Posted on 06/11/2002 10:12:35 AM PDT by thinktwice
Edited on 04/14/2004 10:05:12 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
In your June 7 editorial on the moving of the Ayn Rand Institute to Irvine ["Ayn Rand in O.C.''], you stated that you took issue with some of Ayn Rand's positions, including her ardent atheism. In today's world of terrorism and conflicts fueled by ardent religious beliefs, it would seem appropriate that you would take issue with ardent religious people, not with any atheists.
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
Einstein was Jewish. I guess at that point of ecumenicalism he was stating a fact. Not having spoken with him personally, from all I have read he leaned toward agnosticism.
Einstein's opinions aren't difficult to discover. He was definitely an atheist, but this doesn't prove much of anything.
The religious feeling engendered by experiencing the logical comprehensibility of profound interrelations is of a somewhat different sort from the feeling that one usually calls religious. It is more a feeling of awe at the scheme that is manifested in the material universe. It does not lead us to take the step of fashioning a god-like being in our own image-a personage who makes demands of us and who takes an interest in us as individuals. There is in this neither a will nor a goal, nor a must, but only sheer being. For this reason, people of our type see in morality a purely human matter, albeit the most important in the human sphere.Some of Einstein's Writings on Science and Religion .
Only if you let it "take over". Some of us are quite comfortable with the idea that we have no clue or evidence of where we came from, why we're here, and what happens to us after we die.
Apparently, many others aren't comfortable not knowing the answers to those questions and find solace in religion.
I would be most interested to see something from you to back up your assertions. Some scriptures perhaps.
Keeping in mind the bible was canonized over 1700 years ago and has remaining virtually unchanged since.
Even as an Atheist, I say this is BS!
Luke 14:26 - If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.
It may be BS, but it wasn't the author of the letter who invented it.
We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions -- by abandoning every value except the will to power -- they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies.
Someone on his speechwriting staff knows Nietzsche.
nihilism and socialism/marxism are NOT synonymous. that some may incorrectly say so, does NOT make it so. Nietzsche clearly would have been repulsed by a socialist state as it devalues the individual. If you cannot see that, then your re-reading of Nietzsche has indeed been fruitless and wasted time. I suggest you go back and take a look at the Kaufmann translation of Ecce Homo, wherein Nietzsche states (and I paraphrase as I don't have it here at work with me) "I know my fate, one day my name will be used in the greatest conflagration mankind has ever known..." and he was talking about the abuse of his message.
Many of those same "scholars" would refer to Jesus Christ as the first socialist, they are as wrong in that as they are to equate Nietzsche with socialism.
Yes. It is still a free country, isn't it?
I guess you didn't understand the question. Are people able is a better way of asking.
Do you think people are atheists by choice?
Choice or ignorance.
See above
If you have given something your toughtful concideration and have come to a conclusion, in lieu of any new info, can you just discard what you believe?
In most cases, yes. But there are some things that are beyond human comprehension. That is where faith takes over.
Faith in what? If a man has come to the thoughtful conclusion that there is no God, what would he have faith in? He might BS himself, like many people I know, but he could no more believe something he doesn't really believe than a turtle can fly to the moon.
When I joined the Army I asked them to put athiest on my dogtag. Then I got saved.
Thinktwice's correlation theory ...
Correlation implies a physical law relationship -- find that relationship and all questions about correlation are moot.
Sorry, but I haven't a clue what you would need to be saved from, and on my dogtags they put "no preference" because I prefer NO religion.
Saved from the judgement and wrath of God that I deserved because of my sin.
They put "no preference" on mine refusing to put athiest there as I had asked.
your's, Satan
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