
The Heretic
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Liza said:
Perhaps!
Liza, your reference brought me back to my sciifi days where I consumed asimov, phillip k. Dick, greg bear, baxter, card, niven, pratchet, adams, et.al., like no tomorrow.
One book in particular, likely by asimov, where (the title escapes me, sorry) a highly advanced civilization is trying to solve the problem of entropy because the universe was running out of energy in its advanced age. They designed a supercomputer with unlimited processing speed and near-infinite number crunching capacities and set it the task of solving entropy.
The supercomputer kept repeating that the problem would take an unimaginable amount of time to solve, that it was not able to arrive at a conclusion and kept requiring more evidence.
Then one fateful day, during the death throes of the universe, the computer clicked and uttered the divine words:
In The Beginning......
Now that's one way to out-do the Book of Genesis, by finishing where it starts!
Thanks, your thoughts on humanism are clearer to me now. 
We're part of the universe and not in full awareness of what happens in our heads, with no known ways to escape those conditions. So we can't be totally objective about the universe, including ourselves and are not detached from it.
We're part of the universe and not in full awareness of what happens in our heads, with no known ways to escape those conditions. So we can't be totally objective about the universe, including ourselves and are not detached from it.
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Was it the short story by Asimov, The Last Question? The line in that story was, "Let there be light."The Heretic said:Perhaps!
Liza, your reference brought me back to my sciifi days where I consumed asimov, phillip k. Dick, greg bear, baxter, card, niven, pratchet, adams, et.al., like no tomorrow.
One book in particular, likely by asimov, where (the title escapes me, sorry) a highly advanced civilization is trying to solve the problem of entropy because the universe was running out of energy in its advanced age. They designed a supercomputer with unlimited processing speed and near-infinite number crunching capacities and set it the task of solving entropy.
The supercomputer kept repeating that the problem would take an unimaginable amount of time to solve, that it was not able to arrive at a conclusion and kept requiring more evidence.
Then one fateful day, during the death throes of the universe, the computer clicked and uttered the divine words:
In The Beginning......
Now that's one way to out-do the Book of Genesis, by finishing where it starts!
So, you're saying that we've moved from an anthromorphic God to God as more of an emoition or feeling? (to love another person is to see the face of God?) Even those who aren't Christian speak of a Higher Creator......I think what you're actually talking about isn't the death of "God", but more the "death" of a specific concept of God.