When it comes to morality, one religion's "morality" is another religion's "immorality."

Thinktwice

[thinktwice]

When it comes to morality, one religion's "morality" is another religion's "immorality."

And that contradiction is evidence of serious flaws in religious moralities.

For me, a rational ethics -- free from religion -- is the only ethics worthy of carrying the name "moral."

Aristotle produced a simplistic rational ethics based on virtues visible in respected people, and vices visible in non-respected humans. And teaching Aristotle's non-denominational ethics in public schools would be a great idea, but ... We'd be turning out individuals with the same moral upbringing of Alexander the Great, and that wouldn't do in a socialistic world.

Even better is Ayn Rand's ethics. Her's is an ethics metaphysically based in reality and epistemologically based in reason; making it a clear and concise rational ethics that makes sense. Ayn Rand's ethics is clearly also what America's founding fathers had in mind when writing the founding documents that recognized and moved to preserve individual freedom -- the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

[thinktwice]

Marx's ethics is best described in terms of altruism, the ethics of self sacrifice, and so is the ethics of Chjristianlity with a mystical touch thrown in.

Aristotle and Rand ethics would fall into the eudaemonism category, where human happiness is considered the good.

Spinoza's ethics is said to be rational, but it was never published in his lifetime because his writings were condemned and suppressed by the Christian church.

The beauty in a rational ethics is that irrationalities that appear would be so-identified for rational correction.

That's a whole lot better than having religious nuts bombing everything in sight.

[PFKEY]

If you want to be logically consistent, anyway.

Ouch!

[PFKEY]

are a philosophy major or professor...

It would seem that you are a student of philosophy.

Are you beginning to find some answers and develop some ryme and reason for our exsistence?

I can tell you from my experiences that you will find no real satisfaction if you place your faith in men.

Yes, I chose the word faith deliberatley.

If logic and reason are what you seek to make sense of this world then man will always leave you feeling empty and betrayed.

Where you look for logic and reason and ultimately the answer to why we are is going to change as you continue to breathe.

In the end I hope that you find your way.

[A.J.Armitage]

Marx's ethics is best described in terms of altruism, the ethics of self sacrifice, and so is the ethics of Chjristianlity with a mystical touch thrown in.

I get the impression I'm talking to a program that simply repeats Randian cliches.

[thinktwice]

you will find no real satisfaction if you place your faith in men.

I don't place my faith in men, but in myself -- "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul." -- W.E. Henley

The words "Look homeward, Angel" also come to mind -- they are from "Lycidias" by John Milton, with the following words preceding the piece: "In this Monody, the Author bewails a learned friend, unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637; and by occasion, foretells the ruin of our corrupted clergy, then in their height."

[thinktwice]

Randian cliches

Speaking of cliches, the following exceprt is from Ayn Rand's 1974 speech to West Point cadets. The speech is titled "Philosophy: Who Needs It"

Have you ever thought or said the following? "Don't be so sure -- nobody can be certain of anything." You got that from David Hume (and many, many others), even thought you might never have heard of him. Or: "This may be good in theory, but it doesn't work in practice." You got that from Plato. Or: "That was a rotten thing to do, but it's only human, nobody is perfect in this world." You got it from Augustine. Or: "It may be true for you, but it's not true for me." You got it from William James. Or: "I couldn't help it! Nobody can help anything he does." You got it from Hegel." Or: "I can't prove it, but I feel that it's true." You got it from Kant. Or: "It's illogical, but logic has nothing to do with reality." You got it from Kant. Have you heard the modern activists say: "Act first, think afterward"? They got it from John Dewey.

Some people might answer: "Sure, I've said those things at different times, but I don't have to believe that stuff all the time. It may have been true yesterday, but it's not true today." They got it from Hegel. They might say: "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." They got it from a very little mind, Emerson. They might say: "But can't one compromise and borrow different ideas from different philosophers according to the expediency of the moment?" They got if from Richard Nixon who got it from William James.

[A.J.Armitage]

The words "Look homeward, Angel" also come to mind -- they are from "Lycidias" by John Milton, with the following words preceding the piece: "In this Monody, the Author bewails a learned friend, unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637; and by occasion, foretells the ruin of our corrupted clergy, then in their height."

John Milton: author of Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, and ally of Oliver Cromwell.

[Prysson]

The Palagius Heresy (sometimes spelled Pelagius) was A philosophy that was developed in 300's AD by a Roman Lawyer from Britain. This Lawyer argued a great many things but one of his greatest beliefs was that Grace saves man and that the Church did not have the power to condemn or damn (nor save) anyone. He was excommunicated by Augustinian and his teaches labeled as heretical yet his teaching served as a principle foundation of Lutherans arguments against the church and served as the foundational underpinnings of Calvanism.

[A.J.Armitage]

Um, no. Not even remotely close. Try inverting it.

Christian heresy of the 5th cent. that emphasized free will and the goodness of human nature. Pelagius (354?-after 418), a British monk who settled in Africa in 410, was eager to raise moral standards among Christians. Rejecting the arguments of those who attributed their sins to human weakness, he argued that God made humans free to choose between good and evil and that sin is an entirely voluntary act. His disciple Celestius denied the church's doctrine of original sin and the necessity of infant baptism. Pelagius and Celestius were excommunicated in 418, but their views continued to find defenders until the Council of Ephesus condemned Pelagianism in 431. Source.

After a brief sojourn in North Africa, Pelagius travelled on to Palestine, while Caelestius tried to have himself made a presbyter in Carthage. But this plan was frustrated by the deacon Paulinus of Milan, who submitted to the bishop, Aurelius, a memorial in which six theses of Caelestius - perhaps literal extracts from his lost work "Contra traducem peccati" - were branded as heretical. These theses ran as follows:

1. Even if Adam had not sinned, he would have died.
2. Adam's sin harmed only himself, not the human race.
3. Children just born are in the same state as Adam before his fall.
4. The whole human race neither dies through Adam's sin or death, nor rises again through the resurrection of Christ.
5. The (Mosaic Law) is as good a guide to heaven as the Gospel.
6. Even before the advent of Christ there were men who were without sin.

On account of these doctrines, which clearly contain the quintessence of Pelagianism, Caelestius was summoned to appear before a synod at Carthage (411); but he refused to retract them, alleging that the inheritance of Adam's sin was an open question and hence its denial was no heresy. As a result he was not only excluded from ordination, but his six theses were condemned. Source. (The source attempts, weakly, to link Luther to Pelagius on the grounds of Sola Fide, but proves that, where Sola Gratia's concerned, it was Luther's and Calvin's opponents who were closer to Pelagius.)

Instead Pelagius taught that human beings have a natural capacity to reject evil and seek God, that Christ’s admonition, “Be ye perfect,” presupposes this capacity, and that grace is the natural ability given by God to seek and to serve God. Pelagius rejected the doctrine of original sin; he taught that children are born innocent of the sin of Adam. Source. (This one makes it especially clear how bizarre your "history" is.)

BTW, it's Augustine. An Augustinian is a follower a Augustine, especially against Pelagianism. John Calvin would be a good example.

[Prysson]

Very educational and thanks for the sources..You see I like learning.

[Prysson]

First of all thinktwice you should never take silence as acquiescence or victory. It is yet another example of your faulty “reasoning” My silence contrary to your assumptions had nothing to do with a wakeup call nor was it because you ooed me and awed me and cowed me into silence with your brilliant reasoning. I was simply too busy. Misterios ridiculous thirteen year old “gotcha mentality doesn’t even deserve a response. Since all he can say is vitriolic nonsense that a grade school student could improve on. You on the other hand are a thinker and are deserving of some respect and a response. So I will give it to you and then I will say in advance that I am not going to reply to this issue anymore. It is abundantly clear that you despise people of faith. I am sorry for you for that. I wish their was something I could do to answer to that because I think that you are a good person who probably just has a lot of anger about something. Regardless am not going to continue ad nauseum arguing over the merits and fallacies of Ayn Rands philosophy versus Christian Philosophy. I will simply say my piece and allow you to respond (granting you the final word) and leave it at that. But please have the dignity and intellectual honesty to not claim it as some kind of victory. I simply have other things I need to spend my time on and this conversation has already taken up several hours of my time. Now to your points…

How do we know what we know about Christianlity? What is the basis for its epistemology? Answer is Christian religious writings -- C.S. Lewis for instance.

Wrong. That is your assumption Thinktwice. I know this is really hard for you to understand because you do not believe it to be true. But understand you really should if you are going to have a reasoned and effective commentary about Christians. Christianity for some people is very much about “Jesus loves me yes I know For the bible tells me so” However to leave it at that is an intellectual dishonesty on your part. You (and mysterios) both keep getting hung up on this concept of thinking people and what they would or would not believe. You fall into the same category as Ayn Rand (for which I know you jump for joy) in that you base everything you believe in on the assumption that you are right. But I am going to come back to that in greater depth in a bit. For now though let me just reiterate that You determine that all I know of God is what a book has told me. I can tell you two answers to that. 1 is that the only thing you know about Ayn Rand’s philosophy is what you read in a book so your insinuation that somehow relying on a book is flawed catches you up in the same trap. By your lights you can not know something unless you have experienced it. I have already showed that to be the greatest of fallacies. We know a great many things without ever having seen them or experienced them ourselves and through our rational minds we come to understand them for truth. Ultimately though there is STILL a BLIND FAITH that what you saw in the book is true. You have never seen a proton (to bring up my earlier example) but you believe they exist. Now you would say that it is because you have rationally reasoned out through evidence that they exist. But the fact is that somewhere in the process no matter how you twist and turn it there came a moment when you had to take the existence of the proton at face value. You have not seen one you have not touched one or tasted one Nevertheless you became CONVINCED that they existed. No matter what evidence of there existence you can drum up that helps your case it all eventuates to the reality that you had to take on faith that what you were being told was true…You see the reality is that some things in life HAVE to comes on faith or else we could not exist in the world. If a blind person never sees light does the light exist. Of course it does One mans perception does not make a truth become a lie. In the end blind people believe in light because they are told it exists. By your reasoning they would be utterly STUPID to think that way. And these my friend are just a few of the Glaring flaws in Ayn Rands nice little world. And let me reiterate here that there was a time when Atlas Shrugged was my bible. I am not a novice Ayn Rander. Neither am I a hater of Ayn Rand. Quite the contrary. She was a remarkable person who had some incredible insights into human nature. She was not however a perfect Goddess of logic and reasoning. Her ultimate premise in ethics being that she could reason out right and wrong herself ultimately ignores the question of what determines he own sense of right or wrong. By her argument her own good determines her right and wrong. If it is good for her than it is right. That is on the surface even such utter nonsense. 1. It fails utterly as I have pointed out time and again (and for which you have never answered) where her sense of what is good for herself comes from. It does not answer to it. It is like the endless question why (which is ultimately what philosophy is all about) Why Why Why. No matter what answer you give there is always another why. Ayn Rand posited the concept of Why? Because I reasoned it end of story. And thinks that somehow through the force of her will she can end the debate…stop the questions. That is utterly ridiculous. She can no more do that than her antagonists could wish Hank Reardon to produce steel at a loss. (You see I do know my Ayn Rand) No force of will can make something be that is not. Ayn Rand can not wish an end to the cyclical question of why? Simply because she doesn’t want to answer the question. Why does Ayn Rand believe that what she BELIEVES is GOOD for her is GOOD. What is the foundation of that BELIEF. You have to understand that you can not have a concept of what is GOOD for you unless you have an idea of what is GOOD. 2. As an intelligent person why do you INSIST on ignoring Ayn Rands own glaring influences The fact that she was born in Russia and came to America to escape Communism. This hatred of Communism you don’t think influenced her thinking. The same with her hatred of anything religious. Even an elementary psychologist would have had a field day with Ayn Rand. She hates Religion and she hates government and she hates most people and so conceives of a philosophy that relies on no one but herself. Admirable to be certain…self reliance is admirable. Self thinking and evaluation is a trait the world could use more of. But Ayn Rand hardly developed the idea. She hardly conceived of it from scratch. Ayn Rand had a preconceived notion of what was right and what was wrong. She built her philosophy around those preconceived beliefs. She does not and in FACT and CAN NOT explain where those sense of right and wrong come from. No matter how you break down her reasoning and logic it returns to the same point. Why did she think that was good and that was bad. You say because it had a negative consequence and therefore was bad. But what you were doing was for you own good but someone else good came into conflict and the result was damage to you. By that logic you would conclude that that was actually bad. But it was good for the other person. Why is it bad for you. Morality then becomes relative. There are other ridiculous leaps in logic that she makes…totally unfounded and with no basis in any sense of fact or logic such as the notion that most people hate life and do not really want to live. That is such utter nonsense. In the end (and this is where you my friend are heading) She was an utter fanatic. Completely devoted to her sense of right and wrong and her own “religion” of the mind. That so called religion , had she the capacity to enact her deepest desires, would slaughter almost every man and woman and child on this earth, Like so many other famous atheists (Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, Hitler) Just to name a few…Ayn Rand would gladly toss onto the trash heap of history billions of lives and not shed a tear at there passing. To her they were beyond worthless. They were little more than animals and they should be despised for what they are (or aren’t) That is her message. The world is full of a bunch of animal sheep who should be greatful to lick the boots of people like herself.(note how of course her philosophy places her at the top of the food chain…how convenient) Or do you think for one minute that that ISNT the message she preaches in Atlas Shrugged. Sorry my friend but I reject that. I reject it because of all its glaring contradictions. Her own hypocrisies and fallacies in logic. He refusal to answer the question of why. Her ridiculously childish demand that she accept nothing that she hasn’t proven for herself and claiming to take nothing at face value while at the same time doing just that with 90% of the body of her life knowledge. Taking it on faith. The ONLY difference is that she REFUSED to call it faith. She INSISTED that it was all her own doing. Well that’s nice but it doesn’t stand up in court. I got a bit off topic though…simply put I have more sources of knowledge of Gods existence than just the bible or the writings of CS Lewis. I have personal experiences that prove it to me by the reasoning of my own mind. That you see is all that anyone has to go on. The only thing you accomplish with your position is to Reject what I claim as evidence as evidence. You can stand and CLAIM day and night until you are blue in the face that I have no evidence and no proof but it doesn’t alter the fact that I do. You simply reject it as proof. That is your prerogative but just as with Ayn Rand it does NOT make you correct.

Christian metaphysics is a given: a Christian's first source of knowledge is ... God

Wrong. Christian Metaphysics is a given? Given of what. You have nothing with which to back that up. I could just as legitimately claim that you have nothing but metaphysics to back up your belief that Ayn Rand is correct. Factually you don’t have anything except your belief. You have reasoned it out all you what and it makes sense but it doesn’t make it incontrovertible fact. Let me throw another philosophical school of though out there for you. Nothing you know is based on fact. But is rather based on your belief that what you KNOW is fact…so ultimately the entire body of your knowledge is FAITH based and thus metaphysical. Your human perception tells you what is real. What if what you perceive to be reality if false. It happens ever day. Even the so called hard science are find out all the time just how wrong their supposedly incontrovertible facts were. You claim that such is the case with me in fact. You think I base my belief on some kind of mystical perception that isn’t real…Your assumption is that my perception is incorrect and yours is correct. But what if you happen to have some chemical imbalance in the brain and you perception is in fact altered from reality. How then are you to judge the accuracy of what you know. You might never know the reality from the false. My point is that no matter how much Ayn Rand and you pretty it up in words you can not escape from the fact that at the root of your premise lies a belief that what you are saying is right and the BELIEF has to extend from faith. If nothing else then the faith that your perceptions are accurate and you aren’t insane.

The basis for the "goodness" definitions behind Christian ethics is altruism.

You keep on plopping all Christians into one category… For one thing for some Christian what “goodness” is derived from is being in accordance with the will of God…being bad is in accordance with being against God. Altruism is not Goodness. Altruism is a nasty little word. One can give freely of oneself and ones wealth and find value in that. That is another flaw in Ayn Rands thinking it presupposed that everyone must share her same ethical understanding because she rationalized it to be correct. She herself saw no value to be gained by GIVING. Yet there is millennium of evidence of people who have found tremendous personal value in the act. If I choose to give money to a charity to help someone who is on the outs (many be because their house burned down or whatever) I get value for that. It is ultimately a selfish act in Ayn Rands terminology but she would never accept it as such. She just hated the thought of giving money to people who didn’t earn it. Unearned was her windmill and John Gault her Sancho. But she does not get to determine for everyone what they find value in. Her “Rationale” you see is based on her perception and thus becomes a FLAWED ethical foundation.

Christian esthetics, what's esthetically important to Christians is not to be found in drama, art, literature, etc; but in the afterlife. Best exemplified in my C.S. Lewis quote about man being a nasty, pride filled and dirty creature.

I personally find great esthetic value in Art Theatre Drama etc. I was a theater director for years before I decide I was tired of “Starving” so I don’t know what you are talking about. In fact Christian have traditionally been great patrons of the arts so that comment is just rubbish.

Christian politics -- I'd call it the politics of virtue.

not sure what you mean by that but so be it.

How am I doing, Prysson? And would you like to see a converse review of Rand's Objectivist philosophy?

Doing well…Not convincing me at all but I never said you were stupid.

I'm thinking that post 147 was a major wake up call to prysson, and I'd like to enlarge on my post 147 attempt to explain the basics underlying Christian philosophy in the specific area of epistemology. Something I'd never noticed in Ayn Rand books before the past few days, are the opening words on that unnumbered page found directly under the book cover. And what I've realized now is that the words written under the "Introduction ot Objectivist Epistemology" cover are significant in explaining philosophical problems in religious philosophies. Here is what's written under Rand's Epistemology book cover. HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT WE KNOW? This is the problem that epistemology deals with -- and upon the solution of this problem every other aspect of philosophy must rest. For until we know how we know, we cannot be certain of what we know. And if we cannot know anything with certainty, our capacity to reason, to choose, and to act is subverted at the root. In a world pisoned by the doctrines of irrationalism, a world afflicted by a sense of helplessness and hopelessness, INTRODUCTION TO OBJECTIVIST EPISTEMOLOGY serves as an invaluable antidote. Here is the foundation of a system of thought -- and a view of man's potential -- that returns us from a shadowland of intellectual paralysis and despair to the real world of individual strength and the efficatious mind.

That is a nice little tidbit for a self help book but hardly a strong argument. Also I would point out that epistemology is the philosophy or study of the source of knowledge. It is really interesting in and of itself but I should warn you is not something that anyone has effected a strangle hold on. The very study of knowledge itself and what is KNOWN and HOW it is known is a source of continuous debate. Ayn Rand despite your affection for her did not RESOLVE this philosophical question.

Going back again to post 147 I wrote ... How do we know what we know about Christianlity? What is the basis for its epistemology? Answer is Christian religious writings -- C.S. Lewis for instance. And that does seem to be how Christians know what they know, from what they've read and absorbed in their religious lives ... without any reference to reason.

This once again continues with a faulty line of reasoning. A great deal of the knowledge we have of Christianity does in fact come from readings…but it isn’t the source of the knowledge. That is where you argument is flawed and it returns again to my earlier point that you simply don’t understand what Christianity is. Understandable since you aren’t an adherent but nevertheless your ignorance (and I do not use that word contemptuously) of it is the real root of your problem. I know God exists and it isn’t from any book. I know it because of personal experience and from other personal accounts as well as from a bulk of evidence that supports my own personal experience. I know you would sneer in contempt at what I call evidence but the fact is I have felt the holy spirit moving in me and in the body of worship. My wife has spoken in tongues. There is uncounted examples of faith healings and miracles. There have been prophets and fortellings. There have also been false prophets posers fakers and all manner of cons in relation to faith. But there is also truth. You dismiss these examples You know doubt think my wife was putting me on or is a freak of some kind. I can tell you that she was terrified and contrary to what you might think it actually shook her faith for a time…Not her belief mind you but the worldview of her faith. So it isn’t so simple as you would like to dismiss. But you haven’t seen these and if you have you have dismissed them as nonsense. You claim there is no reasoning about it but that is whewre you are wrong. You see you can belive in Ayn Rand all you want but you cant chane the definitions of words. Reasoning is the process of finding the source of a belief or piece of knowledge or action. I have a belief in God that was reasoned from a wealth of evidence of experience (the small number of items I listed are just that a small number of items to note) From the evidence I reason that God exists. Uoltimately though just as with gravity and protons I have to make a leap of faith to say that the wealth of my knowledge leads me to this conclusion so I ASSUME that my conclusion is correct. You have a prejudice against religion and so you want label it as irrational and unreasoned but it just simply isnt and there isnt any line of argument you can take to prove your point. Instead you just choose to dismiss what we claim as reasoning as nonsense. That is certainly your prerogative to do so but it doesn’t make you wise, or intelligent or a better man or anything of the sort. It means precisely what it is…that you have dismissed evidence. . It doesn’t make you right. If a man prophesizes the a sequence of events down to the smallest detail and 500 years later that sequence of events occurs and that person claim God told him. You know for a fact he predicted it. You know for a fact it occurred but somehow you want to dismiss the little tidbit of where the information came from. Who is being rational and who is being irrational. Now from that knowledge of evidence comes an act of faith…does what I see mean what I think it means. You can only (as Ayn Rand points out) rely on the evidence of your own reason. The problem is that your reason is dependant on so many things. Just as with the existence of a proton you must at some point say that the evidence of my experience has a meaning and that meaning has been written of...I will read that evidence and balance it against my own experience and come up with a rational explanation. Ergo the proton exists because I can experience matter and scientists have told me that matter consists of protons and neutrons. That is what your REASONING is. In the end it is still a leap of faith that what you have been told is true. At some point you have to ultimately have FAITH in your own perception of reality and that in itself is an act of faith. By your definition Gravity is mysticism. I will get to that in a second. Let me first return to you statement that what I believe of about God comes from writings…NO what I believe about God comes from my personal experience. How that belief has been shaped is the product of my own mind reasoning through the wealth of knowledge that Christian writers and philosophers have written. That is no different that someone believing in Gravity and deciding that perhaps he should study Isaac Newton if he wants to have an idea of what it is. That person does not NEED Isaac Newton to know that Gravity exists. He knows it by experience. But what he takes to inform that BELIEF in gravity is what he reads from scientists who have studied its effects. And I would point out that that is all we know of gravity. We know that for some reason NOONE can explain. Matter attracts other matter and that if you put enough matter into one mass then its pull gets stronger. We know nothing of why this is. In essence it truly is magic because it is unexplained. But we don’t dismiss it as mystical nonsense because we have experienced it. The same applies to belief in God. I have experienced God the bible is just wiser men then me telling me more about him. The bible didn’t make God. And neither is the source of my knowledge the bible.



Epistemology is the study of the source of knowledge. It is only a single aspect of reason and at its ultimate root is flawed by the nature of the thinker. That is the ultimate failure of Ayn Rands philosophy. Ayn Rand believed that what we KNOW is the product of our reasoning. In the literal sense she is correct. The problem is that what people know as reality differs. That is also a fact. A paranoid Schizophrenic does not see reality as we see reality. You do not see reality as I see reality. For you there is no God. For me there is a God I have felt His presence and seen His ACTS. My reality shapes my reasoning. Your reality shapes yours. Just as Ayn Rands reality shaped hers. Her hatred of communism, her hatred of religion. These things shaped her philosophy not the other way around. You cant think reality into existence. It exists and your mind responds to it. Your mind of course is as flawed as the next persons. A chemical imbalance here, a twisting of the mind there and some pchological condition arises that effects the whole scope of whats real and what isn’t. That is not to say that things aren’t real. They clearly are. Being blind doesn’t make the light not exists. Being deaf doesn’t make sound not be real. So where is the benefit of the product of reasoning there. You say well they can count on the fact that everyone who can see tells them it is there, therefore they can know that there is light. What if everyone is just putting them on and its just a big lie. What if there is a conspiracy of blind people and that one blind person is the butt of the joke. They are making up this world of light and sights to actually see. And putting her on. By the rational conclusion of that persons mind there is absolutely nothing with which she can reason the existence of light. In the end she has to accept itsexistance on faith. The faith that what she was told is accurate. All knowledge can be boiled down to this kernal of doubt. IN the end you still have to BELIEVE that what you think you KNOW you actually KNOW. So to sit back on some high horse and say I know and am therefore a thinking rational person and you don’t know and therefore are an idiot…well who sounds like the idiot when they say things like that. You say you are the thinker and I am an irrational who has rejected reason. Yet all you have done is soupt Ayn Rand quotes at me while I have given you rational cause and effect REASONING for my belief in God. Now who is the thinker and who is not THINKING FOR HIMSELF. That is not even accurate or fair I only say it to highlight my point which is to say that even you and the source of your belief system comes from books. You read Ayn Rand and became convinced of the rightness of her rationale. It makes sense to you and so you embrace it as THE TRUTH. But when I do the same process and comes to a different conclusion you reject my reasoning as mystical. You can certainly make the claim but it is no different from what you have done.

At first glance, I was pretty sure that your statement (above) was a lie. At second glance, I can see that it was probably a malicious twisting of Ayn Rand words with the intent of getting reactions such as my reaction.

It is not a malicious twisting it is pointing out the flaw in her logic. Ayn Rand believed that everything could be rationalized by the mind and that from that rational perspective your could CREATE morality. The problem is that people minds are different. They aren’t the same. People given the exact same set of circumstance and evidence will come up with two totally opposite answers. From that basis if your morality is dependant on your reasoning than your morality is relative to your mental processes. She hated relativism yet her own philosophy is a product of relative thinking. She just refused to accept that fact because she was arrogant enough to believe that she was absolutely right about everything. That is fine but Ayn Rand was a person and as such has inherent flaws such as her antipathy towards religion and other psychological baggage that good bad or indifferent effected her judgment. She was not free of human failings and she had them they are evident in her philosophy and the impracticality of it. The very fact that he philosophy taken to its purest sense (as she herself takes it in Atlas Shrugged) takes us to a place where the majority of people are wiped out without a moments reflection or a shred of remorse or doubt should tell you something about the real effects of her worldview take to its ultimate conclusion. And you who seem to be so concerned with the atrocities of the church see no contradiction in the atrocities of a person who believes that there own ration morality justifies the destruction of millions of lives.

The truth is that moral issues to those religious deal with sin and forgiveness and getting to heaven; but moral issues to Objectivists involve every volitional action taken by an individual, with every such action having a right and wrong associated with it.

You aren’t even making sense now. You just said that every action has a right and wrong to it. Why is it right and why is it wrong? You say because I judge it to be so. All I can say is thank God you don’t have the right to dictate YOUR sense of right and wrong because no doubt you would be slaughtering Christians because after all as Ayn Rand believed we are just unthinking animals little better than beasts.

For Objectivists; from choosing to eat with either a fork or spoon, to choosing a mate, to choosing a philosophy; every volitional human action is a moral decision with a moral reward or punishment evolving as a result of the decision.

That is nonsense. A moral decision in eating with a moral reward or punishment? That isn’t moral that is the basics of living you have just dressed it up to sound superior (Just as Ayn Rand did) there is no moral act in eating other than to say I want to live. By your logic whatever is good for you is moral. What a nice feel good philosophy you have evolved. The hippies of the sixties thought the same way. Is it any wonder that atheist have committed the greatest atrocities on earth and done so without blinking an eye I mean after all it all just boiled down to what works for you and your own reasoning. There is no God. You would argue that those atrocities are what because they were socialist or Marxist…what because they preached altruism. Where was the altruism in Hitler’s Third Reich. Where was the altruism in Stalin’s Soviet Union. Or Pol Pots Cambodia. Or Mao’s China. These people did not have the common thread of being altruists their actions prove the fallacy of that logic. They all did have one common value None of them believed in God and all of them thought that there own good was moral.

I'd still like to know your source.

My source is the collected writings of Ayn Rand and my own understanding and knowledge of them. You see I actually have the ability to think and reason towards my own conclusions. Why don’t I ask the same thing of you…where is your source for all of your wild assertion such as “Christians don’t think” and Religion is irrational” “Christianity is the source of all the world ills” and other nonsensical sensationalistic comments meant to illicit a response but otherwise having no fundamental truth to them. Chew on that for a while.

[thinktwice]

vitriolic nonsense

"Oh wad some power the giftie gie us,
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion.

From "To a Louse," by Robert Burns

[thinktwice]

Where was the altruism in Hitler’s Third Reich. Where was the altruism in Stalin’s Soviet Union. Or Pol Pots Cambodia. Or Mao’s China.

"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." -- Karl Marx.

"From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs." -- Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 1936, Article 12.

[A.J.Armitage]

Very educational and thanks for the sources..You see I like learning.

Thanks. I'm sorry if I came across a little testy.

[Prysson]

Not at all...unlike some people (who I will allow to remain unmentioned) I do not profess to have all the answers and I am wrong at times. I made a statement in error and i dont mind admitting it. factually that was my understanding but by my own admission my knowledge of palegius was ultimately second hand. I appreciate the links and the opportunity to improve myself.

[thinktwice]

Regardless am not going to continue ad nauseum arguing over the merits and fallacies of Ayn Rands philosophy versus Christian Philosophy.

What's that famous saying about best laid plans?

---

Comparing Rand's Objectivism to mystic philosophies is simple.

Branches of philosophy -- Objectivism ---------- Mysticism

Metaphysics ------------- Reality ----------------- Faith
Epistemology ------------ Reason ---------------- Emotions
Ethics ------------------- Self Interest ----------- Altruism
Esthetics ---------------- A Sense of Life -------- The Afterlife
Logic ------------------- Induction/Deduction ---- Dogma
Politics ------------------ Of Substance ---------- Of Virtue
Ultimate Goal ----------- Personal happiness ----- Heaven
Ultimate Enemy --------- Altruism ---------------- Reason

[Prysson]

I know I said I wasnt going to post again but I had sent a copy of our thread to a friend of mine, who incidentally is a longtime student of philosopher (going on twenty years anyway) He is my most respected friend and at time advesary in argumentation. He replied to me with some points that I have his permission to post. I found them to be valid and so wished to introduce them into the argument. He said the following.

First of all, anyone who has actually studied epistemology should be able to tell you that what it ALL eventually boils down to is where your personal comfort level is of drawing a line in the sand and saying, "Ok, I'll accept these assertions as true for a foundation but I can't really prove them. I CAN prove things AFTER them if I have first agreed to take this set of foundational assumptions as true." The key being though that no matter who you are or where you start you ALWAYS build on a set of assumptions that you are willing (actually that you HAVE) to take on faith. And it all boils down to a comfort level usually derived from personal experience and not necessarily rigorous logical examination. If that were the case, there really could be no foundational set of assumptions.
Kant, for me came the closest to an honest pursuit of this with "Cogito ergo sum." (I think therefore I am). This is actually a lovely (and entertaining if you are into that kind of thing) little piece of reasoning when you follow him through it. But, even as sound as he was convinced it was and as sound as I think it is....once you get down to Kant's bedrock(that I exist), the fun really begins as you start poking holes in that and you really don't exist at all. Even after he has accounted for the great deceiver (a hypothetical being in his rationale, not necessarily the devil), he posits that he exists because even if everything he thinks is wrong, he is still thinking. Is he? How do I know? How do I know I am thinking? Maybe I am really nothing more than some fading electric feedback from a datadownload...(you can really exotic on all these variations of the "brain in a vat"/Matrix scenarios).
Anyway, without getting too far off track. If you are going to pursue epistemology...be prepared. If you honestly and rigorously pursue it, it ALL spirals towards skepticism. The great irony is that even the skeptics "believe" in something without a foundation....They believe that there is nothing that can be known.....which is of course a hard assertion of knowledge which of course means that you aren't really a skeptic at all.
If you remember, this argument is how you and I finally "broke the ice". But my point is that epistemology, like all philosphy including Ayn Rand's (which most philosphers just call "Objectivism" and drop the epistemology)is an interesting and certainly very enlightening pursuit. But the enlightenment you receive is that there really is very little that you can truly know for sure and without question and therefore almost everything you claim to "know" is founded on some other assertion that you simply "accept". A humbling thing to keep in mind when arguing with others.
I would not at all say that it is a worthless pursuit. But to run around making absolute epistemolgical claims is sophomoric at best. I say that acknowledging that there are all sorts of knowledge claims that I believe to be very defensible but I acknowledge that I am basing them on a foundation of BELIEFS, not facts.
Men and women of science, philosphy and theology ALL work from a set of ssumptions they have agreed (at least to themselves) to acknowledge as true even though they can not prove them. If you want to get into a real hotbed of argument. Spend some time studying the philosphy of science. The modern religion. Science and technology is above all this arguing right? Because they deal in hard cold objective facts. Wrong. There is no such thing and science has no more claim to truth than religion. The only thing science can trumpet is usefulness and practicality (which of course it tends to be). On the other hand, if you believe your eternal soul is at stake....is science or theology more practical?
Anyway, if you begin arguing this with almost anyone, in the scientificcommunity or not you will find that they generally have no idea how much their beliefs and their "knowledge" is based on absolute faith, ignorance, or just plain guesswork.
As regards the assertions that the belief in God is not rational, religious people don't find esthetic values in art, Christians caused the dark ages and other silly notions. Does this person not realize that that his assertions are nothing more than hypothesis? Is he incapable of recognizing that the very fact that he holds those beliefs as "given" is nothing more than his own assertion of a belief. He "believes" that such and such is the case and thus it is true? His main premise, that there is no God, is in and of itself utterly absurd taken as a truth. It cant be declared as a truth because it can not be proven. You can not "prove" a negative as even the most elementary student of philosophy knows, therefore the position that there is no God can only be an assertion of belief as it is utterly un-provable.
I would also add that generally speaking no philosopher is ever taken seriously when they simply appear to parrot as a disciple the teachings of a single philosopher. Philosophy is about thinking and what we think as people and as cultures changes from day to day and year to year for someone to declare that a single philosopher has the absolute truth to the keys of rational thought is utter nonsense. They are not thinking they are parroting. Perhaps it is good in the sense that at least they believe in something, but they should refrain from criticizing others who have the decency to do their thinking for themselves. It only makes them look stupid.

[yendu bwam]

Please thank your friend, Prysson, for his valuable addition to this thread. Thinktwice - Prysson and his friend are right. At the base of any logical system is a set of unprovable axioms. The same is as true in math (which is based on purely logical reasoning), as it is of the search for moral truth. Ayn Rand had her axioms, as Prysson has pointed out. Given that the vast, vast majority in this world infer, intuit or see more than enough indirect evidence for them to believe in the existence of God, and to believe that God has provided for us certain moral axioms, you see that you are no different from those who are religious. We both apply reason to the moral axioms we believe are true. The only difference, thinktwice, is that Prysson (as well as I) understand(s) that there are unprovable moral axioms at the base of his (our) belief, and you, it seems, may not. Again, morality is not derivable from reason. And as such, it is wrong to deride those who believe in God as irrational. They have just applied reason to God-given axioms (rather than Rand-given axioms). But here's the really interesting thing - which do you think would lead to a better world - a Christian, God-given morality which requires that we love one another with all our hearts (even our enemies), or a Randian morality in which self is paramount? Many are drawn to Christian morality as it represents for them (or feels for them to be) the ultimate and most revolutionary goodness - a conclusion which of course is not provable (since the notion of goodness is based on our moral axioms). Others accept it given their belief in God and His authority. Even if you do not see or feel this, why would one ever deride a morality based on love for one another?

[yendu bwam]

"From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs." -- Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 1936, Article 12.

One of the cruel premises of communism, as it came to be in practice (with Lenin and Stalin and Mao), was that the collective material benefit (food, shelter, clothing) always outweighed the individual material benefit - and even worse, outweighed the value of individual life. If by 'altruism' you mean the overall collective material benefit, well, communism could be called 'altruistic.' So, you have your definition for that word. But so what? Lenin, Stalin and Mao had a morality which condoned the slaughter of millions. Christian morality is supremely different. Christian morality seeks that each improve himself by more closely following the example of the sinless Christ. As such, that the collective (society) benefits follows from this personal conversion. In short, Leninist morality sought to materially improve society with no regard for human life. Christianity seeks to improve individuals, confident that society will improve as well.

[Misterioso]

Your friend, the "philosopher," is a fraud. "I think, therefore I am" was written by Rene Descartes. What a final blunder you just made.