The structure of atheist argumentation

How is consistent atheism possible? What are the necessary consequences of recognizing the natural origin of religion and the non-existence of gods and other supernatural forces? How can one be an atheist to the end, and not stop halfway, denying only obvious religious positions and retaining less obvious conclusions based on religious premises?

Unfortunately, in the atheist and anti-religious literature known to me, I have not come across a detailed and comprehensive study of this issue — while in religious apologetics it was decided in a deliberately tendentious manner. Many religious writers, seeking to defend the dignity of their doctrine, have attributed to the consequences of an atheistic worldview the loss of the meaning of life, all forms of moral decline, painful vacillations and a desire for suicide, not to mention things that are indecent to discuss in a serious article — such as falling under the power of imps, sexual relations with succubi and incubi and the establishment of revolutionary and communist organizations by order of Satan himself. The idea that European science owes its origin for theology, not to the development of material production and industry, which required the mass production of increasingly competent specialists who investigated and found practical use for ever new forms of matter movement, are also quite dubious, although the original connection of the sciences with theology is constantly refuted by the course of their own progressive development.

More interesting and less obvious to me were the philosophical arguments aimed at proving the existence of the Christian god, over which I had racked my brains a lot even during the period of doubts about the truth or falsity of Orthodoxy. As a result of my reflections, the arguments broke down, but not my head, which could not but please me at that moment. The next discovery, which occurred several years later, was my acquaintance with the ideas of the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, who proposed an interpretation of Marxism as theoretical anti-humanism, and refuted humanism as an ideological and metaphysical doctrine, in which specific members of society were attributed fantastic attributes, such as free will or the ability to "make history" in the same way as a carpenter — a stool. Finally, the last and least obvious discovery for me was that the "world" is also an unprovable metaphysical concept, having a theological origin, since it appears in the text of the sacred scriptures as a basically completed product of the activity of god or gods. Which in turn required me to read more carefully the texts of Jacques Lacan and psychoanalytic literature, which proposes replacing the cosmological metaphor with a spatial and topological interpretation of the totality of forms of matter’s movement.

Upon closer examination, it became clear that the notorious trinity of god-world-human is held together, clinging to each other in a circular manner with the help of dubious philosophical concepts, such as the opposition of the internal to the external, the ideal to the material, the subject to the object, the transcendent to the immanent, and meaning to nonsense. Thus, the internal content of faith is opposed to external deeds as inessential and secondary in relation to the action of god’s grace in the soul or heart of man — with the heart in particularly exotic cases being understood in a crude anatomical way, as an organ that pumps blood. A certain Soviet doctor, Voino-Yasenetsky, who combined the talent of a surgeon with religious fanaticism, despite his own excellent knowledge of medical science, went so far as to claim that the heart, not the brain, is the organ of thinking (!), because it is written so in the Bible (!!). At the same time, understanding that not only faith, but also thinking and personality exist not inside, but on the surface of the socio-physiological body, requires an understanding of the phenomena under study not as habitual and therefore not requiring a detailed explanation of the wholes, but as multiple and discontinuous structures. An important conclusion that I drew from reading Althusser’s texts was the idea that any structure exists only in its effects. Just as faith exists only in manifestations of public confession of religious dogmas and the performance of rituals, they exist only in certain situations at the junctions of social environments. In this sense, religion has nothing internal from the very beginning, although it is accompanied by real effects of the "inner world of man" and the idea of Nature as the inside of a cosmic box equipped by god, into which he has locked humanity, like lab rats, in order to observe us.

In his book "Reason for god: Why So Many Smart People Believers," the American priest Tim Keller shows the otherworldliness of god with the following example: "When a Russian cosmonaut (J.A.Gagarin) returned from space and reported that he had not seen god there, C. S. Lewis said that Hamlet might as well have looked for Shakespeare in the attic of his own castle. If god exists, he is not an object in the universe that can be placed in a laboratory and analyzed by empirical methods. It must maintain the same relationship with us as a playwright maintains with the characters in his play. We, the characters, may well know a great deal about the playwright, but only if he chooses to insert information about himself into the play, and only to the extent that he chooses to do so. Consequently, we can in no way “prove” the existence of god as if he were an object entirely in our universe, like oxygen and hydrogen or an island in the Pacific Ocean.” However, this argument beautifully demonstrates something other than what its author would like, namely, the ethical and ontological bankruptcy of Christian doctrine.

Suppose that Keller is right, and the whole of world history is merely a play staged by an otherworldly playwright for his own entertainment. But then we have another problem: the characters of a literary work have neither self-awareness nor free will, their actions are prescribed by the author along with their existence — and therefore, all the actions of people are committed in their place by god. Hamlet has no free will — he does only what Shakespeare wrote about him. Hamlet is a meaningless puppet, who does not even have his own thoughts: each of his thoughts is not actually his, but Shakespeare’s. Therefore, if Adam and Eve really existed, they would not be guilty of their actions — because they could not act differently: god himself forced them to violate his own prohibition, and he himself punished them for this, like all other "sinners". Moreover, the crucifixion of Jesus is not necessary at all, since in order to save people from "sins" or from punishment for them, god only needed to snap his fingers or just think, without the gospel comedy with the crucifixion, resurrection and flight into outer space. If we consider the course of a historical play on our planet, we cannot help but admit that if it had an author, he could only be a mad sadist who derives perverted pleasure from the pain, suffering, death, hunger, ignorance and poverty of countless living beings. The ethical and moral character of god, who not only allows suffering, but is also its cause, as well as the cynical manipulation of dependent subjects in order to force them to first violate their own prohibitions, then punish for an action that they were not the cause of — excludes his recognition as sane and worthy of respect, not to mention the worship of the subject.

By taking god outside the world, every theologian acts as a follower of the German philosopher, the inventor of phenomenology Edmund Husserl, who denied the real existence of the world and considered it his hallucination — taking the real existence of the world out of brackets and engaging in contemplation and description of subjective sensations. On the contrary, social problems are transferred from the surrounding reality to the head, or as Christians claim, "to the heart" of individuals, in which supposedly the struggle of god with devils takes place. Here theology and phenomenology is coincidence because they tear apart the material unity of the world, asserting that in addition to the real, there is some other world in which gods, devils, angels, individuals and other immaterial entities live, which must be worshiped and money brought to their servants.

Here we come to the second, ontological conclusion from the argument given, which can be briefly formulated as follows: Aristotelianism versus Platonism. Plato, as we know, taught that there are three kinds of being: the world of formless matter, the world of immaterial ideas and the real world at their intersection. Aristotle, criticizing his teacher, claimed that neither immaterial forms nor formless matter exist and cannot exist, since neither formless matter nor immaterial forms are conceivable. Any form is always a form of some matter — and any part of matter always has some form. The meaning of any idealism in general lies in the assertion that forms can exist separately from any matter and, moreover, create it out of nothing, so that matter turns out to be secondary and subordinate to supernatural ideal entities. The ability of thinking to be distracted from the specific features of certain phenomena here acquires an excessive, exaggerated character, becoming the cause of cognitive distortions, as a result of which the attributes of the supreme ruler of a despotic state (wealth, the ability to give orders, issue laws, judge, reward, punish, and so on) are separated from the living bodies to which they are inherent, and are transferred to an imaginary other world as an object of worship.

At the same time, the concreteness of the transferred properties contradicts their abstract and otherworldly character, resulting in the nonsense that the cause of all that exists has a throne, like an earthly king, on which this cause sits. But in order to sit on something, it is necessary not only be an extended object in a gravitational field that defines up and down, but also have an ass. These and similar theological discoveries have led to the fact that smarter believers try to interpret sacred texts in a symbolic way, so that the combination of incompatible qualities makes the things they describe as impossible and meaningless as a round square. For their part, sacred texts respond to such interpreters with black ingratitude, presenting stories that cannot be interpreted metaphorically. For example, the myth of Mary’s insemination by god ascribes to the latter mutually exclusive qualities: immateriality and the presence of male genitalia. The simple reasoning that believing in stories about such combinations is just as justified as believing in the existence of round squares is already enough to kill once and for all the faith in any immaterial entities, as well as the desire to worship them.

Equally absurd is the division of subject and object, the former of which is endowed with immateriality and activity, and the latter with materiality and subordination. Obviously, these metaphysical categories, describing god as an absolute subject who made man as a potter molds a pot from clay, are taken from the ideological understanding of labor activity under the conditions of a despotic mode of production, in which labor activity was subordinated to the state apparatus and the products of its decomposition — landowners, slave owners, aristocrats and similar landowners, who directly appropriated the surplus product produced by the classes subordinate to them. This is confirmed by the fact that the properties of the supreme gods of paganism and the gods of monotheistic religions as absolute subjects are mainly embellished properties of pre-capitalist landowners and slave owners; the properties of Human as a relative subject in humanism are embellished properties of an industrial or commercial capitalist; and the properties of the world as an object are the properties of goods belonging to despots and capitalists and processed by the classes exploited by them.

An elementary acquaintance with physics and the natural sciences fundamentally destroys the idea of ​​such a division, revealing the contradictions inherent in material processes, which are the cause of all forms of motion, as well as the inseparability of motion from the material carrier. Whereas the social sciences reveal the historical origin of such ideas, expressing the peculiarities of modes of production associated with the dominance of the state apparatus and private ownership of the means of production as social forces that discord actions and their results for the majority of members of society.

Uncontrolness of the state apparatus, private owners and the environment by members of society, expressed in their ideological interpretation as gods, humans and the spirits, finds its philosophical expression in the categories of the transcendent or otherworldly independently existing — and the immanent or this-worldly as existing depending on the other world in religion and vice versa in humanism, which preserves the interpretation of god, the world and other people as otherworldly to the consciousness of an individual — but also dependent on his ability to imagine these objects. In extreme cases, such humanism leads to solipsism, that is, the idea that everything that exists is created not by god, but by the solipsist’s own imagination, and can be destroyed by him by the power of pure thought.

It is precisely this transfer of qualities attributed to god to an individual, or to the world as a whole in the case of vulgar materialism, leading to many absurd and ridiculous conclusions. In a certain sense, such a set of philosophies: the objective idealism of theology, the subjective idealism and vulgar materialism of humanism, constitute a closed system that carries out the effects of the internal not only at the level of expression, but also at the level of their circulation, so that each of the points of view covers up its own inconsistencies by critique the inconsistencies of its opponents, and vice versa. In this case, the mutual exchange of arguments can continue for as long as desired, without going beyond the framework of the system to anything external, predetermined as inessential or even non-existent. Such ideological self-closure of contradictory worldviews makes the discussion itself meaningless, since it leads nowhere and results in nothing but a waste of time and effort.

Therefore, within the framework of this ideological system, meaning is interpreted not as an exit to the external, but on the contrary, as staying in an unchanging position, outside of which only nonsense and meaningless delusions exist. The materialist and dialectical interpretation of meaning as a product of an endless ascent from the abstract to the concrete implies the presence of meaningful elements at any early stages of the development of thinking, present, among other things, and in the ideologies criticized and the metaphysical philosophical systems that justify them. Indeed, it cannot be said that religious dogmas are absolutely false or meaningless, since some correlation, even if purely accidental, is present even in animism and totemism, since the movement that underlies the existence of living beings is inherent in all matter, and social and non-social animals have much in common and are connected by a common origin. At the same time, it is absurd to attribute to animism a truth and meaningfulness even remotely comparable to contemporary reflexology, and to totemism — to synthetic theory of evolution.

What is essential in this case is the recognition of the existence of objective truth, as well as the qualitative and quantitative differences in various judgments and worldviews in relation to it. Therefore, when comparing magical, religious and humanist ideologies with the scientific worldview, and theology and subjectivist metaphysics with dialectical-materialist philosophy, it will be true to assume that they differ not only in the number of true and meaningful judgments, but also in the qualitative difference, due to which some worldviews are generally false, while others are true. Based on this, in turn, it will be reasonable to assume that the arguments aimed at defending a false position will themselves be partly or generally false, both for religious apologetics and for the humanistic faith in human, which, as we remember, is complementary to faith in god, and for faith in the existence of the world as a product of god’s design or human activity. Consequently, the task is threefold — it is necessary to analyze how theism is refuted in connection with the refutation of humanism and cosmism. Since all three ideologies are generated by common causes and exist in an interconnected manner, it would be interesting to consider the lines of argumentation aimed at proving the existence and value of the objects of their faith. Philosophical, natural-scientific, socio-historical, ethical and aesthetic — their number can be increased by distinguishing within already-given ones, for example, the philosophical and methodological ones proper, or within the natural-scientific ones — cosmological, geological, physical, chemical, evolutionary and so on, as well as by adding new ones — for example, clinical. Increasing the number of arguments under consideration in defense and refutation of theism, humanism and cosmism leads to the fact that this text becomes more universal, since the probability increases that one of these lines or some combination of them will prove to be incompatible with the ideological prejudices refuted by them and will destroy faith in them in the network of interactions of the social and physiological body of that member of society who will read this text, understand, comprehend and be imbued with its spirit. Let us now consider these lines of argumentation and proof in more detail.

The peculiarity of the philosophical line of argumentation lies in the fact that it takes the problem to a meta-level, in shifting the view from the ontic to the ontological perspective. Indeed, an appeal to the scientific picture of the world as such can lead to the reduction of matter and its laws to physical or social forms of motion, which are not universal, unlike logical ones. Thus, physics can explain specific forms of motion and their inherent patterns, but it will say nothing about the essence of motion as such — and, remaining unanswered, this question falls to theologians and theologians. On the other hand, the question itself may be poorly posed — in the case of the natural sciences, for example, the identification of matter and substance is widespread, which leads to arguments about how matter can supposedly arise out of nothing, that it is in fact a form of existence of energy or information, which is followed, as expected, by the identification of information with the Logos from the Gospel of John, matter with god the Father, and energy with the Holy Spirit. Positivism thus opens the way to the most mossy obscurantism. Similarly, in the social sciences, the default acceptance of an empirical interpretation of the meaning of research closes the way to the development of theoretical concepts that are in fact primary in relation to the so-called facts. But if the process of cognition is turned upside down, then ideological interpretations of phenomena are taken as “proof”, and on their basis corresponding “theories” are constructed about how history is made by people through the negation of negation, interpreted as a volitional act of individual subjects, the existence, consciousness and activity of which are taken as self-evident propositions that do not require proof. The distinctive feature of truth is that it is a self-sufficient measure for itself and its opposite; in other words, truth is what is imposed in the course of the process of interaction with reality. Thus, the truth that there is no god was imposed on me in the course of studying and comparing the dogmas of Orthodoxy and other religions, without asking my permission. Philosopher

The official line of refutation of god includes, first of all, the refutation of a number of dogmas and theological “proofs” of the existence of god as logically and theoretically untenable sophisms. For example, the dogma of the omnipotence, omniscience and goodness of god obviously contradicts the existence of suffering in the world, which an omnipotent, omniscient and all-good god would be obliged not only to eliminate, but rather to prevent. This argument in an expanded logical form was first formulated by Epicurus, and remains relevant to this day, since theists, despite an abundance of attempts, have not been able to find a single convincing argument in favor of the fact that the suffering of living beings supposedly has some higher and secret meaning.

If god wants to prevent evil, but cannot do so, then he is powerless;

If he could do so, but does not want to, then he is evil;

If he has both the power and the desire, then why does evil exist?

If he has neither power nor desire — then why is he called a god?

Epicurus, 4th century BC

Indeed, the incalculable suffering of living beings is the most serious argument against an all-good, omniscient and omnipotent god. The irrefutability of this argument usually leads defenders of religions, and especially monotheistic religions, in which god is one and not bound by any laws, to strange and exotic solutions, among which three main ones can be distinguished: moralizing, mysterious and absurdist.

The first is an attempt to present world suffering as punishment for the fall of Adam and Eve, who ate the forbidden fruit from the magic tree on the recommendation of a talking snake. What all the other trillions of living beings have to do with it, as well as modern members of society, remains unclear, since neither I, nor the deep-sea angler fish, nor pathogenic bacilli, nor the millions of heads of cattle and small cattle, annually killed in slaughterhouses in a brutal manner, have not only never eaten, but have never seen any forbidden fruits. In addition, suffering has existed for billions of years of evolution, that is, long before the birth of the hypothetical Adam and Eve, whose sin has even less to do with the suffering of dinosaurs, armored fish and sea scorpions than it does with you and me.

The result of the obvious absurdity of the moralistic justification of suffering as a consequence of the guilt of characters who never really existed is an attempt to find in it some secret and mysterious meaning, incomprehensible to ordinary human understanding, and the proclamation of suffering as a condition for the moral improvement of the human race is exactly what we all really lack! — is in fact a form of their justification. For example, suffering can be interpreted as a necessary consequence of the existence of free will, that is, the ability of the immaterial human soul to causeless actions to control its body. This free will is supposedly a condition of people’s similarity to god, the consequence of which is their ability to deviate into evil, which is understood as atheism, leading to spiritual and physical suffering; and if god were to prevent suffering miraculously, then he would thereby deprive people of freedom and similarity to himself, which he does not want, considering the presence of suffering to be a lesser evil than its absence. At the same time, in Orthodoxy, to resolve the issue of the relationship between human free will and the divine plan for world history, the concept of synergy, or mysterious interaction, constituting an incomprehensible unity of integrity and difference of both, was developed. However, the explanation of the inability of the world order to live a decent and pleasant life by the incomprehensibility of god’s plan, both in the ethical and natural-scientific aspects, puts in place of the unknown world laws, which thanks to science and industry are being learned and used better every year, an unknowable factor in principle, inaccessible to either logical or experimental knowledge, or practical use on an industrial scale. In addition, if god and his plans are absolutely incomprehensible, then how can theologians know that their interpretation of the plan is correct, and that it comes from their god, and not from demons, not from gods of another religion who want to mock them, show off or make fun of them for nothing better to do, and not from psychopathological states?

Moreover. Such references to the unknowability and incomprehensibility of god and His will are in direct contradiction with the very tenets of the three main monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which are characterized by a contradictory image of god — at the same time incomprehensible and very specific. For example, all three religions have in common that each of them recognizes the existence of a single creator god, whose image was taken from ancient Jewish mythology, who magically created the world out of nothing, and molded man from clay in his own image and likeness — from which it follows that god has an extended humanoid body. At the same time, in others In some places in the sacred texts the corporeality of god is denied, which shows that their authors were quite confused about the properties of the object of worship. Also, a number of similar characteristics are attributed to god in these religions, so that critique of his existence would be fair for all of them taken together. These religions were chosen not because they are the most difficult to refute, but mainly because of their widespread prevalence, due to which they influence the lives of a large number of people, forcing them to engage in many meaningless and empty deeds, such as: prayers, fasts, night vigils, attendance at church services, performance of various rites and rituals; as well as actions that cause obvious harm to themselves and society, namely: payment of church tithes and donations, indoctrination of children, aggression against progressive members of society and other manifestations of religious fanaticism. Thousands of such acts are committed annually, considered by their perpetrators to be something pious and pleasing to god. Needless to say, such fanaticism is often used by selfish politicians and demagogues, speculating on the feelings, fantasies, conjectures and prejudices of the masses, which again cannot but be harmful to social progress and well-being. In addition, the incomprehensibility of god is refuted by theologians themselves, who prove his existence, goodness, omnipotence and similar properties; if god were completely unknowable, then it would be impossible to know about his existence and properties; but since these questions are resolved by both theologians and atheists, then god is definitely knowable — both as a supernatural being and as a religious memeplex.

In general, among philosophical arguments, the so-called “proofs of the existence of god” formulated by Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant are very popular. The average Russian-speaking reader usually learns about their existence not from their own works, but from Mikhail Bulgakov’s mystical story “The Master and Margarita” and the tabloid fiction and apologetics that refer to it. The meaning of these arguments seems all the more meager because, although they all try to prove the existence of some absolute, it is also impossible to prove its identity with the Judeo-Christian monotheistic god, who could well turn out to be a human invention or a speechless idol, even if the arguments of Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant regarding the first cause of the world or the guarantor of physical and spiritual laws were valid. Here are these “proofs”:

1. Since there is movement, and every movement has a cause, and the causal series cannot be continued indefinitely, then there must be a cause for all movement in the world, which is god. — It is not difficult to find a refutation against this “proof”, since it, like other proofs of Aquinas, comes from Aristotelian philosophy, which includes the metaphysical concept of the world or cosmos as a closed centered system and the metaphysical interpretation of causality as occurring in the world. However, the existence and closed nature of the world have not been proven, and if so, then there is no reason to assume the convergence of series of causes of movement to one point. On the contrary, modern dialectical philosophy offers a better explanation of the causes of movement: every movement arises as a consequence of the resolution of one or another contradiction between the forces acting in nature, therefore, the “god” of Thomas Aquinas turns out to be a dialectical contradiction, praying to which is as pointless as to the law of universal gravitation or the laws of electrodynamics.

2. Every thing exists because it is produced by another, and since the causal series cannot be continued indefinitely, there must be a cause for everything that exists in the world, which is god. — This argument is similar to the previous one, and the god deduced from it again turns out to be the contradictory nature of material nature, and not at all the personal god of monotheistic religions. In addition, the interpretation of causality as successive chains of generative causes and generated effects is based on the singularity and orderliness of both — that is, on reducing them to their signifiers. We find an example of such a reduction in the gospel genealogies, where "Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob" and so on — whereas the real process of development and birth of an embryo in the environment of a woman’s body over the course of nine months involves thousands of different chemical substances and biological processes linked by feedback loops. The evolution of such a complex system excludes the presence of any single cause, and is not itself reduced to them, just as the cause-and-effect processes in the rest of nature.

3. All existing things differ in relation to each other as possible and necessary. The former may exist or not exist — while the latter exist necessarily. The series of necessity cannot continue indefinitely, then there must be a cause for everything that exists in the world, which is god. — In this case we are dealing with purely scholastic reasoning, similar in essence to the previous two, and apparently having no direct categorical analogues in modern scientific and philosophical argumentation. The closest of all modern analogues to an absolutely necessary thing, due to which all other possible things receive and continue their existence, is Spinoza’s substance, with the existence of which I generally agree, and which is as far from the Judeo-Christian trinity of god as matter is in dialectical materialism. Also, the support of this argument is the unproven postulation of the existence of the world, without which the argument loses its meaning and requires at least significant revision.

4. Things differ from each other in the degree of perfection, which has a limit, which is god. — This argument is similar to the ontological argument of Anselm of Canterbury, and also refers to scholastic distinctions that have no correlates in reality. In general, the idea of ​​a hierarchy of perfections, in which all beings are arranged in a pyramid and which has some absolute limit, is a cosmological idea referring to Plato’s idea of ​​the Good (το Αγαθον), identifying which with the Christian personal god who works miracles at the prayers of believers is a clear stretch. In addition, different things differ from each other in different respects, and it is impossible to fit a galaxy, a saucepan, a bacillus, a poechmon and a medieval theologian into one common hierarchy of perfections that would have some limit, which would also be personal. In other words, if the cosmos as an ordered hierarchy of beings does not exist, then there is no place for god as its limit.

5. Natural things act purposefully, but since they themselves cannot set and achieve goals, they must be directed to them by a higher and more powerful rational being, who is god. — This argument, symmetrical to the causal arguments, like the others, is based on the conception of nature as a closed and hierarchically ordered cosmos, both in space and in time. However, the purposefulness that takes place in social and extra-social nature does not precede the existence of things, but is developed from their random movement as stable combinations. To look for goals and rational design where they do not exist means to commit the error of attributing an external cause to natural processes. The logical or rational order that exists in nature is inherent in it in a natural way — in other words, what could be called the world mind is not transcendental but immanent, and does not exist as an extra-mundane personality but as a set of interconnected natural laws. Moreover, since the mind does not exist outside the body, but is its property, then the hypothesis of a god ruling the world does not explain its own origin.

Immanuel Kant — about whom among a certain part of the Russian intelligentsia there is a common opinion that Kant allegedly refuted five proofs of the existence of god, put forward by Thomas Aquinas, but instead invented a sixth, which no one has been able to refute since then. However, the corresponding part of the Russian intelligentsia did not get such information from the books of Immanuel Kant, and not even from the books of Thomas Aquinas — but from the novel by A. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita", which characterizes it as worthy of the famous Lenin’s aphorism about brain of nation.

Immanuel Kant’s proof is that since there is an internal moral law in the human soul, then, therefore, there must be its legislator, who is god. This "moral law" itself, characterized by Kant as a categorical imperative, is formulated by him as follows: "Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, both in your own person and in the person of everyone else, as an end, and never treat it only as a means." The difference from the proofs of Thomas Aquinas, obviously, lies in the fact that instead of the unproven existence of the world, Kant’s proof starts from the equally unproven existence of man, who has an inner world that is united and hierarchically ordered — as well as a single set of similar individuals that make up humanity. Three counterarguments can be put forward against this "proof": firstly, neither the existence of such a law, nor its commonality to all people, as well as the existence of the latter, were proven either by Kant or by any of his followers. On the contrary, sociological and psychological science have discovered an incredible variability and diversity of ethical structures in different types of societies, which are explained by the development of productive forces and the combination of elements in social and physiological bodies. Secondly, even if we assume that at the basis or at the limit of this diversity lies some universal moral law discovered by Kant or someone else, this cannot testify to the fact that it was created n some divine or supernatural forces, and did not arise naturally in the course of social life, from the structure of the nervous system, or in some other way. Thirdly, this “proof” was formulated not by Kant, but by Fichte, as a sophistic defense against accusations of atheism, which was a criminal offense at that time. Kant himself probably admitted the existence of god as a moral ideal — but categorically denied the church dogmas about him as groundless. Moreover, in his work “On Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone”, Kant clearly speaks out in favor of the separation of church and state, freedom of conscience and criticizes the “clergy”, which he contrasts with religion as an antisocial institution that should be destroyed as quickly and decisively as possible, following the example of the Great French Revolution. Thus, the validity of the argument attributed to Kant, as well as the relationship of moral norms with otherworldly forces, are erroneous ideas.

Now let’s move on to practical arguments, according to which, from belief in god comes some great benefit, both spiritual and quite material, if not to say financial. One of the most popular arguments of a practical and at the same time philosophical nature, not touching on the fiction of everyday miracles and appearances of angels in the closet, is the famous Pascal’s Wager, according to which we cannot know whether god exists or not, but believing in god is more profitable, since if he exists and you believe in him, you will go to heaven, and if you did not believe, then to hell — whereas if god does not exist and you believed in him, then you will only waste a little time on prayers and worship, and if you did not believe, then you will save them. In other words, the hope for endless bliss and the fear of endless suffering in the other world makes the choice of belief in god infinitely more profitable in a situation of uncertainty of his existence. This argument is refuted based on the uncertainty not only of the existence, but also of the specific certainty of god: if in Christianity alone there are more than fifty thousand different sects, the teachings of each of which contradict each other, and besides Christianity there are a great many other religions, then the chance of guessing the right one tends to zero. It is impossible to get to the paradise of one of the religions without finding yourself in the hell of all the others. In other words, with regard to the famous "Pascal’s Wager" the following objection can be made: let’s say some god exists — but where is the guarantee that the god to whom you propose to pray, Mr. Pascal, is the real god? After all, if the real god turns out to be not the god of Catholics, but the god of Muslims, or Jews, or even better Zeus, Perun or Quetzalcoatl — then in all these cases you will certainly end up in the hell of all these religions.

Thus, the listed arguments of a philosophical nature are not only untenable, but also miss the mark: it is impossible to prove with their help either the existence of god, or his personal character, or that he is the god of this particular religious sect, and not of a competing one. This situation is easily explained by the fact that religious belief in the existence of one god or another is usually first unconsciously accepted, and then retroactively substantiated. The expected consequence of this is the vagueness of the formulations and the inconsistency of the argumentation, due to which all evidential constructions collapse upon close examination and can be preserved only in the absence of such and with the assistance of unconscious processes.

The fact is that there is a fundamental difference between improbable and impossible things, which include the content of theistic and humanist ideologies, and which should be recognized. Indeed, we all know that theists love to preach about all sorts of miracles, extraordinary and supernatural phenomena — resurrections, ascensions, healings, transubstantiations, immaculate conceptions, prophetic dreams, prophecies, talking animals, past and future world catastrophes and similar things, which sensible people usually speak of as impossible. In reality, all such phenomena, seemingly supernatural and impossible, are not impossible, but only improbable, since they contradict only the known forms of motion of matter, but could well exist in hypothetical ones. For example, there is nothing fundamentally impossible in the idea that some highly developed civilization, possessing sufficient resources and computing power, could build a computer simulation of a civilization at our level, in which, under certain conditions, the laws of physics could be cancelled in a “miraculous” way, which would be interpreted by the inhabitants of the simulation as a supernatural miracle if they are theists — and as hallucinations or empty gossip if they are atheists. And further, since it is impossible to know for sure whether our own universe is precisely such a simulation, then hypothetically such a possibility cannot be excluded. However, if we try to estimate the probability of such a structure of reality, we will come to the conclusion that it must be extremely small — since, firstly, it excessively complicates the situation by introducing an indefinite number of additional entities that can neither be proven nor disproved, and secondly, it ascribes to a highly developed civilization properties that are more likely to be inherent in an underdeveloped intellect, since it is unclear why a higher intellect would need to mock creatures of our level of development in such a dubious manner. As for humanist ideologies, the phenomena to which they refer as "proofs" of human freedom — for example, the ability of a person to supposedly consciously control his body, or great historical figures like Napoleon, who supposedly changed the course of history — such phenomena are refuted on the basis of knowledge of causal chains. Thus, for example, in the first case the nervous impulse first comes from the nervous system, and only then is it realized — and in the second case, first a situation had to form in France that structurally required an authoritarian ruler of the state, capable of developing the productive forces of society and advancing production relations in new social conditions. In societies where the nervous system was structured differently, or where a separate social body could single-handedly initiate any changes in the rest of the system, that is, where the physical laws of our world did not operate — for example, in a conventional matrix — perhaps the argumentation of humanism would have a certain meaning. Nevertheless, as in the case of religious teachings, we recognize such a variant of events as improbable, since its probability is insignificant, negligible, so that no one will seriously consider it. Moreover, the miraculous and extraordinary phenomena that theists and humanists talk about could also be caused by other unusual coincidences — for example, some particularly rare fluctuations in the cosmic vacuum, as a result of which tasty buns would materialize in the hands of one or another preacher, and an illiterate shepherd from the Bronze Age would be able to learn the laws of relativistic physics in the blink of an eye. Everyone can continue this list themselves.

Unlike the listed events, which are improbable, the hypothesis of the existence of such objects as god, man and the world, the definitions of which will be given below, seems not just improbable, but fundamentally impossible. In order to more accurately understand the difference between these two concepts, we can compare two hypothetical events:

1. Someone claims that a horned hare exists;

2. Someone claims that a round square exists.

It is obvious that the first event is improbable, but not fundamentally impossible — while the second is absolutely impossible. Indeed, although horned hares are not found anywhere in nature, their existence does not contradict the laws of physics, and one can assume that such a hare could still be born as a result of a particularly rare mutation, or be bred through genetic engineering or some other scientific experiments. In other words, the combination of horns and a hare as specific objects is logically consistent. At the same time, the existence of a round square seems completely impossible, since it contains a logical contradiction — the geometric properties of roundness and squareness are universal and mutually exclusive. Consequently, the difference between the improbable and the impossible is that the former is a description of an extremely rare, but still possible combination of material elements — while the latter is a purely verbal construction in which incompatible properties are attributed to something that can neither exist nor be conceivable.

Now, the claims of spiritualists, theists and humanists about miraculous phenomena are as a rule incredible, while the fundamental dogmas of their ideologies, the existence of spirits, god and man, are as impossible as a round square. In fact, the theists' claim that god is immaterial, as well as the humanists' claim that man is partially immaterial and cannot be reduced to the sum of his material parts and their interactions, contradict the definition of existence, because to exist means to be a material object, and therefore the immaterial is identical to the non-existent. Since matter is the substance of all things, then any thing, including any living being, exists by virtue of its participation in matter. The matter can be imagined as if the geometric shape of any existing object rests on a material substrate, like the lines of a drawing on a sheet of paper. And just as it would be absurd to imagine that the lines of a drawing would separate themselves from the sheet of paper on which they are drawn, thin out to the thickness of a dot, and go on a journey, it is even more absurd to suppose that these lines could form some kind of living self-conscious a living being! Moreover. Theists believe that their god does not consist of parts — and at the same time is a living and thinking being. This statement is an impossible nonsense — since a geometric figure flying by itself is compressed into a geometric point and disappears altogether — while retaining the ability to exist (that is, to be involved in matter, with which, according to theists, it has nothing in common) and to think (that is, to express the relationships of different objects to each other with signs, numbers, formulas and equations).

Humanists, however, claim that man cannot be reduced to the totality of his material parts and the relationships between them — and therefore represents some special, incomprehensible entity. However, how does such an entity differ fundamentally from phlogiston, ether or the “life force” in the natural sciences? If there were some special essence in the socialized body, apart from the components and the relations between them — which, obviously, can themselves be considered as components — then this essence itself, in order to exist, would have to consist of parts and relations in order to exert a force on the other parts of the body, and also have a location in space. But nothing of the sort has been found in social bodies, either anatomically, physiologically, psychologically or sociologically — and could not exist, because the essence described by the humanists contains a contradiction in its description that makes it an impossible nonsense, an analogue of a round square or fried ice. But if such an entity does not actually exist, then the humanists' reasoning about man as the creator of world history, about the alienation and reification of human essence, about its re-appropriation, the leap from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom and other similar metaphysics in the case of socialist humanism, naturally turn out to be nothing more than empty talk, and the "scientific" articles and monographs based on them — an imitation of research.

Finally, theists attribute the creation of the world to god, in the Christian version — through his "word". I wonder how god, who does not occupy any space and therefore does not have and is not capable of having organs not only for pronouncing his "word" — but also a brain to think about anything — could create anything that exists? Professional theists, that is, theologians, in order to somehow justify their impotence in this matter, have invented a special sophistry on this account, which they call apophatic, that is, negative theology. This method consists in the fact that they describe god as something so perfect, sublime and excellent that the words of language themselves prove insufficient to describe him, so that in the end they come to the denial of their own dogmas, asserting, for example, that god is not love, since he is above love, or that god is not good, because he is above good. Obviously, one can object to this argumentation with its own words, saying that god is not something existing, because he is above existence and does not need it — that is, that he simply does not exist. Thus, theistic sophistry, intending to present the object of its faith as something exceptional, refutes itself, showing its inconsistency.

As for apophatic humanism, we have not yet reached it, although something similar to it can be found in the works of Sartre if desired. Unlike theists, humanists attribute authorship of their actions to human, representing him as a kind of substance, that is, the cause of itself. This circumstance turns out to be even more interesting, taking into account the fact that they themselves are not able to control the movement of their ideas, coming into their heads from the structures of commodity-money production, the effects of which are generalized by them in the form of “philosophical”, but in fact ideological categories, concepts and notions.

Thus, on a philosophical level, both theism and humanism can be successfully refuted both in the form of specific arguments aimed at defending their fundamental assertions, and regarding these assertions themselves, contradicting the general laws of ontology, and not only the specific laws of partial sciences and practices.