Formula for Atheism: God is Unconscious

LD330

Possible Pathways

Any act whatsoever can be done in the name of God. One can sacrifice a lamb for God, one can kill a man for God, one can eat a potato chip (or a Eucharist) in the name of God, and one can pick their nose in the name of God.

Acts done in the name of God need not be in accordance with the moralia of the society. They are done only in the name of God.

Any act whatsoever can be justified in the name of God. One can give every rational reason not to do an act, but it is still possible to do that act in the name of God—or, to put another way, it is still possible to do that act because it can be done.

Nietzsche’s formula for his age was God is Dead. Acts don’t need to be performed in the name of God—we can perform these acts anyway. We don’t need to justify them theologically.

Lacan’s formula for Atheism is God is Unconscious. We have not only realized There Is No God, but we have inscribed it into our unconscious such that all our thoughts affirm that predicate. We are no longer just refusing to justify our actions through God, but we are unconsciously operating on the presumption that God Does Not Exist.

Difficult.

But are you truly an Atheist if your Unconscious still believes in God?

That’s a question for the philosophers.

Walk in Beauty, Walk in Light.

seekinghga

Can you please define "unconsciousness" as it is used within the context of this thread? Thanks.

LD330

Sure, Lacan is a Freudian so he means it in the Freudian sense, insofar as he wrote the formula.

As far as my interpretation I mean that which we don't see, but which is behind our frameworks of reality. This is a vague concept-- but I mean repetition or the tendencies.

Related to this affect is Antonin Artaud's poem I Hate and Renounce as a Coward. There is only part of the poem online, but it's worth the price of the book alone: I Hate and Renounce as a Coward

"I hate and renounce as a coward every being who agrees not to have been self-created, and who consents to and recognizes the idea of a matrix nature as the world of his already created body.

I do not consent to not having created my body myself, and I hate and renounce as a coward every being who consents to live without first having recreated himself...

Get back down in your grave god you lowdown corpse."

If you have a different interpretation of the unconscious, or if you have your own ideas on this subject, I'd love to hear them.

seekinghga

@LD330 said

"but I mean repetition or the tendencies."

It sounds like what some Hindus and Buddhists call the "vasanas". These are the tendencies which are accrued through learned, repetitive behavior (or metempsychosis/prarabdha karma if you are so inclined) and are responsible for all modes of attachment, including desire, addictions, personality, etc. These are also what need to be curtailed, sutured and brought back to focus in order to experience samadhi. They are what "remains" of the Ego from the standpoint of being across the Abyss. As Nothing can cross that wasteland intact save for that which is One, the vasanas or tendencies provide the loose structure in which the Neschamah (I'll admit to a fondness for Crowley's preferred terms ) inhabits to interact with multiplicity. The Ego then not being any kind of truth is merely a codified Habit which nevertheless allows us to broach the gap of the planes as it were.

See: <a class="postlink-local" href="http://heruraha.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=14646&p=101953#p101359">viewtopic.php?f=3&t=14646&p=101953#p101359</a>