THE COSMIC AUTHORITY PROBLEM

The Last Word (Thomas Nagel)

I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear [of religion] myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that. [...] My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind. Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning and design as fundamental features of the world.

What that then allows is for atheists--having displaced God (the Father), in a painfully obvious exercise in Freudianism--to elevate themselves to the position of gods--though each, of course, thinks himself the god--and to imagine themselves competent and entitled to impose their own purpose, meaning, and design on the world. The stubborn resistance of the world to their will is what makes them so aburd. Their capacity to do harm to their fellow men in the process of exercising this will to power--as witness Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, even the culture of death (abortion and euthanasia) here--is what makes them so frightening.

MORE:
-THOMAS NAGEL (NYU School of Law)
-ESSAY: CONCEALMENT AND EXPOSURE (Thomas Nagel, Winter 1998, Philosophy & Public Affairs)
-REVIEW: of Unweaving the Rainbow by Richard Dawkins and The Pattern of Evolution by Niles Eldredge (Thomas Nagel, London Review of Books)
-REVIEW: of THE PERVERSION OF AUTONOMY: The Proper Uses of Coercion and Constraints in a Liberal Society By Willard Gaylin and Bruce Jennings (Thomas Nagel, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of What We Owe to Each Other by T.M. Scanlon (Thomas Nagel, London Review of Books)
-ESSAY: Thomas vs. Thomas: A New Approach to Nagel’s Bat Argument (Yujin Nagasawa, Inquiry)
-ARCHIVES: Thomas Nagel (NY Review of Books)
-ARCHIVES: "Thomas Nagel" (Find Articles)
-REVIEW: of The Last Word. By Thomas Nagel (Gilbert Meilaender, First Things)
-REVIEW: of The Last Word. By Thomas Nagel (Edward T. Oakes, Commonweal)
-REVIEW: of The Last Word. By Thomas Nagel (Ric Machuga, Christianity Today)
-REVIEW: of THE MYTH OF OWNERSHIP: Taxes and Justice By Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel (David Cay Johnston, NY Times Book Review) Posted by Orrin Judd at August 20, 2003 8:22 AM