I must say this...
I understand Ayn Rand's points about mystics, and I agree with a large part of it, but being a religious person does not by default mean that you are the problem. Not everyone who is religious subscribes to the philosophy of the mystic looter.
The simple truth is it has turned out to be the progressives that are killing our society with their self destructive philosophy of sacrifice of self to their idea of the public greater good.
One day the Moochers and Looters will fall. It is inevitable that their policies will result in their own destruction because they are not sustainable. They rely on having something to mooch and something to loot. Eventually they will run out of both.
Once the moochers and looters are removed from their high places of power and our nation has returned to the ideals of self reliance, production, and personal liberty that made it so great we will have all the time we want to debate each other on the existence and merits of god. Right now we have a lot better things to do than to climb all over each other about who does and does not believe in the divine.
We, the men and women of the mind, are at war right now with a very clear and present danger to our way of life. The penalty for losing this war is the subjugation of our lives and production to the federal government. I am not saying that there should not be any debate on the site, that's part of the fun. I am concerned that we are coming to a point where these debates are becoming a dividing force at a time we need to be strongest.
Look around yourself. The American people voted Barack Hussein Obama II president only a few years after 9/11. Our government and public have begun to embrace the very people and religion that perpetrated that attack. The federal government is spying on Americans, militarizing the police, making us a laughing stock of policy failure around the world, and threatening to take away our very right to self defense while the Supreme Court has ruled that police are not required to protect anyone. China is launching aircraft carriers and building stealth fighters.
Do we really need to be insulting and disrespecting each other about who is and is not religions? Do we not have bigger fish to fry? .
The simple truth is it has turned out to be the progressives that are killing our society with their self destructive philosophy of sacrifice of self to their idea of the public greater good.
One day the Moochers and Looters will fall. It is inevitable that their policies will result in their own destruction because they are not sustainable. They rely on having something to mooch and something to loot. Eventually they will run out of both.
Once the moochers and looters are removed from their high places of power and our nation has returned to the ideals of self reliance, production, and personal liberty that made it so great we will have all the time we want to debate each other on the existence and merits of god. Right now we have a lot better things to do than to climb all over each other about who does and does not believe in the divine.
We, the men and women of the mind, are at war right now with a very clear and present danger to our way of life. The penalty for losing this war is the subjugation of our lives and production to the federal government. I am not saying that there should not be any debate on the site, that's part of the fun. I am concerned that we are coming to a point where these debates are becoming a dividing force at a time we need to be strongest.
Look around yourself. The American people voted Barack Hussein Obama II president only a few years after 9/11. Our government and public have begun to embrace the very people and religion that perpetrated that attack. The federal government is spying on Americans, militarizing the police, making us a laughing stock of policy failure around the world, and threatening to take away our very right to self defense while the Supreme Court has ruled that police are not required to protect anyone. China is launching aircraft carriers and building stealth fighters.
Do we really need to be insulting and disrespecting each other about who is and is not religions? Do we not have bigger fish to fry? .
No one would be in favor of silencing debate, which you correctly point out is part of the fun, but how is it Libertarian or even Objectivist to belittle a personal belief?
You never know what function religion serves in a person's life - it may be the last thing keeping them sane.
So I don't even challenge people on religion (unless of course they ask for it - then I open up an intellectual can)
Relax @Hiraghm. It's all part of the fun.
I mean, in one sentence, you call people "neurotic and insecure" (textbook ad hominem) and then complain about feigning superiority. Be fair and stop the hypocrisy.
(NOTE: To be clear, I've *lost* plenty of debates in the past - religious and otherwise. It's just that a friend and I won a two-on-two debate just the other day, so I'm kind of "feeling it." I mean no offense to anyone who's of any particular faith...if it works for you, who the h-e-double hockey sticks am I to take that away? Like OBAMA's fake healthcare promises: "If you like your plan, you can keep it"!!! )
You don't like being fed your own porridge? Fine, stop dishing it out.
In point of fact, I don't have much of a problem with criticisms of religion, however hypocritical I think they may be. But when the laser-like focus is pointed at *Christianity*, then my back hairs get up. Not because I'm a Christian, but because I know a little about history.
The attack on Christianity in the U.S., and there is an attack, is not about the good or ill of Christianity, but about "fundamentally transforming" the United States, a campaign waged by our internal enemies.
If America is 77% Christian as one cited poll apparently said, then what better way to kick the props out from under the country than by injecting doubt into the faith of believers? The false notion of 'equality' has been used in other ways to degrade the nation; if you can make Christians think their faith is just another religion, and they're the majority population, you're going to make their confidence in their judgment shaky.
Ironically, Christianity got its start because the Romans became jaded and didn't really believe in any of their old gods. By the time of Christ, for example, many in the military worshiped middle eastern gods, not Roman ones.They were ripe for the message of Christianity, something new, different, and exciting.
After all, Ayn Rand said: "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."
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. - Ayn Rand
Good post... I do however find it troubling that I am almost inclined to quote Rodney King... I fear this thread will also be hijacked and wander from the specific point...
Respectfully,
O.A.
It's odd, though, that you say voting for President Obama has something to do with embracing religion. I voted for him as the person, not for his Christian beliefs. As long as he doesn't apply Christianity to scientifically-falsifiable areas, I do not care. Just as I can get along with friends and associates of different religions, I can support President Obama without being the same religion.
Atheists say that religion leads to totalitarianism.
Can't we all just get along?
With regard to science, this led to an odd kind of scientific conservatism, a suspicion of novelty, an indifference -- this is only a slight exaggeration -- to anything more recent than the work of Sir Isaac Newton. I remember being astonished to hear her say one day, "After all, the theory of evolution is only a hypothesis." I asked her, "You mean you seriously doubt that more complex life forms -- including humans -- evolved from less complex life forms?" She shrugged and responded, "I'm really not prepared to say," or words to that effect. I do not mean to imply that she wanted to substitute for the theory of evolution the religious belief that we are all God's creation; but there was definitely something about the concept of evolution that made her uncomfortable.
Like many other people, she was enormously opposed to any consideration of the possible validity of telepathy, ESP, or other psi phenomenon. The evidence that was accumulating to suggest that there was something here at least worthy of serious scientific study did not interest her; she did not feel any obligation to look into the subject; she was convinced it was all a fraud. It did not fit her model of reality. When an astronaut attempted during a flight to the moon to conduct a telepathic experiment, she commented on the effort with scorn -- even the attempt to explore the subject was contemptible in her opinion. Now I have no wish to argue, in this context, for or against the reality of nonordinary forms of awareness or any other related phenomenon. That is not my point. My point is the extent to which she had a closed mind on the subject, with no interest in discovering for herself why so many distinguished scientists had become convinced that such matters are eminently worthy of study.
Another example -- less controversial -- involves hypnosis. I became interested in hypnosis in 1960. I began reading books on the subject and mastering the basic principles of the art. Now this generated a problem because on the one hand Ayn Rand knew, or believed she knew, that hypnosis was a fraud with no basis in reality; on the other hand, in 1960 Nathaniel Branden was the closest thing on earth to John Galt. And John Galt could hardly be dabbling in irrationalism. So this produced some very curious conversations between us. She was not yet prepared, as she was later, to announce that I was crazy, corrupt, and depraved. At the same time, she firmly believed that hypnosis was irrational nonsense. I persevered in my studies and learned that the human mind was capable of all kinds of processes beyond what I had previously believed. My efforts to reach Ayn on this subject were generally futile and I soon abandoned the attempt. And to tell the truth, during the time I was still with her, I lost some of my enthusiasm for hypnosis. I regained it after our break and that is when my serious experimenting in that field began and the real growth of my understanding of the possibilities of working with altered states of consciousness." - NB, Benefits and Hazards
"I could give many more examples of how Ayn Rand's particular view of "the reasonable" became intellectually restrictive. Instead, to those of you who are her admirers, I will simply say: Do not be in a hurry to dismiss observations or data as false, irrational, or "mystical," because they do not easily fit into your current model of reality. It may be the case that you need to expand your model. One of the functions of reason is to alert us to just such a possibility.
It would have been wonderful, given how much many of us respected and admired Ayn Rand, if she had encouraged us to develop a more open-minded attitude and to be less attached to a model of reality that might be in need of revision. But that was not her way. Quite the contrary. Other people's model of reality might be in need of revision. Never hers. Not in any fundamental sense. Reason, she was convinced, had established that for all time. In encouraging among her followers the belief that she enjoyed a monopoly on reason and the rational, she created for herself a very special kind of power, the power to fling anyone who disagreed with her about anything into the abyss of "the irrational" -- and that was a place we were all naturally eager to avoid."
Christian tolerance.
Just because someone is religious does not mean they are not capable of rational thought. It also not mean they subscribe to the brother's keeper thing the way you mean it. You are putting forth a generalization to cover a group of people.
If you honestly believe that there are no bigger fish to fry than being concerned if someone is religious or not then you may have your priorities a bit misaligned.
This is starting to look like any number of Christian Bible studies I've witnessed (literally; I didn't participate), where one person after another quotes from holy writ.
Instead of using her words to back up your beliefs, why don't you wrap your minds around your own concepts? Certainly she had some good ideas and is a good reference, but she was not God, or a messiah.
There are any number of examples of quite rational people, with brilliant minds, who were also deeply religious.
To focus solely on the rational and ignore completely the emotional is to turn oneself into a computer, with no volition. Even Rand recognized that her highest morality was not a thought, but an emotion; happiness.
She erroneously tried to define happiness and failed. Happiness is not rational.
Let me anecdotally explain how reality can be escaped and how happiness is not rational, if I can.
Last night, I was disappointed because instead of waxing the floors, a difficult, tiring job that I find rewarding, they needed me to help stock the pet department. In my current physical condition, slinging 50lb bags of dog food is not conducive to well-being.
I put the love theme from "High Road to China" in a loop on my phone while working. I indulged in a personal daydream which is nobody's business but mine while listening to it, and was hardly aware of the hard physical labor I was performing. I passed through the night, happy... having escaped reality in my mind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_243UepSn...
If we had to survive as purely rational beings, there'd be no purpose to our lives, and no way we could cope with reality on a day to day basis.
Except for you precious few paragon Objectivists, of course.
"A mother's illusions about her offspring's beauty, intelligence, etc. is what keeps her from drowning them at birth."
- Robert A. Heinlein.
Did Ayn Rand misundestand the Bible? (self.culture)
Read more at http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/rlewelle...
So quit calling it a "Christian ethic". You're excluding Jews and Moslems.
The Jews' book is the Old Testament.
The Moslems' book is the Koran.
You want to be rational, or you want to squeak out your emotional issues?
Don't care about being "inclusive", I care about condemning Christians, at least implicitly, when IT'S NOT A CHRISTIAN THING.
You want to damn religion, then damn religion, quick fucking picking on the Christians.
And btw, what's wrong with "I am my brother's keeper"? Nobody's making you be your brother's keeper. If you don't believe in God, or Christ as your savior, then why in hell would you care if it's the opinion of any religious people that you are your brother's keeper? And what if you happen to get your rocks off on being your brother's keeper? Are you forbidden from doing so because, omg, that might be perceived as non-self-centered?
Personally, I think God did Cain an injustice in that story, if it happened as has been related down through the years and through countless translations.
The value each statement added was in promoting the truth, and making clear the animus toward Christianity.
It's like condemning homosexuals because some priests molested some choirboys. If the analogy escapes you, ask Maph, I'm sure he gets it.
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Wait, what? I thought Obama's ethnic heritage was in Kenya (at least on his father's side). The people who committed the 9/11 attacks were Arabs from Afghanistan.
You realize that Kenya and Afghanistan are two totally different countries, right? Or are you trying to imply that Africa and the Middle East are essentially the same because they're both foreign territories on the other side of the Atlantic?
Actually, bin Laden was from Saudi Arabia; Afghanistan merely provided sanctuary for them.
Yes, I am pretty sure they are two different countries, but thanks for pointing that out.