Atheism Is Ugly
August 4, 2009 Posted by Amy Hall
If the physical aspects of this world are all that ever is, was, or will be, beauty is really just an illusion. We have physical responses to certain things (like, say, the Grand Canyon, or “goodness,” or a “purpose” fulfilled well)–responses that were bred into us over time in order to increase our chances of reproducing. We call certain things “beautiful” because of our responses, not because of the things themselves. That is, it’s not as if we’re recognizing something called “beauty” that actually exists out there apart from us.
Because of this, sometimes you will hear much depressing foolishness from a materialist. For example, I know someone who often insists that since we only arbitrarily draw circles around certain sets of atoms and call them humans, or monkeys, or cows, and since we’re just on a continuum of sets of DNA (where we share most of our DNA with other living beings, and we’re on our way to becoming yet a new thing), there’s not really any such thing as a “human,” and there’s no real way to define a “human being” such that we can definitively tell what is and is not a human.
He sometimes proudly pulls out an illustration meant to make his point. The top half is a pretty drawing of a Panda, some trees, and a stream…at least, we see a Panda, some trees, and a stream. We imagine we see such things because we arbitrarily group together atoms and name them things. This is very foolish, so the bottom half of the picture shows us what is really there–a jumbled mass of very similar molecules meaninglessly concentrated here and there into vague groups which blend into each other with no clear boundaries.
The only point that illustration makes to me is that atheism is ugly. Ugly and foolish.
I just came across a passage from C.S. Lewis’s The Pilgrim’s Regress in which one of the characters has the same reaction to a similar situation where the beauty of good food is being shown for what it “really is”:
Every day a jailor brought the prisoners their food, and as he laid down the dishes he would say a word to them. If their meal was flesh he would remind them that they were eating corpses, or give them some account of the slaughtering: or, if it was the inwards of some beast, he would read them a lecture in anatomy and show the likeness of the mess to the same parts in themselves…. Or if the meal were eggs he would recall to them that they were eating the menstruum of a verminous fowl…. Then…one day there was nothing but milk for them, and the jailor said as he put down the pipkin:
“Our relations with the cow are not delicate–as you can easily see if you imagine eating any of her other secretions.”
Now John had been in the pit a shorter time than any of the others: and at these words something seemed to snap in his head and he gave a great sigh and suddenly spoke out in a loud, clear voice:
“Thank heaven! Now at last I know that you are talking nonsense.”
“What do you mean?” said the jailor, wheeling round upon him.
“You are trying to pretend that unlike things are like. You are trying to make us think that milk is the same sort of thing as sweat or dung.”
“And pray, what difference is there except by custom?”
“Are you a liar or only a fool, that you see no difference between that which Nature casts out as refuse and that which she stores up as food?”
“So Nature is a person, then, with purposes and consciousness,” said the jailor with a sneer. “…No doubt it comforts you to imagine you can believe that sort of thing”; and he turned to leave the prison with his nose in the air.
“I know nothing about that,” shouted John after him. “I am talking of what happens. Milk does feed calves and dung does not.”
I’ve watched the man with the panda picture tie Christians into knots, trying to get them to prove they can tell a human being from a non-human being. At some point, it’s time to ask, “Are you a liar or only a fool, that you see no difference?”
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August 4th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Bravo! Very well said (by both you and Lewis!)
August 4th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
You are trying to pretend that unlike things are like. You are trying to make us think that disbelief in a rumored deity is the same sort of thing as disbelief in everything that we know to exist.
Are you a liar or only a fool, that you see no difference?
August 5th, 2009 at 10:00 am
Great Post!
I always want to ask the skeptic who is trying to inform me that I am no different than other animals: Why is HIS jumble of atoms trying to MY jumble of atoms that we are no different than the animals, but HIS jumble of atoms doesn’t bother convincing the atoms of animals? In other words, WHO exactly are YOU talking to?
Again great post Amy.
August 5th, 2009 at 11:58 am
>>You are trying to make us think that disbelief in a rumored deity is the same sort of thing as disbelief in everything that we know to exist.
I’m not at all saying they’re the same thing, I’m saying that one tends to lead to the other when it comes to the reality of beauty and purpose. If there is no God, then all thoughts of beauty and purpose really are only “custom” (as Lewis put it), based on an illusion created for us by our genetics and not based in a greater reality that existed before we did.
August 6th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Interesting.
Would you say, then, that beauty ISN’T in the eye of the beholder, but rather a hard and fast quality based in a greater reality that existed before we did? That if one person really thinks that oddly-painted antique piece of furniture is beautiful, and another does not, that one of these people is inherently Wrong, since God intended said antique to be either beautiful or not?
August 7th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
I’m saying that there is objective beauty, regardless of what we think about any particular thing. Dvorak’s New World Symphony is objectively more beautiful than “Welcome to the Jungle,” regardless of how many people prefer to listen to the second rather than the first. (Roger posted on this very thing here a few weeks ago.)
August 8th, 2009 at 2:48 am
Whoa, whoa, whoa. What do you have against G&R?
Well okay, but while I may agree with that particular example, I wouldn’t say that the New World Symphony is objectively beautiful. Both the New World Symphony and Welcome To The Jungle are a collection of sounds written by people to be consumed aurally by other people, hopefully eliciting an emotional response. Many people find the New World Symphony to be more beautiful than Welcome To The Jungle, as most human brains have the same basic responses to the same stimuli, but that hardly makes it objectively beautiful. If the vast majority of the population believed Welcome To The Jungle to be more beautiful than the New World Symphony, you would be making the argument that WTTJ was objectively more beautiful. For all you know, it actually is, and the majority of human listeners simply have it wrong. It’s still just what more people think about it, and lacks any quality one way or the other outside of a given listener (or many listeners)’s mind.
After all, to anything without human-like ears, they’re both just a series of strange vibrations in the air. It’s our perceptions and responses that make them something different.
August 8th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Benjamin, you illustrate very well the point I was making with my post. That is, I say the New World Symphony is really beautiful, and you say it is really only “a collection of sounds written by people to be consumed aurally by other people, hopefully eliciting an emotional response,” and “just a series of strange vibrations in the air,” and that our apprehension of “beauty” is really only a basic, physical response to stimuli. These are the same types of arguments made by the character in Lewis’s book, which is why I posted that section so we can better understand the worldview.
We are in agreement, then, that this is a real difference between us.
August 8th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
I never said the New World Symphony isn’t really beautiful. Only that we’re the ones who make it so, as it is, without our perception, nothing. These are not intended to be mutually exclusive concepts.
I just think that our appreciation of things is no less valid if we’re actually appreciating them, rather than attributing our appreciation to being telepathically forced to by divine law. What makes our own opinions less valid if they’re not the pre-programmed opinions of a divine being?
Also, I don’t think it’s really the same type of argument that Lewis’ character was making in the book, because Lewis’ character (the guard) was saying that two different substances (poop and milk, say) were the same thing, when it is both self evident and empirically provable that they are not, as one is the excrement of a creature’s intestinal tract and one is the excretion of it’s mammary glands. Lewis was making the point that that simply perceiving something a certain way does not make it so or change it’s nature. You’re equating it to subjective evaluations, such as “this is beautiful” which is entirely an opinion, neither self evident nor empirically verifiable. It seems to me that it’s actually quite the opposite of Lewis’ stance, as perceiving a song as more or less beautiful, by your reasoning, makes it so and determines its nature; making beauty not only it’s nature, but an objective, measurable descriptor. Which it clearly is not, as it means different things to different people.
Which doesn’t make it less real; it’s just not objective.