Rand and Religion
Interested to hear how others have dealt with the anti-religion aspect of Objectivism. I agree with Rand that most religious institutions tend to be very heavy on self sacrifice. However, I feel that most of that comes from financial interest in the church itself (ie. Catholics selling indulgences). When reading the actual bible, I don't see as much about self sacrifice as I see lessons on how to treat others. I'm not a fanatic by any means, but I do find it hard to overcome 37 years of religious teaching that there is something greater than ourselves. Do other's believe that you can square any portion of your religion with your Objectivist ideals? I don't think they have to be mutually exclusive. Thoughts?
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I think that is a true weakness in the conservative movement today- we allow the liberals to set the language of the debate.
Scott manages this site and is its moderator. He was also a Producer on the movies. In other words, this is his house.
Kaila
It would be interesting to know what it specifically is that you consider a waste of time?
Spam is normally associated with someone trying to sell something, that is definitely not the case with the information I include in my comments.
Furthermore I would ask you who you believe gives you the authority to tell anyone how to post. I post my name and email address as well as a website to encourage further commentary and in order to not hide behind a pseudonym as so many people tend to do. I find that habit to be used mostly by people who like to slander other people instead of having a reasoned exchange of ideas.
Of course if anyone doesn't like what I or anyone else has to say, they are free to ignore my post.
Fred Speckmann
A separate issue is whether the definitions or terms are connected to reality. My previous comments of faith are such an example.
A great read on this is Richard Rubinstein's, "Aristotle's Children". He is a theist, a great story teller and historian. It shows a much deeper view of the attempts to integrate reason and faith in history. It never gets to Rand even though her work proceeded this book.
You can do better than that Fred. http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/faq#faq1...
On another note, I need to ask you to stop posting your email address and website url in your comments as it could be considered spamming. Thanks.
While I don't necessarily agree with your entire point here, you have hit on one of my issues with atheist. I am very willing to have a conversation about my beliefs, but many atheists begin the conversation with "you must be the biggest idiot on earth if you believe in God." These are the people I refer to as militants preachers of atheism. I love a good intellectual debate, but when you start from the premise that my currently un- provable premise is the only possibility, it's hard to have a debate.
I agree, you are a total waste of time as you continue the argument of how many angels are dancing on the head of a pin.
Your only point is your continuing argument with Christianity which you wish to destroy and sadly don't understand.
By my using the word fundamentally the word following is qualified to be not quite the same at all. While I certainly without qualification see similarities between the two philosophies such as freedom of agency (i.e.the choice to follow one's own wishes) to keep what is one's earnings from work performed or businesses created are in fact identical. The only difference is the manner in which objectivism is applied by purely individual choice and Christianity is a guiding moral principle and philosophy.
Fred
You wrote above: "The philosophy of objectivism and Christianity are in fact fundamentally the same."
I tried to point out that they are far from "fundamentally the same".
Now you write: "I must remind you that I was not claiming that objectivism and Christianity were the same."
Which is it?
This kind of discussion is a total waste of precious time.
mammoths and the velociraptors and the alligators.......
whoops; that last one was a phenomenal success!!! -- j
p.s. the crocs and allis are wonderful, having made
it so far along the path of life, aren't they?
Once again I receive an argument about angels dancing on the head of a pin. While I have no problem respecting the opinion of an atheist and have nothing against atheist, I must remind you that I was not claiming that objectivism and Christianity were the same. I was stating that they are not conflicting in my opinion as a Christian whatsoever. In fact objectivism despite what Ayn Rand's beliefs were are very compatible and attempt to serve the same purpose of freedom for all men. Note, I wrote compatible and not the same.
The question when trying to communicate between Christians and atheist is always the same. Why do atheist spend their precious time trying to make Christians feel inferior and foolish for their beliefs, not to mention often trying to ban Christianity when we don't want to interfere in your lack of belief at all.
Fred Speckmann
"... we have no evidence of any type that shows an organism evolving over time into a different organism."
Genetic changes are the only way that a LIVING organism species can change, i.e. mutations. That, I think, is what Darwin observed and understood, composing his theory on a "macroscopic" scale. We now already know much more than he did and, I am confident, will learn in the future much more. Evolution of life is evolution of DNA. Isn't it?
"...and simply ran experiments to prove their initial theory, and refused to study any possible explanations that didn't match their preconceived notions."
I do not think they ever ran any controlled experiments. They composed numerous computer simulation that produced widely diverging forecasts for the climate. As we speak, more and more evidence is surfacing that they falsified the input data to obtain the forecasts which their political ideology demanded.
And science and scientists are getting their reputations terribly smeared, thanks in no small part to the journalistic industry, whose vast majority shares the same political ideology with the global warming crowd.
When you think of these probabilities, do you consider all the failed attempts that accompanying the successful ones? The latter ones are the only ones that we see.
So when you say, "both sides have no proof", that ignores the fact one side precludes proof by the nature of their assertions to the extent they have epistemologically nonsensical language constructs.
At the extreme of this dilemma, we have the contradictions of quantum theory. One good friend who is literally a rocket scientist points out that the predictions of that theory have worked out and have been tested to more decimal precision than any other because of the appropriate skepticism. My best attempt to hold that full context is that the math in fact "describes" the forces at work, However, the explanation needs a rethink to discover an alternative to the contradictions. There is a version of this situation for Einstein's General Theory of Relativity too. A description I have heard is that the theory resolved a logical problem by opting for fixing "C", the speed of light, and trading off identity, And that was driven by a philosophical presumption that didn't appreciate what they were giving up.
For those interested, I recommend reading Rand's, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, her theory of Concepts. I especially recommend the appendices in the second edition which clarified a lot for me many years ago.
I will spend my time in the middle of that spectrum and continue my pursuit of knowledge.
I also disagree that proving God doesn't exist is impossible. If we can scientifically prove any of the competing theories, it would then disprove the alternatives.
I am not saying that theory is wrong, I am simply pointing out that it is a theory, and needs further investigation. Until we find a way to prove any particular theory, we should not rule out competing theories.
That type of exclusionary science is what gave us man made global warming and climate change. Those scientists started with the premise that the world was warming post industrial revolution, and that warming was caused by man. They refused to acknowledge any other theories (ie- that our planet's climate has changed constantly over millions of years), and simply ran experiments to prove their initial theory, and refused to study any possible explanations that didn't match their preconceived notions.
We may find out that both sides of this argument are completely wrong, and creationism and evolution are both wrong. If we don't continue to test all theories until they are proven or disproven, we will never move past our current understanding.
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