Bourgeois Sentimentality
What people call ‘atheism’ these days is specifically materialistic atheism. Certain Buddhists, for example, claim to be atheist — not believing in an all-powerful God — but they nonetheless understand that Man has a soul (which they believe to be immortal); that there is a spiritual dimension underpinning life; and so on. What sets modern, materialistic atheism utterly apart is that it states that the material world is the only dimension of reality; that all aspects of life, thought, emotion and the world are entirely material or physical.
This what the materialist atheists consider to be a scientific point of view.
I want to emphasise a point I touched on previously. The idea — as expressed by the communists and others — that the moral underpinnings of secular Humanism (at least the anti-religious version), are simply bourgeois sentimentality, and that in secular Humanism or in any philosophy constructed on a foundation of materialist atheism, the logical end result is the Holocaust and the Killing Fields.
Mr Dawkins and Mr Hitchens would deny this strenuously. In fact, they both claim that neither Hitler nor Stalin were atheists in the true sense — for example I have it argued by atheists that Hitler was some sort of Pagan mystic, and that Stalin drew his world view from some corrupted Chritian notions he picked up in Childhood.
(This is in fact classic Socialist doublespeak — wherein whatever wrongs the Party does are immediately imputed upon the other side, of which the offenders are then said to be agents. I believe Mr Dawkins and Mr Hitchens are revealing something of themselves they might prefer hidden.)
Mr Dawkins argues that atheism was ‘incidental’ to Hitler, but the truth is, it is Secular Humanism itself which is inconsistent with materialistic atheism. Marxism, Nazism and mass murder are the logical and inevitable consequence of the philosophy of atheist materialism.
Now, the typical atheist will immediately object. In the West, this person is usually a ‘me first’ sort of person, and in most cases the basis of their belief is nothing more than ‘I can’t see it so it doesn’t exist’ (’If a tree falls in a forest and I wasn’t there to see it, did it make a sound?’). So, this person will become annoyed if confronted with the statement that atheism leads to genocide and mass murder. He or she will argue that ‘I am not like that, nor my atheist friends, therefore the argument is preposterous.’
And it’s natural that he or she would be offended, so please let me assure him or her, that I am not suggesting he or she is a Nazi Brownshirt. What I am saying is that, in the communist vernacular, he or she is a sentimental or ‘decadent’ Bourgeois, who has an attachment to traditional morality logically inconsistent with their philosophical outlook — a characteristic the ‘heroes’ of Socialism understood very well, hence their scorn and hostility to middle class ‘’reactionaries and counter-revolutionaries’, even those who regarded themselves as Socialists.
This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.
–Che Guevara
(Let me hasten to add, I am no friend of the communists. If you find yourself in the sad position of having been persuaded an evil philosophy such as materialistic atheism is true, having a moral code that is inconsistent with it is not a bad thing.)
As I argued previously, atheism taken to its logical conclusion leads to a nihilistic disregard for human life and human exceptionality; and the subsequent license to murder and destroy. That most Western middle class atheists (to their credit) do not embrace this is a result of their upbringing, the social surroundings and habits, and sadly it will diminish over time (rapidly on a generational scale). There is no logical philosophical basis in materialistic atheism for the values our society holds dear, its ‘progressive’ and godless middle class included. They are just a product of affinity to those we most encounter (’people like us’).
I would say this to materialistic atheists: it’s a mistake to open this Pandora’s Box. You feel wise and knowledgeable when you broadcast to the world the foolishness of the old ways, and your great superiority in intellect and reasoning. You see this as the clear light of reason, a gift for young and old.
But cast far, this seed will land in hearts and lives very different from your own, and the results will not be what you predict. The evidence for this is that it has happened numerous times before. When you broadcast your message to the world, the young and impressionable, the disillusioned, the lost — that there is no God; and that Man has no soul and knows of no truths other than what he constructs for himself — not everyone is going to embrace this philosophy in the half hearted manner of the Western Bourgeois
Not everyone is going to put their mind into this brave new world of pure freedom, but keep their heart in the altruistic moral order of times past.
Sentimentality is a product of comfort. What will happen when this philosophy finds as its raw material those who have grown up ouside the cocoon — the timid Georgian boy whose childhood was a constant torment of fear; the poor Austrian small town boy, impoverished and humiliated in an imperial capital full of privileged elites? What when these men, grown to manhood, their souls shaped by the influence of their harsh life experience refracted through a philosophy of spiritual nihilism?
Bred outside the cocoon, outisde the middle class comfort zone, what attachment will these men have for middle class values?
When they arrive, with their armies of lost and twisted souls, will you be the first to recoil in shock and dismay as they work out the implacable logic of a soulless world?
Will you be the first to cry ‘why me?’, as they line you up for elimination.
‘You called us forth,’ they will say. ‘Why do you cry out?’
Will you then also cry out “Oh, God, no!”
‘Too late to call for God’, they will say. ‘God is dead.’
…and who killed Him?
