2.4 无神论的自我否定本质
2.4 The Self-defeating Nature Of Atheism
The user's message is a question, not text marked for translation in a book context, but the system instructs me to translate the user's text. I should translate it into Chinese (Simplified). 我们有充分的理由相信超自然实体的存在吗?
Do we have a good reason to think that supernatural entities exist?
这里有一个理由。绝大多数人类在历史的各个时期都明确相信某种超自然的存在或存在者。人们对这些超自然存在究竟是什么看法不一,这并不能削弱一个事实:这些人都相信某种超自然的存在。此外,这些信念分布在世界各地、横跨不同时代,彼此之间并无关联,却各自独立地存在。
Here is a reason. The vast majority of human beings throughout time have explicitly believed in some supernatural entity or entities. The fact that not everyone has agreed on what those supernatural entities are does not diminish the fact that these people all believe in some supernatural entity or other. Furthermore, these beliefs are held by people across the world and across time independently of each other.
唯物主义无神论者有责任解释这一现象。如果这些信仰并非由真实的经验所引发,那么它们必定是人类几乎普遍且自然地陷入的一种妄想状态,或是人类在判断世界上什么确实存在、什么并不存在时所具有的某种倾向性大错。这些妄想必须强烈到足以驱使所有这些人投身于极端的宗教虔诚之中。换言之,这些并不仅仅是短暂的幻觉。这种妄想,即"上帝妄想",必须被深切且持续地感受到,以至于身陷其中的人们甚至丝毫没有察觉自身精神失常的状态。
The burden is on the materialist atheist to explain this phenomenon. If these beliefs have not been induced by actual experiences, then they must be the result of a state of delusion humans almost universally and naturally suffer from or a predisposition humans have in making big mistakes about what does and does not in fact exist in the world. The delusions must be so strong, in fact, that they drive all these people to great lengths of religious devotion. In other words, these are not simply passing hallucinations. This delusion, i.e., the “God delusion,” must be deeply and consistently felt to such an extent that the people suffering from it don’t even have the slightest clue about their mentally disturbed condition.
但是,若断言人类容易陷入如此根深蒂固的迷惑,并且容易犯下如此重大的认知错误,这实际上就等于否定了人类心智本身,以及它准确认识和理解世界的能力。然而,这当然也会动摇唯物主义无神论者自身的心智,进而动摇他们的结论,因为这些人最终正是把全部信任寄托于人类心智,相信它能够理解自身在宇宙中的位置,并发现宇宙最深的奥秘。
But by claiming that human beings are prone to suffer from such deep and abiding delusions and are liable to make such significant cognitive errors, this does nothing other than impeach the human mind itself and its ability to accurately recognize and understand the world. But this, of course, undermines the very minds and hence the conclusions of the materialist atheists themselves, who put ultimate stock in the ability of the human mind to understand its place in the universe and discover its greatest secrets.
换句话说,人们普遍承认超自然的存在,这种承认如此普遍,因而内在于人之为人的本质,也内在于人类思维对周围世界的体验之中。因此,否定这种关于超自然的普遍观念,就等于否定人类思维本身,以及人类存在于世界之中并如实体验世界的能力。唯物主义无神论正是在承诺这样的立场,却没有意识到其计划本身的自我否定性。
In other words, the recognition of the supernatural is so universal and hence so inherent to what it means to be human and the human mind’s experience of the world around it that, to discredit that general notion of the supernatural is to discredit the human mind itself and humanity’s capacity to be in and experience the world as it really is. That is what materialistic atheism has committed itself to, not realizing the self-defeating nature of its program.