Hiding religion behind the concept 'unknown' in a 'relabeling'is not honest. Your posts are increasingly incoherent and contradictory.

1) Is Timelord an Objectivist?
2) If so Timelord provided a definition for life.
3) If Timelord whom YOU have defended as an Objectivist used the definition I mentioned, then either a. The definition is correct withing Objectivist philosophy, or b. Timelord is not using the definition right and misinterpreted the definition of life within Objectivist philosophy.

4) If the definition is true, then a. a fetus is human life and entitled to all the rights a human has, making abortion Murder by the legal statues, or b. the definition is false, and Timelord made the mistake.

Either way no matter how I was neither misinterpreting nor misrepresenting anything, simply making a logical observation based on one of the Gulches more prolific Objectivists.

So please pick which is true and false. Or provide in your "opinion" what the REAL definition of LIFE is, and we can go from there.

That is unintelligible and rambling. These posts are becoming increasingly incoherent. You assume there is a "God", then say it is "unknown" despite your claim to it as knowledge, then toss out a "faith fits over there", whatever that is supposed to mean, then veer off into living "according to bets" deemed to be "faithful", then call the whole blob a "set of set-aside pile of notions". This whole incoherence is called "intriguing" with no reasons, followed by a leap to your being "treated to new knowledge here". The incoherence is not knowledge at all and has nothing to do with "here" insofar as this is a forum for Ayn Rand's ideas. If you want to become a full fledged mystic based on feelings, then just be honest and leap in with abandonment and do it, but it has nothing to do with Ayn Rand's philosophy, which it completely contradicts.

First, I have NEVER attacked Ayn Rand's endorsement of atheism, or her views on God and Religion.

You just commited a major LIE, If I did so please show me where I attacked her.

Also you AGAIN, pulled a liberal tactic of reversing words to deflect a topic, which demeans YOUR credibility and shows me you are not capable of comprehending things. Or perhaps your are dyslexic.

I did NOT say an Objectivist Framework for Christianity. GET IT RIGHT!!! I said "Christian context within an Objectivist framework"

They are two ENTIRELY different things which you obviously did not understand and then attack me for due to your poor reading and understanding skills.

You sound like a liberal. Genes are present at conception and they are human genes.

fascinating! . I will check it out!!! -- j
.

If you are looking for excuses to believe what you feel like you will find it anywhere. Blarman's militant insistence that his imaginings that faith as a source of knowledge while Bible Thumping rambling theology is irrational to its core and no answer to anything. His lack of logical standards in his rationalizing only means that no discussion is possible. Whatever you do because you feel like it you should be thoroughly aware that that approach is fundamentally opposed to Ayn Rand's philosophy. You can do what you want to but please stop calling it Objectivism while trying to disguise religious faith as nothing but the valid concept of the unknown.

it has everything to do with mine -- but not everything unknown is God;;;
God is in that grouping. . faith is, too. . it is a fun group, since everything
which we learn contributes to its dissolution, yet it seems never to diminish!!! -- j
.

A pregnant woman is murdered and the murderer is charged with two homicides despite the unborn baby being described as a fetus..
Meanwhile crack whore Sally Ann visits Planned Parenthood for the upteenth time as Obama applauds.
What is wrong with this picture?
A rational thinker does not need religion to figure stupid out. An unborn baby also has rights.

nope, just that God is unknown, and faith fits over there also -- I adjust
my life according to bets which I take about the unknown, calling
the actions faithful. . it's a set-aside pile of notions which I find
quite intriguing, since we are often treated to new knowledge there. -- j
.

Having a telescope has nothing to do with intuitions and spirits. The existence of telescopes, glasses, amplifiers, and hearing aids is not a form of faith and does not justify it.

Taking risks and having confidence is not religious faith in the supernatural as a means to knowledge. The distinction is between your faculty of reason perceiving and integrating the data supplied by the known five senses versus fantasizing in your imagination. A desire to know more and the confidence that you can is not and does not justify the notion of faith as a means to knowledge. Blarman's demand for immortality contrary to all known facts is irrelevant to knowledge and how we obtain it.

if you start another thread, Blarman, would you let me know about it?
I am reading every word of this interchange series and find it fascinating!!! -- j
.

Force against "another" what? The source of rights is recognition of an individual's nature as a living entity who must use his reasoning mind to live. That does not apply to a fetus and is why a fetus is not a "person". A fetus is a potential person.

A fetus or a previous collection of human cells that has human DNA does not have the characteristics of a person until it is born. We have rights because of what we are, not because what we are was encoded in DNA. Being born is the essential difference.

This has nothing to do with a fetus "initiating force". The woman has the right to control her own body. Once the baby is born it is a biologically independent entity, no longer literally parasitical on a biological host, and begins to exercise its five senses and its reasoning capacity to differentiate and understand things in the world. The parents then have the responsibility to care for the person they have created. That person's rights continue to grow in accordance with its capacity to exercise them.

You seem to be basing everything on a the idea of "initiation of force" without regard to force against what and why, where the principle comes from, and what else is required in ethics. That is an a-philosophical libertarian approach that is not Ayn Rand's philosophy.

for me, though, it's good. . I seek to learn more about the unknown,
I have faith that I will learn more, and I have faith that it is there.
Blarman's afterlife comments are interesting, as I get ready to go on
vacation and dodge thousands of other cars on the road. . I might not
do this if I were deathly afraid of the unknown, like a possible death
on the road. . but I go on vacation anyway, with the long-term view
that we're likely to be OK, my wife and I, on the road. . as an atheist,
years ago, I went on vacation differently. . I was a tad more anxious. -- j
.

We already have a concept for the unknown. The word is "unknown".

"Relabeling" does not make the reasons for rejecting religion go away and package dealing religion with the valid concept of the unknown does not justify religion for anyone who recognizes the concept "unknown".

I have a telescope, and its use IS instructive!!! -- j
.

Planning for one's future does not mean fantasizing a future beyond one's existence.

yes, and I have. . God is the unknown.
an alternate view is simply this::: God is reality. . we are
trying to know reality, making strides daily. -- j
.

Questions about the time frame for viability does not mean a woman loses her right to her own body. It is telling that religionists mystically proclaim "rights" for the unborn even before the end of the first trimester, all the way back to cells at conception, showing that even "viability"to survive is a phony issue for them in their mystical impositions.

AR: "Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered."

no, Exceptico, he need not. . he can believe, and it's the polar opposite
of agnosticism. . the agnostic believes NOT but is not totally sure;;;
the Christian believes, and is totally sure. . as Heinlein said,
delusion is functional -- without it, mothers would drown
their babies at sight. -- j
.

it's the same kind of difference, Blarman, as we taught in the 70s
as the difference between the Japanese business perspective and
the U.S. perspective. . we in the u.s. had typically thought in terms
of the next quarter, the next year, the next 5 years for planning.
the Japanese were thinking in terms of 25 years, particularly
in terms of market share. . that's how Honda beat Harley. . well, one of
the ways. . the Honda 50 was such an international hit that they
began there, and Harley had nothing, there.

the difference is perspective. . think long-term and win in the long run. -- j

You are irrationally fixated on death and fantasies of how you want to get around it. Your faith is cognitively useless and destructive. Rejecting it is not "nihilist". Your fantasizing is not a source of knowledge and not something to be pushed on a forum for Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason. Take it somewhere else. It doesn't belong her.

Christian doctrine is a merging of ancient mystery cults and neo-Platonists, especially Plotinus. Neither is a credible recommendation.

The mentality of faithful fantasies as opposed to reason based on the physical senses apprehending reality is the fundamental distinction between Plato and Aristotle, which remains the fundamental philosophical distinction in various guises to this day.

We know we have five senses and we know that in addition people have the capacity to fantasize. We also know that thinking is not infallible and that random thoughts and feeling are, to say the least, unreliable means to knowledge. We know that no one has ever been able to describe, let alone validate, any mechanism for claimed special insights by faith.

That is why we rely on reason, logic and the scientific method. That includes devices like telescopes to enhance the power of sight in accordance with known physical principles. Telescopes are not a new form of awareness establishing by analogy a claimed validity of faith.

This is why one cannot argue with the arbitrary claims of the faithful asserting their favorite fantasies as superior to reason. There are no standards under that claimed method to establish truth, i.e., correspondence with reality, and no standards by which to resolve disputes.

That is why the destructive religionist mystics are fundamentally antagonistic to Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason and why discussion with their proselytzing here would be futilely impossible, is why they are rationally dismissed out of hand as cognitively worthless, and why such proselytizers don't belong here -- to be summarily removed if they cannot and will not confine themselves to the guidelines of this forum.

If by your definition you mean the standard one with omnipotence etc that you encountered in a philosophy course, that has been discussed several times as impossibly self-contradictory, as has been well known for a very long time. Blarman's "clarification" with millennia-old theological mumbo jumbo from the "point of view" of a mystic trance does not help.