After Atheism

Where do they go?

Richard Fernandez (aka Wretchardthecat on Twitter/X and Wretchard T. Cat on FB) posted:

"I rhetorically asked the question: "What happens to intellectuals, when after rejecting God, they reject atheism? Where is there left to go?"

The answer? To a pre-rational state of being, a private internal world, the “life of feeling”."

I think there is a step in the middle, after they reject God and before they get to the Nietzschean state of "God is dead".

It's a search for a God replacement - or a search for gods (with a little "g"). They try to replace God with paganism - the earth, government, climate - but it seems in that search there is either authoritarianism or chaos, there is nothing in between.

The final stage is, as Fernandez describes, the "life of feeling" where people turn inward to the belief they are their own god and anything they feel is the rule, and in that belief, legitimize literally any action.

The Federalist has a timely article about America's turn toward paganism here.

A few years ago, I wrote that we are on the path to return to the Dark Ages.

Victor Davis Hanson, possibly the greatest living American historian, said something that really crystallized that thought for me. He said:

"Science is dying; superstition disguised as morality is returning. And we’ll all soon become poorer, angrier and more divided."

There is a lot packed into those two sentences.

One wonders - is the world careening headlong toward a second Dark Age?

The Dark Ages we know from the history books was a period of intellectual darkness and barbarity from the fall of Rome in 476 AD to around 1000 AD featuring:

• Widespread unrest as Pax Romana ended – Rome could no longer project power across Europe to enforce order

• The rejection of legal order as factions sought to establish superiority and control over traditional territories

• The rise of tribalism and ethnic segregation

• Loss of faith in societal institutions

• Economic collapse

• De-urbanization as cities died, no longer able to support their populations

• Rise of Islam and Islamic conquests leading to the First Crusade

• The rise of pseudo-science – such as alchemy

There are so many similarities between the fall of Rome and the waning of Pax Americana:

• Widespread unrest as Pax Americana ends – America can no longer project power to enforce order (or is not willing to do so)

• The rejection of legal order as factions seek to establish superiority and control over traditional territories (Putin’s nostalgic Soviet daydreams and the never ending war in the Middle East)

• The rise of tribalism and ethnic segregation (unrest in the Black community and calls for self-segregation in America)

• Loss of faith in societal institutions (declining church attendance)

• Economic collapse (the global recession)

• De-urbanization as cities died, no longer able to support their populations (Detroit – need I say more?)

• Rise of Islam and Islamic conquests (i.e. ISIS and Islamofascist terror groups)

• Increased conflict between organized religion and science (evolution vs. creationism)

• The rise of pseudo-science (such as “climate science” and Fauci-ism)

It is the height of arrogance for people to believe that there could not be a second coming of the Dark Ages. I’m sure that the people of Rome didn’t believe the Roman Empire would ever fall and yet there are so many things about America that recall Rome in its pre-fall days of bread and circuses and gladiatorial combat.

Might want to sharpen your swords and start working on that moat you have been putting off digging.