Faith is not "realistic". It is impossible to argue with a mystic. Discussion here is for the benefit of understanding by the rational. Those who aren't are not our concern.

He is referring to concepts that are well known and logical. Reality is not a "straw man". The "point of view" of an "alternate" mystic trance misusing words and concepts is not relevant.

They don't deny that Pops can do that, but he doesn't take orders from the plebes. Besides, wasn't the theatrics with the cross enough? The role of the psychiatrist is more pertinent.

I think it was the Green God.

If so, then anyone should be able to say what it is.

Belief through faith is fundamentally destructive whether practiced by traditional religions or communist thugs. Reason and faith are opposites. They are mutually exclusive. Knowledge of the world cannot be attained by faith. Communist regimes were ideologically based on the altruistic morality of sacrifice of the individual to others inherited from traditional religion and retained by faith.

This country was founded on the ideas of reason and individualism in the Enlightenment, not religion. The Enlightenment overthrew the death grip of religion on western thought. Christianity was the philosophy of the Dark Ages, not of this country. The moral right to one's own life, liberty, property and pursuit of one's own life on earth is the opposite of Christianity's demands for faith and other worldly duty to sacrifice. This country would have been impossible under the traditional Christianity, which had to be watered down and secularized to survive. "Moral underpinnings of Judeo Christian absolutes" for sacrifice, duty, and living for another world contradict everything the founding of this country stood for.

If you are interested in Ayn Rand's ideas you should read in particular on this historical/philosophical topic Leonard Peikoff's The Ominous Parallels.

Faith is incompatible with Ayn Rand's philosophy and cannot be derived from it. Muddying the waters by relabeling faith to mean only the "unknown" does not help. You only leave confusion over what you claim to be talking about.

You missed the point that rejecting the belief is atheism, not agnosticism, and returned to 'all religion' versus 'Christianity' in the original question, which distinction I had not discussed. You don't need to disprove a negative. An arbitrary assertion, like the claims for a god, is rationally rejected out of hand, not to be taken seriously, as if it had never been said. That is the basis for atheism as not believing. If in addition the arbitrary assertion is loaded with self contradictions, as claims for god typically are, then you can say that it cannot exist because contradictions don't exist. So you don't need to see a "proof either way" to be an atheist.

The essence of Ayn Rand's ideas was her philosophy of reason and egoism, not rejecting faith. Rejecting faith is a consequence, not the central point. Atheism is a negative position, only rejecting the supernatural. She emphasized what she was for. She emphatically rejected religion but did not dwell on it unnecessarily. She once said that she is an atheist but not a militant atheist. She had more important things to write and think about. But her adamantly rejecting it when it came up was required by integrity. There would have been no justification for pandering to the "sincerity" of something so destructive and so fundamentally opposed to her philosophy and support of the good.

I missed no point. Denying god would be aethism, and yes, I was once there. Rejecting such belief is not really the same. Never in my 77 years have I seen any god, so I "can't know" either way, which I term agnostic. Never in those 77 years have I seen proof either way.

Whether Christian or any other religion, my problem is with Blind Faith, using that as a substitute for reality and truth. I consider that was also the essence of Ayn Rand. It would probably have been better had she been less adamant, as by that she invited the disdain of those who "feel" sincerely religious. Sad.

Yes, and we have been discussing mostly ggonline. The question was in the present tense, not the historical Valley in Atlas Shrugged, which had no trace of any kind of mysticism, faith, or the supernatural. Only the consistent and best were selected by invitation.

Theories aren't just proposed out of thin air and demanded to be accepted as true until someone proves otherwise. The establishment of scientific hypotheses and theories through painstaking research based on prior knowledge and scientific explanation is a difficult and time consuming process. Scientists first look for problems that may have been missed, but mostly the subsequent process after establishment of a theory is to explore the frontiers and accuracy and to see where else it may apply or may not apply in unanticipated ways. It is a process of constant striving and hunger to discover and explore more knowledge, broadened in scope, explored in more detail, better integrated, and scrupulously uncovering and correcting any errors.

This process of discovery and understanding could not be more different than the mystics' decrees of faith.

Very true. Borrowing from Branden, I don’t have any faith, I don’t respect faith, I don’t believe in faith. After a person has announced he holds his belief by faith, all attempts to engage in discussion fail because the only means I have are reason, empirical demonstration, rules of evidence, and so forth. None of which are relevant to the grounds for his belief.

I found an immense amount of transparent rationalization in this thread. The godists begin by espousing some particular doctrine that makes them argue the notion of god is plausible or that some supernatural force in the universe is plausible. The next second, they are talking about accepting Jesus Christ as the savior, the doctrine of an after life, original sin, and a host of other precepts which are in no sense whatever logically entailed by or imply the notion of god originally set forth, even if one granted the concept any kind of intellectual validity.

Exasperating. But, it makes me enjoy a Margarita on the rocks all the more.

Your snarling contempt for science is astounding. The article you cited is a sensationalized account of attempts to establish the precision of a difficult to directly measure constant. It was first measured by Cavendish in his famous experiment published in 1798. It was previously known by the time of Newton from indirect measurements from astronomy. Newton's theory of gravitation has been a spectacularly successful achievement of the rational human mind for centuries, yet the mystics still snarl at it.

Science is done despite religion, not because of it. If a scientist holds irrational ideas in addition to his accomplishments, the accomplishment does not justify the rest. Argument from authority is a fallacy.

Thanks for clarifying it. I was unaware of that info about Ayn Rand.

You can't argue with faith. It's dogmatically arbitrary with no standards for resolving differences. The details of his "thoughts" are irrelevant.

You are equivocating between a rational being and cells with potential that only have "human" genes. That is an equivocation on "human".

The Bible thumping did not answer his question. You don't seem to understand the difference between the shape of the earth as a sphere (not "round") and the earth's orbit around the sun (not "round").

Your contempt for science (not "sciense") is astounding. Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason has enormous respect for science as achievement of the human mind. The laws of physics are conceptual knowledge that must by formulated by man based on empirical discovery of facts properly categorized. Things do what they do because of what they are, i.e., in accordance with their nature, not because of obedience to the supernatural. "God did it" is no explanation of anything and never led to any understanding, it's insistence as church dogma only held up and prevented scientific exploration for centuries.

It doesn't make any difference what sect you claim to be. Other people are not "stupid", let alone "damn freeking STUPID", for rejecting religious dogma demanding a duty in the name of being "responsible".

It doesn't make any difference what you claim your source is. You are misrepresenting Ayn Rand.

There is no such thing as an "Objectivist framework" for Christianity.

People are welcome here when they are honest and serious about learning more about Ayn Rand's ideas, no matter what their background, and when they don't proselytize religion and don't attack Ayn Rand for not endorsing religious dogmas the way woodlema does.

You missed the point. Rejecting belief in a god is atheism, not agnosticism. It doesn't matter how many gods are on the menu. If you "can't" or "don't know" something it's assertion by others doesn't make it possible.

Presumably, Johnpe focused on Christianity for this topic because it is the dominant religion in this country, it is the religion behind religious conservatives, and it is the religion that most often shows up on this forum as confused with being compatible with Ayn Rand's ideas.

Also did you even READ my post. I said based on the definition Timelord provided... good grief READ dammit READ and comprehend!!!

Not sure you and I are on the same page.

What makes you think I am Catholic, really? good grief...What "Church" are you talking about, certainly not one I have ever attended.

Birth control, I love sex for pleasure, and you need to be responsible for YOUR decisions, if that means being responsible for 18 years because you were to damn freeking STUPID to control yourself then SO BE IT!!!

It's a shame you can't stay out of other people's "knees". The church opposes birth control as well as sex for human pleasure and abortion. Until the Supreme Court ruled in the early 1970s that the bans on birth control are unconstitutional the Church openly supported that statist imposition of anti-man Church dogma.

Your assertion that based on Objectivism "a fetus is human life and entitled to all rights" and "abortion is murder" is false. You don't know what you are talking about. Your religious proselytizing and attacks on Ayn Rand do not belong here.