From Chinese Atheism to the Dao
comment (The comment is from a react video)
I don't know why, but I find some sort of enjoyment is trying to steelman these sorts of things. So, let's see if I can make any real sense out of this...
So, I think this person is using the relatively common conflation of "atheism" with "materialism". That's why he keeps bringing up metaphysics, the Dao, etc. Anything that's not of the material world. When he says he "used to be an atheist", what he really means is he used to live life entirely materialistically, with materialistic goals and motivations.
This is why he's bringing up the past. When he looks at great works of art and their inspiration, he sees the artist being motivated by more than just materialistic things like money. Instead, they were inspired by the "divine", however you or they want to define that. I think that this is what he's saying he wants to move back towards.
Of course, it's simply not true that, now that we're more capitalistic, people simply aren't inspired by anything more than money and other materialistic things. But this is how he sees the world, probably because of how he was raised.
So, yeah. Nothing to do with the actual existence of supernatural things. Nothing to do with God vs No God. He's just using the term "atheism" (incorrectly) to mean having an entirely materialistic lifestyle and philosophy. And, as a musician, he wants (and wants us, too) to move towards doing things for more than material reasons. He thinks if we move back towards making things for the divine, or to try to use our works to reflect some sort of deep truth, it will result in much greater and more profound works.
My own comments:
- the "divine". This reminds met of Thomas Nagel’s phrase “the religious temperament”. It describes both religious and non-religious people. The following quote by Nagel gives a basic outline:
Existence is something tremendous, and day-to-day life, however indispensable, seems an insufficient response to it, a failure of consciousness. Outrageous as it sounds, the religious temperament regards a merely human life as insufficient, as a partial blindness to or rejection of the terms of our existence. It asks for something more encompassing without knowing what it might be.¹ (my emphasis)
- "some sort of deep truth". At the beginning I expected the person from the video to have converted to Christianity, based on statistics (some percentage of mainland Chinese people have converted to Christianity). But no, he simply senses that there must be some kind of "deep truth". But seems to have as of yet no clue what that might be. Maybe in the next video? Not there yet. The previous video? Yes.
The previous video is quite long, but to jump to the conclusion: His personal theological hypothesis/intuition: there is one objective divine/ultimate reality. Apparently something fairly close to the Christian God. But different civilizations and religions have encountered and represented this divine realm all in some way, but imperfectly.
- There’s still no attempt at proof, only speculation based on his reading of history and what ideas pop into his head. In Dutch we have a word called ietsisme that may be applicable. Also, I still think the quote by Nagel cited above remains relevant. Some people just can't accept the brute facts of life. There has to be something more, they're sure of it.