Part Six - Atheism and Salvation
Atheism and Salvation
Kabbalah
The Kabbalistic conception of God as En-Sof, "the infinite,"[1] leads to atheism. Super-Infinite, the supreme unnamable, magical, and esoteric, above the Name Jehovah, the Tetragrammaton. According to this view, man is an emanation of En-Sof and therefore is potentially omnipotent. He exercises this magical power through the calculated numerological use of the Name Jehovah, allowing him to create the Golem, a thinking material entity in the service of man.
Prometheus
The pagan sages already had an inkling that the desire to be like God or to consider oneself a god, rebel against God, or dethrone God and replace Him is a foolish presumption, which they called hybris, which can be translated as "arrogance," "hubris," "presumption," or "pride." Man is right to be great, but he must not seek to surpass his limits. He must not transgress (trans-gradior = go beyond) the boundaries set by divinity.
This is illustrated very well by the famous myths of Icarus and Prometheus, the latter already exalted by Marx, who called him "the first of the saints in the philosophical calendar," as well as the Titans, who, wanting to overthrow the gods, were defeated by Jupiter and cast into Tartarus. A very interesting counterpart to these myths is the biblical story of the Tower of Babel.
Only with pantheism does man naturally possess divine knowledge, as in Gnosticism [2] and Theosophy [3], or man is considered by nature a god who must become aware of his divinity, as in the Indian vision [4].
Examples of the modern revival of ancient pagan pantheism include Masonic esotericism and the philosophy of Severino, who judges Christianity as nihilistic because, according to him, the concept of creation from nothing would imply the assertion that being is nothing; which is false because saying that being comes from nothing does not coincide at all with saying that being is nothing.
Coming-from indicates the origin from which the coming, that is, the created being ‘follows’ what one comes from, but it does not deny it. Non-being is quite different from coming from or originating from. "From nothing" does not mean denying the being that comes from nothing because "coming from" does not mean denying itself simply because it comes from nothing. Certainly, nothing denies the being that comes from nothing, but that nothing is before the being that comes from nothing, so when the being actualizes, that non-being that denies it disappears.
William of Ockham
Nominalistic Occamism [5] leads to atheism because, despite its realism in epistemology, claiming that the intellect has as its object the individual entity existing outside the soul, it conceives the universal only as an artificial mental entity, which he designates with a conventional name, assuming it for a collection of diverse and similar individuals.
It is then understood how, for Ockham, God cannot understand the universal but only understands the singular. Now, since it is the will that contacts the singular, here the intellect is supplanted by the will, and willing replaces knowing, according to the well-known saying sit pro ratione voluntas. It is clear that a God of mere will, enclosed in the concrete without abstract universality, even if proclaimed good, without intellect is folly that leads the will to violence; however, Ockham does not draw the atheistic consequences of this approach but remains a theist, albeit of a theism that favors authoritarianism as voluntaristic, but on the other hand, favors individualistic and utilitarian liberalism due to the exaggerated emphasis on singularity.
Descartes
Descartes professed to be a Catholic and indeed practiced the Catholic religion. He practiced Catholic morality but expressly said that for him, it was only a "provisional morality," given the elaboration of the authentic morality that descended from his system, a morality that he never dared to formulate but will be nothing other than the ethics of German idealism, which will produce communism and Nazism.
However, there is good reason to think that his adherence to the dogmas of Catholicism was not convincing but only for convenience because they have no rational basis in his philosophy, which, as demonstrated by Cornelio Fabro in his extensive and well-documented historical-critical study [6], a study on which I base my critique of Descartes, leads to atheism through German pantheistic idealism.
Let's start by recalling that, as is known, Descartes argues that the idea of God is naturally inherent in our minds. Already here, we are off track because properly speaking, only God possesses the a priori idea of Himself, being Himself the absolute Idea of Himself, as Hegel also saw quite clearly.
Instead, we do not possess any innate idea of God but derive it by intellectual abstraction from reasoned consideration of external sensible things, of which we have certain, objective, immediate, and initial experience and about which we question the origin of their existence.
On the contrary, as we know, Descartes' vision will be enormously successful and will be taken up by Kant, who speaks of the "idea of God" as an "a priori form" of reason, where a priori means: from-that-which-is-first. Now, we must note that there is a before in knowing and a before in being. It is not true, as Spinoza believed, that the order of ideas corresponds to the order of things: it is the reverse.
Indeed, the before in being is God, while the a posteriori, the from-that-which-comes-after, are the creatures because God is the creator of the creatures. Conversely, in the process of our knowing, what comes first, initially, are the creatures, known first. From these, we move to God, so that the God who is first in being, in knowing, comes afterward, at the end, as the culmination and pinnacle of knowledge.
Now, based on this, we must observe against Descartes that only God possesses the innate or reflected idea of God and based on this idea, knows the world that He creates. Descartes' thesis, therefore, according to which we possess the idea of God a priori, without having obtained it a posteriori, that is, from a reflection on the experience of things, is a thesis that regards our mind as if it were the divine mind. Thus, placing our mind in the place of God or identifying it with God's mind, leads respectively to pantheism and atheism.
It is also necessary to note that the Cartesian principle of knowledge placed in the consciousness of thinking and not in the experience of external reality leads to atheism because my existence is not the principle of being, but my consciousness of thinking arises from my existence. It should be observed that I am the principle of my knowledge but not of my being, which precedes and is presupposed to knowledge and my self-awareness.
I observe that I certainly perform the act of my knowledge, but I derive my knowledge from contact with things, from being external to my mind. Without this contact, I cannot form the idea or concept of things and thus of God because the concept is a reflection, an image, or a mental representation of the thing or the real, which I create in my mind to know it.
Cartesian rationalism leads to atheism because, according to it, reason is capable of knowing everything knowable through its concepts and reasoning, so it does not admit anything beyond and above itself, even if it is God, something that it cannot know and demonstrate.
Descartes does not go so far as to assert, as Hegel will, that human reason has infinite power because it is "the divine in man"; nevertheless, by denying that there is anything that reason cannot scientifically, that is demonstrative, know, it is clear that he rendered Christian faith useless and already leaned towards Gnosticism, which would later be adopted by Freemasonry and German idealism [7].
That goodness perfects simply being understood as essence, had already been understood by Plato and is reiterated by St. Thomas when Plato said that God is epèkeina tes usias, beyond essence. But at the same time, Plato called God to pantelos on, the completely and perfectly existing being.
Pascal
"The God sensible to the heart" is the essence of Pascal's theology. "Heart," as we know, is the biblical term used by Christ to signify the soul as the root of vital, sensory, intellectual, emotional, and volitional powers. However, in Christ's language, we find all the terms related to the activity of reason and intellect about God [8]. He is the Logos, that is, the subsisting Reason, evidently a transcendent, foundational principle and rule of human reason, participating in the same Logos and aimed at the knowledge of the Logos.
Pascal falls victim to the Cartesian concept of reason, confined to mathematical and mechanical sciences. Influenced by the Jansenist Lutheran pessimism, he fails to see how philosophy can and should appropriately deal with God.
He inopportunely opposes the "God of philosophers" to the "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," as if the God that reason discovers as the existing Being is not the same God, hidden in the first case and revealed in the second. He reduces belief to a "wager" as if it were horse racing and not rather the more serious and fruitful commitment of reason, which engages the eternal destiny of man.
Spinoza
Spinoza's God is the unique existing Substance, self-founded like Parmenides, an absolute Substance existing by its essence, endowed with many modes and infinite attributes, fundamentally thought and extension, simultaneously spiritual and material, Spirit and Nature, Substance that determines and finite-sizes itself in the multiplicity of entities: omnis determinatio est negatio, as things are a determined negation of Substance. Well, this concept hides atheism.
However, entities for Spinoza are not substances but particular and accidental manifestations of Substance, among which the human intellect is supreme, reaching its perfection in amor Dei intellectualis, which, however, is not an act of man as a creature of God because God creates nothing from nothing, as nothing exists outside of God. Instead, God sees Himself and the world in man, as man and through man, an attribute of God. Thus, man becomes the eye of God, as Spinoza says, seeing God, himself, and the world as God sees them, that is, sub specie aeternitatis.
Atheism is hidden under deism
A characteristic phenomenon of English empirical mentality is deism, especially that of Hume [9], distinguished from theism. While theism involves the certain, necessary, universal, and obligatory affirmation of the existence of God based on the principle of causality applied analogically from sensory experience and elevating the intellect to the knowledge of God as ipsum Esse, deism is a curled languid, and opportunistic mental and moral attitude. The subject admits the existence of God by his utilitarian, revocable, and convenient decision, not necessitated by reason and the application of the principle of causality.
For the deist, the affirmation of the existence of God is not the certain conclusion of an indisputable argument touching the being or existence of things. It does not imply that he intends with metaphysical intellect the intelligible and ontological scope of his statement. It does not require him to know what the spirit is. It does not require an absolute moral commitment that would make the subject ready to give up life to remain faithful to his conviction.
It is a simple, debatable, and not entirely certain common belief that does not claim to transcend experience, imagination, and emotion—an experience mystical and concrete, alien to abstract ideas, part of one's personal history, not expressible in metaphysical concepts because metaphysics is a sign of the presumption of reason to abandon the material world, rising to a plane of reality, the spirit, not verifiable by sensory experience.
From this point of view, the story of Thomas More, although English, does not reflect deism but theism. Conversely, we might wonder if Hume would have been willing to give his life for his belief in the existence of God.
In other words, while the theist is ready for martyrdom rather than renounce or doubt his conviction, the deist calculates from time to time what is convenient for him to do to safeguard his current interests, achieve worldly success, and avoid trouble, behaving both as a deist and at other times as a theist
Who will favor the idolatry of the God produced by thought will be Descartes, who, doubting the truth of the senses, will argue that the idea of God is innate in our mind. This has the consequence of giving space to the Kantian conviction that the idea of God does not correspond to an external reality unknowable to us, but that this idea is nothing more than the supreme regulating and synthesizing idea of reason inherent in reason. Here we are again in idolatry. And here Feuerbach has a point.
Masonic Enlightenment Deism
Masonic deism derives from empirical Anglican deism. The Anderson Constitutions of 1723 state that a Mason acknowledges the existence of God as the "Architect of the universe" and that he "cannot be a stupid atheist."
However, they assume the Kantian view of "religion within the limits of pure reason"[10], meaning that admitting a religion not as natural religion but as a revealed religion, based on the assumption of a personal God who speaks to man about Himself and gives him orders for heavenly and eternal salvation, is seen as an illicit and unreasonable departure from the proper limits of reason. It leads to a tangle of unsolvable problems and pushes toward chimerical perspectives, and vain and unrealizable desires, distracting man from taking care of real-life issues.
The Masonic God was embraced by 18th-century French Freemasons like Voltaire [11] and Robespierre [12]. They argued that since the existence of God is a certain datum of reason, it must be a principle of the State. Simultaneously, they advocated that the concept of God must be freed from Christian dogma and morality, which they considered a set of authoritarian and sacred taboos precepts, unreliable legends, childish myths, and absurd fantasies. These, in their view, stifle freedom of thought, deny human equality by creating privileges and discriminations, prohibit tolerance, mortify the dignity of reason, devalue science, and hinder progress, leading to violence, superstition, moral regression, and tyranny.
The Masonic God, therefore, is only the ideal of reason that Kant speaks of. However, the higher, "speculative" degrees involve an esoteric and initiatory knowledge of God as "gnosis"[13] or "absolute science" as the realization of Fichte's "I"[14], or as the realization of pantheism.
Based on these considerations, it can be said that the Masonic concept of God, though not devoid of positive aspects and opposing atheism, is ultimately nothing more than an idea, an idol of reason. Reason itself does not appear to be created by God but is a Cartesian reason, reason as an act of the cogito, that is, of the "I" that, by thinking itself, posits itself.
Undoubtedly, the Masonic doctrine includes the figure of "Lucifer." However, the Masons do not believe in the existence of the devil because, for them, Lucifer is only a symbol indicating the light of reason as the principle of freedom. However, given the Kantian reason, self-founded and not created by God, making God conceived as an ideal of reason, it is clear that with such assumptions, the Masonic worship of Lucifer risks truly becoming an idolatrous worship of the demon [15].
Leopardi's Notion of God
Leopardi [16] does not deny that God exists; he simply believes that this existence, like that of all things, originates from nothing and dissolves into nothing. It is not a real existence but only thought or hypothesized, only "possible," as he says. However, in reality, it does not actualize: it is an illusion to believe that God exists truly. Leopardi's God-thought resembles Kant's God-Idea, except that Leopardi empirically rejects the value of the idea according to Platonic teaching.
At the end of his life, he even says that the concept of God itself is impossible and contradictory. But since he accepts contradiction—and here he curiously resembles his contemporary Hegel—he insists on accepting this contradictory God, who affirms and denies our happiness, claiming that the only happiness we can have is this illusion.
In his mind, while on the level of human experience, he is entirely realistic, making him attentive to the dynamics of our feelings, enabling him to build an immense historical-literary culture and create his splendid poetry, at the metaphysical level – conversely - he exhibits an impressive intellectual blindness. He calls the truth an illusion, that is, that God exists truly and is the creator of the world, and calls the illusion truth, that is, that the world is suspended in nothingness without any creator, and God himself is a phantom arising from nothing.
He is influenced by 18th-century empiricism, anti-metaphysical, and uninterested in the question of the origin of being, focusing solely on phenomena to dominate them with technique and ensure purely earthly happiness for man. However, at the same time, he has a marked metaphysical inclination, realizing it entirely upside down, reifying nothingness and nullifying being.
He observes the becoming of sensible and human things but is unable to see that they need to be founded on the immutable Eternal. He has the concept of this Eternal, but instead of conceiving and affirming it as Being and Reality or recognizing it as existing, he understands it as Nothing. Nothing in the place of God.
It is not difficult to discover at the root of Leopardi's thought the concentration on his ego, the ultimate effect of Cartesian ‘cogito’, which, at the beginning of the 19th century, had been taken by Fichte to its extreme pantheistic and, therefore, atheistic consequences. Leopardi does not openly declare this conviction, but it is manifested when he speaks of "my system" in opposition to the doctrine of Christianity, claiming to provide an interpretation of Christianity that destroys it. Thus, those critics who believed Leopardi to be a theist simply because he speaks of God are deluded, without considering what Leopardi meant by the word God.
In reality, given the aforementioned reasons, a more refined and radical atheism, concealed under a false and convoluted theism, could not be conceived. It takes empiricism from Hume but abandons Hume in its inability to understand metaphysics. Instead, Leopardi understands metaphysics very well, even though he lacks the principle of causality. However, his is a reversed metaphysics, where nothingness takes the place of being. We could also think of Sartrean existentialism. It is the metaphysics of nihilism [17].
For Leopardi, only mutable and corruptible material things that fall under our senses exist, and there is no need to ask why they exist. They exist because they exist, and that's it. We are faced with the grossest Sensualism. But what surprises Leopardi is that he, with all this and beyond all this, possesses a perfect metaphysical conceptualization, setting him apart from Hume's Sensualism, who understands nothing of metaphysics.
Leopardi, however, has a ‘very precise metaphysical concept of God’, as the first, supreme, eternal, immutable, infinite, subsisting being, self-reasoning, necessary, existing in itself, exactly like St. Thomas. One might say that he learned it from him, even if he doesn't tell us. However, with all this, he does not feel compelled to affirm its existence but willingly denies it. We are facing, therefore, the most complete and blameworthy form of atheism found in the history of human thought.
Severino is correct in considering Leopardi the most significant thinker of the West. Leopardi is precisely at the opposite end of the spectrum from the greatest, who is St. Thomas. However, in Severino's judgment, there is an aspect that needs clarification: the most significant in the sense that he is the most atheistic. In this sense, he is not the best but the worst. He is not the wisest but the most foolish. "Dixit insipiens in corde suo: Deus non est" (Psalm 13:1; 52:1).
What can deceive us about Leopardi is that he indeed admits the existence of God, but not a real existence. He admits it in the sense that it is not only conceived as possible but not affirmed; it is not real but based on nothing, which is the only reality that truly and necessarily exists. Based on nothing because it is I who voluntarily conceive it as a possible object of my mind, without any logical necessity or without being obliged at all by the observation of objective and real existence.
This means that in the face of contingent things that pass, Leopardi does not apply the principle of causality; he does not ask which Being can be sufficient to explain their existence. He sees them as if they have their raison d'être only in themselves, in their transience. He absolutizes the contingent in such a way that it does not need to justify its existence, even coming from nothing and going towards nothing. On the other hand, this eternal and necessary nothing takes the place of God. Leopardi's God is the God of negation, absurdity, death, meaninglessness, and nothingness.
At the same time, there is in him a resentment against nature, to which he seems to attribute the blame for having formed him, deformed, and yet in need of happiness, feeling himself innocent. He lacks the awareness of having sinned before God and deserving punishment. Evil does not come from him but from the "stepmother" nature, which is God himself determined, in turn, by Fate. Thus, instead of redeeming himself from sin, Leopardi enjoys an adverse destiny, somewhat anticipating Nietzsche.
All this naturally entails the disdainful denial of the real and eternal existence of God as the First Cause, Subsisting Being, necessary and absolute, a horrible image of Fate. In the Hymn Ad Arimane [18], Leopardi puts "nature, fate, and God" as synonyms, as principles of the evils that afflict man, without realizing that evil cannot originate from God, but only from the creature. It is necessary to posit the existence of God as infinitely good, the cause of the universe, and the savior of man.
Fichte
I am posited because I have posited myself [19]
The ego posits itself as determined by the non-ego [20]
From here will follow Fichte, the right target of the subsequent Feuerbachian critique because, by declaring the existence of the extramental thing non-existent, he will conceive the ego as self-founded, a development of the Cartesian ego and a substitute for the biblical "I Am" of Exodus 3:14. Thus, the human ego identified with the divine ego takes the place of God. Fichte is rightly accused by his contemporaries of atheism [21].
This explains why Feuerbach derives atheism from Hegel, who takes up the Fichtean concept of the ego as the coincidence of thought and being, or rather, of thought and action. Feuerbach, neglecting the fact that God should be conceived as an external and transcendent cause of the human mind, has a chance of denying the existence of a God who, indeed, in Hegel, is nothing more than an entity of reason, abstract and imaginary, a product of the human mind itself, with no reference to the external sensible objective reality
Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli OP
Fontanellato, November 3, 2023
Source:
https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/ateismo-e-salvezza-sesta-parte-610.html
[1] See Gershom Scholem, "La cabala," Edizioni Mediterranee, Rome 1992; Julio Meinvielle, "Influsso dello gnosticismo ebraico in ambiente cristiano," edited by Don Ennio Innocenti, Sacra Fraternitas Aurigarum in Urbe, Rome 1988.
[2] "La gnose, une question philosophique," edited by N. Depraz and J.-F. Marquet, Les Editions du Cerf, Paris 2000.
[3] E.P. Blavatsky, "Introduzione alla teosofia," Bocca Editori, Milan 1911.
[4] Mahendranat Sircar, "Hindu mysticism according to the Upanishads," Trubner&Co, London 1974.
[5] Orlando Todisco, "G.Duns Scoto e Guglielmo d’Occam, Dall’ontologia alla filosofia del linguaggio," Libreria Universitaria, Cassino 1989; Pierre Alféri, "Guillaume d’Ockham. Le singulier," Les Editions deMinui, ORIS 1989; Guglielmo di Ockham, "Scritti filosofici," edited by Alessandro Ghisalberti, Nardini Editore, Florence 1991.
[6] "Introduzione all’ateismo moderno," Edizioni dell’Istituto del Verbo Incarnato, Segni 2013.
[7] Schelling explicitly praised Gnosticism.
[8] See, for example, Mt 7,6; 15, 16-17; 16,8; 22,38; Lc 5,22.
[9] See his "Dialoghi sulla religione naturale," Edizioni Laterza, Bari 1963.
[10] Edizioni Laterza, Bari 1985.
[11] See "Scritti filosofici," 2 vols., Edizioni Laterza, Bari 1962.
[12] See Albert Manfred, "Rousseau, Mirabeau, Robespierre. Tre personaggi della Rivoluzione francese," Edizioni Progress, Moscow 1989.
[13] See Vicomte Léon de Poncins, "Freemasonry and the Vatican. A struggle for recognition," Britons Publishing Company, London 1968.
[14] See "Filosofia della massoneria," Bastogi Libri, Rome 2023.
[15] See the learned treatise by Father Paolo Siano: "Introduzione allo studio del luciferismo massonico," un Fides Catholica, 2, 2006, pp.13-80. Especially pp.37-38 and 74-80.
[16] See the very interesting and in-depth study by Emanuele Severino: "Cosa arcana e stupenda," Mondadori, Milan 2020.
[17] Cf. See the studies on nihilism by Vittorio Possenti: "Nichilismo teoretico e la 'morte della metafisica'," and "Terza navigazione. Nichilismo e metafisica," both for Armando Editore, the first in 1995, the second in 1998. Surprisingly, Possenti does not discuss Leopardian nihilism. Severino's concept of nihilism is entirely erroneous, as he claims it is implicit in the Christian concept of creation. See "Essenza del nichilismo," Adelphi Edizioni, Milan 1995.
[18] "Puerili e abbozzi vari." Edited by Alessandro Donati. Bari, Laterza, 1924.
[19] "La dottrina della scienza," Edizioni Laterza, Bari 1971, p.41.
[20] Ibid., p.102.
[21] See the account narrated by Fabro in his "Introduzione all’ateismo moderno," Edizioni dell’Istituto del Verbo Incarnato, Segni 2013, pp.543-576; 635-644.