Posted on 04/22/2003 5:25:25 PM PDT by RJCogburn
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. — Ayn Rand, Appendix to Atlas Shrugged
In her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and in nonfiction works such as Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Ayn Rand forged a systematic philosophy of reason and freedom.
Rand was a passionate individualist. She wrote in praise of "the men of unborrowed vision," who live by the judgment of their own minds, willing to stand alone against tradition and popular opinion.
Her philosophy of Objectivism rejects the ethics of self-sacrifice and renunciation. She urged men to hold themselves and their lives as their highest values, and to live by the code of the free individual: self-reliance, integrity, rationality, productive effort.
Objectivism celebrates the power of man's mind, defending reason and science against every form of irrationalism. It provides an intellectual foundation for objective standards of truth and value.
Upholding the use of reason to transform nature and create wealth, Objectivism honors the businessman and the banker, no less than the philosopher and artist, as creators and as benefactors of mankind.
Ayn Rand was a champion of individual rights, which protect the sovereignty of the individual as an end in himself; and of capitalism, which is the only social system that allows people to live together peaceably, by voluntary trade, as independent equals.
Millions of readers have been inspired by the vision of life in Ayn Rand's novels. Scholars are exploring the trails she blazed in philosophy and other fields. Her principled defense of capitalism has drawn new adherents to the cause of economic and political liberty.
As long as you retain such prejudice and skepticism, there is no way I can convince you of anything, and I don't think anyone else here could convince you either.
Only the Holy Spirit can convict someone (which usually results in bringing one to his knees) --– and He doesn’t convict just anybody:
For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate [to be] conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. – Romans 8:28-30
Good grief. Just because you insist that I should think that any old moral precept will do for a moral relativist, doesn't make it so. It is extremely easy for a moral relativist to discern by reasoning from evidence about how humans behave, which moral precepts will advance the moral community's interests and which will not. Just because it isn't an infallible process (as you claim, without much evidence, that yours is) doesn't mean I can't do it, or shouldn't care about it. Of course I should care about it. I'm a human.
I believe I am less of an agnostic than most. I think there are, in fact, some good reasons for postulating that a motive intelligence informs the universe. However, I am not confused by that into thinking that I shouldn't struggle to understand as much as I can about the universe that can be discerned in a critical manner, by mundane reasoning about tangible evidence.
American christians could have stopped the murder by herbicide of nearly a million viet nam peasants, and nearly a million genocide victims of the Pol Pot regime, and many more since then, had they taken their moral precepts, as given in the bible seriously, and taken a principled stand. There are too many of them for our government to ignore. It made me angry then, it makes me angry now. I apologize if my response to this is discomforting. According to people like exmarine, our country is utterly christian since it's founding, so I see scant excuse for this. Unless all those overseas-slanteyes have Mideanite blood, of course.
As I pointed out before, all traits are inherited, and all traits are subject to sculpting by the law of survival of the fittest. It is irrelevant whether or not, or to what degree, the implementation of these traits is through DNA. We knew about this before we knew about DNA.
That's why we have fan-tail guppies, chihuahuas, and families that produce volleyball champs generation after generation. Do you also want me to "prove" that prowess in volleyball is located in some particular gene?
I happily return these sentiments.
...there was little mention here, whether from the Scriptures or the works of Jewish theologian-philosopher-historians (theosopherians?) of ruach and I wonder what it's good for, really. Do they suppose that ruach = nefesh + neshama? No, I doubt it. Then, do they say ruach is "soul" whereas neshama is "spirit" as it pertains to humans? Is ruach ever used in reference to the pre-human hominids, or only to us Adamic types?
First, what Scriptural warrant or other evidence is there for reference to "pre-human" homonids, or "pre-Adamic" types?
Second, with reference to "nephesh" and "ruach", a more thorough treatment.
Cordially,
For instance, Lurkers might be interested in some of the differences between the materialist and physicalist philosophy. Hawking (a materialist) is satisfied when a result can be predicted with regularity but Penrose (a physicalist) is not satisfied until the theory makes sense.
Likewise, when a question wanders to the boundary of what can be observed, the materialist shrugs it off as either an item for the anthropic principle or an anomaly which will be resolved by future generations. A physicalist prefers a material explanation but not being willing to quit, pushes the boundaries further out – looking for new kinds of science or theory.
As a believer who is much interested in the research, I relate to the physicalist philosophy but never get frustrated by the boundaries since I already am much aware of what lies on the other side.
This president, George W. Bush, is the first one known to me (and I’m in my 57th year on earth) who has both the moral clarity needed for administration and the courage of that conviction to act as commander-in-chief. I know many of us were praying for a leadership of this type. It is nevertheless overwhelming to see the prayers answered so powerfully. That does not mean that I expect Dubya to be error-free, but as long as he starts the day by kneeling before God – I will be comforted.
On this link, we can see the three terms used in giving instructions for prayer: Souls and Prayer
On this link, we have an analysis of the words as they are used in context and their meaning: Ramchal's Daat Tevunot taught by Rav Avraham Brandwein
Spiritual quality is only found in Man, as we saw, "Elokim breathed into his nostrils a Nishmat Chaim (a Living Soul)," concering which the Zohar (3:123b) says, "He breathed from within Himself." This means that Hashem placed within Man the spiritual potential to develop himself and his will beyond his given nature, and direct it towards that which is Godly. The means to this end is the Torah and its commandments. With these, Man can elevate himself higher and higher to the point where that fundamental Will (Ratzon) to do good receives a higher Value and Importance. It then rises up from the level of Nefesh to that of Ruach, and then to Neshamah. That is, that same Nefesh now can develop itself to the point that it is on the level of Neshamah, so that it is now considered Godly, a chelek eloka mima'al….
We can understand this, however, based on the Ari's teaching (in Etz Chaim) that exalted levels of Chayah and Yechidah surround us and illuminate us from above. They are therefore called Makifim, Envelopments. That is, unlike Nefesh, Ruach and Neshamah, which are internalized, Chayah and Yechidah are so exalted that we cannot internalize them and they therefore remain outside of us.
At some time around 2300 BC, give or take a century or two, a large number of the major civilisations of the world collapsed, simultaneously it seems. The Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, the Old Kingdom in Egypt, the Early Bronze Age civilisation in Israel, Anatolia and Greece, as well as the Indus Valley civilisation in India, the Hilmand civilisation in Afghanistan and the Hongshan Culture in China - the first urban civilisations in the world - all fell into ruin at more or less the same time. Why? …
Some decades ago, the hunt for clues passed largely into the hands of natural scientists. Concentrating on the earlier set of Bronze Age collapses, researchers began to find a range of evidence that suggested that natural causes rather than human actions, may have been initially responsible. There began to be talk of climate change, volcanic activity, and earthquakes - and some of this material has now found its way into standard historical accounts of the period.
Agreement, however, there has never been. Some researchers favoured one type of natural cause, others favoured another, and the problem remained that no single explanation appeared to account for all the evidence….
The hunt for natural causes for these human disasters began when the Frenchman Claude Schaeffer, one of the leading archaeologists of his time, published his book ‘Stratigraphie Comparee et Chronologie L’Asie Occidentale’ in 1948. Schaeffer analysed and compared the destruction layers of more than 40 archaeological sites in the Near and Middle East, from Troy to Tepe Hissar on the Caspian Sea and from the Levant to Mesopotamia. He was the first scholar to detect that all had been totally destroyed several times in the Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age, apparently simultaneously.
Since the damage was far too excessive and did not show signs of military or human involvement, he argued that repeated earthquakes might have been responsible for these events. At the time he published, Schaeffer was not taken seriously by the world of archaeology. Since then, however, natural scientists have found widespread and unambiguous evidence for abrupt climate change, sudden sea level changes, catastrophic inundations, widespread seismic activity and evidence for massive volcanic activity at several periods since the last Ice Age, but particularly at around 2200BC, give or take 200 years.
Areas such as the Sahara, or around the Dead Sea, were once farmed but became deserts. Tree rings show disastrous growth conditions at c 2350BC, while sediment cores from lakes and rivers in Europe and Africa show a catastrophic drop in water levels at this time. In Mesopotamia, vast areas of land appear to have been devastated, inundated, or totally burned...
Yet what was the cause of these earthquakes, eruptions, tidal waves, fire-blasts and climate changes? By the late 1970s, British astronomers Victor Clube and Bill Napier of Oxford University had begun to investigate cometary impact as the ultimate cause. Then in 1980, the Nobel prizewinning physicist Luis Alvarez and his colleagues published their famous paper in ‘Science’ that argued that a cosmic impact had led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.. He showed that large amounts of the element iridium present in geological layers dating from about 65 million BC had a cosmic origin.
It was not an error of omission or neglect that caused either of the genocides I cited. It was intentional US policy, paid for by US, largely christian, taxpayers to peel back jungle with massive, indiscriminate blankets of herbecide. It was US policy to provide recognition and massive support for the Pol Pot regime. It is not a question of standing idly by while two groups that hate each other duel it out, it was a question of committing, or aiding and abetting genocide to further US policy...Supposed US policy, I guess I should say.
Hoping not to re-ignite a previous debate, I don't take Penrose too seriously on this subject. Of all those who have made their extra-observational speculations accessible, I have found Rees the most entertaining. However, I think it remains, not a boundary condition, but an untethered speculation that the evidence for the anthropic principle really is there. It has not been demonstrated to my satisfaction that simple beginnnings, such as the singularity that apparently started up the whole shebang, do not manifest themselves in simple, symmetric natural laws and, in however complex a manner, balanced forces.
Likewise, when a question wanders to the boundary of what can be observed, the materialist shrugs it off as either an item for the anthropic principle or an anomaly which will be resolved by future generations. A physicalist prefers a material explanation but not being willing to quit, pushes the boundaries further out – looking for new kinds of science or theory.
Hmm. Well, I think I'm a standard-brand materialist, but I don't have a problem with the notion that there are explanations for things that are beyond both my grasp for all time. I, in fact, think it quite likely. Perhaps I'm ignorant of fine philosophical distinctions, but I have been under the impression for some time that a traditional materialist is simply addressing the sensible allocation of finite scientific resources, in eschewing metaphysical explanations--not making a claim one way or another about metaphysical explanations.
I haven't found the link yet, but I do recall a source that described the ruach as the point at which the person decides for God (neshama) or for self (nefesh.) The description was the ruach is like a moral compass and point of the article was the importance of each decision (ruach.)
I haven’t done exhaustive research into the foreign policy of administrations prior to Clinton, so I’m not qualified to debate the subject at this time.
You may be like some other Freepers here who are epistemologically materialist but not metaphysically materialist. The differences I mentioned above (between physicalist and materialist) apply to the philosophy - not the epistemology.
Materialism as a philosophy states that the natural realm is all that there is, i.e. the philosophy excludes all spiritual possibilities. Materialism as epistemology excludes metaphysics in scientific endeavors.
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