Before comparing questions of ethics, or any other parts of a philosophy, most apologists for religion, including yourself, start too far up the tree. Rand puts down a basis for philosophy at certain basic premises. You can compare it to a tree. Root = metaphysics, trunk = epistemology, branch = ethics, leaves = politics, flower,= art. Each part springing from the one below.You, on the other hand start out with the fact that you must believe in a ghost, an invisible God. So, right at the beginning, we are no longer able to compare religion to her philosophy, because even where certain ethical questions converge, the two are at polar opposites since there is no rationality to religion's basis, and rationality is the entire basis of Objectivism.

Stunned, humble, thankful.

Hello Herb7734,
You and the site are exceptional lights!
Your material, humor and demeanor are greatly appreciated. :)
Best wishes,
O.A.

thisguy explains it better perhaps than I did : http://www.seanedwards.com/christian-...

as one of those being somewhat downgraded here as a christian lets look at few things Rand says : In a letter to Sylvia Austin dated July 9, 1946, in Letters of Ayn Rand, p. 287:

There is a great, basic contradiction in the teachings of Jesus. Jesus was one of the first great teachers to proclaim the basic principle of individualism -- the inviolate sanctity of man's soul, and the salvation of one's soul as one's first concern and highest goal; this means -- one's ego and the integrity of one's ego. But when it came to the next question, a code of ethics to observe for the salvation of one's soul -- (this means: what must one do in actual practice in order to save one's soul?) -- Jesus (or perhaps His interpreters) gave men a code of altruism, that is, a code which told them that in order to save one's soul, one must love or help or live for others. This means, the subordination of one's soul (or ego) to the wishes, desires or needs of others, which means the subordination of one's soul to the souls of others.

This is a contradiction that cannot be resolved. This is why men have never succeeded in applying Christianity in practice, while they have preached it in theory for two thousand years. The reason of their failure was not men's natural depravity or hypocrisy, which is the superficial (and vicious) explanation usually given. The reason is that a contradiction cannot be made to work. That is why the history of Christianity has been a continuous civil war -- both literally (between sects and nations), and spiritually (within each man's soul).

All emphasis was in the original. All punctuation and spelling is from the original. However she makes a very simple mistake that many make by tying the act of salvation to works done on earth .Salvation is easy believe and you are saved . Works are done ( or ethical decisions made) because as a saved person you want to do them . My particular "sect "believes that God gave us an intellect for a reason and that we must come to God through logical thought. . lets look at the galt oath "I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
This pledge, which one makes to oneself, is an expression of individualism, and a Personal Declaration of Independence from the shackles of both society and the state.

The first half of the pledge is a recognition that no others have a claim, by right, to your life, whether they be an individual, a group, or the government, and you assert your freedom and independence.

The second half of the pledge indicates a recognition that you are a self-sufficient adult, prepared to take responsibility for the conduct of your own life, and, respecting the rights of others, you have no intention of forcing them to fulfill that responsibility for you. If we look at the original disciples they were not forced to follow they were told what it would entail and they chose to follow. They decided themselves that the value he offered was worth the value they gave up . just food for thought here

Hi jconne. Apologies for the delay. Life is awesomely busy these days. Getting ready to speak at the upcoming Atlas Summit/FreedomFest.

At any rate, how to streamline and essentialize this...? Ok, I define God as capital R Reality, as a whole in it largest all-inclusive sense. All-that-is. Not each part, process and subset thereof, but EVERY part, process and subset thereof, taken as the single fundamental greatest Unity.

In my spiritual practices (the things I do to build, maintain and grow my relationship with God = my spirituality), I consider 2 aspects of God.

One is what I call Presence, which is the very quality of Beingness which pervades and is shared by Everything That Exists. Through meditation and prayer (not in the traditional sense of that word) and other spiritual practices, I can feel and connect to that infinite reservoir of power and energy to recharge and turbo charge myself to rise above and perform beyond my own finite store of power and energy.

The second aspect is Grace or Spirit or Flow, as you will. This is the intricate field of interlocking beginningless and endless causual connections - The Way of Things. This is where I seek guidance, data and direction beyond my finite store of knowledge and understanding and my limited capacity for wisdom, insight, forsight, intuition and creativity. It is the realm of everything that I don't know that I don't know. It is where all possibility residws, where what I need to know when I need to know it, to live at my peak performance and direct my actions and my life optimally, unfolds as I need to know it in Ever Emerging Reality (my job is to pay attention [LOVE that phrase!], let go of the best-guess snapshot of how reality should be, and continually integrate that data into my ever evolving strategies and next steps.

Ok. I will stop there for now. Thanks for asking.

Quit changing the subject. Deism is not christianity. Christianity is evil and not responsible for one good thing on this earth. Stop with the revisionist BS.

Keeps us on our toes.

The right to self-defense is a "flaw" of Objectivism? And being the master of our own rationally-derived moral code is bad, even though the alternative is to have our moral code dictated to us by others? And atheists here are being dogmatic, even though this is an Objectivist forum? I wonder what the response would be if someone entered a religious forum and said the other participants were being dogmatic, self-important and intolerant for not being respectful to atheists on their forum.

Though I understand you're being sarcastic, I'd encourage you to do that, actually.

It's not a religion...like progressivism, liberalism, environmentalism, or even the organization of the teachings of Jesus, Buddha or Confucius.
I'm just trying to show that what our biblical ancestors had pagan mystified, humanized or otherwise misunderstood was just the way things work in the cosmos on a quantum level...it's really simple stupid...ex, if you read the description of what Einstein expressed as a "Quantum Event" you'd have to think..."That's ask and receive"...(and NO, we're not talking about the silly notions expressed in the "Secret") and the whole process may be related to quantum entanglements...this stuff is exciting, amazing and may answer many of the questions we have about these things...If one is willing to look at it...you might see that This is what will eradicate Mysticism.

Hello Herb.
I'll hazard a guess that most scientists (and I, too) accept some casual usage if the point is not crucial to the discussion. For example, saying speed to mean velocity or force as mass or molecule to describe an ionic compound. It becomes unacceptable when someone vomits up some new age (or old religion) babble and attempts to attribute some definition that is contrary to standard scientific usage. This applies to the “quantum event” nonsense that Olduglycarl is putting forth. So if you want to express some idea and don’t quite have the precise or accurate terminology, please use plain language and go for it. Just don’t get all huffy and pontificate about your special usage with some vague claim about a definition somewhere on the internet, while failing to annotate where the claim comes from.

Sorry about the length of what follows, but it’s my freshly written “Phancy Physics” for regular folks who are smarter than dummies. Or basic vs fancy physics in plain English.

Many things follow the rules of classical mechanics, often called Newtonian physics after the great physicist/mathematician, Sir Isaac Newton. Often the math involves simple algebra. Suppose somebody drops a baseball off a high building. The baseball falls downward over time (call the time at any instant t), so we might want to think about how far the baseball has fallen after t=1 second or t=5 seconds, and so on. As it falls, gravity makes the ball fall ever faster, the velocity downward increases with time. (Velocity is speed with a direction, such as 20 meters per second downward, and I’ll use meters instead of feet to make calculations easier shortly.) The change in velocity over time is called acceleration, and that acceleration is set by gravity, a constant (unchanging) value at the surface of the earth, where we walk around and play baseball and fly airplanes. To find the distance the ball has fallen over time, the calculation is simple. Distance downward = ½gt², where g is the acceleration constant for gravity 9.8 meters/(second²). Let’s round that to 10 to make things easy. After 3 seconds, the ball has fallen ½×10×3². Or half of ten (that’s 5) times three squared (that’s 9) or 45 meters. That wasn’t too bad.
Now consider two cars, one going east at 50 miles per hour and one on the opposite side of the highway going west at 60 miles per hour. How fast do they pass each other? Add the values 50 + 60 to get 110 miles per hour relative velocity (in the opposite direction.) That’s simple, too. Thank you Sir Isaac.

The Newtonian/classical world makes two important assumptions.
We assume that the baseball can drop any amount in a smooth continuum of values. 3 meters per second, then 3.1 meters per second, then 3.2 meters per second, and so on as it accelerates.
Also, lets assume that things behave normally at normal velocities. The cars go past each other at the sum of their velocities. No funny business in the calculation.

Quantum mechanics: values can not be anything in a smooth continuum. At microscopic sizes, some values can only change by fixed/discreet/quantized (pick your favorite word) amounts, a quantum. An electron orbiting around an atom can’t have any size orbit, only some very special orbit sizes. When an excited electron drops to a lower orbit, it releases a specific quantum (discreet amount) of energy. We can see the result from large collections of microscopic atoms doing that at once, for example in the specific reddish color of a neon sign or the green and violet colors from mercury vapor fluorescent lights. These things do not produce a nice smooth rainbow of colors like a hot glowing filament in a tungsten light bulb, only some very specific colors.
Addressing the definition of “quantum event”: it is an event that has a fixed “quantized” change that is not described by classical mechanics. No mystic interpretations. Does the big bang qualify? Arguably, because it was a microscopic singularity that could not be described by Newtonian physics. Were specific energy levels involved? Hard to say at this late date of t = 15 billion years. What about light from HeNe lasers in early supermarket scanners? The energy transitions were absolutely quantum events, and they produced light at the precise wavelength of 632.8 microns.

Relativity: At normal speeds, things behave themselves. When things move relative to each other at rates near the speed of light, the calculations become squirrely in a non-intuitive way, though still subject to specific math rules/equations. Suppose a rocket is going from the Earth to Mars at a velocity u=50% of the speed of light and another one is going from Mars to Earth at velocity v=60% of the speed of light. Newton would have said, “Just add the speeds u + v, so they’ll pass each other at 110% of the speed of light.” But he would be wrong. At these speeds, which would be called “relativistic,” we get Einstein’s universe. The velocities add with the funny equation u+v/(1+u×v/c²) where c is the speed of light. That says they pass each other at 84.62% of the speed of light. Clearly not the world of classical physics. What if the relative velocities are tiny compared to that of light, say 10,000 miles per hour or slower? The u×v/c² part becomes close enough to zero that we get back to simple addition of classical cars “speeding” past each other on the freeway. Similarly, the many different microscopic quanta of light from a hot tungsten filament blur together, and look like a continuous rainbow of colors.

We'll leave stimulated emission, time dilation, length contraction, and the like to some other discussion at a later date.

The most extraordinary things I've learned this year is that everything needed for life, including all the elements come upon the cosmic winds, the sun's heliosphere is like a cell membrane around our solar system and electromagnetic currents connect everything to each other and looks like a neural network in the body.

Kind of makes one go...Hmmm

what i have found is that they do not want to listen...my children were willing to listen before they became teenagers and needed some years alone to think things out...which i granted them...they agree with me now...my second wife agreed to disagree, but then reversed later and divorced me over it...my bad for trusting her honesty...

i have influenced those who wanted an open discussion...but they are few and far between...

I'd go with - a relationship with reality, reason and your own integrity. Part of integrity is thinking for yourself and having high standards before YOU say something is true.

So, how do you distinguish fact from fiction?
What are your rules of evidence?
This question is for any theists here out there.

Are you interested in having contradictions in terms pointed out?

When presented with a question, is the responsible thing to do - to determine the question's validity before attempting to answer it?

What's maliciously evil, is asking an unanswerable, invalid question and telling people they should feel guilty is they can't answer it. Think - the Emperor's New Clothes. That's the lesson of that story.

Teach that - not the Adam and Eve myth!

Posit - Adam and Eve are punished for not being blindly obedient but rather, seeking knowledge. Knowledge of good and evil! Which is - that which is good for you and that which is not. Punished for wanting to know the difference?!! What an evil story to foist on children. The opposite of all that's ethical!

And then, posit Jesus, to save us from God's punishment for Adam and Eve's transgressions - seeking knowledge to think for themselves, being curious and NOT being blindly obedient. Again - evil manipulation incarnate! It really does't get worse than this. Is destroying a soul less evil than destroying a body? And then pretending it's saving the soul.

Humans deserve better!
Shout it from the mountain tops.
And at every opportunity.

Be part of bring back an age of reason and precluding the insane political conversation taking place in the daily news.

Pope Francis, like so many religious people, have been fooled into thinking that socialism and liberalism equal compassion while in fact it's just the opposite.

Your comments on this post are thoughtful and well done. Thanks for your insight.

You will find no disagreements from me on these points. The embrace of socialism by current day moochers has been at the expense of the American work ethic (often called the Protestant work ethic in past generations), at the prompting of New Deal era looters and their current day heirs.

Deism is most definitely not equal to atheism.

What I said has not been refuted, nor can it be, despite the number of people who agree with you vs. those who agree with me.

What seems to be taking over today is kind of the opposite. People just take what they can like honey badgers without consideration and courtesy. I live in Las Vegas and it's very obvious with drivers here. They dart around with no consideration for other drivers at all

I think I’ll drop by a religious forum and tell them I’ve tested the hypothesis that God exists and found it lacks credibility. I’ll suggest that regardless of the conclusions they have reached previously, they must be willing to accept that they could be wrong. Out of respect for their forum, I’ll only share my reasoning with them via PM’s. I wonder what their reaction will be.

Blarman, Very well stated . I would love to hear about the evidence that you've based your conclusion on.
The defining notion of God by religion becomes convoluted by preconceptions mostly by religions and controllers.
Because scientists have mostly agreed on the Big Bang theory from the evidence that supports it. The Big Bang has become accepted. But I think it requires a bit of "faith" to accept that every particle of matter in the entire universe would fit on the tip of a needle.
I have studied the precessional code and the incredible connection to the earth, sun and moon's dimensions as well as important vibrational frequencies.and can't imagine the impossible odds of the same numbers recurring.
It could just be a incredible coincidence but it might have another source.

Thanks, conscious 1978.