George Will On Religion and Founding Needs Ayn Rand's Theory of Rights
"He even says explicitly that neither successful self-government nor “a government with clear limits defined by the natural rights of the governed” requires religion. For these, writes Will, “religion is helpful and important but not quite essential.”"
""I'm an atheist. An agnostic is someone who is not sure. I'm pretty sure. I see no evidence of God," Will told Real Clear Religion."
For years I've admired much of what Will has had to say, as I do when he says that limited self-government based on natural rights doesn't require religion.
This is refreshing to hear because most conservatives simply refuse to acknowledge that there can be a secular and rational basis for individual rights and liberty, but instead only think that Divine Authority is the end-all explanation and moral justification for everything.
I'm glad to hear that George Will isn't limited in this way. Let's give him the credit he deserves for this.
Our government is secular, as the founders expressly intended. Thomas Paine was an atheist, Jefferson and Franklin were Deists, and Deists do not believe in the Judeo-Christian anthropomorphic white-haired interventionist guy-in-the-sky who experiences jealousy, anger or love. The Deists' God is none of these things.
The phrase, "endowed by our creator" is found only in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution or Bill of Rights. The Law of the Land is embodied by the Constitution and BoR.
The DoI and Federalist #43 both refer to the "Laws of Nature" and of "Nature's God," but that is the language of deists, not Judeo-Christian beliefs.
Some faiths object to or even forbid writing the name of their deity. While the common Christian name for 'God' is simply God, or Lord (gets a bit contradictory with Jesus and the holy trinity stuff), the Hebrew names for G-d include, YHVH, YHWH, Jehovah, Adonai, Ehyeh, Asher, Ehyeh...
The framers of our founding documents were skilled wordsmiths, I think the words they employed and those they omitted were each selected with clear intent and broader understanding than the bulk of today’s pandering politicians combined.
Religion is mentioned in a couple of the Federalist Papers, but it is not a primary or protracted discussion in any of them.
In Federalist #2, John Jay counted as a blessing that America possessed "one united people—a people descended from the same ancestors, the same language, professing the same religion."
In Federalist #10, James Madison identifies the most serious source of faction to be the diversity of opinion in political life which leads to dispute over fundamental issues such as what regime or religion should be preferred.
John Jay, George Washington and a few other founders repeatedly praised “divine providence” for the success our Revolution, but these were the same few voices saying the same thing over and over again, and historic reality reveals that our success was won by the blood and courage of a relatively small group of men and women determined to free themselves from all forms of government AND religious oppression (including yours).
cont...
Thomas Paine, author of “Common Sense” (link below) and "Age of Reason" was an outspoken atheist; it is unlikely the Revolution would have occurred without him.
Benjamin Franklin was a self-proclaimed Deist who wrote a great deal often mentioning religious matters, often in a negative light:
"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies."
—Benjamin Franklin, in Toward The Mystery
"I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it."
—Benjamin Franklin from "Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion", Nov. 20, 1728
"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
—Ben Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac, 1754 (Works, Volume XIII)
"My parents had early given me religious impressions, and brought me through my childhood piously in the dissenting [puritan] way. But I was scarce fifteen, when, after doubting by turns of several points, as I found them disputed in the different books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself. Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the substance of sermons preached at Boyle's lectures. [Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was a British physicist who endowed the Boyle Lectures for defense of Christianity.] It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough deist"
—Benjamin Franklin, "Autobiography,"p.66 as published in *The American Tradition in Literature,* seventh edition (short), McGraw-Hill,p.180
"The way to see by Faith is to shut the eye of Reason."
—Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1758
"Remember me affectionately to good Dr. Price, and to the honest heretic Dr. Priestley. I do not call him honest by way of distinction, for I think all the heretics I have known have been virtuous men. They have the virtue of fortitude, or they could not venture to own their heresy; and they cannot afford to be deficient in any of the other virtues, as that would give advantage to their many enemies; and they have not, like orthodox sinners, such a number of friends to excuse or justify them.
Do not, however, mistake me. It is not to my good friend's heresy that I impute his honesty. On the contrary, 'tis his honesty that brought upon him the character of a heretic"
—Benjamin Franklin, letter to Benjamin Vaughan of England, in Works, Vol.x., p.365
...cont
I'm sure you're familiar with Thomas Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptist Church that contains the following statement referring to the 1st Amendment, reiterating its intended meaning:
"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."
—President Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Church (1802)
Jefferson believed religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God – not his government.
Jefferson wrote this letter Jan. 1, 1802 -- WHEN HE WAS PRESIDENT!
As one of the authors of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and probably thee most intelligent individual of his era, I think Jefferson knew exactly what that document is intended to convey, and what he intended to say in all of his writings.
Jefferson expressed many personal thoughts on religion, which were rarely charitable, earning him accusations of being atheist:
"The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man."
—Thomas Jefferson to Jeremiah Moore, August 14, 1800 -- Ford 7:454 - 55
"The clergy...believe that any portion of power confided to me [as President] will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion."
—Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, 1800. ME 10:173
"The proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right."
—Thomas Jefferson: Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779. ME 2:301, Papers 2:546
[ Reference Article VI, 3, of the Constitution: "No religious test"* ]
*Article IV, paragraph 3.
"No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
Article IV, paragraph 3, illustrates there is ONE and only one reference to religion in the body of the Constitution, and that single reference forbids the use of any "religious test" as a litmus test for anyone to hold public office. Perhaps more importantly, it also illustrates the framers did not completely ignore religion in the Constitution and Bill or Rights, they erected walls of separation between government and religion.
"Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, more than on our opinions in physics and geometry. . ."
—Thomas Jefferson ("The Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom")
"In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty."
—Thomas Jefferson
"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."
—Thomas Jefferson
"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear."
—Thomas Jefferson
"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical."
—Thomas Jefferson: Bill for Religious Freedom, 1779. Papers 2:545
cont...
Washington, Adams, Madison:
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
—George Washington (The 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, signed by John Adams and ratified unanimously by Congress.)
- - - (The above says it all, but there's more!) - - -
"Thirteen governments [the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind."
—John Adams
- - - “founded on the natural authority of the people alone” - - -
- - - “without a pretence of miracle or mystery” - - -
"In the Papal System, Government and Religion are in a manner consolidated, & that is found to be the worst of Govts."
—James Madison, Father of the Constitution (Letter to Jasper Adams)
"Notwithstanding the general progress made within the two last centuries in favour of this branch of liberty, and the full establishment of it in some parts of our country, there remains in others a strong bias towards the old error, that without some sort of alliance or coalition between Government and Religion neither can be duly supported. Such, indeed, is the tendency to such a coalition, and such its corrupting influence on both the parties, that the danger cannot be too carefully guarded against."
—James Madison (Letter to Edward Livingston)
"Because the bill vests in the said incorporated church an authority to provide for the support of the poor and the education of poor children of the same, an authority which, being altogether superfluous if the provision is to be the result of pious charity, would be a precedent for giving to religious societies as such a legal agency in carrying into effect a public and civil duty."
—James Madison, Veto Message, Feb 21, 1811 By James Madison, to the House of Representatives of the United States: Having examined and considered the bill entitled "An Act incorporating the Protestant Episcopal Church in the town of Alexander, in the District of Columbia. (Madision did not think it was the role of government to aid even the charitable and educational aspects of religion, even non-preferentially.)
"Besides the danger of a direct mixture of religion and civil government, there is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by ecclesiastical corporations.
The establishment of the chaplainship in Congress is a palpable violation of equal rights as well as of Constitutional principles.
The danger of silent accumulations and encroachments by ecclesiastical bodies has not sufficiently engaged attention in the US."
—James Madison, being outvoted in the bill to establish the office of Congressional Chaplain.
"They seem to imply and certainly nourish the erroneous idea of a national religion."
—James Madison, on his opposition to government-sponsored calls to prayer and thanksgiving.
So keep religion OUT of politics, if you please.
--The BuddyLama
NEXT: National Mottos and Pledges of Allegiance…
The Federalist Papers – index
http://www.foundingfathers.info/federali...
US Constitution – transcript
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charter...
Bill of Rights – transcript
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charter...
Amendments 11–27 – transcript
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charter...
Common Sense – by Thomas Paine
http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica...
Jefferson Bible (The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth) – by Thomas Jefferson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_B...
http://www.beliefnet.com/resourcelib/doc...
Religion is your way of life: your code of conduct. It is WHY you do what you do and how you value things when weighing decisions. Religion is all about recognizing yourself and your goals - whether they be for power, lust, money, family, etc.
What course you choose to take for your life and what value set you choose to adopt are the very heart of "religion". You can choose to pursue (or worship) whatever or whomever you choose. It can have a formal name and affiliation or not. But to deny that this is anything but religion is self-deception.
Liberals worship liberalism (or the power derived thereby). Communists worship communism (or the power derived thereby). Christians worship Christ. Buddhists worship Buddha. Muslims worship Allah and Mohammed. PETA worships animals. I could go on and on. The choice to make is to identify WHICH set of values you want to live by and WHY.
I don't accept your premise.
Food for thought.
What is more, you disagree, but are not disagreeable - unlike some others. The world would be a better place with more like you.
Bear with me. I think men created religion for a reason. If we created it--we needed it; it was a tool. Society is evolving. Many have been willing to throw religion under the bus during this upheaval, but they aren’t addressing the fundamental questions to why man created religion in the first place. Did we need to reach outside ourselves, maybe? I don’t know. I just know it was an important part of our development. I personally beleive it has something to do with the brains inability to understand mortality. You can’t stop yourself from thinking. It’s a survival instinct thing. So my theory is we developed stories to correlate with our brain's belief that ‘we’ will always be. Now, good behavior usually will help you to survive longer, agreed?
I personally believe that kids do better if they are raised with a belief in God. The reason I say this is: there isn’t a mechanism in society to compare to teaching kids self-awareness and conscious more readily then the believe that an omni-present being is watching everything that they do in secret. If no one sees you doing wrong, then how can it be wrong? When will it feel wrong? It’s hard to feel discomfort and shame if there isn’t an audience. Would they use their rational brains to control their behavior?Medically, we can prove there is nothing rational about a teenage brain--good luck with that! What aids can we use?
I think the idea that something ‘larger’ than ourselves is a useful productive tool. If we want to do away with it, we need an adequate replacement to mediate upon.
Yes. I am atheist, but my kids know the people think the Devil punishes evil-doers and that there's no evidence for this. My son is interested, and my daughter doesn't care. I try really hard not to give them any of my ideas. They don't know for sure what I think of politicians or anything I think is controversial. They'll figure out the world based on reason and facts.
Ayn Rand did address why religion was created. It is a primitive form of philosophy and every human being requires a philosophy in some form to integrate his ideas and observations. As conceptual beings who must use our rational minds for survival we can't live range of the moment jumping from one thought to another with no connection, coherence or explanation. See her essay "Philosophy and Sense of Life", republished in her anthology The Romantic Manifesto. It should have also been included in the more recent Philosophy: Who Needs It?.
n.
Pretentious, insincere, or empty language
Not name calling at all. I stand by my comment.
I say that history is replete with examples of tyrants and bullies that oppress masses of people, and those people willingly acceding to such. The Pharaohs, Genghis Khan, Roman Emperors, European Kings, Dukes, Earls, etc., al the way to modern day Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc. I say that all of them had much better lives and wouldn't trade any downside for "mutual non-aggression." And many of those who were ruled lived in those systems willingly. Heck, we have many today who are willing to give over control to others and be ruled instead of rule themselves (we call them Democrats).
If as a bully I can subvert you to my will, and you accept that, why would it not be in my best interest to do so? And history shows that many are willing to allow such.
All the "bullies" you mention, certainly had no regard for the natural rights of individuals—a rather obvious observation. Objectivism sees those rights as fundamental to the nature of man; but it is not a religion that is imposed, by magical wand, cross, or threat, on others. However, when one of your "bad asses" runs into a group of people that cherish the value of their natural rights, they will see the passion and intelligence of men and women that don't willingly give that up.
That "bullies" exist doesn't negate the philosophy of Objectivism. Just because Objectivism doesn't threaten men with some post-life damnation, doesn't negate the truth of its concepts.
People are...people; some have a better grasp on reality than others.
Rand's achievement was explaining the origin and validity of man's rights in a way not previously understood.
It seems to me this is the type of point that Will is trying to make. While, yes, we were founded on many so called "Judeo-Christian" principles or ideas, we were NOT founded as a religious country. Therefore the rule of law and rights, as such, can not be said to be based in religious context.
The reason the Constitution is less-religious in content reflects upon the widespread appeal of the Enlightenment movement in Europe at the time, while the Declaration was more religious in attuned because it was written at an earlier time.
I think about the historical context when we talk about possible changes to the Constitution to reflect a more modern thought. The world at large is in chaos; this is not the time to be rewriting anything. No one seems to have a clear purpose or thought.
Without a Judeo-Christian foundation, there is *no* basis for morality, except for "well, most people don't want it this way". Christians led the charge to end the slave trade. Christians led the charge to end slavery itself (most people wanted it). Christians stood side by side with blacks in their fight for civil rights. Christians led the charge for women suffrage. Christians led the charge to end the murder of unborn babies (and it will end, despite most people looking the other way on it).
Oh, and, yes... Christians and Churches were responsible for preserving our system of individual liberty in the war for independence. Not that others didn't play a part, but they were the lead influence. Who is Jonas Clark? http://chuckbaldwinlive.com/Articles/tab...
Long story short, and back to my original point: Without an unchanging foundation, morality is whatever YOU make it. That is why Christians have always led these causes, we have an unchanging moral foundation in an unchanging God.
Even George Whitefield, the well-known, mesmerizing evangelist just before the revolution, supported slavery on principle.
Ironically to most Objectivists, Christianity is quite a selfish decision to make. Christians realize what they perceive to be their own inadequacy and make a decision to live their lives for another man (Jesus Christ) in exchange for a promised future salvation. Whether that decision is a good decision or not is certainly one worth debating (and frankly has been debated thoroughly) in the Gulch.
Yes. This is just as no one has to explain offensive behaviors of their group. "What about [light-skinned people / dark-skinned people / Muslims / atheists] who did [XYZ]? " People shouldn't have to answer for things *other people* did.
The danger on a cultural scale is pushing destructive, false premises as a foundation (including the bizarre claims of "Christian Objectivism") because when those wrong premises are emphasized and followed out it means the end of modern civilization and a return to the Dark Ages. This why, for anyone who takes ideas seriously as the source of trends on a cultural scale, the attempts to explicitly promote religion or an alleged "compatibility" with Ayn Rand's philosophy must be explicitly and emphatically rejected.
But the kind of mixed premises I am referring to are more fundamental. American Christians for the most part live their lives, and consciously and rationally work, in pursuit of their own values and dreams here on earth. This is in complete contradiction to the essential Christian ideals of other-worldliness, submission, sacrifice and faith even while occasionally paying lip service to it on Sundays. If their actual sense of life becomes undermined by a rise in religion on a broad scale, then the society is doomed.
People can call themselves whatever they want. And, occasionally, even if they are truly a Christian, I know this comes as a shock to you, but... Christians aren't perfect either.
For almost all of human history, the view was "God gives rights to government, which gives rights to man". Our founders (and again, their predecessors) said "no... that's not right. The truth is, God gives rights to man, who gives rights to government".
Yes! I think they wanted to say that rights are a human birthright and pepole grant power to the gov't, not the other way around. They thought this was so monumentally important that they didn't want to get bogged down with the question of where does humankind's birthright come from. That's up to everyone to decide for themselves. They weren't making a statement on that point. They were trying to avoid this very discussion of whether they endorsed particular religiouis views.
I said they were avoiding them, not evading them. They were saying rights are a human birthright. It's not a stretch to read that claim and ask how did humans come to have agency, the feeling of free will, self awareness, and everything associated with those rights. The Constitution does not address the points. I don't consider that evasive.
The Constitution is a secular political, not a philosophical, document. There was no place for philosophical discussion in it. It didn't arise at all; it wasn't "avoided". If the government were founded for theocracy, the Constitution would have had to include religion.
Some people really have an incomplete or naïve view of history.
But that doesn't change what I already said: They used the foundation of Judeo-Christian principles in our founding.
The Declaration of Independence however, the document that is the reason the Constitution exists, explicitly mention the "Laws of Nature and Nature's God", "endowed by their Creator".
Definition: deist - Deism is the belief that reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to determine the existence of a Creator, accompanied with the rejection of religious knowledge as a source of authority.
This is more like the concept of Intelligent Design than explicitly Christian. We Objectivists argue that reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to determine that there is no need for the existence of any god and that, in fact, accepting the existence of a (necessarily) supernatural god is counter to reality. As you have said before, you may choose to believe what you want to believe and I'll go down a different path.
The Founders believed in the Judeo-Christian version of God, but you are correct in that most did not specifically associate with any professed creed. But I think it a bit two-faced to try to assert that simply because most did not ally themselves with the various sects of their time, they did not believe in a Judeo-Christian God and that such a belief did not heavily affect their deliberations and foundational beliefs.
If you so badly want a country founded on and ruled according to your judeo-christian beliefs and fantasies, go found one, but keep it out of this country founded on reason and individual rights. Practice it in the privacy of your environment or with others that believe as you, but not in my environment or one which we have to share.
The second question is whether or not the Founders were influenced by a belief in the Judeo-Christian God. Since we can not ask them directly, we can only look a their published writings, and the predominance of those suggest that the majority interpretation of God was profoundly Judeo-Christian in nature. Some like George Washington leave no ambiguity whatsoever, as his use of the word God in speeches such as his inauguration addresses is plain and clear in denoting his understanding and faith in a Judeo-Christian God. Others such as Jefferson are less clear because some writings seem to support, but others oppose. John Adams grew up as a Puritan, but while he later dropped his affiliation with that sect, his writings make it clear he still believed in a Judeo-Christian God. We can go on through the list of Founders if we wish.
Does that mean that the United States was created only to govern a Christian nation? I can not agree with that assumption because if that were the case, I would expect the First Amendment to be exactly the reverse of its present writing.
If the real point of the question is to identify the source of inspiration of these men, I would suggest that simply trial and error, as well as long deliberation by informed men played the larger part. Simply reading through the Constitutional Convention debates makes it very clear to me that these men were highly educated in the histories of both past and present governments and could easily point out flaws in any or all of them. They were as quick to point out the flaws in Switzerland or England as that of Carthage or Rome or Athens. And they had one failed experiment - the Articles of Confederation - under their belt to learn from.
I care much less about the origins of the Constitution than the preservation of such and the resulting freedoms.
But what you said there, that they were deists, even if I gave you the "most" (which I'll contest some other time), you just said that they had sufficient evidence through reason and observation to determine that there is a Creator. But, they themselves choose to rebel against that creator.
The world they lived in, they didn't have the archaeological and historical evidence that backs up the accuracy and historicity of the Bible. They could "reasonably" (though not really) reject the claims of the Bible by making the assertion that it isn't accurate, and/or was corrupted.
Today, we don't have that luxury. It seems that almost every time a spade is turned in archaeology, it supports the accuracy of the Bible. This started to really accelerate in the 1800's, continuing through the 1900's, and still continues to this day. Finding things that Luke said that people thought "he was wrong, this guy wasn't proconsul, nor was he leader during this time" only to find out he did in fact hold that title during those times when they made an archaeological discovery.
Little things like that have happened so many times that nowadays, people can't claim that the Bible is inaccurate, so they have to either completely reject God all together, or make a claim that the purpose of the Bible isn't to be inerrant, but to be "interpreted" in different ways.
All that to say, the founders were honest enough to say that "yeah, reason and observation lead us to conclude that there is 'a god' out there". But modern day people are trying to claim the exact opposite, despite us having more evidence to support the existence of God than we did before.
I write an entire post showing that the very founding fathers of this nation (even the diests) essentially said "reason and observation lead us to conclude that there is 'a god' out there", in order to show that your claims that "[my] belief in God is not based on reason" are false.
Then you come back and say "you are impervious to reason"? Sigh...
This is a site for those who admire Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason and her novel Atlas Shrugged that it made possible, not for proselytizing religious mysticism. You have gone far beyond discussion of the history of the formulation of the constitution and the lack of religious mysticism in the founding of this country. You are promoting religion as such with your mystical mindset with appeals to "revelation" and "sacred text" on behalf of belief in the supernatural. You can believe whatever you want but that doesn't belong here.
Unless you want to do some homework yourself and read a book I suggest (because obviously you are not familiar with the facts presented in it), then I think we're done.
The book is "Evidence that Demands a Verdict" by Josh McDowell. He set out in his thesis to disprove the Bible. He became a Christian.
Prove it ewv
That is not only not "well documented", it is false, not a "fact" at all. Judeo-Christian principles are the philosophy of the Dark Ages and the opposite of the founding of this country, which was based on the Enlightenment emphasis on reason and individualism in contrast to the centuries dominated by their opposite. Christianity was primarily other-wordly in its mystic beliefs. The first and fundamental goal was to wallow in and live for salvation in another realm, denouncing and escaping from the misery of life on earth. The means of allegedly knowing were by faith in contrast to reason. It is not possible for such a world-view to have lead to the founding of America and it did not.
Read some history. Or if you're not fond of reading (which I doubt, but regardless, videos are fun still), David Barton has produced an excellent video history on the foundation of America in his "American Heritage" series.
The Enlightenment is so named because people became enlightened when they rejected the dogma and authoritarianism from the Dark and Middle Ages. The pursuit of individualism and rationality led to an explosion of knowledge and well being.
The Founding fathers of this country were well read in the ideas of the Enlightenment, particularly Locke, and it was in fact the philosophical basis for this country. Instead of reading Barton's imaginative interpretations, read a real historian, like Bernard Bailyn's classic Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.
This is a forum for reason and individualism in Ayn Rand's philosophy, not for proselytizing religious faith with tortured re-writes of history and grandiose claims for your "depth" as you preposterously write off enormous institutions like the Catholic Church and its history as non-Christian in your tormented revisionism. Your dogmatic ignorance and lack of objectivity do not belong here.
I tire of your rantings and ramblings. You make claims without any basis, you utterly refuse to look at facts I've presented, and you refuse to acknowledge that, possibly, someone other than yourself MAY have something valid to say. You rant about what this board is supposedly for, I explain something and you say "that doesn't matter", etc, etc, etc. You are blinded by your hatred, and not a single word I can ever say in and of itself will ever change that fact. I'm not mad at you, becuase if it weren't for the grace of God, I'd be doing the same thing you are, and probably would be even more vitriolic than you are. Have a good life, I pray some day God will have mercy on you and show you the Truth. And I'm sure you're seething right now about me even saying what I've said here, whether you admit it or not. Good day.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?se...
Try this exercise: read a Papal encyclical and replace the word "God" with the word "State" and see just how close it comes to a Communist equivalent. The relationship between Christianity and Communism is uncanny. If you agree that Communism is evil, I'd suggest that you look very closely at what you've let into your religion. I suggest that it is built-in and cannot be separated.
Heck, look at today's Pope if you have any doubt about the Catholic Church's misguided direction it's gone in over the last millenia-plus. Now, that's not to say that all Catholics aren't Christian, but certainly a LOT of them aren't. But I know some who are.
Don't get me wrong, you do have to choose.. but you never will unless God draws you. And if He draws you, you WILL choose, not because he forces you, but for the same reason you eat when you're hungry, when you didn't eat 2 hours before because you have changed, and now you actually want to. He changed you, and now you want to.
As for your choice about birth - do you believe that we originated from nothing? I happen to believe that we existed before this earth and that we chose to come here for the experience. Birth is an entry through a portal to a new realm of experience. Seems to fit both circumstances and I doubt the analogy with reference to baptism was randomly selected.
Yes, we have that choice. But every single human being on the planet earth since time began, until time eternal, WILL choose to reject Christ, by their own human nature. Where does that leave us?
ONLY those whom God "draws" (as Christ himself said) can come to Christ, and those whom he draws *will* come.
It's plastered all over scripture. It's the same thing Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Whitefield, Spurgeon, Aquinas, Polycarp, and all the way back to Paul and the Apostles, all taught and believed.
I'm not quite sure where you get your belief about our "existence before this earth, and choosing to come here for the experience" from, but I've never seen it or heard it anywhere in the Bible, and I've read through it and studied it verse by verse at the same time 2.5 times already, and have listened to thousands of hours of sermons and biblical teachings by long-time Bible scholars.
If you have a reference for that belief though, by all means share.
And you're absolutely right. Christianity is living your life for another being, in this case, the God of the universe. Christians see themselves as wholly subservient to God because, well, he's God. People turned off by being subservient to the creator of the universe, well... they want to invent who they *think* God should be, rather than find out who God is for real. And based on who they think he should be, they say "well, God can't be real, he's not like I think he should be".
It is instructional to note that within the entirety of the New Testament, Christ's harshest words were to whom: the Jewish leaders who purported to be awaiting His coming! "By their fruits ye shall know them."
Fortunately, Christians don't rely on man to interpret the scriptures for them. They have the Spirit of God and inspired men called prophets to help out when there is any ambiguity. Those who choose to interpret scripture for themselves reap their own rewards.
"your argument above leads to the conclusion that the other is not composed of 'true Christians.'"
A Christian is someone who follows Christ - not someone who merely professes such. Just as you would not have an Objectivist who believed in the welfare state. Does that mean that there isn't some allowance for imperfection? Of course not. But self-profession in my mind is of little value - it is the actions that matter. Christ Himself said such on more than one occasion. The other matter gets into authority, and I won't get into that right now.
"I think you can probably see that proposition is fallacious and is of the "Scotsman" variety because it confuses a mere attributes with defining characteristics."
But that is exactly what we are talking about, is it not? Is one a Scotsman who speaks with the appropriate brogue, but can not trace his lineage? No. Such is an impostor and all true Scotsmen will call such out - kilt or no kilt, haggus or no haggus.
One can not lump all Christian denominations together in the same pot because they all have different ideas about what "being a Christian" even means to themselves! A Baptist will not call a Mormon a Christian. The Protestants object to the Catholics. Thus the Scotsman fallacy is inapplicable in this circumstance. That was what I was trying to point out.
"Are you trying to say that non-Christian Objectivists are to be despised by God as somehow "worse" than non-Objectivist Christians?"
On the contrary, Christ castigated the Pharisees (Jewish rulers) because they were those who professed to believe in and look forward to the coming of Christ, yet were the ones who openly opposed Him when He came! The criticism was because they were hypocrites - they were blessed with a knowledge above others and when the time came to act on it, they allowed their own desires and lust for power to trump their own religion. A second example is when he cast the money-changers out of the temple. They knew what they were doing fell contrary to their own beliefs. Christ further instructed these very leaders that the publicans (tax-collectors - universally despised because of their tactics and known dishonesty) and harlots (no explanation needed there) would go into the Kingdom of God before them. Why? Because the harlots and publicans had not been educated as to Christ's doctrine and so could still repent and change their ways. The Pharisees and scribes knew what they should have been doing, but didn't do it. They were in a state of open rebellion rather than ignorance. The scribes and Pharisees knew the path, but not only refused to walk it themselves, but prevented others from walking it. The publicans and harlots didn't even know about the path.
I would also mention that God despises none. We are His children and He loves us as such. That does not mean that when our children choose a path we know will harm them that we are not concerned and displeased. What parent does not make an effort to try to correct a disobedient child - sometimes by allowing them to suffer the consequences of their own actions in the hopes they will learn from the experience? And it is out of this love and His respect for us that He allows us to choose our own paths - without coercion. Does He try to educate us on the path available? As far as we will allow, yes. For we can not open the door at the end of the path unless we follow it. But those who knew about the path and choose not to follow it will not have the excuse of ignorance in the end. They will know that they could have had everything and they consciously chose otherwise. That will be their Hell.
The fact of the matter is that most true CHristians did not find slavery to be a problem for most of the history of Christianity.
That is primarily a Catholic doctrine that is without foundation in the Bible. Some other sects have adopted it - knowing no differently - but I don't agree with it. I adhere to the principle of personal accountability - we'll be responsible for our own actions and not those of our progenitors.
You can do better than trying to change the clear definition of what Paul wrote. I was able to do apologetics better than that back in the day. Come on barwick. There's a much better response than just saying i'm ignorant and changing the meaning of the word slave. You can do it. I've got faith in you. Just not your god. :)
Paul never condoned involuntary servitude, but he told those who were slaves (involuntarily) to submit to their masters. You might want to read Exodus 21:16 if you think the Bible ever condoned involuntary servitude.
The "Christian" North America you speak of did not have slaves (involuntary servants) in the primarily religious communities. The commercial (read: the King who called himself a Christian, and others of the same kind) sectors that began to see the profitability of the colonies, they brought involuntary servitude to North America.
"Church clergy and congregations often played a role, especially the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), Congregationalists, Wesleyans, and Reformed Presbyterians as well as certain sects of mainstream denominations such as branches of the Methodist church and American Baptists."
I am not trying to saying Christians were superior in this effort-only stating the fact that many denominations were against slavery as a group. I'm certain individuals disagreed on this. Bt I don't see it as a coordinated religious movement.
That is patently false. Have you read Ayn Rand? Why are you here?
Not only is the foundation of morality based on the nature of man and the factual requirements for his living on earth, a "Judeo-Christian foundation" of mystic faith and supposed other world makes a morality for life on earth impossible. Subjective decrees of fantasy, subjective "revelations", and imposed duties of subservience explain nothing and are the opposite of any kind of permanent foundation. Rejecting rationality in formulating morality based on the factual nature of man and his requirements for life makes no more sense than accounting for the weather with speculated demons and gods. You don't have a "foundation", you are issuing irrational dogmatic decrees.
Ayn Rand makes claims. We make claims. You make claims. The Chinese make claims. Plato made claims. The Nazis made claims. The Communists made claims.
Every single person thinks they know what's best for themselves and often for other people. The only one who can trump our knowledge of what's best for ourselves is one who is omniscient. And rarely can we make determinations about what is best for someone ELSE better than they can do for themselves. But it does happen in certain circumstances.
I'm not talking about the whole altruism thing and those who espouse that believing in a deity automatically makes you a slave to same. That isn't part of the theology that I believe. In fact, any theology that isn't based on a fundamental premise of free-will is really only one of slavery.
Belief that one will have to answer for one's actions in life is a powerful positive motivating factor for many. Even if you didn't hold such a belief, it would seem rational to support such a system, as the opposite is potentially anarchy.
I don't know if you've been subjected to my theory of the "Baddest Ass on the Block." Without a final accounting, what is to stop each of us from seeking to be the BA? I know, AR and others have argued that it is in an individuals own best interest to recognize the rights of others, as that is the only way for their rights to be retained. I say that history is replete with counter examples. In fact, history is nearly universal in that there has always been a ruling bully, there still are today, across much of the world. And increasingly, we are seeing the same take hold here in the US.
Most excellent, well-thought out and reasoned response there kiddo.
When you can think for yourself, come back.
In short, any god that would create the kind of system described by Christian theology is not only not "Love" but is actually quite a monster.
But hey, don't promise to give god whatever comes out of your house first, in case your child comes out. Because then it will require you to sacrifice your child. And be forever known in the Christian bible as a hero of the faith.
Regarding whether Christians will not accept the point that ethics need not be based upon the existence of a god, many Christians will grant that one can certainly be ethical without the existence of a god. Pres. John Adams is a counterexample, but I can tell you of several people within the Gulch who are Christians that would "accept the point that ethics need not be based upon the existence of a god". That being said, it is easier to be moral when one has an unmoving foundation of values in place; for Christians, their god is that foundation.
It's not easier to be moral with a fantasy as an unmoving foundation, but it is easier to adhere to a destructive dogma in the name of morality as a fanatic. Superstition is not a foundation for anything involving living on earth.
Have you ever seen Abraham Lincoln? How about Julius Caesar? Homer? There's varying levels of evidence to support all of those men. And similarly, there's a level of evidence to support the life of Jesus Christ, and his deeds and works, and his apostles, and their deeds and works, etc.
So please don't go around saying there is no such thing as a "rational Christian".
And your second half of your first sentence... I'm going to choose not to fly off the handle on you for that one. I'll just ignore it unless you decide to continue with it.
C'mon Robbie. You can do better than personal attacks.
btw - the individual also pulls the juvenile tactic of down voting all the posts to which they disagree. Like I have said ad nauseum, I don't care about the points, but the actions speak volumes about the maturity of the poster.
Galt's oath is the denial of altruism; e.g. his unwillingness to accept the sanction of the victim. I can think of something even more fundamental: one cannot be both a Christian and Objectivist because the Christian accepts the existence of a supernatural entity on faith and bases everything else upon that belief, and the Objectivist rejects the supernatural entirely.
The a-philosophical libertarian 'non aggression principle', without an ethical basis, is put out as a kind of 'axiom' not resting on anything else, but that is not the case for Ayn Rand. She was very careful to show what facts of man's nature give rise to the need for ethics and what it must do.
Ayn Rand's conception of axioms, which is very specific, appears in her metaphysical basis identifying the fundamental starting point of her philosophy but not ethics. She very much rejected the idea of throwing out "axioms" that don't rest on anything else as if they came out of whole cloth (which turns out to be cloth with holes). You can find the axioms of existence, identity and consciousness discussed in several places, such as Galt's speech, but it's best explained in her book Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology and in Leonard Peikoff's OPAR mentioned above.
So do I, but they are not Augustinians engulfed in the religious sense of life. They are Americans with American individualist values who are so far away from Christianity that they would have been condemned as heretics and worse in the Christian era.
I'm so proud of you, having "become an adult and learned to reason for yourself", since, you know, apparently I don't know how to do that.
Whatever (big) kiddo. You go on believing what you want to believe.
Agree or disagree, but, hey, "he started it" :)
Just saying, it was pretty troll-ish to come on and say "fairy tale".
A very interesting article. I believe the link provided in the article to Rand's Theory of Rights ( https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/iss... ) may be of some help. It is a condensed version, yet of some considerable length. It hits the primary points and excerpts from her writings and explanations of the other various options along with their shortcomings according to Obectivist doctrine.
It is not a short article, but it sure is shorter than any of her books.
Respectfully,
O.A.
But I think he got it wrong in accepting religion, in a pragmatic manner, to serve in that role in the last two centuries of knowledge based realism. Religion, superstition, and the supernatural in a world of unknowables and limited imagination can provide for the masses, acceptable answers and motivations for civil interaction and even culture. But when actual knowledge and the pursuit of such can begin to answer the questions of why and how beyond the readily observable and can move forward to a world of readily available energy, transportation, communication, food, comfort, and ease of survival--even beyond the planet, the motivations and civil interaction moderators previously derived from the religions are seen for what they are, superstitions, magic, and supernatural.
Rand has provided answers in her philosophy, but can a philosophy fill the role previously held by religions for the masses, particularly a philosophy of the individual? Placing emphasis on the individual, the philosophy is of necessity disorganized and unwelcoming to those unwilling and unable to obtain the necessary education and insight to understand the philosophy, much less confidently apply it to their lives. But it remains that in order to keep government from intruding into that civil and individual space, something institutional in nature must arise and become as universally available and accepted as religion was in our past.
I won't attempt in this comment to address what that or those civil institutions could be, but I'll at least posit that Objective Philosophy must be at the foundation.
But from our perspective, we just walked down a road and saw the bridge was out. You're in a car on that road, and so we're trying to warn you.
Moreover consider not starting with something like "that's complete nonsense!" I am not always successful at avoiding this, but I try. I'm not doing anything productive just by saying I think something is stupid.
But if you want to give your time or money to help someone with no benefit to yourself other than you just wanna, I can't imagine anything wrong with that.
Whether or not you _should_ help someone else, and how much, depends on who and what they are and if they are worthy of help, what they may mean to you personally, and what you can afford to do without sacrificing more important values. If you don't take all that into account, and help because you "just wanna", then there _is_ something wrong with it, not because helping others is bad but because it's the wrong method and may harm you. There are options you take every day on minor things you do when it's what you want at the time, but it has to be optional and nothing important should be done because you "just wanna". In the case of helping others you could do enormous damage either by sacrificing something more important to you or by helping the wrong kind of person who isn't worth your efforts or worse.
I'd put this to you: relying on the government to enforce an altruistic policy is, at best, a lazy man's act. At worst, it promotes theft and covetousness--both of which the Judeo-Christian traditions forbid.
When you force someone else to give, that's theft. Worse than that, it is robbery.
The basic virtues are not 'social' at all since morality is required first as a guideline for how to live your own life. Since we live in a social context, that of course has social consequences.
Anyone who wants to know more, reply to me privately--unless I hear enough demand for me to post that as a public question.
If we "sanction" something, doesn't it mean to actively agree with? I don't read that in any part of Christian theology, which instead seeks positive action to take control of one's own future - to own one's self and one's future and all the possibilities that may arise. It gives methods for dealing with frustration and others' choices so as to allow one to focus on the bigger goal. It gives ideas about the bigger goal in the first place, and it provides a support structure to reach said goal. But in all this, primary responsibility still lies with the individual to _attain_ the goal: there is no sliding through the proverbial Pearly Gates on the coattails of others.
This is an interesting question. Isn't being able to give something away if you so choose part of its starting out as yours?
Enlightenment came as a result of people being able to READ (due to the Gutenberg press). What was (and still is) the most widely printed book? The Bible. What happened during the Enlightenment? People read the Bible (because most families could only afford one book).
But then something happened. They compared Catholic dogma with that of the Bible and found inconsistencies and contradictions. Then when they brought up their concerns to their priests, the priests were unable to reconcile these differences. So the people began to look outside the Catholic Church for truth. They began starting over - looking at EVERYTHING without the Catholic official seal of approval, which led to all kinds of unrest and persecution. All kinds of mental and scientific revolutions (not to mention all the Protestant religions) followed which eventually overthrew Catholic control of Europe. THAT was the Enlightenment. It was the study of truth unsuppressed by Catholic ideology and enforced by the nation-states of Europe.
Aristotle and Plato knew the world was round and rotated around the sun nearly two millenia prior to Columbus. Why were sailors in the Dark Ages afraid of falling off the edge of the world? Because they had grown up under a ruling religious culture that was more interested in control than in truth. The Chinese had sailed all over the world prior to the 1400's, amassing a massive trade empire in the process and creating very detailed charts of the coast of Africa and Indian Ocean. There is also significant evidence that they may have sailed the Pacific as well. Columbus was relying on these charts as much as anything when he set sail across the ocean. Why? Because the map-makers of his time were beholden to Catholic dogma and couldn't include much of this information.
You continue to see the entire Christian religious world as being Catholic. It's not. I don't have any problems with you pointing out the inconsistencies of Catholic religious dogma (it's been done for several centuries at least) - or any other you want. But to be intellectually honest, you first have to understand that Christianity is not exclusively Catholicism. You will continue to fall victim to the logical fallacy of guilt by association by projecting your criticisms of Catholicism onto other Christian sects.
The Founders of the United States were overwhelmingly Christian and overwhelmingly NON-Catholics. See [http://candst.tripod.com/tnppage/qtable.htm] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founding_Fathers_of_the_United_States] (Heading: Religion)
You are 110% right in that America would have been impossible if its creation was as just another vassal of the Vatican. Were the Founders influenced by Locke, etc.? Unquestionably. But their primary belief was in a God who created all men equal and wanted all to have equal opportunity in the land of America (see Declaration of Independence). They had seen what dogmatic control of government had done (and was still doing) for more than a millennium to the nations of Europe (among others) and so as their very first order of business set about establishing as their first constraint on government a prohibition against dogmatic/religious control. They crafted American individualism as the key tool to allow all to escape the burden of government-imposed religious dogma not because they refused a belief in God, but precisely because they believed in a God of opportunity and equality, hard work and just reward who was there for the pure seeker of truth - unrestrained by the limits of man.
Christianity has been mystical, sacrificial, ascetic and otherworldly in all essentials since its beginning in one of the many mystery cults in primitive times. Christianity, in both its earliest form and the sects into which it evolved, is in all essentials the opposite of the founding of this country. It led to and was the philosophy of the Dark Ages, not America. It is the opposite of the distinctive American sense of life of individual pursuit of one's own goals and happiness for and in accordance with life on earth, and obviously the opposite of Atlas Shrugged.
This is not a matter of "guilt by association" connecting "the Vatican" to "Christians" at the expense of "Protestants", or any kind of wars between religious sects, it is a matter of fundamental ideas and their role in history.
The sordid sense of life of the likes of Tertullian and Augustine were not "the Vatican". They were the early intellectual expression and development of the original crude mysticism, long before the theocratic rule of "the Vatican". All of it was rejected by the Enlightenment emphasis on this-worldly reason and individualism enjoying and pursuing life on this earth.
You have no regard for the _content_ of the ideas that developed across history. It matters _what_ one reads, not the act of reading whatever is at hand. The Enlightenment, contrary to your bizarre assertions, was not caused by people reading the Bible, and truth and science did not arise from competing religious sects. Your "history" -- Catholics Bad; Protestants Good; read Bible and lo, truth, science, and America appeared -- is hilariously preposterous.
Enlightenment thought was made possible not by serfs reciting the dogma of sacred text with subjective "interpretations" when they could personally read a translation of the Bible, but initially by the more intellectual elements in the Church breaking away -- notably Aquinas who re-introduced Aristotelian ideas of reason and this earth, which ultimately led to the overthrow of the likes of Augustine and the domination of life and culture by religious faith and dogma, though that had not been his intent. The rabidly anti-reason Martin Luther of the Protestant Reformation rejected the rise of Aristotelianism in a reversion to the worst of Augustine: "Aristotle is to theology as darkness to light" and "reason is the devil's harlot, and can do nothing but slander and harm all that God does and says."
The founders of this country did not have the mindset of other-worldly Christian ascetics, and they were equally as opposed to the tyranny of the Church of England as the Vatican or any other sect. Their first order of business was to establish a secular government with limited powers in order to protect the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, of every individual here on earth, from government in any form -- not just from "dogmatic/religious control" by "the Vatican" against those who want to subjectively interpret the Bible in a mystic frenzy. There was no "God of opportunity and equality, hard work and just reward who was there for the pure seeker of truth", which is a contemporary conservative religious slogan that is false, a-historical, and a hopelessly inadequate, anti-intellectual "faith-based" defense of the rights of the individual.
This is not a matter of an intra-religious war of competing other-worldly dogmas subjectively accepted on faith. The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in one's own life pursued by reason here on earth is the opposite of all of them, and was not possible, let alone necessary, with an essentially religious mindset. Neither is Atlas Shrugged. The Dark Ages was and is.
The evidence I just gave you plainly states otherwise. Ignore it at your own risk.
"You have no regard for the _content_ of the ideas that developed across history. It matters _what_ one reads, not the act of reading whatever is at hand."
You've never really _read_ scripture, then, have you. It is a profoundly philosophical text that touches upon every part of human existence, behavior, and value. That you choose to discard it so easily just because it proclaims the existence of a God you would rather not deal with seems rather short-sighted, given your obvious attention to many of the other worldly scholars of the ages. I would have expected any real seeker of truth to have at least given the most published book in history more than a passing glance, but that could be nothing more than pure speculation on my part.
This is an excellent post with awesome comments from new comers. Good work! :)
You've made your own point more eloquently than you can possible imagine.
What you seem to not be able to get over is that we actually agree much more than we disagree - you just choose to focus on the disagreement part. We both agree that identity is key. We both agree that values lead to decision-making. We both agree that natural rights such as life, liberty, property, and pursuit of our own gains (as per our values and desires) are inherent. We just disagree on the purpose of life.
I would also point out that I have actually PAID to participate in this site. I find it interesting that you have not yet done so.
In Piekoff's book, he defines Objectivism (as per Rand) as being the search for absolute truth. What IS. That means discussing possibilities - even ones some may rather ignore. I am here because I find most of the conversations here stimulating and logical and because they present things for me to think about as well as fairly sound reasoning for such, but not because I will ever embrace atheism. I believe that Rand should have advocated agnosticism instead as it fits more with in line with her rejection of formal religion (and antipathy towards such), but also acknowledges the unknown. But such is not for me to decide. I am here to present items for thought. You are welcome to accept or reject as you see fit.
As to my "snarky" comment - there was no "snark" intended. By your own words, atheism is nothing more than the pronouncement of a negative. I was only observing that your statement was both profound and defining.
Yes. I think our Constitution is not for the best in us but for the part of us the freaks out and wants to ban unpopular speech, guns, and search every house for those horrible child abusers etc.
We now have a society that seeks increasingly to legislate all behavior, with the result the degradation of morality/ethical behavior because there aren't specific laws prohibiting various behavior. Plus, laws require getting caught, so no self-restraint is called for, merely the ability to shield oneself from getting caught.
I've probably said this a hundred times. More laws are not the answer, they are the problem. They remove responsibility of the individual. They instill a sense of getting away with it, instead of the shame of doing something "wrong." We have a culture of people who aren't ashamed of living off their neighbor (welfare), of a political class that feels they are so clever (the electorate is too dumb to know we just screwed them), and a business community that seeks profit via cronyism instead of being the best. It is a society that has already failed and is merely waiting to collapse on itself.
The founders were all about "Free Will." one of the most basic doctrines in the Bible. Our own free will to choose out course of life based on a specific moral code or set of principals, that in the US Constitution are called LAWS.
"Here is my Creed," Franklin wrote to Stiles. "I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by His Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we render to him, is doing Good to his other Children...
Jefferson was very tight lipped about his personal religious views, but through his writings obviously believed in God, but did not care if you did or did not or if you believed in 20 Gods'
Thomas Jefferson was always reluctant to reveal his religious beliefs to the public, but at times he would speak to and reflect upon the public dimension of religion.
Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom: "The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. ... Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error.[2] Jefferson's religious views became a major public issue during the bitter party conflict between Federalists and Republicans in the late 1790s when Jefferson was often accused of being an atheist.
There are many famous quotes of John Adams on religion, especially in response to the Atheism of Thomas Paine. For John Adams, Atheist beliefs were a threat to a decent and moral society. He rebuked Thomas Paine's criticism of Christianity by declaring that no other religion had more "wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity." But John Adams was independent of mind to recognize consequences of any established religion. In the view of John Adams, Christianity had been twisted over the centuries by authorities who used superstition and division to control the populace, abuse minorities, and lead large scale wars. In the writing of John Adams on religion, he often criticized the Roman Catholic Church for its corrupted structure of power and deceit. John Adams' religion certainly changed during his life, but he always believed in the virtue of Christianity and attended church regularly throughout his life.
You people need to READ a little more on the founders, and on what principals this country was REALLY founded on. Not only in Christianity, but also a large portion from the government structure of ROME, and the sepration of Government to dictate religion to the people who should be free to choose their own beliefs, and not be inhibited from that.
Have any of you read the first amendment? Why do you think it was first? Why do you think they said:
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
First Amendment, first part of the first sentence. That is how important God and freedom of worship was to the founders.
Actually, I'm probably closest to a deist. Thinking there might be some consciousness or intelligence behind the whole curtain but that said consciousness does not really care one whit about events on this puny planet.
Here is a wikipedia article about the book:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_B...
http://americanhistory.si.edu/JeffersonB...
This book was a literal cut/paste from bibles and listed out the morality of Jesus and is in essence a transliteration in what appears chronological order tugging and pasting between the 4 Gospels. Wikipedia is not accepted in Collegiate circles as a "real source" either, but might just be good as an index on where to find the REAL sources.
This is a direct Quote from TJ. "I am of a sect by myself, as far
as I know."
— Thomas Jefferson, 1819
So by declaring himself a Sect, he is declaring himself a religion unto himself.
But my point had nothing to do with religion or God, only the disingenuous nature of the liberal mindset based on THEIR construct of No God and the belief in Evolution, and the "Law of Nature", Only the strong survive, which in itself is the antithesis of Welfare and supporting and elevating the poor.
From Monticello's website (but hey, what would they know about TJ):
With the help of Richard Price, a Unitarian minister in London, and Joseph Priestly, an English scientist-clergyman who emigrated to America in 1794, Jefferson eventually arrived at some positive assertions of his private religion. His ideas are nowhere better expressed than in his compilations of extracts from the New Testament "The Philosophy of Jesus" (1804) and "The Life and Morals of Jesus" (1819-20?). The former stems from his concern with the problem of maintaining social harmony in a republican nation. The latter is a multilingual collection of verses that was a product of his private search for religious truth. Jefferson believed in the existence of a Supreme Being who was the creator and sustainer of the universe and the ultimate ground of being, but this was not the triune deity of orthodox Christianity. He also rejected the idea of the divinity of Christ, but as he writes to William Short on October 31, 1819, he was convinced that the fragmentary teachings of Jesus constituted the "outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man." In correspondence, he sometimes expressed confidence that the whole country would be Unitarian[3], but he recognized the novelty of his own religious beliefs. On June 25, 1819, he wrote to Ezra Stiles Ely, "I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know."
- Rebecca Bowman, Monticello Research Report, August 1997
http://www.monticello.org/site/research-...
You and others can deny all you want that Christianity had no bearing at all on the US Constitution but the phraseology, the importance of being able to worship how YOU choose, were major key components in the Constitution AND the Revolutionary War against England.
Regardless of what you think or believe, here is another DIRECT quote from Jefferson on the US Constitution and our founding based on Religious notions.
Religion, as well as reason, confirms the soundness of those principles on which our government has been founded and its rights asserted. – Thomas Jefferson to P. H. Wendover, (1815. ME 14:283)
No government can continue good but under the control of the people; and people so demoralized [lacking good morals] and depraved as to be incapable of exercising a wholesome control, their reformation must be taken up ab incunabulis. Their minds [must] be informed by education what is right and what wrong, be encouraged in habits of virtue and deterred from those of vice by the dread of punishments, proportioned indeed, but irremissible. In all cases, follow truth as the only safe guide and eschew error which bewilders us in one false consequence after another in endless succession. These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure of order and good government. – Thomas Jefferson to John Adams (1819. ME 15:234)
Drop the obnoxious preaching to us that is we who need to "READ", with tortured polemical references to "First", bizarrely twisted to mean religion was being put first and above all else. Read the history yourself of how the major influences were the Enlightenment, not "ROME" and mysticism, which could not possibly have lead to this country, its spirit, and its success using reason to live on earth.
I'm sure if they determine that someone is out of line that they will address the problem.
Please take this as friendly advice.
I've seen users get very quickly banned for the exact same claim.
That said, many different buddhist lineages have taken this toolbox and turned it into a religion and meshed it with all sorts of gods and rituals (the Tibetans come to mind as a notable example).
What I was pointing out was that many of the posts on this thread were attempting to treat "Christianity" as a single, homogeneous belief set rather than a variety of widely varying belief sets, which can lead one to erroneously conclude many different things. When one recognizes that the individual sects vary WIDELY in their belief sets - in fact even contradicting each other on various points - it then becomes illogical to denounce all by inclusion (fallacy of guilt by association). One must individually address the individual belief sets in order to prove or disprove their validity.
But in the off chance that life isn't merely an exercise in complete futility and pointlessness, I'm going to choose a course that provides something to look forward to after death. If I'm disappointed, I've lost nothing and won't even realize it.
Really. Do you _want_ this life to be transient and meaningless? For Death to be the point at which nothing you did ever mattered at all? That anyone you ever cared for or who cared for you was similarly a fleeting, passing fancy? An ephemeral wind?
Why does it bother you so much when I tell you that I live for an extension of my being beyond the Door of Death so that I can continue to enjoy the company of my friends and family? That I seek for a continuance of my intellect - my intelligence, my identity - beyond the close of this chapter of my life? Why should I NOT seek to continue what I value and hold dear? Wouldn't that betray the single most important principle of logic itself - identity?
You don't have to believe in God. I'm not trying to tell you to. I'm trying to point out the meaninglessness of the alternative. If you choose to ignore it because it doesn't fit your preconceptions, that is your choice. I live for life and the possibilities it brings. Any who choose to live for death may similarly enjoy that privilege. I just can't reconcile such a desire with a simultaneous desire for being and identity. To me, it is a stark contradiction of logic.
The point I was trying to make was that the difference branches off very quickly at Death. For those who do not believe in an afterlife, at that point, existence becomes entirely meaningless. Nothing one ever did in life matters one whit. It wouldn't matter if one was the "saintliest saint" or the "vilest of sinners". It wouldn't matter whether you were a Christian, a Buddhist, a Muslim, or an Objectivist. That's the whole point: the meaningless of it all. Without existence after death, any investment in morality I make and its aggregate returns will be nullified instantly.
Instead, I choose to live for myself. I choose to live assuming that my actions here determine the possibilities which will open up for me after the Door of Death swings shut. I choose to live so that the investment in my actions here will pay dividends both now AND then. I just refuse to buy into the mentality of oblivion when there is the so-obvious alternative which has so much more appeal!
I just realized she said "pemise". ROFLMAO!
The intolerance of the objectivist religion towards others that are productive and good is
disturbing to me.
Rejecting even the possibility of a higher intellect,creator, when you look at nature is not logical at all.
If you have it all figured out then you are a better man than me. Goodbye.
http://ij.org/savannah-tour-guides-free-...
The founding fathers did not see it as important AND they saw it as a violation between Church and State. Objectivists are not intolerant of everyone "productive and good." You have enjoyed yourself on this, an Objectivist, website.
Faith is merely a foreign word to those who refuse to think of anything in terms of possibilities - especially anything beyond this life. That to me is the main area where atheism falls on its face in a big way. If there is nothing after this life - no amount of achievement in the present will matter one bit. If one is living for themselves, how can they possibly claim to believe in one's own dissolution at death as being a viable alternative?
Rational people accept their '"dissolution" at death because every observation confirms it. There is zero evidence of consciousness existing apart from a material, living body. Your wishful thinking and speculations about a supernatural existence don't change that. Your perceived lack of achievement does not imply that you keep going.
"Rational people accept their '"dissolution" at death because every observation confirms it."
So I'm really curious: how many people have you met have passed through the Doors of Death and confirmed your hypothesis? Answer: Zero. So how many observations actually exist confirming your hypothesis? Zero. And you want to call that confirmation or proof? Really?
On the other hand, I have many witnesses who say that life does exist after this - of which I am one. It is not wishful thinking or superstition. You choose to disbelieve the witnesses because you prefer the alternative. Such is your conscious choice. You are entitled to it and (contrary to what you might think) I do not seek to take away any such. We each lay our plans for tomorrow, investing in what we each think will bring us the greatest return. I invest in a future with friends and family in which I plan to enjoy that investment. I hope your investment brings you all the returns you anticipate.
Thank you for your words of support. Which ideas do you think *all* objectisits would disagree with me on? I've only read Fountain Head and AS, and I loved/agreed with most of it. So it suprises me there would be things _all_ objectists disagree w/ me on. It's possible, though, b/c I come up with my own ideas, and I haven't read non-fiction on Objectivism.
I would start with Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
https://www.aynrand.org/novels/capitalis...
I reject the claim that all of those things are intrinsically collectivist.
We hire police officers to reduce crime. We make everyone pay for it, even those who would be willing to provide their own security. We'd like to find a way for people don't like it to opt out, but the theory is even if we had the police only respond to people who paid for policing, just having them patrolling benefits everyone. So we make everyone pay. We do the same thing for defending the country against invasion.
Suppose we find that parts of one of those supposedly collectivist programs such as Welfare or education provide the same type of benefit as more policing. Maybe if you provide food and education geared toward a good-paying jobs, a percentage of would-be criminals will focus instead of learning a useful job. The knee-jerk response appears to be "if you want to hire someone to arrest them and jail them, great, but if the approach involves trying to help them that's collectivist." You can show that many gov't attempts to help people fail. You can show that many gov't attempts to catch criminals while respecting citizens' rights fail. But it doesn't mean the very concept of gov't providing help and/or policing are wrong.
We have a huge problem with collectivism, esp with middle-class citizens who look to the gov't to take care of their life decisions or basic needs. This is part of why gov't is several times most costly and intrusive than it needs to be.
My concern about collectivism, however, doesn't make opposed to anything the gov't does that sounds at all like helping someone.
Aren't all gov't programs funding by theft (compulsory taxes)? If so, what is the reason for singling out certain programs as collectivist?
I didn't mean any offense by "singling out", just trying to understand why some spending is collectivist.
"The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law. But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from the role of protector to the role of man’s deadliest enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the right to the wielding of violence against victims deprived of the right of self-defense. Such a government substitutes for morality the following rule of social conduct: you may do whatever you please to your neighbor, provided your gang is bigger than his." Galt's Speech
My point is the same motivations for using tax dollars to stop crime with guns and jails allows us to use tax dollars for things that sound like helping people if they achieve the same goals. I can see reasons why it might be contrary to objectivism, but it's very hard for me to understand that if evidence shows gov't can protect us from criminals by jailing people or providing job training or drug treatment, the objectivist says gov't must to limit its toolbox to things that are punitive.
2. the govt takes your money to do these things with. If you do not limit their role, pretty soon they need more of your $s to try this or that program and before you know it, you are paying 40-50 percent of your earnings to this or that of which you have no benefit but you are now a slave. tht's right-you do not get to break your slave role from the US without a rigorous exit process and lots of money. Do not forget the goal. It is most efficient for the market to decide this or that program. and there is incentive. people, ie police payers, will leave if the city can't keep crime under control. any 8 year old playing SIM city figures that out after a couple of games
"roper role of government must by definition, be limited. to try this or that program to bring down a perceived crime rate spike is not the govts role"
Then how is it acceptable for the gov't to pay for policing (i.e. this program or that program) to reduce crime?
I think that most here would say it is anything that puts the rights of the group over the rights of the individual. If you can point to a program that puts the rights of the individual over those of the group, then you may have one that most here could agree with. I'm the Hallings would say that IP protection would be such. I can think of nothing else that would fit such a definition.
"Any group or “collective,” large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members." Virtue of Selfishness