The Nature of Nature
An irony of the modern age is the growing absence of reason and the growing predominance of mysticism among the atheists.
Witchcraft is popular among the Woke.
I am not the only one to notice this. A social critic and comic artist of particular insight, codenamed Fourth Age mentions in a recent podcast how he covered a Young Adult book convention where myriad topics touched on how to put Woke talking points into books aimed at schoolchildren, including material meant to glamorize and teach occultism.
Atheist occultism is particularly peculiar and puzzling to me, for, in my youth, we atheists boasted ourselves to be creatures of pure reason, devoid of any trace of mysticism or spiritual belief.
This arch-rationalistic atheism was before the advent of the New Atheism of Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, et al. I turned my coat and turned by back on the atheist camp before these men rose to fame. In hindsight, I think I jumped ship just in time.
I am haunted by the idea that the aspect of the New Atheism that makes it “new” is the abandonment of reason in favor of nihilism.
Old atheism, by and large, was based on philosophical naturalism, that is, the theory that nothing but the physical world was true, therefore nothing but empirical knowledge was truly knowledge.
These two are metaphysical theories, that is, theories logically prior to any theory of physics and serving as a foundation to them. Naturalism is a theory of ontology, that is, the discipline of studying being as such; radical empiricism is a theory of epistemology, that is, the study of knowledge and the sources of knowledge.
Empiricism is the theory that knowledge based on observation is true knowledge, one among the several sources of knowledge; radical empiricism is the theory that knowledge based on observation is alone true knowledge, the sole and lonely source of all knowledge.
Many an old atheist, this writer included, spilled much ingenious ink attempting to resolve two paradoxes: First, naturalism itself is not natural, since, if true, it is a metaphysical truth hence not physical, hence not true. The theory that nothing non-physical exists is an abstract theory, and abstractions are non-physical.
Second, radical empiricism likewise, if true, is a metaphysical truth hence not empirical, hence not true. No experiment nor observation can prove or disprove the proposition that no knowledge does nor can exist aside from that deduced from experiment and observation.
Empiricism only proves or disproves those particulars that fall under observation. No universal proposition can be proven true by empiricism, because no observer can observe all phenomena in the cosmos at one view. The proposition that no universal propositions are true is, however, itself a universal proposition. If empiricism is true, the proposition is true; but it radical empiricism is true, the proposition is not true, for radical empiricism does not merely say empirical knowledge is true, it absurdly says all non-empirical knowledge is not.
In sum, Naturalism, if true, is non-naturalistic truth hence untrue. Empiricism, if true, is non-empirical truth hence untrue. Hence, for either, if true, then untrue.
New atheists embraced rather than resolved the paradox, and reached the conclusion that truth is untrue. This is nihilism.
By nihilism here, I do not mean goth girls who sport black lipstick and toy with the romanticism of despair. I mean the metaphysical theory that there is no final truth available to man, only “narratives” that is to say, fictions to be judged on their utility, not their veracity.
This nihilism is a self-defeating paradox, a statement that it is true that there is no truth. It is not mean to be a rational statement, merely a sentimental one.
The sentiment being expressed is a mistrust of the faculty of reason, which means a mistrust of the utility of rational debate as a means to discover truth.
Nihilism, in effect, ventures the arbitrary opinion that all debate is merely an exchange of arbitrary opinions, none of which can be questioned nor cross examined. Attempts to question the opinions of another are disguised acts of violent domination, hence always illegitimate. Use of the intellect is always illegitimate.
Now, if a man find himself endlessly toppling end over end in a murky fog with no solid ground beneath and no heavens above, muffled moans and eerie whispers heard dimly in the distance, with no guiding star, no sense of up and down, then he has nothing to do and no way to do it.
Such is an apt picture of the mental life of an intellectual who believes it is always illegitimate to use his intellect.
Mystical truths arrive not through the senses, nor through the operation of the reason. Mysticism is the awareness of certain truths that present themselves to the human mind by means of which there is no natural account.
Mysticism is a word of many meanings, but here I am using it to refer to the epistemological theory that mystical insights can be true, despite any lack of empirical or rational warrant, that is, despite any lack of natural account.
Mysticism also is used to refer to esoteric or ineffable truths, that is, those hidden things impossible to put into words. I am not using the word in that meaning here. The Ten Commandments, coming directly from Mount Sinai, are mystical in the sense that they are not open to empirical or rational confirmation: but they are hardly esoteric, ineffable, or immune to verbal expression.
Revelation, by this definition, is always mystical, for a revealed truth is held true only insofar as the prophet or dreamer of dreams who speaks it, is trusted as an honest authority, speaking on behalf of the supernatural source he claims to represent, which source is likewise trusted as honest.
Like any other claim of knowledge, revealed truths can be examined for their self consistency, explanatory power, and predictive accuracy. It is legitimate to demand a purported authority to produce warrant of his authorization, as when prophets work miracles.
But let us draw a sharp distinction. A believer in the supernatural, such as a monotheist, can acknowledge mysticism (that is, knowledge for which there is no natural account) as a valid, for when the knowledge comes to him not through natural means, he can point to the supernatural as the source.
A New Atheist or nihilist, on the other hand, holds that there is no natural account for any knowledge (or for anything whatsoever) since there is no truth. Hence, for the nihilist, all knowledge is mystical, since there is no natural account of anything. There is no nature. Nothing accounts for anything.
There nihilist sentiment that there is no truth, in effect, the sentiment casting doubt on the nature of thought, the nature of reason, the nature of logic.
This opens the question of what is nature.
The word itself comes from the same Latin word for birth which gives us English words like nativity and naturalization and native.
The narrow sense of the word refer to the wildlife of the untamed great outdoors, the merciless and beautiful worlds of brute beasts red in tooth and claw, of virgin forests, majestic mountains, seas and storms and stars, that is, in other words, all things natural as opposed to manmade.
Manmade things follow after the will of the maker. A chair is a chair because a carpenter furnishes a room with a place to sit. But living things follows nature, with herb from seed and fruit tree from fruit, and fish and bird and beast and bug, each after its own kind, each born of creatures like itself. It is this likeness that is the nature of each creature.
The wider sense refers to what is natural as opposed to supernatural, that is, everything that follows after its own kind, or is caused by a cause of like kind to the result.
The Greek word for this same idea gives us our word physics. Physics is the investigation of the natural motions of inanimate objects, astronomy, ballistics, tides and vortexes, the compositions and motions of chemicals, elements, atoms and particles, light, magnetism, electricity, gravity, time, space, matter, energy, and so on.
However, all these things are rightly called natural, and rightly held as the subject to the examination by physicists, under the axiom that no effect results save by a cause sufficient to bring it about. Or, in other words, every effect follows after a cause of its own kind.
Witchcraft is otherwise. Witchcraft is the attempt to subvert nature by producing effects whose causes are either occult, that is, hidden, or whose causes are supernatural.
In this sense, magic is the opposite of science, for effects follow not from any cause of like kind, which is to say, not from natural causes.
Magic is when the effects result from causes that are insufficient, or the reverse of nature. In nature, shadows and symbols follow reality. In magic, reality follows the shadows and symbols: as when stabbing his shadow, or marring his reflection in a looking glass, stabs or mars the man. This is the principle of uttering a magical formula as a curse: as if the words can produce the effect because they are correctly spoken, not as if someone or something hears and grants the request.
In the normal course of things, words and symbols follow reality rather than shape reality, magic presupposes some occult sympathy, psychic energy, spiritual force or familiar spirit stands ready to reverse the normal course of things.
When you or I or any muggle pokes a needle into a doll, we merely get a doll with a hole in it; when the witchdoctor does the same thing, he wounds the man the doll represents.
While many a writer, the great C.S. Lewis among them, sees the close relation between the motives of modern science and the motives of medieval alchemists or ancient magicians. Both scientist and magician crave power over nature. Despite this similarity of ends sought, the means used is markedly distinct.
The scientist see what looks like magic, such, as for example, the fact that an iron bar gained weight when it rusted, whereas a wooden bar lost weight when it burned, and he uses his metaphysical knowledge that all causes must follow after their own kind to deduce that some hidden cause must account for both. He ponders the theory of phlogiston and the theory of oxidation. If he finds a hidden cause to explain the observed results, he publishes it, and welcome peer review. Others are invited to perform the same experiment independently.
The scientist, in other words, humbles himself to listen to the witness of nature. Nature is mute, but she never lies.
The magician, on the other hand, is prone to hide his results. He writes his formula into grimoires which he hides, and only his disciples have revealed to them the secret knowledge. That is what the word “occult” means. It come from the same root as the word for occlude and conceal.
The disciple is not asked to confirm the results by independent observation. He takes the occult knowledge on faith, and hides it from his generation, until he finds a disciple to whom it can be passed in turn, after secret and awful ceremonies at midnight.
For the nihilist, reason is the same way. He cannot ask the student to confirm his results by independent observation. The truth that there is no truth is not something that can be observed, nor confirmed, nor even, come to think of it, thought. It taken on faith, on the authority of the master who reveals it.
There are no awful ceremonies and black masses to celebrate the passing on of the occult knowledge, merely the sneers of professors and professional pundits, the social proof of social pressure, and all the hidden mechanism which silence dissent before it is voiced.
In a sense, this is an occultism more occult than occultism, because the act of passing it along to the next generation is itself a hidden act. Nihilism presents itself nonchalantly as the default all right-thinking people know, the ideas that are “in” with the “in crowd”, the passkey to be admitted to the inner circle, separate from and superior to the hoi polloi. Nihilism is not taught, merely absorbed, as if by osmosis.
Nihilism is nameless. That is, those who hold it do not have a name for it, do not identify it, seemingly never think on it. Instead they merely assume it, and ignore attempts to question their assumptions, or laugh such questions to scorn.
Now, nihilists do not literally believe in magic because, by definition, they do not literally believe in anything.
That is to say, if they were serious and sincere about what they preach and teach (and only a great fool would believe them serious and sincere), the nihilist would say he believes nothing because it is true, for nothing is true; instead he professes beliefs he finds it useful to profess. Useful to whom? Useful to the party in power, to the establishment.
Nihilism is never revolutionary, never evolves, never promotes beneficial social change. Only Christianity does that. History attests that Christian nations abolish the slave trade, outlaw pederasty and sodomy, equalize unjust laws, or extend the voting franchise to women.
Nihilism, the belief that all beliefs are equally false, serves only to sap the unwary of the virtues needed to question authority and overthrow injustice.
By no coincidence, Christian nations also outlaw witchcraft. Both classical pagans and oriental tyrants routinely kept and consulted court astrologers, augers, haruspices, wizards, soothsayers, and Chaldaeans.
By no coincidence, as Christianity loses ground, occultism gains ground. As G.K. Chesterton is often misquoted as saying, once one stops believing in God, one does not believe nothing; one is prone to believe anything.
So why is belief in magic useful to the Woke?
Perhaps their most elite ranks practice diabolism, human sacrifice, and grotesque acts of pederasty and perversion, both to bind the conspirators together in chains of mutual blackmail, and as vaunting expression of their superiority to and independence of the common decency of the common ruck and riffraff of mankind they so despise.
Like the magician, the nihilist regards his occult knowledge — in this case, the knowledge that there is no knowledge — as a mortarboard of wisdom, a crown of victory, and a halo of superiority.
But even those who do not literally believe in magic find it useful to the party to teach occultism to children. Simply, this instills the belief that secret springs move the great gears of the world, that magic words produce real results, that effects arise by human will, not from any natural nor obvious causes.
Nothing is more perfectly suited to the worldview that male becomes female merely by uttering the magic words called pronouns, than the belief in magic. Nothing is more suited to the idea that goods can be consumed before they are produced, and to the other myriad ideas of voodoo economics and cargo cultist thinking than the belief in voodoo and cultism. Nothing makes man more like God than having all men bow to him as the unquestionable authority always to be taken on authority.
Nothing makes nihilism seem more reasonable than the belief that reality itself is controlled by magic, which is to say, reality is not real, but instead reality is optional.
Magic seems familiar to all men because we all remember it from the nursery. When a child first learns to talk, the difference between true and false, objective and subjective, is unclear. A child must be taught to talk. He need not be taught to lie, and he need not be taught to tell stories. These things are natural to all the sons of Adam. And sometimes, as when a fearful child talks himself into being brave, or a willful child talks himself into being obedient, or when an apology cures a quarrel, words do seem to have a magic power.
Certainly when a rhetorician or a snake-oil salesmen makes a strong argument look weak, or an ad executive makes used car more palatable by calling it “previously owned” there is an enchantment that dulls the senses.
And the first time a shameless grifter asks a gullible audience to disbelieve the clear evidence of their own lying eyes, and believe man is woman and woman is man, believe that video evidence of ballots being stuffed through counting machines repeatedly is not evidence of anything, believe voter identification is racist, believe that everything is racist, believe that everything (including severe cold snaps) is caused by global warming, believe that marriage is not marriage, and that goods can be consumed before they are produced, and that the Russia hoax was not a hoax but was sound and honest news reporting, that foes are friends and failure is dramatic success … all these absurdities and more, all the endless endless torrent of nonsense, blither, blarney, junk science, fake news, blatant falsehood, gibberish and jabberwocky … and the gulls in the audience gullibly lap it all up, bathing in bullshit, swallowing bullshit, gulping it down, snorting it up both nostrils, stuffing it firmly in both ears to block out all other voices … then the shameless grifter stands awed at his own godlike power to rewrite reality in the hearts and minds of men, a power greater than mesmerism, for the gulls will go on to gull others, fools fooling fools, in legions, in generations, without end.
How can he not believe in magic?
And if a gull is willing to believe a pronoun can change a man into a woman, or invent scores of new sexes and sexual orientations, while also believing sexual orientation is fated and foreordained by twisted molecular strands of genetic material, why would he be unwilling to believe fate is foreordained by cycles of stars and planets, unwilling to believe crystals can cure illnesses, or governments produce wealth by decrees, by printing money without gold?
These are men who propose that driving an electric car will save the planet from the angry sun, while never wondering where is the coal-burning powerplant whence the electric energy flows.
Why would such a dunderhead, whose reasoning power has been gas-chambered by gaslighting, be unwilling to believe voodoo doctors wound their victims by poking dolls with pins?
The fool in his heart says there is no God. Once the fool believes that, there is nothing too foolish for him to disbelieve.
The man who believes nothing is a nowhere man. Word have no meaning to him, thoughts have no things. He mocks honor and wonder why generals behave dishonorably. He castrates and bids men be fruitful.
Magic is all he has to live by. Truth is gone, only bunk is left.