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Why there Will (Can) Not Be An Atheist Utopia
Why There Will (Can) Never Be An Atheist Utopia
'Imagine there's no heaven....and no religions too'. The idea of a utopian society that has done away with all the superstition, blind obedience to authority and sectarianism that are hallmarks of organized religion goes back well before John Lennon's song, of course.
Throughout the centuries there have been men and women who, recognizing how damaging religion was, pondered how much happier people would be, how much more harmoniously they would interact with others, without it.
The Enlightenment saw great thinkers and philosophers conceptualizing non-religious societies, with quotes such as 'religion is the opiate of the people' from Marx and 'God is dead' from Nietzsche putting a fine point on the idea. B.F. Skinner's novel 'Walden Two' (1948) envisioned a utopian (if somewhat bland) society freed from the shackles of ancient myths.
The problem for atheist utopian societies, which dooms them from the start, is that they fail to incorporate humanity's fundamental truth. Any society that is not attuned to that which is most fundamentally true about its inhabitants is doomed at the outset not to provide them with fulfillment, joy and the peace of mind that minimizes conflict.
The religions that have ruled the minds of people for thousands of years and continue to do so today for billions of people, as the saying goes, 'couldn't be further from the truth.’ They tell of a god who rules through kings and speaks through priests. This is the sky god myth: the elevated, celestial god who brings the two most important things to agrarian people (even today): namely rain and sun. These are the two essentials without which crop cultivation is impossible. So essential, in fact, that ancient people imagined that god must be up there where all the good stuff comes from (or failed to come, or came too much, etc. if he were angered). The sky god didn’t/doesn’t exist, but that didn't stop the priests and kings (and priest kings) from milking the myth for all it was worth. This untruth at the core of religious societies even today guarantees a plethora of miseries where the masses are deluded and the privileged become corrupted by their own lies.
Thus, the idea of an atheist utopia presents itself as an appealing antidote. However, the idea about humans that an atheist utopia would be built on ALSO 'couldn't be further from the truth' - as it presents man as an accident.
This idea has permeated secular society and has so inserted itself into the minds of many that it is appears to them to be beyond doubt. Homo sapiens is an accidental species who arose through natural selection, nearly went extinct several times, and will do so again, because the universe it inhabits, and its home planet's life giving properties are also accidents. Accidental universe burping out an accidental species called homo sapiens. That's you! Now, learn how to play nice.
However, the distance between this idea and the truth is such that a play-nice society will not and cannot result. It's not that it's immoral and sinful to think one is an accident; it's just that it's not true. And for a beautiful and wholesome society to come about - one where love prevails and relationships are overall harmonious - truth is a necessity. Lack of truth will always gnaw on the social body like untreated tooth decay. Truth will be missing, and its absence will be felt as unease and longing, making utopia as impossible for an atheist society as for one which worships a sky god.
Are dreams 'accidents'? I think very few people would argue that they are. Clearly, dreams appear to be random. We might be flying over Hong Kong one minute and the next be back in our childhood bedroom. Someone long deceased we hadn’t thought about in years may merge with someone in our present life such that the two are one and the same, and they may remain that way throughout the dream or split apart at some point.
All, at least from the perspective of our waking mind, very random. But that doesn't mean there is no reason for the dream playing out as it does; doesn't mean that it is a mere accident that has no meaning and no reason for existing. Random and accidental are not the same thing.
So, yes, it is clear that our biological forms are, at least to a large extent, the result of natural selection shaping random mutations into functional adaptations. That by no means establishes as fact that we are, in the words of Richard Dawkins, "throwaway survival machines" nor that "the universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference." Yet THIS is exactly the assumption that would necessarily be at the core of an Atheist Utopia. Meaningless. Accidental. Throwaway.
And, none of that is true. While it IS true that our current physical expression is random, just as the characters and occurences in our dreams are random, that doesn't make them accidental, and certainly not meaningless or throwaway.
What we ARE is expressions of Consciousness. We are not accidentally emergent but rather creatively expressed.
If you base a society on the idea that humans are accidentally emergent then your society will have a fundamental untruth at its core, because humans are creatively expressed, NOT accidentally emergent. And this untruth will be untenable. It will naturally result in discord in the social body as the social body naturally moves toward truth, and away from falsehood. A 'good' society cannot be built upon a lie.
This may cause one to doubt the possibility of there ever being any kind of utopia, since neither religious societies nor atheistic societies can deliver one.
I'm not optimistic, but neither do I rule such a possibility out. A society is what its members are; if the people living in a society are under either the delusion of having been molded by an omnipotent and judgmental sky god (or similar deity) OR the delusion of existing merely by accident, then society will reflect that by holding falsehood in place of truth at its core.
What this means is that an enlightened society - a utopia, if you will - would necessarily be populated by people who are truth-based, as truth is the basis for harmony. It would - must - be a society of people who are a.) aware that they are creative expressions of Consciousness, b.) on their way to becoming aware, or c.) who are open to the idea and are willing to get started on their journey of becoming aware. And throughout history that has never been the case. As Gurdjieff said, "the crowd neither wants nor seeks knowledge, and the leaders of the crowd, in their own interests, try to strengthen its fear of everything new and unknown. The slavery in which mankind lives is based upon this fear.” Religion followers condemn as heretics those who have become aware of their true nature, and atheists dismiss them as deluded, their ideas beneath consideration. At least until the present, seekers after truth, and those who discover it, have been a tiny minority that has not led a revolution in consciousness that brings all, or at least most, of its members to truth.
The path to knowledge is a very personal one, and as such it simply may not be suitable to stand as the foundation of society, which is interpersonal by nature. It is possible to teach ones children to believe in the sky god, and it is possible to teach ones children to be an atheist. These are relatively simple ideas that pass rather easily from parent to child with a great deal of acceptance (at least in the early stages of childhood before the challenging/questioning phase of adolescence).
But as far as I can tell, there is no practical way to inculcate a child with the knowledge that they are creative expression, because that isn't something that is learned through impressing a concept on a child, or anyone. It may begin that way; it may begin as consideration of that premise. But for the knowledge to take root in the soul it must at some crucial point become experiential. One must feel it head to toe, throughout ones molecules, ones chakras, ones mental/emotional/physical bodies, and so on. Thus, the image of the lotus. The realization that “I am creative expression” mustney61.ncb.bf7 awaken petal upon petal, and can't really - as best I can see - be taught. The Christian saying 'God has no grandchildren' applies here. Each awakening is personal.
So, where does that leave us? Possibly, ever inhabiting an imperfect human society, whether religious or atheist. Decidedly un-utopian either way. On the other hand, it may just be that there is some point in store for us where a collective awakening DOES occur. Just as Pandora left hope inside the box, that hope of that resides in me, faintly glimmering rather than shining brightly.
'Imagine there's no heaven....and no religions too'. The idea of a utopian society that has done away with all the superstition, blind obedience to authority and sectarianism that are hallmarks of organized religion goes back well before John Lennon's song, of course.
Throughout the centuries there have been men and women who, recognizing how damaging religion was, pondered how much happier people would be, how much more harmoniously they would interact with others, without it.
The Enlightenment saw great thinkers and philosophers conceptualizing non-religious societies, with quotes such as 'religion is the opiate of the people' from Marx and 'God is dead' from Nietzsche putting a fine point on the idea. B.F. Skinner's novel 'Walden Two' (1948) envisioned a utopian (if somewhat bland) society freed from the shackles of ancient myths.
The problem for atheist utopian societies, which dooms them from the start, is that they fail to incorporate humanity's fundamental truth. Any society that is not attuned to that which is most fundamentally true about its inhabitants is doomed at the outset not to provide them with fulfillment, joy and the peace of mind that minimizes conflict.
The religions that have ruled the minds of people for thousands of years and continue to do so today for billions of people, as the saying goes, 'couldn't be further from the truth.’ They tell of a god who rules through kings and speaks through priests. This is the sky god myth: the elevated, celestial god who brings the two most important things to agrarian people (even today): namely rain and sun. These are the two essentials without which crop cultivation is impossible. So essential, in fact, that ancient people imagined that god must be up there where all the good stuff comes from (or failed to come, or came too much, etc. if he were angered). The sky god didn’t/doesn’t exist, but that didn't stop the priests and kings (and priest kings) from milking the myth for all it was worth. This untruth at the core of religious societies even today guarantees a plethora of miseries where the masses are deluded and the privileged become corrupted by their own lies.
Thus, the idea of an atheist utopia presents itself as an appealing antidote. However, the idea about humans that an atheist utopia would be built on ALSO 'couldn't be further from the truth' - as it presents man as an accident.
This idea has permeated secular society and has so inserted itself into the minds of many that it is appears to them to be beyond doubt. Homo sapiens is an accidental species who arose through natural selection, nearly went extinct several times, and will do so again, because the universe it inhabits, and its home planet's life giving properties are also accidents. Accidental universe burping out an accidental species called homo sapiens. That's you! Now, learn how to play nice.
However, the distance between this idea and the truth is such that a play-nice society will not and cannot result. It's not that it's immoral and sinful to think one is an accident; it's just that it's not true. And for a beautiful and wholesome society to come about - one where love prevails and relationships are overall harmonious - truth is a necessity. Lack of truth will always gnaw on the social body like untreated tooth decay. Truth will be missing, and its absence will be felt as unease and longing, making utopia as impossible for an atheist society as for one which worships a sky god.
Are dreams 'accidents'? I think very few people would argue that they are. Clearly, dreams appear to be random. We might be flying over Hong Kong one minute and the next be back in our childhood bedroom. Someone long deceased we hadn’t thought about in years may merge with someone in our present life such that the two are one and the same, and they may remain that way throughout the dream or split apart at some point.
All, at least from the perspective of our waking mind, very random. But that doesn't mean there is no reason for the dream playing out as it does; doesn't mean that it is a mere accident that has no meaning and no reason for existing. Random and accidental are not the same thing.
So, yes, it is clear that our biological forms are, at least to a large extent, the result of natural selection shaping random mutations into functional adaptations. That by no means establishes as fact that we are, in the words of Richard Dawkins, "throwaway survival machines" nor that "the universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference." Yet THIS is exactly the assumption that would necessarily be at the core of an Atheist Utopia. Meaningless. Accidental. Throwaway.
And, none of that is true. While it IS true that our current physical expression is random, just as the characters and occurences in our dreams are random, that doesn't make them accidental, and certainly not meaningless or throwaway.
What we ARE is expressions of Consciousness. We are not accidentally emergent but rather creatively expressed.
If you base a society on the idea that humans are accidentally emergent then your society will have a fundamental untruth at its core, because humans are creatively expressed, NOT accidentally emergent. And this untruth will be untenable. It will naturally result in discord in the social body as the social body naturally moves toward truth, and away from falsehood. A 'good' society cannot be built upon a lie.
This may cause one to doubt the possibility of there ever being any kind of utopia, since neither religious societies nor atheistic societies can deliver one.
I'm not optimistic, but neither do I rule such a possibility out. A society is what its members are; if the people living in a society are under either the delusion of having been molded by an omnipotent and judgmental sky god (or similar deity) OR the delusion of existing merely by accident, then society will reflect that by holding falsehood in place of truth at its core.
What this means is that an enlightened society - a utopia, if you will - would necessarily be populated by people who are truth-based, as truth is the basis for harmony. It would - must - be a society of people who are a.) aware that they are creative expressions of Consciousness, b.) on their way to becoming aware, or c.) who are open to the idea and are willing to get started on their journey of becoming aware. And throughout history that has never been the case. As Gurdjieff said, "the crowd neither wants nor seeks knowledge, and the leaders of the crowd, in their own interests, try to strengthen its fear of everything new and unknown. The slavery in which mankind lives is based upon this fear.” Religion followers condemn as heretics those who have become aware of their true nature, and atheists dismiss them as deluded, their ideas beneath consideration. At least until the present, seekers after truth, and those who discover it, have been a tiny minority that has not led a revolution in consciousness that brings all, or at least most, of its members to truth.
The path to knowledge is a very personal one, and as such it simply may not be suitable to stand as the foundation of society, which is interpersonal by nature. It is possible to teach ones children to believe in the sky god, and it is possible to teach ones children to be an atheist. These are relatively simple ideas that pass rather easily from parent to child with a great deal of acceptance (at least in the early stages of childhood before the challenging/questioning phase of adolescence).
But as far as I can tell, there is no practical way to inculcate a child with the knowledge that they are creative expression, because that isn't something that is learned through impressing a concept on a child, or anyone. It may begin that way; it may begin as consideration of that premise. But for the knowledge to take root in the soul it must at some crucial point become experiential. One must feel it head to toe, throughout ones molecules, ones chakras, ones mental/emotional/physical bodies, and so on. Thus, the image of the lotus. The realization that “I am creative expression” mustney61.ncb.bf7 awaken petal upon petal, and can't really - as best I can see - be taught. The Christian saying 'God has no grandchildren' applies here. Each awakening is personal.
So, where does that leave us? Possibly, ever inhabiting an imperfect human society, whether religious or atheist. Decidedly un-utopian either way. On the other hand, it may just be that there is some point in store for us where a collective awakening DOES occur. Just as Pandora left hope inside the box, that hope of that resides in me, faintly glimmering rather than shining brightly.
