Galt would have refused Conservatives from the Gulch just like he would have refused Liberals
Posted by JohnConnor352 8 years ago to Philosophy
Both [conservatives and liberals] hold the same premise—the mind-body dichotomy—but choose opposite sides of this lethal fallacy.
The conservatives want freedom to act in the material realm; they tend to oppose government control of production, of industry, of trade, of business, of physical goods, of material wealth. But they advocate government control of man’s spirit, i.e., man’s consciousness; they advocate the State’s right to impose censorship, to determine moral values, to create and enforce a governmental establishment of morality, to rule the intellect. The liberals want freedom to act in the spiritual realm; they oppose censorship, they oppose government control of ideas, of the arts, of the press, of education (note their concern with “academic freedom”). But they advocate government control of material production, of business, of employment, of wages, of profits, of all physical property—they advocate it all the way down to total expropriation.
The conservatives see man as a body freely roaming the earth, building sand piles or factories—with an electronic computer inside his skull, controlled from Washington. The liberals see man as a soul freewheeling to the farthest reaches of the universe—but wearing chains from nose to toes when he crosses the street to buy a loaf of bread.
Yet it is the conservatives who are predominantly religionists, who proclaim the superiority of the soul over the body, who represent what I call the “mystics of spirit.” And it is the liberals who are predominantly materialists, who regard man as an aggregate of meat, and who represent what I call the “mystics of muscle.”
This is merely a paradox, not a contradiction: each camp wants to control the realm it regards as metaphysically important; each grants freedom only to the activities it despises. Observe that the conservatives insult and demean the rich or those who succeed in material production, regarding them as morally inferior—and that the liberals treat ideas as a cynical con game. “Control,” to both camps, means the power to rule by physical force. Neither camp holds freedom as a value. The conservatives want to rule man’s consciousness; the liberals, his body.
The conservatives want freedom to act in the material realm; they tend to oppose government control of production, of industry, of trade, of business, of physical goods, of material wealth. But they advocate government control of man’s spirit, i.e., man’s consciousness; they advocate the State’s right to impose censorship, to determine moral values, to create and enforce a governmental establishment of morality, to rule the intellect. The liberals want freedom to act in the spiritual realm; they oppose censorship, they oppose government control of ideas, of the arts, of the press, of education (note their concern with “academic freedom”). But they advocate government control of material production, of business, of employment, of wages, of profits, of all physical property—they advocate it all the way down to total expropriation.
The conservatives see man as a body freely roaming the earth, building sand piles or factories—with an electronic computer inside his skull, controlled from Washington. The liberals see man as a soul freewheeling to the farthest reaches of the universe—but wearing chains from nose to toes when he crosses the street to buy a loaf of bread.
Yet it is the conservatives who are predominantly religionists, who proclaim the superiority of the soul over the body, who represent what I call the “mystics of spirit.” And it is the liberals who are predominantly materialists, who regard man as an aggregate of meat, and who represent what I call the “mystics of muscle.”
This is merely a paradox, not a contradiction: each camp wants to control the realm it regards as metaphysically important; each grants freedom only to the activities it despises. Observe that the conservatives insult and demean the rich or those who succeed in material production, regarding them as morally inferior—and that the liberals treat ideas as a cynical con game. “Control,” to both camps, means the power to rule by physical force. Neither camp holds freedom as a value. The conservatives want to rule man’s consciousness; the liberals, his body.
Not at all. It is you who are insisting on such a definition applying to God - not me. We haven't even touched the attributes of any such character in this discussion - you are superimposing what you think and expecting that it is the same thing I am suggesting. I suggest you check your premises. I have done nothing more than suggest possibility.
I would also point out the sheer hubris of affirming that mankind's knowledge is to such a point that we can say with any degree of certainty what may or may not exist. That is the path of arrogance and presumption. Presumption applies blinders or the proverbial rose-colored glasses so that when one travels the path he/she sees a perverted view. Exploration, on the other hand, does not seek to make up rules for itself about what it will find on the path. The explorer follows the path, takes in the wonders, and derives knowledge from the experience. Presumption would have gotten Lewis and Clark killed by grizzly bears.
"And how do you “prepare” for an afterlife, anyway? There are any number of incompatible..."
Agreed. So I would think the best idea would be to get help.
And how do you “prepare” for an afterlife, anyway? There are any number of incompatible “supreme beings” worshipped by various religions. What happens if you choose to obey the wrong one?
If one is to conclude that existence exists, then one must also conclude that the law of identity holds and all things have a specific nature and can only act within them. If a particular entity has no specific nature (not personality but what defines it as an entity separate from other entities) other than omnipotence, omnipotence, and omnipresence, then it must necessarily exist outside of the laws of reality… Not a part of our reality… And not be part of existence… you cannot have a being that existed before existence and still believe in the metaphysical primacy of existence over consciousness. There logically opposite positions. You are suggesting that an entity can be both entirely one attribute and also entirely its opposite attribute at the same time. This would be the equivalent of stating a painting is entirely red and also entirely green at the same time.
E. coli bacteria are about 1 cubic micrometers not size. There are 1000000000000 cubic micrometers in 1 ml of water.
Number of proteins in an e.coli cell:3-10*10^6 (depending on growth rate)
So let's assume the low concentration.
In a single ml of water there can be 3x10^18 proteins.
Earths water surface: 361 million square km
So if we assume only 1 m of the water is that concentrated to contain enough "soup" then that would be 3.61x10^14 cubic meters, or 10^23 ml. So up to 10.83x10^41 places for a protein to form in the "soup." Assuming the chance happens once a second (which would be so slow as to be considered nearly inert), every second, that gives you 1.7x10^57 chances for a protein to form over 3 billion years. Multiply that by a nearly infinite number of planets with water and you get the point.
Also keep in mind that once a protein forms, it actually is more stable and requires less energy to be at rest the more complex it is. They grow themselves simply by the laws of thermodynamics. Eventually lipids would form, combining together into cell membranes, and then the rest I'm sure you can imagine.
Once that first protein formed, the process and rate of growth would increase geometrically, if not exponentially.
Looked at this way, life forming would appear to be an inevitable consequence rather than a near impossibility.
Sources:
http://kirschner.med.harvard.edu/file...
Appeal to authority is only applicable if the principle is false. If the principle is true, it is the veracity of the principle itself which lends the air of authority. One can cite appeal to authority only after one has determined the principle to be false - not beforehand. As a father of several small children, I can point to numerous examples of times when I could see very real dangers present to my children they themselves were ignorant of. There was no time (and in dealing with a two-year-old no mental capacity) for them to understand the true danger they were in. When I yelled "STOP!" they had to trust that I knew something they did not. When I tell my two-year-old to wait for his food to cool before he eats it, it is because I know what he is not yet cognizant of and the potential for danger which lies directly ahead if he pursues his present course in defiance of my recommendation. Is he still free to grab those steaming potatoes and burn his fingers and wail? Yep. But was the principle involved "listen to dad"? No. The principle was that one must wait for food to cool before handling it or one will be the unintended instrument of rapid heat transfer! He could either learn by trusting dad or the hard way through personal experience and the trauma of a few burnt digits. (You can probably tell which choice he made.)
"However the main point remains that one cannot build an ethical system on an appeal to authority"
I completely agree. One may start out trusting on the word of another, but at some point they must cut the apron strings and move forward of their own volition.
"If your position is that one can outgrow the need for God's guidance on ethical matters, then wouldn't it also mean that he was not the basis for them in the first place?"
To go back to your point about appeal to authority, is the principle true because of who says it or is it true because it is? I would opt for the latter interpretation. That being said, I will ask you a question: if He exists and knows what the rules are, regardless the source of the rules are His efforts to instruct us any less valuable?
"If you have proof, then please share it."
I have proof for myself, but what I have found is that what matters is whether one is willing to seek their own proof. Ultimately, the decision must be yours and made freely, openly, and honestly. Now if you are willing, I will share with you in a PM exactly how you can ascertain for yourself the truth of the matter.
"That is a false and foolish methodology to follow when building a philosophy. It would lead inevitably to failure after failure..."
Failures have never stopped the entrepreneur nor the inventor. Why? Because the goal is deemed worthy of the effort. However, there is a shortcut available to those who wish to so take advantage: one can look to others who have been there and follow in their footsteps. Why blaze a new trail when one can take the one already there?
"However, long before you get to the possibility of the existence of a supernatural being of any sort, you reach the conclusion that nothing exists outside of existence."
I have never once posited existence outside of existence. That is a strawman. Let's say you had existed from the Big Bang and had watched the formation of galaxies and stars, of nebulae and comets. Don't you think that knowledge couldn't be drawn upon? And if we persist after death for a similar duration...
I didn't quote Sherlock Holmes for nothing. If you choose to look at a sample and conclude that nowhere in the entire population could exist a single red swan, all you can really claim is that you do not believe such to be true. Certainty is a much higher standard. Scientists believed coelecanths were extinct - up until someone actually found one. The reality is that they hadn't looked far enough or long enough and ended up asserting a presumption that turned out to be very wrong.
"Objection 1: Desires do not trump reality."
Never said they did. But we don't achieve our goals by telling ourselves they can't happen either.
"Objection 2: You do not have options, desirable or otherwise. Either your consciousness will terminate or it won’t. It’s not your choice."
If you admit two possibilities, why do you insist on asserting the first as the only real one, then? And if the second is real, what then?
"Objection 3: Your “pursuit” of the “fate” ..."
Now you're getting into pure speculation - and it's just false. I am an agent unto myself. I choose, and by my choices determine my path. Even in the presence of a junction in the path I can not avoid, I am still free to determine the path afterwards. You have the choice to assume such a path does not exist. I proceed on the assumption that it does. If I'm right, I'm prepared for what follows. If I'm wrong, it won't matter. On the other hand, if you're right it doesn't matter and if you're wrong... Hmmm... You're betting the entirety of your continued existence that it doesn't exist and claiming that I'm the imprudent one. To each his own I suppose.
"Objection 4: One’s “ultimate self-interest” consists of discovering and integrating facts of reality..."
I agree wholeheartedly with you on this one, believe it or not. But go back to my point in #3: if I prepare for the eventuality of continuance, I shall not be disappointed when it proves real.
I suggest you prove such a hypothesis. At best, all we can do is take from the point of the Big Bang forward.
"We do not need to know all the answers..."
But there you diverge into the realm of faith, or acting upon what one does not know to be true, but merely hopes to be true. I must ask why then you insist that others have all the answers?!? You make everything to be about proof, proof, proof, when you admit that you yourself are not in possession of all knowledge. Can you not see the blatant double-standard in such a stance?
"All that is needed to know that a supernatural creator does not exist is an axiom of existence exists, and following the logic from there."
Unless you have acted upon your hypothesis and tested it, it is only that - an hypothesis. Logic is not proof - only observation fulfills that requirement. One can infer such a thing - but it is not proof until tested and verified.
If one is never willing to move without immediate gratification/proof, one never has to work to achieve and one never gains the satisfaction in so doing. Those who choose to deny to reach for that unseen goal will never achieve it - real or not. They will be the ones standing by while others achieve.
Again, http://Dictionary.com gives two definitions of atheism:
1. the doctrine or belief that there is no God.
2. disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings.
Ayn Rand falls in the second category, which can be summed up as: “There is no evidence of a creator, so there is no reason for me to believe in one, so I don’t.”
So Ayn Rand’s formulation of atheism is not an “assertion of a negative”, it is rather the refusal to accept a positive statement that encompasses multiple logical contradictions and no real evidence.
RE: “I pursue the fate of my consciousness, refusing to believe in its termination as a desirable option. I pursue my ultimate self-interest: my continuance.”
Objection 1: Desires do not trump reality.
Objection 2: You do not have options, desirable or otherwise. Either your consciousness will terminate or it won’t. It’s not your choice.
Objection 3: Your “pursuit” of the “fate” of your consciousness is pointless, since its “fate” is not in any way dependent upon your “pursuit”.
Objection 4: One’s “ultimate self-interest” consists of discovering and integrating facts of reality, and living according to them to the best of one’s understanding. This is true whether or not one’s consciousness will live on forever. If it does, great. If it doesn’t, then the “pursuit” of immortality is futile and takes precious and irreplaceable time away from pursuing one’s rational self-interest in the here and now.
You are very correct that we do not have all the scientific answers to the universe, but those are not all needed to know that a supernatural creator is logically impossible, for many of the reasons we have already enumerated.
We do not need to know all the answers to the entire universe to know that the earth is not flat, for instance, or that one cannot accelerate matter to exceed the speed of light. Only certain aspects are necessary to know those facts. All that is needed to know that a supernatural creator does not exist is an axiom of existence exists, and following the logic from there.
Can you explain the creation of that point of matter leading to the Big Bang?
I accept the fact that there are certain questions which we do not yet have answers to. The erroneous presumption is that we currently have enough knowledge to presume the only answer is an assertion of a negative.
We hold that matter is neither created nor destroyed, do we not? So in actuality, "creation" is a misnomer. It is not the sudden existence of something where nothing was prior, but rather an organization of the existing into a new form. So all a "creator" would had to have done was utilized the existing rules of gravity, knowledge of particle physics, etc. to facilitate such action. Imagine if you had the ability to directly manipulate the forces of gravity. Could you not lasso a passing comet to provide water for a large ball of silica?
Now if you want to argue temporality, please keep in mind that just because we have no individual knowledge of any state we may have existed in prior to what we know now, to deny that any such could have happened seems rather presumptuous to me. The only way to assert that such a thing could not have happened is to have positive knowledge of what did happen. This is where the atheist's argument breaks down into an assertion of the negative, because the inherent assumption is that no such knowledge is possible. They are left with at best an untestable hypothesis - hardly the solid bedrock of proof demanded by their own standards. Theists at least have the appeal to an atemporal source of knowledge.
"Closer to your argument, however, one does not need to know every aspect of a given entity in order to conclude whether its existence is logically possible or not."
I would agree. However, one has to know enough details to devise a practical test.
"one can comfortably conclude that it does not exist."
"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." - Sherlock Holmes. Only when one is 100% confident that one has considered all possibilities and ruled each of them out through observation may one conclude non-existence. Logic assists in the derivation of the conditions, it is not the test itself. That is why atheism can be nothing more than an unproven hypothesis. How Objectivists can simultaneously embrace and unproven and unproveable hypothesis on the one hand yet insist on the proven for everyone else is a contradiction I can not resolve.
"Your final paragraph is completely littered with leaps of logic and subjectivist definitions of reality."
It is all fairly basic astrophysics and biology, actually. Astronomers and biologists have long examined our solar system and the requirements for life as we know it to exist and found them to be rather stringent and specific. Dismiss them at your own peril. As I said, I find that atheists tend to reject the obvious evidence right under their own noses.
I am not here to coerce you or force you into any course of action or belief. You must decide for yourself what to pursue and what not to pursue. But I'm not going to waste either my time or yours trying to prove to you something which is better discovered of one's self. I pursue reality. I pursue the fate of my consciousness, refusing to believe in its termination as a desirable option. I pursue my ultimate self-interest: my continuance.
First of all, your appeal to authority fallacy is showing again. But that is neither here nor there any longer. You are accepting an appeal to authority as a plausible way of conducting oneself, and denying it is even a logical fallacy. All of those examples you give are actually logical fallacies, if the actor is acting purely on the assumption that the authority figure is always right because they are the authority figure. The army example is especially confusing, because you then seem to be suggesting that God relies on us to give him updates about Satan's doings on Earth. However the main point remains that one cannot build an ethical system on an appeal to authority, because it is circular reasoning. One can, at times in one's life, take shortcuts in decision making until one fully understands the ramifications of one's actions. However, that cannot be the foundation of a philosophy. It must be based on reason and reality.
"There are many examples in life where we start out relying on others for information."
If your position is that one can outgrow the need for God's guidance on ethical matters, then wouldn't it also mean that he was not the basis for them in the first place? If God is just acting as a teacher or guide, like one's parents, then is he not also bound by the laws of the universe? Your parents' job is to teach you reality. If that is all God is doing, rather than what I was taught as a Christian that morality is based upon emulating God's very nature, which is perfect by definition, then I would suggest that He seems incapable of changing the rules and he really isn't so omnipotent as so often suggested. If that is the case, and his whims and wishes do not actually alter or contradict the facts of reality, then we are still left with our faculty of reason as our only means of determining the laws of reality and how we must act because of them. That is Philosophy.
"Atheists tend to reject the proof put before them as well as the means of perception. I could tell you that I have proof of myself. Would it matter?"
If you have proof, then please share it. All information must be considered before drawing a conclusion. If your means of perception is anything other than our senses, however, then I doubt it would be valid. Share it however, please.
"The only way to settle the controversy for one's self is to decide that the truth is more important than one's preconceptions."
Keep in mind that your God is closer to a preconception than our conclusion that there isn't one.
"To do that, one must posit what may be then take the journey to see if it is there."
That is a false and foolish methodology to follow when building a philosophy. It would lead inevitably to failure after failure, chasing one impossible, illogical, or just simply incorrect possibility after another. Why handicap oneself by "taking the journey" alone without the knowledge and work done by our predecessors to give us a starting place. Rand's starting place is the axiom that "Existence Exists." Your method seems to suggest that we should fully entertain the possibility that existence does not exist, and then follow that around for a while and see what happens. If you actually try to live life with that as an axiom, you will inevitably fail at everything you attempt (that is consistent with that axiom), causing yourself nothing but pain and unhappiness.
If by "take a journey" you instead mean simply a thought exercise, then I can understand it a bit more. However, long before you get to the possibility of the existence of a supernatural being of any sort, you reach the conclusion that nothing exists outside of existence.
Or, broken down into steps:
I believe X.
I don’t have evidence for X at the moment.
I think I’ll look for signposts of X.
If I find them, they will give me hope.
This puts the cart before the horse, belief before evidence, based on “hope”. It underscores the point I made earlier: “Understanding of true principles requires understanding of how they were derived, not acceptance of them by faith (which, sooner or later, all supernaturally-based religions conveniently require).”
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