Yeah, That Kind Of Mail

Indeed, perhaps chaos, absurdity, illusion, appearance, and not being but nonbeing, are the last word - this is the claim of atheism with a tendency to nihilism.

One of the accusations against religion is that it's some kind of a scheme by the powerful to make the masses passive in their exploitation.  That, of course, is at odds with the idea that religion makes people violent and dangerous, that religious people are always killing each other over religion.   There is no lie that atheists tell about religion that they don't tell another lie that is logically inconsistent with the first one - in the game of atheist polemic against religion it doesn't matter as long as, in the end, atheism can be held to be the winner.  It's not that different from the dynamics of Trumpian fascism in that.

The opposite is the actual case, the Jewish law is probably the most radical of leveling economic programs ever expressed in terms of legal obligation and the Gospel and Epistles are a universal extension of that. 

The fact is that every successful struggle for rights that has succeeded in the United States has been far more characterized by religious content than materialistic-scientistic and especially atheistic content.  I've given the list often enough, the great abolitionist struggle, from the 18th, arguably from the 17th century, through the 19th century was, explicitly, made in claims from the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, not based in the great sciency heroes of the "enlightenment".  It would be hard to do that since the major figures of the American enlightenment were, just about to the last one, slave owners, some of them enthusiastic slaveowners who had distorted the United States Constitution to support slavery.  The same is true of the struggle for the emancipation of Women, the great and ongoing effort for universal suffrage, the rights of the disabled, even the rights of LGBTQetc. has succeeded when it was inclusive of those whose devotion to those has been based in religion.

Go look at that quote from what I posted this morning and ask yourself, which thing do you suppose would be more productive of a real struggle, the kind of struggle that costs you, on behalf of other people, the denial of either the reality of reality or its ultimate significance or the religious alternative to that order instead of chaos, meaning instead of absurdity, truth instead of illusion, substance instead of appearance, and being instead of nonbeing, the idea that the rights and dignity of other people not only had significance but that you had a real, consequential moral obligation to struggle for the rights and dignity of others and for yourself?   Nihilism produces inertia and inertia is no help to the effort to change the status quo.  Nihilism is the best friend of oligarchic fascism, it discourages resistance.  Especially resistance that risks the life of those who resist. 

Note:  We're predicted to have a major winter storm start any time now, here.  It's always possible I'll be off line.  If so then I'll post more of this when the electricity comes back on and the internet lines are up.