Christian Atheism
Thinking through the Liberalist bind between Atheism and Theology
The next session at The Portal will be opening a space of Real Talk with
to think through “Metapolitics”. To learn more, or to join, see: The Portal.I recently hosted
to discuss his latest book Christian Atheism: How To Be A Real Materialist. Throughout our discussion we explore the contemporary tension between atheism and theology on the level of liberalist politics, the nature of belief, and the European mystical tradition. We also expand into more philosophical topics related to Hegel’s logic, alien encounters, and the more radical possibilities of scientific materialism. For an extended written engagement with Žižek’s latest work, see: Atheism as Truth of Christianity.Slavoj Žižek is a philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual. He is the international direct of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, visiting professor of New York University and a senior researcher at the University of Ljubljana's Department of Philosophy. He is also the author of several contemporary philosophical classics, including The Sublime Object of Ideology, For They Know Not What They Do, Tarrying with the Negative, The Fragile Absolute, Living in the End Times, Less than Nothing, Absolute Recoil, Hegel in a Wired Brain, and more.
Throughout the video we discuss:
The limitations of the liberal atheist stance which combines great principles of atheism with an illusory form of materialism
Liberal atheism seeks to maintain Christian moral values as a regulative ideal without any significant ontological commitment to truth
True materialism cannot be asserted directly, must be enacted within a subversive reversal of religious edifice itself via existential/subjective error
The Christian movement from Christ to Holy Spirit reflects the nature of a purely self-relating autonomous belief (without background dependence)
Wrong questions vis-a-vis belief: do you think God exists? Do you really believe in God? Belief is a practical question: can I live as a Christian in Holy Spirit?
Modern liberals vis-a-vis traditional fundamentalists: total lack of belief, no ontological commitment to their actions, reduced to daily pleasures
Other hand: fanatical fundamentalists are bluffing, they are not really in Holy Spirit, for them religious insight is approached as a scientific fact
European mystical tradition, e.g. Meister Eckhart to Jakob Böhme: saw there is no God without man: God who created man, reborn in man retroactively
New challenge: how to think through Christianity beyond anthropocentric stance towards alien life?, i.e. a God that placed his bets on multiple planets?
Pittsburgh Hegelians: view Hegel’s logic as eternal/transhistorical, framing all possible knowledge; is the only truly eternal thing logic?
Challenge for Hegel: does Hegel’s logic withstand frame of quantum physics? Or: would Hegel’s logic withstand alien encounter?
Obscure philosophical speculations/questions about eternity of logic, alien encounters, etc. have surprising political consequences
Science/technique is not just Heideggerian disclosure of being but opens truly radical changes disrupting our spiritual sense, questions of freedom, etc.
To find out more about Slavoj Žižek’s work on Christian Atheism, see: