A reader asked me my definition of an atheist. Allow me to play Lineaus and identify the various subspecies.
An atheist is someone who disbelieves in any god. I would make a distinction between a rational atheist and a fashionable atheist, based on his motive for disbelieving.
A rational atheist is one who, if asked, can provide some warrant for his disbelief, give some argument or chain of reasoning to justify his disbelief. He does not believe in god for an impersonal reason.
A fashionable atheist is is who, if asked, reacts to the question with erratic hostility and antic halfwittedness, jerking his knees and elbows at strange angles, lolling his tongue and crossing and uncrossing his eyes in protuberant and alarming display of eccentricity. This behavior is accompanied by accusations, ad hominem, insults, sneers, carping, capering, expressions of hate and scorn and contempt that anyone would dare raise such a question. This is also accompanied in a manner risible were it not so pathetic, with what psychologists call projection, where the fashionable atheist accuses all and sundry in the immediate area of being filled with hatred and bigotry.
After he is done voiding his bowels and rolling sticky warmth, tearing his hair and shrieking his praise of himself as a paragon of cool intellectual ratiocination, bystanders, embarrassed, avert their eyes, pretending something that fascinates them is in the grass underfoot or the sky overhead. Or, if the reaction of the fashionable atheist to a request for his reasoning is in word-noises, the glossolalia he eructutates approaches this same level of dignity and reasonableness. And he says religion is a “meme.”
The causes of fashionable disbelief are emotional, personal, and usually quite frivolous. He is scornful of religion, ignorant of history, and proud of his ignorance. He is indifferent to morality and decency if not (through an odd inversion of psychology) actively proud of his immorality, a righteous defender of perversion and unrighteousness.
He is not just shallow, he is shallow in all aspects of his philosophy. If I may be permitted the oxymoron, the fashionable atheist is profoundly shallow.
The arguments of the rational atheist generally will fall into two camps of arguments: first, that God is not necessary to explain nature nor to account for moral imperatives, theistic belief is unnecessary; second, that God an incoherent concept, since a being of omnipotent Providence could not tolerate the evils that exist in the world, nor could an omniscience being leave room for men to have free will.
A third camp of argument is specifically antichristian rather than atheistic, which argues that nothing in particular distinguishes Christian belief from pagan fore-bearers, that Christianity grew up from human imagination and historical or anthropological roots.
By this argument, even if the atheist became a Deist (that is, a man who believes in the somewhat Neoplatonic “Watchmaker God” of the philosophers) he could not take the step to affirm that the Christians describe that God accurately or know Him. Strictly speaking, all arguments about comparative religion or pagan parallels with Christ are not atheist arguments at all (since to argue that all men agree on the basics does not argue that those basics are false); but for some odd quirk of recent history are taken to be such.
All these arguments can be met with rebuttals that in turn can be met with counter-rebuttals and counters to those counters, and so many a merry seminar can be had between theists and atheists who agree to disagree on a rational basis.
It is far otherwise with the fashionable atheist.
The passions and whims of the frivolous atheist makes him fall, or decline, into three or four basic camps: (1) Antichrists (2) Marxists (3) Romantics (4) Nihilists.
Antichrists is an over-dramatic word, but I will use it under a better presents itself. These are men who do not believe God exists in retaliation for some real or imagined slight by God against them, or judgment, or past wrong. I leave it to others to untangle the question of how a rational being can direct his anger or anxiety against a non-existent being.
Marxists includes any and all Progressives and Leftists who accept Marx’s ironic analysis of the Church as an opiate for the masses. The Church, in the Marxists worldview, is a conspirator who exists merely to enable the self-delusion of the ignorant, and render the poor and oppressed passive with colored smoke-dreams of a better life in a next world, so that the evils of this world go unchallenged. I call the analysis ironic because such shallow beliefs are, of course, opiates themselves.
Marxism is an ersatz Church which those who despair of the next world, or who are too stupid to believe in it, delude themselves with colored smoke-dreams about heaven on earth, and who allow the evils in their souls to go unchallenged, that the Marxist may abet and do whatever evils in this world his corrupt imaginations can devise, from simple lies called Political Correctness, to slanders, to frauds, to extortion, to expropriation, to mass theft, to violence, up to and including riot, rebellion, revolution, and all the sick and sinister institutions of the abortion mill, the police state and the concentration camp. It is the opium of Marxism which dulls the mind and smothers the conscience and induces hallucinations to permit otherwise decent people to contemplate and savor such monstrous evils, while taking on a tone of intellectual superiority and moral self righteousness.
I include in this category all socialists and semi-Marxists and ignoramuses who neither know nor care whence the ideas in their heads were spawned, or who first concocted them.
Romantics is also an awkward word, but, again, I cannot think of a better to describe this group. I do not mean anyone who like love stories or who favors emotion over reason, for that would include theists of all traditions and sects.
One might call this school “Progressives” or “Theosophists” or “Shavians” or “Nietzscheans” or even “Transhumanists” but all these words have other implications or specific meanings, and hence would be misleading used here.
I mean anyone who believes in a vaguely-defined “life principle” or “living energy” or “evolutionary purpose” which again serves as an ersatz religion, and who thinks we humans shall evolve into superhumans even as we once evolved from apes. They generally agree that the belief in God is a hindrance to the spiritual growth and evolution from mankind to supermankind. They generally agree that man is lead by an inner light or interior god, or that all mankind is part of a godhead, like a Trinity run amok and turned to Myriads.
The foremost example of this camp known to me is the science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon. My apologies for being so ill read, but I consumed my youth with science fiction works, so this is where I first came across this fashionable modern idea of a materialistic mysticism. Whether he got the idea from G.B. Shaw or Fred Nietzsche or somewhere else, I know not. The basic idea is to dress up Darwinian notions of decent with modification with Marxist or Hegelian notions of a directed or deliberate evolution, a striving of the “life-force” or the powers of history toward a specific and lofty goal.
I will hasten to add that Darwin is not a member of this camp and nothing like this: the “evolution” he describes is undirected and accidental. Darwin says that out of a litter, there will be some variation and mutation of the parent form, and whichever litter mate just so happens to have the characteristics best suited to survive long enough to reproduce in whatever environment he happens to find himself will carry on that trait; and he speculates that the breeding for these traits by “natural selection” will from time to time gradually accumulate so many changes as to constitute a new species.
Mystical nonsense about a life force trying out different new shapes as a frivolous housewife tries out new hats has nothing to do with Darwin. The Romantics took Darwinian ideas and made idols of them, bowing down and worshiping them as a goddess called history, or fate, or progress.
The Romantics and the Marxists overlap, because one belief does not preclude the other. Strictly speaking, what I am calling Romanticism does not preclude a belief in God, but here I am using the word to refer to those Romantics who are atheists, those who do not think God made Man, but who instead think that men will one day evolve into gods.
Once again, I leave it to others to disentangle how a rational person can believe in evolution being directed toward a goal without believing in a divine intelligence doing the directing; or to explain why all these patently non-divine things, the material world, the history of species, the history of man, are supposed to be given divine attributes and epithets and win our devout loyalty.
I am tempted to say it is all nonsense, but I will instead do the Romantics the honor of saying their mysteries have not been disclosed to me, who is not of their cult and clique.
Nihilists disbelieve in God more or less by default. By Nihilism here, I do not mean someone who believes nothing is worth doing because life has no meaning. That was fashionable among the Goths and their Beatnik forefathers. The new fashion is otherwise. A nihilist is one who holds anything you want to do is worth doing, on the grounds that life has no innate meaning, and is given meaning by an act of human willpower or self-expression.
The nihilist says there is no Truth, no truth with a capital “T”, merely truths, local truths, by which is mean not truth but whatever opinion or self delusion or arbitrary set of ideas one finds convenient, or useful, or comforting, or fashionable this season.
Nihilism hence forms the default metaphysical and ontological stance of our age. Anyone of the modern generation who, without reflection, adopts the politically correct cant and shibboleths of popular in the media, in entertainment, in academia, will assume that any speech is meant as propaganda, any philosophy meant as self-justification, and that any motive for any act is selfish and self-aggrandizing. In the modern age, willpower is the only god. If a man says that he wills or wishes or suffers a whim, it is considered somewhere on the spectrum between extremely discourteous, to outright treason to judge or to condemn his choice. The mere act of choosing is regarded as sacrosanct, and the content of the choice is considered beyond discussion.
Nothing could be more clearly against the radical subjectivism of this worship of the whim than a belief in an objective and rational moral system whose imperatives we cannot escape, unless perhaps it is an objective and rational moral system imposed by a supreme being with the moral authority and present power to do so, whose judgments cannot err.
The particular hatred of the modern age is directed against theism is general, monotheism specifically and Catholicism most of all precisely because of the metaphysical difference between nihilism and a belief in solid reality, and a spiritual reality.
The animus is directed against theism in general, because if the pagan gods exists, we cannot with abandon create our own reality or (what is to the nihilist much the same thing) our own “narrative” of reality; the animus is directed against the Abrahamic religions specifically because if there is one God, the supreme ruler of the universe with a legitimate claim on our loyalty and a specific demand on our moral behavior, our freedom to choose is limited to a small number of possible interpretations of a basic moral program, a limited (albeit ever growing) number of denominations; and the animus is directed against Catholicism most of all, because if there is only one true apostolic and universal Church, the demand of the magisterium abolishes Luther’s freedom to decide what doctrines to follow and what to ignore. In this last case, human freedom of choice is a limited to a simple binary of orthodoxy versus heterodoxy. For the nihilist, an institution determining specific nuances of theological questions, such as the nature of justification, incarnation and trinitarianism, and moral questions of homicide, abortion, slavery, divorce, contraception, socialism and social justice, leaves him with very little room to exercise his power of inventing reality or narratives of reality.
Since the whole point of nihilism (let us be honest) is to silence criticism of one’s own immorality by undermining the basis of all moral reasoning, polytheism and monotheism are annoyances and enemies, but Catholicism is the arch-enemy.
The danger faced by any rational atheist is that he will fall into the temptation to be a fashionable atheist while still talking as if the choice and decision were purely based on evidence. Real rational atheists should be quick to denounce the fashionable atheists in their midst, since they bring the whole school of thought into disrepute, obliterating the legitimacy of their central claim, which is that reason naturally directs man not toward a belief in a Supreme Being, or Unmoved Mover or Form of the Good, but toward atheism. Unreasonable people believing in reason for irrational reasons is a monstrous self contradiction.
For the same reason, of course, Christians should be quick to denounce the hatred and sanctimony of Pharisees and hypocrites in our midst, as nothing more quickly gives scandal to the spiritually starved unbeliever than to see the devotees of the God who is Love parading themselves to the public eye with loveless words and deeds.
Your classification relates to a post below of Stephen J, where he lists atheist beliefs. I suggest that the various categories of atheist belief may be classified by which of his bullet points they accept. Namely, we have:
1) Materialists. All beings are completely determined by the physical laws of the material universe, and this is a complete description. Perhaps this corresponds to your “rational atheists”.
2)Existentialists. I choose this term as a more neutral one for purposes of taxology that the tern “Nihilist” you use. These atheists still postulate a spiritual aspect to human awareness (a “soul”, if you will). This aspect perishes at death. Thus, human willpower or self-expression are the only things that give meaning to life.
I agree that this category is probably the most common form of atheism.
3) Supernaturalists. These are willing to attribute a spiritual aspect and a form of consciousness and awareness to other entities in the universe (other than human minds), or to the universe as a whole. But they do not believe these entities are worthy of reverence or of awe. Their goal is still that of increasing their own power and imposing that power on the universe.
This category includes most of your “Antichrists” and believers in Magick and sorcery. They believe in spiritual entities, and are in competition them.
4)Romantics. These believe in spiritual entities, tied to the physical or independent, that are worthy of a measure of worship. This includes a great deal of New Age, Gaia belief, as well as the more old school Shavians and Nietzscheans, you mention. There is often a millennial aspect to this, as though God does not exist yet but is coming.
And now I see I have trouble “placing” the Marxists. Do they belong with the Materialists? Marxists claim to have a materialistic interpretation of society, economics and history. But they glorify the struggles of the revolutionary, who seems strangely immune to class determinism. In this sense, they are “Existentialists”. And as they personify the Class Struggle and the need to sacrifice oneself for the Revolution, they start to sound more and more like Romantics.
Marxists are materialists who borrow the trappings of Millenarian Christianity or Messianic Judaism. Original Sin = the invention of private property. Moses = Marx. The New Jerusalem = the Socialist Utopia on Earth.
“a belief in an objective and rational moral system whose imperatives we cannot escape”
Isn’t this how worldviews work though?
I’ve never met anyone who, at rock bottom, didn’t believe their worldview was built on some ineluctable insight about reality. The subjectivists among us are correct to notice that this insight doesn’t need to be hard-fought or suffered for – when you’re already comfortable, laziness and incuriosity are certainly as rewarding as the theological delicacies.
I am not sure what to make of this comment. Subjectivism is the default moral and metaphysical belief of our age. Are you claiming all subjectivists are secretly believers in an objective reality and moral code? I cannot agree with that. Or are you claiming that subjectivism is illogical and self-refuting? With that I can agree without any doubt.
The psychological or spiritual reasons how and why any rational man can adopt and profess an arrant paradox are unknown to me. I can only speculate what goes on in their minds.
” Are you claiming all subjectivists are secretly believers in an objective reality and moral code? I cannot agree with that.”
Well, kind of.
I suppose that all subjectivists will agree with statements like ‘actions have consequences’ and ‘success is better than failure’, which to me, sound like the beginnings of objectivity and morality.
The root problem with subjectivism seems to me to be that radical subjectivists refuse to philosophize, but continue to act and to seek pleasure. In my experience, the subjectivists take the very starting place for philosophy as their ending place, because it is easy to do so, and because they correctly reason that if you can feed yourself and please yourself and keep from getting fired, you have no need of philosophy of religion, which are the domains of truth and consequences.
All subjectivists, in my experience, believe that subjectivism is true for all people at all times, and furthermore that it is all people’s duty to acknowledge this.
I remember a philosophy class that turned into a pigpile on me until the teacher intervened in the discussion because it got too fierce — and I meekly observed afterwards that it was very odd to be told that I was wrong for saying that points of view could be wrong. Fortunately, they were smart enough to be abashed. (One classmate, not one of the pile, chuckled.)
Nevermind it’s your choice to do so.
Perhaps it is better, as in taxonomy, to distinguish several levels — or at least two — regarding whether an atheist has or has not a particular quality.
Among frivolous atheists:
1. How strong is the antipathy towards the concept of God?
a. Very strong indeed.
b. Strong, but silent.
c. Claims utter apathy.
Is there particular hatred of any faith?
a. Christians only.
b. “Abrahamic” religions.
c. Hates all faiths equally.
… and so on in this vein. Thoughts?
There are several resources of strong quality — one is from a quiz site, but it is remarkably concise and maybe accurate — which may help flesh out this ultimate taxonomy of atheism.
http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=6487
http://quizfarm.com/quizzes/quiz/ReverendAcid/what-kind-of-atheist-are-you/
http://firmitas.org/atheists.html
There is also, as always, the Catholic Encyclopedia:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02040a.htm
I have only one tangential comment: many, many more atheists claim to be “c” hates all faiths equally (because that is the respectable rational position for someone who thinks all faiths equally false) than actually live up to this rational standard. I have never once heard an atheist blaspheme Thor, for example, but I have heard dozens express admiration for Buddhism. In reality, we in the West live in a Christian culture, and the fashionable atheists despise Islam only when analogizing Christianity to it.
John, your observation reflects mine. In common experience, most atheists are not deductive atheists as much as they are inductive agnostics. Ergo, detesting organized American Christianity due to personal emotional revulsion, but being overly infatuated with Buddhism (Americanized fluffy version) or other “Eastern” systems (Americanized fluffy versions) which pretend to offer the trappings of spiritual depth, without having any depth in truth. It seems to me a lot of this is merely rebellion against rules. People want to be able to do whatever they desire — especially sexually — and have no consequences. As long as they believe they’re not hurting anyone (by their estimation) that’s all that’s necessary to be “sin free.” A concept that’s ludicrous to any Christian who actually pays attention to what Christ preached turing his tenure on Earth. Hence the Left’s reinvention of Christ as “Hippy Jesus,” the all-love-all-the-time guy who never judges anyone and never wants us to do anything other than just love other people, and that’s enough. Again, the goal is to remove rules and expectations. Because it’s cruel to expect 21st century Americans to actually live up to or abide by standards their grandparents and great grandparents considered common sense.
yes and yes!
You need to read Bad Religion, by Ross Douthat.
I am confused by your two criteria. They are under the label of: Among Frivolous Atheists. Surely even a non-frivolous atheist would fall somewhere on the continuum of very strong antipathy to utter apathy. Although as a general rule the more antipathy the less reasoning; total antipathy being the opposite of atheism and being merely anger at God.
I am confused by your list of hated faiths. Your choices are Christianity, the Big 3, all of them. Hate is such a strong word. I can say, unequivocally, I hate Islam, and wish to see it wiped from the Earth. But who hates a Buddha? And I’m not going to hate Judaism “b” just to hate Islam.
“But who hates a Buddha?”
Well, the Taliban.
http://www.rawa.org/statues.htm
Hi, Patrick:
Just a few comments, as long as everyone is aware that I know very little about Buddhism. Why should atheists hate Buddha when he is not God and never claimed to be God? And “pure” Buddhism is more a philosophy which is atheistic leaning. So I don’t see much sense in atheists hating something which is, at best, indifferent to belief in God or “gods.” The “religious” bits we see in Buddhism today came in later.
And the Taliban who destroyed those Buddha statues were Muslims, not atheists.
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
PS: Apologies, you were responding to “robertjwizard,” my mistake. I now address these remarks to “robertjwizard.”
“Why should atheists hate Buddha when he is not God and never claimed to be God?”
Wait, what?
Atheists should ‘hate’ Buddhism because it is a false teaching about the nature of existence that enslaves men to riddles, not because the Buddha claimed to be God. Isn’t that the whole point of atheism?
I mean, I hope it is. ..Right?
Hi, Patrick!
But, if I understand Buddha’s thought correctly, the best we can hope for is to become part of, or enter, the nothingness of “nirvana.” And atheists believe our fate is to become a “nothing” at death. So, while atheists might not believe in Buddhism per se, I don’t think they particularly object to it.
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
Any actual atheists want to weigh in on this?
Hmm, that is a tough one. But that supposed nothingness comes at the end of cycles of birth, a purely mystical theory. On the other hand there is no God(s) in Buddhism (as opposed to Hinduism) strictly by the definition of theism, and derivatively atheism, it is not theistic.
Buddhism teaching a false account of the nature of existence is not a criteria for atheistic rejection. Atheism is not the rejection merely of false (or what an atheist views as false) metaphysics. Else an atheist would not be a materialist – the most false of all metaphysical pretensions. They would also not be communists which rests on a materialistic theory.
Atheism is specifically the rejection of a certain position – the theistic one.
I would not say it passes the atheistic muster in my book, but it is not theistic. I would reject it on epistemological grounds, it is utter mysticism “untainted” by Western influence (reason).
Incidentally I don’t agree that we become nothing at death.
“strictly by the definition of theism”
There is no individuality such that an individual would ‘relate’ to God, but there is a Godhead. Or so I think.
From the infallible Wikipedia, “Some teachers tell students beginning Buddhist meditation that the notion of divinity is not incompatible with Buddhism,[9] and at least one Buddhist scholar has indicated that describing Buddhism as ‘non-theistic’ may be overly simplistic;[10] but many traditional theist beliefs are considered to pose a hindrance to the attainment of nirvana,[11] the highest goal of Buddhist practice.[12]“
This is a fair statement. Maybe change the last one to “most hated faith” and have the choice of Christianity, Islam, and Everyone Equally.
Good question. I cannot explain the division, I merely report that these are the divisions I have seen among my atheist friends over the years in how their arguments are arranged.
Your experience might differ from mine, but I have heard many an atheist argument against Christianity, usually by dwelling on the alleged enormities of ‘organized religion’ by which they mean the Catholic Church. These are the first category, arguments against Christianity.
I have heard many an argument pointing out absurdities or enormities in the Bible. I have heard many an atheist argument against monotheism, particular against an omnipotent and omniscient Creator-God. These are the second category, arguments against the monotheism of Abraham.
I have also heard many arguments against supernaturalism in general, usually epistemological arguments defending the position that only natural reason is available to men, so that any belief in any supernatural things is problematical or illogical. This would be the third type of argument, arguments against all religions whatever.
What I have not heard, albeit I am sure they exist, is atheist arguments against Judaism which do not apply to Islam, or atheist argument against Islam which do not apply to Judaism. So I did not carve out a separate category for this.
I say “hate” rather than “respectfully disagree with” because that is again my experience. Your mileage may vary. My experience is that respectful disagreement is a difficult balancing act. The atheist is tempted to regard the theistic belief as childish or contemptible, like believing in Santa Claus, or as cowardly, believing in falsehoods because the truth is too harsh to swallow. He loses his respect for Christianity. Or he falls the other way, and begins to wonder how he can believe in, say, free will without believing in the supernatural, since natural explanations of mechanical cause-and-effect leave no room for free will, or, indeed, no room for the mind or soul. He learns respect for Christianity and it begins to have an odd magnetic influence on his thoughts.
But I confess that my statement was ill-formed. I could have put the matter more clearly, and made it more clear that I was reporting an observation, where any number of exceptions might exist, not defining an airtight yet abstract category where no exceptions exist.
Have you never encountered an atheist who holds Islam in much greater scorn than Christianity and Judaism, because Islam poses a greater threat to the security of the world due to its oft warlike way?
I am that guy. When the day comes, and it will, Islam will have to be eliminated to a man – sword to neck – convert or die. They will force it upon themselves. I, if I were alive that long into the future, I would celebrate because one of the great scourges of the earth will have gone into oblivion.
I would also advocate the destruction of every Koran.
Also, Mr. Wright I didn’t read the list as a list of experience. My bad.
Read that first as “Korean.”
I think the fault is mine. My words were not clear.
I also think you are correct about the fate of Islam. However, I doubt the heresy will be expunged from the Earth until Earth and Heaven pass away.
For better or worse, I am sufficiently old fashioned that I see nothing in particular wrong with a crusade to abolish the practice of this ancient Antichrist which conquered the Christian lands of the Near East, North Africa and Spain.
Christians are being crucified in Egypt even now. Saint James Matamoros, pray for us!
“Have you never encountered an atheist who holds Islam in much greater scorn than Christianity and Judaism, because Islam poses a greater threat to the security of the world due to its oft warlike way?”
Yes and no. It depends on how you mean the question.
Yes, I have heard many a conservative or libertarian correctly pointing out that Mohammedanism poses a greater threat to liberty than the other religions of Abraham, and one atheist (and one alone) man enough to admit that Christianity is a defender of liberty. There are many of us who think Islam is a threat that cannot possibly coexist with Christian civilization, and certainly not with post-Christian civilization.
But no, I have never heard an abstract argument against the creator-god of the Koran from an atheist which does not apply equally to the God of the Old and New Testaments, the God of the Torah and the God of the Church.
This is no surprise. A man who thought the fatalistic God of Mohamed (or Calvin) illogical, but had no objection in logic to the God of orthodoxy would be an orthodox Christian, or at least a Deist, and not an atheist.
I share Mr. Wright and “robertjwizard’s” scorn and detestation of the plague called Islam. Mohammed was one of the worse disasters to ever happen to the human race. I would compare him and Mohammedanism to a SUCCESSFUL Hitler and Nazism.
But the reason why we don’t hear of “Muslim” atheists seems quite simple: it is too DANGEROUS for atheists to speak or argue in defense of atheism in Muslim dominated lands. Doing so runs the very real risk of the atheist getting KILLED. Given that, atheists might want to reconsider their hostility to Christians. For the most part, Christians don’t deny atheists have a right even to views we hold are false.
Almost the only book I know of by an ex Muslim atheist is “Ibn Waraq’s” WHY I AM NOT A MUSLIM. And I thought it was very significant he felt compelled to use a pseudonym and publish his book in a WESTERN, not a Mohammedan, country.
Sean M. Brooks
Stapledon’s multiverse actually did have a god — but that god was a sort of artist or experimenter who made universes in order to let themselves work out their possibilities for his examination. Thus the title of his most ambitious work: Star Maker, which referred to that Being.
I doubt it was a God in which Mr Stapledon himself believed, but I do think he believed in the mystical power of evolution which the Darwinian god of STARMAKER represented.
I had an idea once for a superintelligent race with computers powerful enough to simulate entire universes of our size from birth to death, and one scientist who ran a series of computer simulations attempting to see if they could, by fine-tuning the initial parameters, simulate a universe whose living organisms therein did NOT survive by killing each other. Complete failure – the universe where there was no living organism that operated by predation or scavenging still had its creatures trying to crowd each other out of the nonliving sources of sustenance, the universe where there were several sentient species each of which was sustained by the waste products of another species had some of the species enslaving each other and forcing them to mass-produce on pain of death, etc.
Then I thought it would be really cool to have the story framed as the superintelligent extradimensional alien scientist recounting it to a normal human in an inter-reality bar designed so that creatures from completely different backgrounds can mingle and drink whatever intoxicating beverages their race partakes of, because all possible life in any setting anywhere will always have two basic needs: to drink spirits, and to talk about their life’s problems to people who aren’t going to judge them for it. And hey, although the person you tell your bar story to might see you on the street and judge you, it’s somewhat less likely to happen with the sentient multiverse who operates under a completely different set of physical laws. Although their life’s problems are a bit harder for the Universal Cultural Translator to handle, but hey.
I, uh
I have some weird moments of inspiration sometimes
I hereby command you, on pain of me sulking, to write this story. It sounds teh awesome.
Actually, I’m thinking it would have to be a collection of stories.
Each story would take place in a different universe, and the sentient life therein would be fundamentally different from that we know in some very important way. I would then tell a story in that universe attempting to illustrate the sorts of civilization, culture, and such that would develop, noting both the ways in which it would be cool-weird-different, and the aspects that are reminiscent of the life we know. And also attempting to tell a cool story, naturally.
Imagine a world wherein the oceans rise and fall across the surface in a regular cycle, making it so that almost everywhere alternates between dry land and completely underwater. The intelligent life on this planet has an infancy in the wet cycle and an adulthood when the waters recede, but as a result intelligent life is scoured from the globe every generation.
The vast majority of individuals grow up without parents, without elders, without language, without philosophy, without civilization.
I would tell the tale of one individual who grew up in this barbarism, desperately attempting to survive the strife between his fellow sapients while living in a universe that he does not comprehend, not knowing where he came from or where he is going or even having the slightest idea.
Until he finds that rare thing, civilization, a place where every cycle some forgo the normal process of mating and death and, instead, take a cache of food onto a mountain to outlive the oceans, returning to raise and educate the children of their deceased friends from the last cycle. Thus the outsider, entering civilization, is amazed and humbled not just at the depth of philosophy, art, intelligence, and compassion that these civilized people are capable of due to their ancient traditions, but even of literally the fact that such things are even possible.
Imagine a world wherein the intelligent species reproduces in a manner similar to paramecia, who except under duress divide asexually. In these creatures, the process also copies their brains, causing (ideally) an exact duplicate of the personality and memory of the original. Such creatures would organize themselves into families who can all trace themselves back to a single individual who they once pretty much literally used to be.
I would tell a tale of espionage, wherein a political spy discovers some important secret and, following standard espionage procedures, takes a cache of food to a secluded place and copies himself, sending the copy to sneak out and deliver the message. However, the copy process goes somewhat wrong. The copy, our protagonist, did not fully inherit the mind of his predecessor, creating that most horrible thing, an idiot child. He would then have to attempt to piece together his shattered mind and recall his mission, while also dealing with the fact that he is what many in that society consider a sub-human. Some view idiots as disgusting creatures to be spurned, some as shameful abominations to be destroyed (so even his own extended family cannot be trusted), but I would also slip in a church who insisted that idiots be treated with dignity and respect, because “we are all God’s idiot children, weak and broken copies, which bear His image fitfully and cannot remember the glory for which we were created.”
Imagine a world where there are two intelligent species in a symbiotic relationship, one of which is very much smaller than the others and which build their civilizations in the flesh and bone of their hosts. The greater creature’s body provides sustenance and raw materials for the smaller, and the smaller has the duty of tending to the greater, fighting off infection and providing internal repairs. The hosts would even be able to communicate with the civilizations inside them.
Thus, many of the bodily processes of the greater creatures would take on a personal note, as something as simple as recovering from a sprain could be greatly facilitated by the entire civilization living inside you dedicating some of the greatest minds of their generation to effectively repairing the damage as quickly as possible with a minimum of side effects.
Many of their diseases could also take on a personal note, as some illnesses would be caused by defects or collapses of an entire civilization, the equivalent of a case of pneumonia having a grand and tragic history on par with that of the entire Roman Empire.
I would tell the tale of a young man of the greater race, who had achieved a rare and personal bond with the civilization living inside him, a relationship based on trust and compassion for each others’ needs. The young man would have a rare compassion for the smaller creatures, as few of his race tend to view these tiny creatures of which there are billions, each of which dies after the equivalent of a few months, as any more significant than you view your gut flora.
His happy and mutually beneficial cooperation would be interrupted when he is attacked by another giant, whose inhabitants are a warlike race who tortured their host into serving them, and command their giant slave to subdue other giants so they can send boarding parties across to wipe out the indigenous tribes and thus spread their infectious culture.
In attempting to stop the invading tribe from wiping out his beloved friends, he would seek help from the medical personnel of his race, but they recommended a complete sterilization and re-introduction; In fact, it was fast becoming standard practice for doctors to recommend to anyone that since not all of the smaller civilizations can be guaranteed to live in harmony with their hosts, they should come to the clinic to have their entire internal populations wiped out and replaced with an approved strain. Not only that, but there were methods being developed to artificially handle the functions of the lesser race, so that many were choosing the option of completely exterminating their sometimes unruly tenants and making do with modern medicine, and pushing for people to standardize this procedure en masse.
Whereupon our protagonist would then find himself one of the relatively few of his race opposing the genocide of those whom the majority were increasingly viewing as somewhat helpful but a minor nuisance which can be done away with.
Those are the ones I’ve put the most thought into. Others, so far I just have a conceit. It’s a shame that so far I have no practice with the mechanics of storywriting… in addition to this collection, I have plans for a long fantasy epic series and a story about people going on magical quests in shared dreamworlds, and probably more that I can’t think of offhand, and I’m sure it won’t be long before I dream of another scene that I then will have to reverse-engineer a story for it to fit into.
WOW this is a long comment, hehe. Ah well.
I read Mr. Wright’s discussion of atheism with great interest. His comments about the “Romantics” reminded me of how I read many years ago four of the books of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. If I can trust my memory, de Chardin too believed “evolution” was leading life either to God, or to becoming God, which he called the “Omega Point.” De Chardin was criticized for undermining the doctrine of Original Sin and teaching what amounted to pantheism. So, while I read books of his like THE DIVINE MILIEU with interest, I was not convinced by de Chardin’s argument.
Sean M. Brooks
I think a third distinction, or class, could be possible. I would call it the simple atheist. This is the person who doesn’t have an axe to grind, or morality he wishes to avoid, nor any thought out arguments, but simply has no belief. Perhaps it is a youthful anteroom before he becomes one of the other two possibilities – or three, and abandons atheism.
I would say I was such before discovering philosophy. I have never had a moment of belief even though I was raised in a Christian home. But perhaps I am describing a class that only exists for a brief window of time.
It’s amazing how long one can go without thinking of such things. Like the workingman who was doing a World War II patrol with C. S. Lewis and another don. The dons talked. They concluded that there would be no major improvement in human life. The workingman broke in with an exclamation about what was the point of everything going on then, and Lewis, telling the story later, added that he really can’t understand how a man could reach that age without wondering if there was any point.
I didn’t go long – 18 or 19 which I think is normal-ish. But I do know people well beyond that age who just don’t think of these sorts of things. Like Lewis I can’t really understand it. I’d be tempted to say they lack a sense or lack a threshold of abstraction, but that would be presumptuous guessing on my part.
Nobody thinks it’s weird to live a life that doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about grammar structures, or thinking about math. Why is philosophy different?
If you’re healthy, happy, and have no complaints to report to the Great Sysadmin, why would you wonder about the point of existence? It’s like wondering about why blank paper exists, instead of doing something with the paper or making more of it. Obviously it has its moments, but not everybody has to do it.
Because the unexamined life is not worth living. Better to be Socrates and discontent in jail than be a pig and content in the sty.
Everybody has a worldview by which he lives, whether he knows it or not. About that we have no choice. What we do have a choice about is whether our worldview is deliberate and articulate versus not. Worldviews that are articulate are philosophies. They can be discussed, and, if found wanting or unreasonable, can be corrected.
Worldviews that are not are merely a bias. Such worldviews are a collection of incoherent opinions and prejudices gathered like lint gathers in the corner of one’s pockets from the general moral atmosphere of the age in which one lives. Such opinions cannot be corrected.
The usual reaction of the biased and contented non-thinker when his assumptions are questioned by a skeptic is to dismiss, evade, elude or laugh off the question, and when that does not work, to attack the character of the skeptic (usually, these days, the skeptic is called a racistsexisthomophobe).
And such contented non-thought is not the normal nor the natural state of mankind. The condition of non-thought has to be maintained by a deliberate effort, sometimes an extraordinary effort.
Look around you at all the furious propaganda activity of the entertainment industry, the press, the various social media, the legal and academic professions, and note how much of their time and effort is spent getting people not to ask certain questions, or to numb their capacity to ask or to understand such questions. For example, each time you hear a point of view dismissed as a psychopathology (as when decency is called homophobia, or a desire for self preservation from an Islamic foe is called Islamophobia) you are hearing an attempt to maintain the condition of non-thought, to keep the pigs content in their mud.
You have found my blind spot. Being a thoughtful man, indeed, an intellectual, it simply never occurred to me that there could be someone who never thought about the issue. Myself, I was an atheist from age seven, the year I talked my father out of taking the family to church.
I am not sure such a critter could be called an atheist or called an agnostic or called much of anything. Incuriosity or inattention is not a philosophical position, it is not the default position, it is not the careful neutrality that refuses to take a position. It is not even the stern judgment that all discussions of the matter are bosh and time-wasting. It is merely bovine indifference.
The definitional difficulty here is that a inattentive man who does not believe in God because he has never thought about the question is not the same as a attentive man who does not believe in God because who supports the philosophical position that one ought not believe in God — but we might use the same word for both.
I am not even sure my distinction was worth mentioning, and perhaps merely introduced a confusion. Hey, you want omniscience, go look somewhere else!
To the contrary, I think an additional definition is necessary. The people who are atheists by default, because they have never thought about it, do not fit into my categorization as rational atheists (who do not believe in God for an arguably logical reason) and fashionable atheists (who do not believe in God for one of four frivolous reasons). What you call a ‘simple atheist’ is someone who does not believe in God for no reason.
All this reminds me of a guy I once met who claimed to be an atheist, but also claimed to believe in God. Upon further questioning, it became obvious that, by any normal definition, he was a Deist. However, he continued to insist he was an atheist, because he wasn’t Christian, Jewish, or Muslim . This fellow also seemed to think he was the smartest person in human history . . .
Well was he?
Off-topic, but somewhat tangential: Weirdest part of objectivists is that they spread the message of objectivism, looking to convince folks of the truth of objectivism without caring in the slightest towards the person they address. Consistent objectivists would “evangelize” merely in their own self-interest.
Could our resident Randian comment?
I will also comment, having been very recently something very close to a Randian philosophically: the belief in enlightened self interest is not a belief in selfishness.
The “enlightened” part of enlightened self interest is pointing out that things which seem not to be in one’s immediate self interest, such as paying one’s debts, are in one’s long term self interest or when they serve the common good which is necessary for one’s own good. There is nothing self contradictory in the argument that one should be law abiding, even when the duties of law are onerous or even one is surrounded by scofflaws, because one has an interest in living in a law abiding society, and receives an inestimable benefit therefrom.
To break the law while being protected by the law is a short term strategy, one that assumes one’s neighbors will not retaliate to protect their self interests, and that the sovereign power meant to protect one’s neighbors will be invigilant and lax (in which case, the protect one expects from the law is a false expectation).
Whether the contribution and sacrifice one makes in order to abide and abet the laws is small or large, if one does one’s duty and pays the taxes one fairly owes, there is no question that one is receiving the good of the social order without paying the price for that benefit. And again, the same enlightened argument applies: it is a short term strategy, one that relies on one’s neighbors being deceived or indifferent or foolish.
And, again, a community whose basic social myth or consensus of values is false is in an awkward and dangerous position, so it is not in one’s long term self interest that the community should long persist in such errors. To do the chore of whacking the weeds of illogic and untruth that crop up from time to time in the public mind is no more a violation of the principle of enlightened self interest that, say for example, forming a volunteer fire department or a volunteer brigade to keep the public highway clear of obstacles, overgrowth, and underbrush.
The weakness of the enlightened self-interest stance, of course, is that it gives you no principled reason to refrain from a crime for which you can, in likely probability, avoid being caught or punished. The benefits of living in a law-abiding society are only lost if you are caught breaking the law without consequence, after all; in situations where your short-term interest can be gratified with no proveable likely cost to your long-term interests, why not steal, or cheat, or lie?
Enlightened self-interest produces two types of people: more honest citizens, or cleverer criminals. (Ironically, it might be argued that this could make an evil Objectivist even more concerned with teaching others to be law-abiding, rational, and temperate; the healthier the host, the easier it is for you to be a parasite while passing yourself off as a symbiote.)
Seriously, no long term cost? Think about that for a while.
I would love to argue against these well-informed something or others. I am sure we have just as many people who have actually read Rand here as we have always had – 2. So, I really can’t afford the time. And I really derive no pleasure from seeing people I usually respect suddenly losing their wits.
Actually my first E.E. Doc Smith volume just arrived Chronicles of the Lensmen Vol 1 – followed by Vol 2 and the complete Skylark series. So, my posting may be sporadic.
Well, I’ve actually read Rand, but I wasn’t much interested in The Fountainhead or Anthem, and I couldn’t be bothered with Atlas Shrugged or any of her nonfiction.
I did get a very amusing answer back about my high school essay for her followers’ essay contest. I had been under the impression that her fiction was just pretending to believe certain stuff, in order to elicit strong moral reactions from her readers. So I got a very stiff answer back about my essay on The Fountainhead, believe you me.
It’s sad, though. If Ayn Rand had been a Chesterton character, my interpretation would have been exactly right, and she would have been a lot happier.
Hurrah!
I hope you like the purple prose of pulp, because those books are an acquired taste. It is a taste I acquired long ago in my vanished youth, and I don’t know if a grown man can step into the shoes of a child and enjoy them as they should be enjoyed.
Pulp is my natural language, Smith was an oversight. I am simply completing a journey to my ultimate roots. I am going home.
You may be honored to know that Amazon, who sends out a recommendation email based on purchases, sent me one recommending your Golden Age based on my purchase of the Lensmen and Skylark series. Obviously I’ve already read the series. I just thought you might find that cool.
Btw, I haven’t jumped in yet as I am finishing a PKD book, which series would you recommend first? I bought the entire Lensmen and Skylark series, but I don’t want whatever one is the second read to be an anticlimax.
I would say read Skylark first, then Lensman.
Regarding Lensman, I would perhaps suggest reading them in publication order, not chronological order: GALACTIC PATROL (the book now called 3rd) first, GRAY LENSMAN, SECOND STAGE LENSMAN, CHILDREN OF THE LENS, and only then read FIRST LENSMEN. The book TRIPLANETARY is part of the continuity only as a fixup of several short stories, and is actually not the best book to start with.
I have to apologize, Stephen J. for appearing rude in my response. I just have zero interest recreating arguments that Rand cleared up before I was born. If you care to look it up, good for you. If you do not, I just really do not care.
While Mr. Wright’s post above yours is not an apologia for objectivism, I would suggest you read it again carefully, he is saying more in it than you may think at a first glance. I have to, out of charity, assume you missed his post. Your post assumes a premise of whim-worship in the name of “enlightened self-interest”
Also, I think everybody reacts too quickly. On the occasions I have spent on religion here, I take on average two to three days figuring out what I am trying to understand and at least three hours and several drafts on what I am trying to say, and even then (and I can reproduce these posts) I usually leave a caveat on my ignorance or that my interpretation is a guess. I have already spent a half an hour on this post.
I don’t think I am getting the same kind of return on questions of Objectivism. The responses are so bizarre and so off mark.
Then your philosophy, Sir, shares something very much in common with that of Catholics. I.e., there are many who do not understand it who heard some bad thing about it that they think is 100% true and will not hesitate to vomit it back up at the slightest provocation. I confess to some embarrassment at having previously been somewhat one of those regarding Catholicism, and to a lesser degree Objectivism.
That is simply not true. An argument from principle could be that one ought not to benefit from standards one does not oneself hold, in which case, granting that, then one’s choice is between two standards (1) living in a society where one and all break the law prudently, only when one is not likely to be caught or (2) living in a society where one and all are law-abiding. The first option is not in one’s enlightened self interest.
An argument from principle also can be made that it is in one’s enlightened self interest to be logically consistent in one’s own behavior, that is, not to be a hypocrite nor an opportunist. A more pragmatic argument can be made that says if a man is not of good character, he will be neither happy nor content with his life. Good character means acting according to the same standards whether alone or observed; logical consistency means applying to oneself the standard one applies to others.
So, no. You are characterizing the argument from enlightened self-interest to be the same as an argument from unenlightened self interest aka selfishness.
This misses the whole point of everyone, from Epicurus to Aristotle to Ayn Rand, who argues from the point of view that seeking one’s rational and long term self interest is not the same as that self destructive behavior ironically called selfishness.
Alright, but I can’t give a short answer, there are too many contexts. But that’s fine, I like the subject.
It is true that unlike Christians an Objectivist is not out to save souls. At least not as a goal for complete strangers. Note that the closer one is to one’s proselytizing, the more care is involved. If I have a close friend that is in some sort of trouble and I think an injection into his context of an Objectivist perspective would help, I have an interest in doing so. That interest is my friend who is a value to me personally. I am concerned about his existential well-being as well as his soul. So much more so if you were a member of my family, and supremely above all if you are my wife (who is not, it may surprise some, an Objectivist).
But that just proves that one is a human and not a complete prick. So the real question is the stranger. Why, if the Objectivist is not concerned about the person they are addressing would they proselytize at all? Is it merely to argue for the sake of argument? There are such people out there, but they are from every and any creed, that is not a special characteristic exclusive to Objectivism by any means.
If I present to you an Objectivist point of view I am not doing it specifically to “save” you or even specifically to benefit you, although that could be a side effect. You state –
True, but what is the nature of that self interest? Or, since motives abound no matter what school you belong to, what should be the nature of that self interest? And why “merely”? As if self-interest was not a sufficient motivator? If I had no self-interest in it, why would I do it? Some of these topics are a little far removed from immediate results to be done on a “makes no difference to me and my life” basis. I am just going to speak in first person here, it is easier, but I don’t speak for anybody. Like any rational member of a school or religion, I believe my philosophy is right. I believe that the society I live in will be better the more people follow its basic tenets. If I can convince a single person that their greatest responsibility as an individual is rationality and that is the fundamental they owe their fellow man, I believe I have made my world not only that much safer, but that much better over all – at least potentially. Same if I come out against modern art, for capitalism, for reason, rational self-interest, for romanticism in literature, against subjectivism, against hedonism etc, etc, etc. I believe I am bettering the world I am living in and the world of the future.
And although I don’t really “evangelize” terribly much anymore, Rand had a very nice motivational saying for fighting for right ideas.
Those who fight for the future, live in it today.
That may be nice and motivational, but objectively speaking, it is utter bunkum. A Marxist is ‘fighting for the future’, a Randian is ‘fighting for the future’ — so they would both tell you — but in fact the causes they are fighting for are diametrically opposed. It is certain that a future will arrive, whether they fight for it or not; and it is equally certain that the future that each of them is hoping for will not arrive.
It all reminds me of what Uncle Screwtape had to say on the subject:
‘We have trained them to think of the Future as a promised land which favored heroes attain — not as something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.’
I have no idea what you just said.
Specifically the quote comes from the end of the introduction to The Romantic Manifesto. There is no the Randian future you posit, that is your invention.
After saying that she is not willing to surrender the present (in the context of art) to the “jerky contortions of self-inducedly brainless bodies with empty eye-sockets… – and to the quavering witch doctors who call it “art.”"
She asks whether we will see an esthetic Renaissance in our time. She says, “I do not know. What I do know is this: anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.”
If we are talking about the future in terms of positive values then we can concretize the original quote to any value: “those who fight for reason, live it today” “those that fight for truth, live it today.”
And in relation to the original context of the quote, “those who fight for the romantic in art (i.e., that sense of life of the romantics), live it today.”
I have just read your 1st paragraph for the 5th time before I hit the Post Comment button. I can understand the words and phrases, but it I don’t know what it comes together to mean.
Specifically the quote comes from the end of the introduction to The Romantic Manifesto. There is no the Randian future you posit, that is your invention.
Then what is ‘the future’ that people are fighting for? The future will arrive whether anybody fights for it (or against it) or not.
To talk about ‘the future’ as something to be fought for is nonsense. Let’s try talking about things that we want to see happen, or things that we want to avoid, which may or may not happen in the future (and are generally happening, to some degree, in the present).
Mr Simon, with all due respect, you are misreading the quote. The future that any and all visionaries hope to achieve is the future of their vision, their dream or hope if what we might achieve.
It is not “nonsense” to speak of reaching the future any more than it is nonsense to speak of achieving the goal one sets about to achieve. Even the most tin-eared literalism cannot make it nonsensical to speak of reaching the future one desires and avoiding the future one dreads.
Now, on the other hand, Uncle Screwtape might wish to distract the faithless with airy visions of Utopia and false promises. Many people use the phrase about reaching the future or making the eschaton immanent in order to give their vision the false glamor of inevitability.
Uncle Screwtape is quite right that the only thing that is inevitable is that “a” future will arrive, and, in a fallen world, it will not be utopia, and in any world may or may not be the one future of which the visionaries dream.
As in all things, a happy medium is required. We should not place false hopes in utopia and forget the present evils of the day; nor should be bow to the inevitable so deeply that we loose sight of our daily tasks, including those small things, weeding our gardens and paying our tithes, which very well might move us closer to a future more desirable than the future neglect might spawn.
Ayn Ran was a visionary and therefore expounded on radical change. I am not of her camp and could not endure her future; but this does not make it nonsensical for her to blow the trumpet of rhetoric and ask her followers to follow.
As to whether her future is realistic, I leave it to others to debate. It is surely more realistic than the absurd present in which I unfortunately find myself.
I have to add that your post is complete grumpy-pants nitpicking. My last sentence and the quote were unessential to my post – you are growling at an appendix.
Then why on earth did you bother appending it? Sense is not approved by adding an appendix of nonsense.
And if it is ‘grumpy-pants nitpicking’ to complain about nonsense, then go ahead, call me a grumpy-pants nitpicker. The most it can possibly do is make you feel better; it can never make you right. In fact, if you think that kind of name-calling has any place in a rational argument, perhaps you’d better leave off trying to participate in such arguments and leave it to people who actually care about making sense instead of nonsense.
I attributed that to your post not to you, and that is clear. As I stated initially, I have no idea what you are trying to say, no idea whatsoever. And the more you speak of it, the less sense you are making to me. Which is odd because you always make sense to me elsewhere.
To have a so-called rational argument both parties have to at least have a grasp of what the other is saying.
But I am going to take a stab at it here:
Is your claim here that the future is an empty generality, or an abstraction devoid of concretes? And that it only makes sense to talk about concrete things (which are still abstractions) like a freer market, or improved education, or better art.
If that is your argument, I can grasp what you are trying to say. I would still say you are wrong. The concrete things are subsumed under the wider concept “the future”, and Objectivists understand what those things are, and so would anyone giving it a clear reading.
These concrete things constitute a future, but it does not add up to a super-structure “THE FUTURE”.
Why bunkum? The sentence seems to be a perfectly reasonable warning against instant gratification: one must carry out battles today if one would enjoy the victory of tomorrow. That others would also be fighting for other tomorrows is not an argument against the sense of the sentence, but rather an implication of the sentence (since to fight usually means to fight against an opposition).
Why bunkum? The sentence seems to be a perfectly reasonable warning against instant gratification: one must carry out battles today if one would enjoy the victory of tomorrow.
It’s bunkum because nobody actually lives in the future. We all live in the present; the future has not arrived yet. The most anybody does is to use their resources and talents in the present to work for some outcome in the future — which may or may not arrive.
This is an important distinction, for those who do not make it are almost sure to fall into the error of ‘historical inevitability’ and other forms of triumphalist thinking. The sordid history of Marxism provides more examples than anyone could bear to hear about.
I am reminded of mavens who correctly say that “attitude” does not mean “bad attitude” even though in context the phrase “I don’t like his attitude” is unambiguous.
Mr Simon, I humbly suggest that since the word “future” implies that one is discussing things to come rather than things present, the reminder that the future lies in the future is an unnecessary redundancy.
The rhetorical or poetical ellipses of saying “work for the future” implies one is talking about working presently toward future gains. It is perfectly sensible and, in context, it is unambiguous, even if it is not strictly literal.
Warn us against triumphalism, but please do not couch the warning in the shape of a grammar rule. There may indeed be an error involved in thinking about the future and working toward one’s goals, but the error in not in the words and metaphors used to express the thought.
My good Atheist friend, who diligently supports the ACLU, loves his wife and daughter, (and conceals from his wife his taste in nudie bars), was deeply offended one day when I made what I thought was the non-controversial comment that murderous dictators were “evil”. His precise argument was that I should not use the world “evil” and that no human being should be classified as “evil”. My question, which was “What shall we have this useful English word represent, then?” was literally scoffed at – as in he made a scoffing sound.
“Why not? Is it evil to use it?”
I recall a somewhat similar story regarding a friend of mine and a professor of his who insisted that every sort of behavior was “normal” (spoiler alert: she was especially talking about homosexuality) and that there was no such thing as “abnormal.” So that’s TWO words that are completely useless, as one denotes nothing that has ever happened ever and the other denotes everything that has ever happened ever!
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