21 levels of Self-Deception: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

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with Descartes.

The subject object split leads us into ‘objectifying’ others — treating them to an extent as commodities rather than as individual persons. Also, there has been an assumption that considering ourselves as subjects is just a simple notion. Psychoanalysis has shown however that becoming a subject is actually a very fraught process, involving by definition, the suppression of desire. (The denial of Eros — hence very pertinent to our discussion.) It is also a process that as currently described, is deeply related to death and is heavily misogynistic, both in its conception and in its consequences.

In the theism-atheism duality, the question: ‘Is there a God?’ is too simplistic. The kind of separate, fully transcendent being that is normally implied by the question can be seen as just another way in which we choose to split reality. The distinction then between ‘God’ and ‘not God’ and so between ‘believer’ and ‘unbeliever’ is arbitrary. In fact, the way this polarity is contested simply reinforces the underlying assumptions on which both theism and atheism are built. The God who is rejected by atheists is the same God who is embraced (or feared) by believers. The understanding of what or who ‘God’ might be is never really contested. This may be contrasted with the kind of pantheism advocated by Spinoza, in which there is only one substance, which is God, and mind and matter are seen as twin attributes of this single underlying reality. Alternative ways of viewing all dualities are clearly possible, and the theism atheism duality illustrates this

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