Objectivism & Thanksgiving?
Thanksgiving is, by tradition, given to a being that Objectivists say either does not exist or is unnecessary. Hence I am curious how, if at all, Objectivists deal with Thanksgiving. When responding, for clarity to those reading this thread, identify yourself as either atheist, agnostic, or deist. As for myself, I cannot rationally conclude that this universe is not the product of a rational mind. There is way too much that would be inexplicable.
I am truly seeking to understand how you have determined reason is man's ultimate means of determining reality when you deny you have faith in such a means when you cannot prove another means is not superior (e.g. revelation).
I believe you have a circular reasoning (i.e. we have reasoned to reason).
I am not being antagonist, but seriously asking a question, expecting a serious response and not philosophical invective.
If that is true, then how do you determine your morals when you don't believe there is an external revelatory source for such? If you reason that an accepted moral position is not to murder, is it invalid for one to reason murder is an accepted moral position (i.e. murder is good to one person and not good to another).
A: Only if the something remained in the emptiness therefore therefore it would not be empty. In any case that's a hundred or so million years in the future as one possibility but for me it's two possibly three decades if I lay off hamburgers once a month.
Ok good, I am glad you didn't avoid the question.
Unfortunately, I have a question to ask you which will help me answer your question.
Have the 5 sense, scientific method or any other means of perception determined something can come from nothing?
Some minds do determine murder as ok. Meaning is created by a mind in the sense that one makes a judgement about a relationship of ones percepts in some sense or significance to oneself or to some other aspect of reality, i.e., if the self is rational and well integrated, it can create mental meanings that are valid about objective reality.
Your "If meaning is what I create, then nothing is right or wrong in an absolute sense correct?" seems to imply some kind of belief in a static reality of rights and wrongs that are perceived by minds. The unit of minds is the individual mind as in individual brains and such a mind is self made and can create meanings rationally, irrationally, or non-rationally. But that meaning is in the brain of the individual and not to be reified as some absolute to be discovered in reality externally to individual brains. It takes a sense of self to decide on right or wrong or good or bad. That is why there is so much bad in the world where self is considered as a nearly evil attribute of a human. Also, not everything has a meaning, so, your use of the absolute "nothing" is not meaningful.
There is a great scene in the movie Shenandoah (which could be a tribute to objectivism) when Charlie Anderson (Jimmy Stewart) is about to pray before a meal in keeping with his deceased wife's wishes to keep the family in the church. I'm doing this from memory but Charlie bows his head and says well Lord, we prepared the field, planted the seed, weeded the field, fed the animals, did our own butchering and harvested the field-then we cooked the food--but I guess we are thankful to you.... bad paraphrase but great secular Thanksgiving moment.
I like best the AR comment AND the comments in last year's Gulch on thanksgiving-a producers holiday. I have often found myself just thankful about an outcome. Not a prayer-just internally grateful that I made it through. As many have said, sometimes we are just stuck with a word, a name a date and for me sometimes it's just easier to say Merry Christmas than to explain all of the legends and pagan rites leading up to that day. A well meant albeit lazy greeting works. But to sum up-today because of the calendar I take a moment to be internally thankful for the RESULTS of MY EFFORTS. And Happy thanks-give day to you all. We are in the Gulch for- if not a rigid adherence to a creed-we are here with a shared or common approach to a belief that our own minds and our own efforts are a beautiful thing.
I am grateful to you all that contribute. Especially when I think I have the only answer and your comments and responses challenge me to THINK.
If I were naming the holidays, I'd probably name them Harvest Festival and Winter Solstice. They come at universally recognized times of the year.
But on this day there is a component of thankfulness at our house, not to any external God or government, but just that the glass is significantly more than half full.
Meaning is something that minds create about objective reality. Meaning is not something that has some kind of existence other than in rational minds. Those who try to reify concepts live in fantasy worlds. The facts of evolution and existence are not the cause of anything. They are concepts about matter and its processes. Evolution is the meaning that minds have created about some aspects of reality as are the principles of chemistry and physics and all other studies of objective reality.
Societies through government and religions make all kinds of reasons to control people and Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, pledges, etc. are ways to get people to act in some way that makes some feel good to see some people obey.
The Pilgrims probably had a good reason for giving thanks to their god after surviving their initial communist society's first years in the new world. They soon found that the "from each according to ability and to each according to need" type belief was inhuman and that private property was the human way to go.
I celebrate TDay, XMas, Easter, Memorial Day, Labor Day and all the other traditional holidays, and then I throw in a few pagan holidays to boot. Why Not? I do not care about whether there is a 'tainted origin' in these holidays - they are what I mean them to be.
Thank you (Gulch, not God) for being here and being informative and entertaining for the last several years. There: I have Given Thanks!
Jan, happily arrogant
Aristotle's logic and Galileo's scientific method coupled with the intelligence which Nature has infused into humans are the necessary elements to correctly identify that existence. Faith and worry have never added one iota to the knowledge base developed by humanity.
That knowledge base does not yet include the origins of the universe, specifically, the answer to the question: Did anything exist prior to the current expansion of the universe?
What does this mean? Can you send a link to an example of someone doing it or someone writing a blurb about others doing it--- any example that sort of explains what you mean.
Load more comments...