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The Presuppositions of Christian Neo-Objectivism

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  • 2 weeks later...

That has nothing to do with Objectivism, so I don't know why you'd call it Neo-Objectivism. The ideas themselves are just assertions. "inborn inner pressure to do what is right." No such thing exists, and if it does, prove it. And if you can prove it, having an 'inner pressure' to do something does not mean one ought to do it.

 

The Christians have a history of trying to integrate good and rational philosophy with their mystic philosophy. But of course, such a thing cannot be done.

Edited by Peter Morris
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  • 3 months later...

The desire to combine Objectivist philosophy with Christian mysticism is a common trend among people who have experienced Ms. Rand only thru her fiction and her non-fiction essays about ethics and politics.  Thirty years ago, as a man with 12 years of Christian education, I read these books and essays in that same context and tried to combine them during the distracting life period of raising kids and making a living.

 

When I got to the epistemology and the Aristotelian metaphysics years later, I hit a wall.  You cannot accept the axioms of existence, consciousness, and identity - you cannot accept the ideas of causality and non-contradiction - and continue to believe in the Christian God.  To do so requires a contradiction.

 

And so, back to the OP.  There is no symbiotic relationship between conscience and reason - conscience is a dependent of sense perception and reason.  Having a conscience has nothing to do with mysticism.  It's the eventual recognition, that doing to and for others as you would like them to treat you, based on the values you hold, is way more in your best interest than acting like a bully or a predator. You have reason, your neighbor has reason - specialization and trade are in your best interest over force and fraud.  That's reasoned conscience and it has nothing to do with God. 

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...  tried to combine them during the distracting life period of raising kids and making a living.

I'm curious about this. Specifically, I'm curious whether you held on to some Christian principles or whether you held on to some Christian concretes? I assume that a person can try to combine some ideas from the sermon on the mount with some ideas from Objectivism... the concretes of whether Jesus actually gave the sermon would be unimportant. Alternatively, someone might keep the concretes and interpret the principles with an Objectivist spin... so, Jesus said these various things, but he was trying to stress individualism, etc. 

 

Anything you can share would be interesting.

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The only thing about Christianity I continued to hold after about age 32 was my enjoyment of their traditional Christmas music.  While many things taught by Jesus Christ (perverted by men ever since) are human-life-on-earth positive, they cannot be justified or supported in a metaphysics and epistemology based in mysticism and the primacy of consciousness.  My 12 years of Catholic education was a series of complete contradictions between what I was taught and how I saw religious people live their lives.

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Christian Neo-Objectivism starts with the symbiotic relationship between reason and the human conscience, the inborn inner pressure to do what is right. Reason discovers and understands the conscience while the conscience, in turn, gives reason the valuation of good...

 

If there were an "inborn inner pressure to do what is right" (innate morality?), then what did Christ suffer and die for?  (hint: 3 letter word; sounds like pin)

 

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Here is an assertion that supports the conscience as a universal experience. Lying is universally valued as wrong by the conscience. No parent has ever said to a child, "I am so glad you have started lying to me; now you will have many advantages over people who do not lie."

...

 

I think parents use irony to make a point with their children much more than you give them credit for.

 

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What does anyone think about these premises?

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Needs some work.  Try discovering the "three A's" of Objectivism, as recommended Ayn Rand.  Two of them are Aristotle and the lady herself.  The third is a Saint you're probably familiar with, credited by Ayn Rand for releasing  Aristotelianism during the Renaissance.

 

Edited by Devil's Advocate
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