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Showing content with the highest reputation on 12/20/11 in all areas

  1. dream_weaver

    The Value of Work

    I'll stick with being perceived as having a pretentious literary tone.
    1 point
  2. Well done, bluecherry. If one can understand what bluecherry has explained, then one will understand why the micro-focus on details, losing sight of the whole, will never help to understand the "rape." Dominique vs Roark, a clash of metaphysical value-judgements, one side held in error and not truly, fully or consistently embraced.
    1 point
  3. Dante

    Knowledge

    Welcome to the forum. Rand actually wrote her most extensive and explicitly philosophical stuff on the subject of epistemology, in the form of Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. I would highly recommend a very careful reading of that to gain an understanding of how Rand thought we gain knowledge and conceptualize it properly. There is also a more accessible reference that you can view free online that does a good and faithful overview of the Objectivist viewpoint on the nature and features of knowledge. It doesn't go in-depth into Rand's concept-formation methodology (subjects like measurement omission, for example), but it lays out the proposed nature of knowledge and the support for that nature. It's called The Logical Structure of Objectivism. The relevant chapters are the Introduction and Chapter 1. The discussion of knowledge begins on page 7 of the Introduction and continues through the entire first chapter, entitled 'Knowledge.'
    1 point
  4. Now that Ayn Rand has finally demonstrated the efficacy of Reason to man in the 20th century, a new speculation about God has emerged as a revision of Blaise Pascal's 17th c. thought that it is safer to "wager" that God does exist than that He doesn't, as follows: The existence of God cannot be established through Reason. Though all men are free to "wager" as though God does exist, they should take into account that Reason would have to be God's crowning creation and gift to man. It endows man with the capacity to grasp everything that exists in the universe that God wants man to be able to know and the capacity to use that knowledge to perfect the life God gave him. They should consider also the distinct possibility that God would not want to be known by man, but rather would prefer to observe from afar what men can achieve on their own by means of the capacities with which He endowed them. After all, God would not have given man Reason if he did not want man to use it in accordance with its designed function. Furthermore, any rejection of Reason, such as the arbitrary replacement of it by the Satanic anti-capacity of Mysticism to fabricate false ideas of God's universe, or worst of all, false ideas of the nature or will of God Himself, would most certainly constitute the most damnable sin. Thus, in that case, man would be subject to only one commandment: I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt falsify neither other gods before Me, nor the nature of Me Myself nor the nature of My creations. Thus, in that case, there would be only one mortal sin: the rejection of God's Reason in favor of Satan's Mysticism. Thus, in that case, in the end, Heaven would necessarily be occupied only by God and around Him all of the rational atheists who ever existed. Thus, in that case, all who abused the rational minds God gave them and stubbornly clung with nothing more than Faith to religions that worshiped some allegedly revealed God would necessarily go to reside with Satan in the fires of Hell for eternity. Thus, in that case, it would perhaps be better not to "wager" on the existence of God after all.
    1 point
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