Spiral Architect

You need to keep in mind that Capitalism is a political concept born of ethics. A good trick when thinking about an issue like this or debating with someone is to remember a simple thing – Substitute the word “Capitalism” for “Freedom” and reevaluate. The results can do wonders for clarity. But to the point directly a producer in a free market produces a value to trade. The value may be the best product in quality and price but not necessarily so. Quality and price is subjective to the user when it comes to trading just like the diamond dust represents quality to some people but obviously not you. There is no contradiction – The producers are indeed creating what is valued and demanded by the market. It has to otherwise they would not be making any money and subsequently be forced to create a new value (or go out of business). Unfortunately, in this case, you don’t agree with the market. I can appreciate your frustration since I have similar issues when it comes to music. But that isn’t the fault of Capitalism because it is not the fault of freedom. The contradiction is the idea that freedom should create specific results. Capitalism is the freedom to live, associate, and trade with others. To choose Capitalism is to choose freedom because it is freedom… not because it produces the best results economically. It usually does but it is not the reason to choose it. That would be a utilitarian argument by claiming the Government’s policy should be determined by results instead of ethics. As for subliminal messages dream_weaver said it best.

I am honestly trying to get to the crux of your argument. “Just the facts” as Joe Friday would say. My earlier post did offer an opinion but addressed the issue outside of your point which did absolutely nothing of value. Thus I’m sticking to base points now to understand your position fully before offering anything extra. As for people’s reaction, you can’t expect people who seriously chew on ideas to just give up on something that has had lots of intellectual digest time. You’re going to have to work pretty hard to overcome something that fundamental and that well established. Love the fact you’re swinging for the fence but you shouldn’t be surprised if people start lining up to throw a fast ball your way. Now, where were we… You are saying that existence and consciousness are primary metaphysically but when it comes to understanding human awareness (epistemology) this becomes reversed since the laws of logic is how a conscious mind validates existence and its own consciousness. Is this correct? I meant the later. You are saying logic is an irreducible primary in epistemology that all facts are dependent upon. Consciousness and existence are not irreducible primaries (when it comes to our awareness) since they require logic to help validate them. I understand you mean this applies to epistemology, not metaphysic (which is the mistake I made earlier). You are saying that existence is primary in metaphysics since it is the foundation of all of existence, but when we move to the study of human thinking logic is the primary because it is the foundation of how we understand existence. The argument is that knowledge moves though a hierarchy where each science validates and proves the one above it but Objectivism falls short since it fails to bridge metaphysics to epistemology properly. Since perception cannot validate logic alone, there is a point between metaphysics and epistemology that Objectivism fails to validate. Objectivism makes a metaphysical argument for something we can only understand in the science of epistemology. It is claiming perceptual proof for a method of thinking when we have to use that method of thinking to understand what we perceive. Are to put it simply, the bridge connecting the two sciences flows the wrong way? Objectivism has a very detailed hierarchy that moves through a long chain of knowledge. It is chronological and you’re dealing with people who consider studying that hierarchy a cardinal virtue. Surely you can see how the perception of reverse engineering that hierarchy then claiming to find fault with it would cause a problem. In fact, that is why I am explicitly working within your approach - So I can understand it from your frame of reference.

Let me see if I understand. Your argument is that sense perception, existence and consciousness, cannot prove the laws of logic, but the laws of logic can prove them and itself. Therefore the laws of logic (identity) and their prior implication is the foundation of existence and consciousness?

Yes it would. The purpose of Government is to protect your rights, not violate them. Marriage, same sex or any other, doesn't violate anyone's rights therefor the government has not need to act. It is a non-issue politically. The fact it is a political issue today is just one of many examples of collectivist thinking run amok. As for other Objectivists, I have yet to meet one personally that thinks otherwise. I’m sure they exist but I am also sure they are a minority. The full evasion of thinking that has to be conducted to go from objective thinking to accepting a religious or traditional idea on faith is anathema to Objectivists.

The problem with “competing governments” is one of jurisdiction. If one private court issues a judgment against someone there is no reason for another court to honor it. If I sue you and you run to another court’s jurisdiction you can seek to be protected from my court. The reason you need a third part to run the courts is to insure that there are rules of jurisdiction – Otherwise states or townships might as well be a different country. As for bribes – The problem you state can certainly happen but it can happen in any type of government. In fact, the bigger the government the more likely the complexity of it will breed “hanger-ons” that will use the rules to their advantage. For example – A century ago Vanderbilt “bribed” officials so they wouldn’t impose rules on his business and that is generally treated as abuse by his critics (it isn’t but I digress). Today companies do the same thing but it is considered “campaign contributions” and other system accessible methods that are legal. “Bigger” government breeds methods and opportunities for cronyism. You best option is a small and limited government with simple and well defined rules so the citizenry can have oversight of it and recognize abuse for what it is when it happens, then fire the parties involved when needed.

Since the others have done a good job answering the core point I'll just help you with this. Don't worry about it. I've been reading back threads and their is a LOT of great feedback here. I've been reading Oist material for 20 years and I still don't have a comprehensive understanding of everything (a tought one for me is the finer details of Epistemology). It takes time and like you I've read a lot of sources over the years. The good news is that you don't have to reinvent the wheel as many posters here like to help explain things!

When it comes to convincing people nothing talks louder than success, simply because demonstrating something explains it better than talking about it. So with a million dollars I’d: 1. Invest it/Start a business in something for which I’m passionate 2. Codify it’s rational principles in a value and mission statement 3. Hire the best minds as needed 4. Promote it internally and externally for it's ideas 5. Make no apologies for it’s virtues 6. Make money (ROI) 7. Let the example stand for those who see your success/happiness 8. Have an outreach program for those who want to learn more Incidentally - I’ve done steps two through seven on a department and division level and have had success. Naturally I couldn’t promote Objectivism since it was not my business but using the values to create leadership principles then working with people on those principles can be very rewarding and the results amazingly. Taking it to the corporate level then opening the discussion further would be tremendous.

Well, I wish I read that before I wrote that long post. I gave this more thought than it deserved. “An axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it.” Or to put it bluntly, your demand that “Objectivism can’t prove that at some point in the future there might be one instance of A equaling non-A” is completely dependent upon arguing with the tools of that axiom. You are counting on the axiom being true at a future point to prove it isn’t. You need A to equal A to do this, which is exactly what Objectivism does in fact say about axioms and logic. You couldn’t even argue the point if contradictions existed. You need the Objectivist definition to argue against the Objectivist definition. Or to put it more elegantly than I did: Beautifully succinct.

An interesting question to chew on. I'd say that the anxiety a lie detector picks up doesn't validate the Objectivist principle as a moral value, but does offer insight in the emotional consequences of accepting a value then failing to keep it. It shows the emotional reactions that a value can produce, in this case a negative when the individual abandoned it. It is a minor demonstration that emotions proceed from values and our evaluation of them.

What an interesting conversation. Odd premise, but interesting. “And "long term" and "short-term" are not moral considerations, as I stated above, so long as they do not hurt others. If a person chooses to live an intensely happy 30 years and then end his life, can you "judge" him for doing so? Is it your right to do so? Will it even make a difference what you think? Moral judgement regarding short or long term actions are based upon your goals and subjective to the person.” If I do meaningless work so I can goof off and party hard for immediate gratification, it is morally equal to working hard for a long range goal that I desire? It is a non-issue that is subjective? Think hard, because your post says yes even though it is obviously not the moral choice to do so. It is not in your rational best interest to think short term this way, but what IS more interesting it also violates your own utilitarian concept of being justified by the results. Not in any degree can both choices be considered equal. And yes, I have the right to judge the person. You judge someone for your benefit, not theirs. Whether they should live a certain way is very contextual, but if we assume for the sake of argument that this is a person who was capable of living a full life and tossed it away for a several decade sprint to nowhere, it would likely get a combination of sadness and contempt from me. Sadness because he focused on the want more than the I and live part of “I want to live”. Contempt because he didn’t bother to learn how to live, as in live like an adult in the real world, instead treated it like a game, then didn’t have the balls to stay in his game anyway when reality interrupted. “The empirical research, supports hedonism (experience) and suggests that the accumulation of money and material things (something extolled in Objectivism) do not lead to happiness.” Objectivism doesn’t extol the virtues of accumulating money and material things. It “extols” the virtue of gaining or keeping values since it is required to live like a human. This could be honesty, love, saving money, or my CD and vinyl collection. Money and material things are just one of many values, all which requires work to gain or keep. It’s the smearing of money and material things that we criticize since it is a symptom of an ideology that teaches people to either not value, or to value but not bother with the virtues (like work) necessary to gain those values. There is a reason that the mind that thinks you can accumulate “to much” money also demands compromise on principles. It starts with wealth but continues with your integrity and every other value. There is also a reason the minds that decry materialism demand the sharing of those materials. A mind that ignores the work required to value something ends up wanting to get the value without having to do the work. I bring this up since, if you take the time to really think about the sentence I italicized, you will make an interesting observation between this and your example of the person who committed suicide after 30 years of “intense living. Spoiler Alert: He didn’t value his life enough to do the work. “Hedonistic societies are happier and simply don't care about "race" in any meaningful, day to day sense. This is why sex (short term) is usually less discriminating than marriage (long term).” Sex or any unthinking short term pleasure has nothing to do with philosophic ideals, except demonstrating the lack thereof. The desire of immediate gratification through short term sex acts is simply some dude trying to rub one off quickly to get the blood back to his brain, a condition it is in due to being left on auto-pilot. The idea of some noble social result is silly. If I accepted this premise as true then every teenage boy taking the SafeSearch controls off of Google Images is going to grow up to be racially colorblind…

Why then was Galileo locked away for life, forced to read scripture weekly until until his daughter was given permission to do it for him, or his gravesite relocated by intrervetion of the Pope himself? I'll be the first to admit that my church history is a little rusty (my predominant reading on this was when I worked nights aroung the time of the first Gulf War), what I do remember is that he was punished by the Church over the debate of heliocentrism and was taken to task when he failed to take a neutral stance in a published work.

I'm hardly trotting out Galileo as if it was an odd example nor is what happened to him somehow misrepresented. He was locked away for daring to claim basic scientific facts, things that are taught in grade school today, and when he died Ferdinando (?) wanted to enter him next to his family with honors but the Pope used legal force to have the mans body taken elsewhere. Even in death the man was banished because of the church. You can claim whatever you want about Christianity as a philosophy, but it's history as represented by it's organized representitives was very political. For the record, your link confirms the history of Galileo. It only sites that Bruno might have been executed for occult reasons instead of science reasons. If I were to accept this as true, religion sponsered murder is still murder despite the fact the man might have been murdered for non-science reasons. The fact the church could arrange an executuon for any religious reason proves the point. But I agree with you, this is the wrong thread for this. Perhaps another thread at some time to chew on the history involved.

I've had this issue, but with people in general. In the trucking industry a lot of people listen to the radio, either NPR or Rush and friends, so I see this a lot. It's probably a product more of people being passionate without having their internal house of knowledge in order on the subject. When one accepts ideas on face value instead of inducting them into a heirarchy of provable knowledge, at some point that person is going to "wander off the reservation" when they can't back up their opinion. As a philosophy student, you have the ablity to get to fundamentals in a world that likes to play fast and loose with such things so your more likely to get that reaction. I know. I get the same thing at a higher frequency when I talk altruism with a "liberal" or faith with a "conservative", for example.

I would encourage you to read everything about being productive in OPAR, it would answer the example you site. But first, my point was that principles are based on a range of knowledge that has to do with the nature of being human and they cannot be disqualified because you want to project an extreme case that is outside of 99.9% of people’s lives. Thus the “Emergencies” reference. But to your point over the example from OPAR: So what you are saying is that “the rich” don’t have to work because they can invest their money and live off the interest? If they work to set themselves up they can pursue other activities with the extra time? Exactly. They have to be responsible and use their wealth productively or it will be squandered. The principle still applies; you just don’t need to punch a clock to do it. Your methods of being productive may change but you still need to honor the principle or you will consume more than you earn. It’s either-or. You are either productive and earn what you consume or you become nonproductive and consume more than you earn. You either earn or maintain the value or you lose it. If you’re arguing that some rich people don’t have to do this and fake it for a while by consuming wealth, then I agree. They have a choice and a few do this, thus the idea of the worthless playboy. But notice that they are living against the principle of productivity and are slowly paying the price for it. They squander values and that is a vice. Also note that this argument doesn’t just apply to the rich as a lot of people do that today. The credit crises and the National Debt also demonstrate the lack of this principle in action. Wall Street is being “occupied” by those who wish to live in defiance of this principle. Actually they want to pass the responsibility to someone else but that is another discussion. Let me try to be positive – Your argument is right if, and only if, you reduce productivity down to a simple issue of earning income through traditional work. You need to expand it however from the single issue you are looking at to every method of maintianing wealth and over to other requirements of living too. It is a principle and it applies to all the facets of earning your life. It is a virtue of earning whatever it is you make your Purpose in life. It applies to wealth but also other activities that generate fulfillment for one’s life too. If one isn’t being productive then one is drifting with no purpose day-to-day and paying the consequences materially and spiritually for living with one’s life on cruise control. Being rich only allows one more time to ignore the consequences. Something I have seen done incidentally. First, I reject the collectivist idea that popularity determines value. I would think you do to since you liked Atlas Shrugged enough to pursue the philosophy further. The fact we live in an age of instant communication doesn’t change the fact that what is predominantly being communicated is bad. Garbage in and garbage out, as they say. The fact we can ship garbage at the speed of light anywhere in the world doesn’t make is smell any better. Now, what I am saying is that if you want to compare something data wise then you need to set up similar conditions the best you can to reproduce them. Or failing any reasonable ability to do so you make sure you understand the differences. Those differences? Thousands of years of Christianity, in an age of mystic thinking, quick conversion, and state controlled religion is not a valid comparison to 50 years for a philosophy that demands people take their time to think through its principles, one that rejects the idea of state control. The first is built for quantity, the second quality. Toss in the fact that the primary method of thinking is still mystical today and the slow growth of this philosophy is not unexpected. The fact it grows at all in such a vacuum demonstrates its virtues. Yes, there are reasons, whether explicit or not, which is the point. Like I said, Objectivism, a philosophy based on reason and adherence to reality, is not going to be in high demand in a culture that rejects reason. Why would it be? Your premise seems to indicate think that a philosophy is spoken and just “ignites” the world on fire, or something, that collectively people will automatically pick the right thing or justify something’s value. History has shown that people slowly accept what dominates their culture, even if unidentified, and not always what is right. Obviously the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany did not accept the best philosophy, only the trend that was dominating their society. Pragmatism is popular, amongst other ideas, exactly because today’s philosophic culture is guided by the opposite of objective thinking. THAT was my point. It is the Postmodernism meltdown of philosophic thinking (or should I say the lack thereof) that demonstrates why Objectivism is in less demand. Not many people are looking to think, and by think I mean use reason. Reason is not in demand, only mysticism and emotions. A culture that has accepted Postmodernism is not going to be quick to accept anything that tells them to slow down and start thinking. Good to hear. Thank you for clarifying that. So people use their freewill to make poor choices? If freewill disqualifies a principle since someoen can do it wrong, then everything would be disqualified! If you’re being counterproductive and/or depressing yourself then you’re not being rational. Depression or “counter-production” is a warning sign you’re doing something wrong. If you are in that state then you need to step back and reevaluate what is causing those things to happen. It would be irrational to "just keep on truck'n" as if nothing was wrong. I’m not sure what “psychological fact” proves that paying attention to reality and thinking about it “can go too far”, but considering such a fundamental activity is a prerequisite to living like a human I’d be very suspect of that “fact”. *** And just to tie this back to the beginning, Happiness should be the goal of every person for outside of the psychological confession of not wanting to be happy, it defines your Purpose, or how you choose to live in a way that makes you happy. It is this fundamental choice that requires you to be productive in earning it if you want to live a happy life. If you are not productively earning (or maintaining) the things that make life worth living, then you end up in life that you are not trying to live. There is no free ride, even emotionally or spiritually, and you have to be productive to earn the purpose that defines what makes you happy. Happiness determines Purpose determines Productive Means to accomplish it. Not being productive means you are not achieving your purpose means you are not achieving the thing that make you happy.

Starting with the Holy Roman Empire moving forward to the Enlightenment, and even attempted today, Christianity was imposed by being a State Religion. No, it wasn’t always brute force, if that is what you meant so I’ll qualify it now, but state sponsored religion is still forcing religion on people. A person living in the Dark Ages or the Medieval Period could not “opt out” of Christianity. Even pretending to accept the state religion was no guarantee if you did not do or say what the church wanted. Galileo says hello from life imprisonment, or should I say the gravesite the church demanded afterward for his heresy.

This is way more complicated than it needs to be. To go back to the basic points: 1. Productivity What you have done is construct a one in a million scenario that is very unlikely then claimed that the idea of productivity is invalid because one aspect of it does not apply to your constructed scenario. This is similar to the “Ethics of Emergencies”; you are basing philosophic principles on unique circumstances as if they were the standard of life. You are ignoring the full definition of productivity and applying it to a nonstandard situation none of us are likely to ever encounter, then demand we justify it. Productivity is the basic process of a human successfully working to gain or keep the values that sustain his life. Productivity is a value but the process is the virtue to the primary value Purpose. For normal day-to-day life a lot of productivity is the necessity of long term planning and work needed to survive and grow. It is necessary to live well. But it is also the process of working towards other values that are more specific to the individual that meets his specific goals. It is necessary to live well. Wealth is a small part of a much bigger principle. Besides, to use your specific example it still doesn’t hold, as a billionaire is still going to be productive in either keeping his values (including his wealth) and earning new ones, or he will not be productive and loose them. His life will result in the consequences of those actions, for better or worse. History is filled with both. For the negative, “Shirtless to shirtless in three generations” is the classic example of what happens to those who did not live productive lives when handed wealth. The consequences of being a worthless playboy are so well documented in Rand’s writings I shouldn’t need to spell it out. 2. Growth as a Philosophy You’re comparing a philosophy that is a mere 50 years old to several that were around for a very longer time. One of them took centuries to get off the ground. You’re also comparing them to Objectivism which, by definition, tells people point blank TO NOT accept its premises but question them every step of the way. Objectivism demands that people don’t “just jump in” but take time to think through every step and principle, then only come to conclusions through a process of voluntary thinking. Objectivism is a method of thinking, not a growth industry, and we don't force it on anyone. Now compare that to Christianity. Christianity requires people to accept it on faith and for most of its history used force to spread itself. Objectivism demands peaceful conversation and voluntary rational acceptance. Anything less is unacceptable. If anything the fact Objectivism continues grow speaks well since its methods require time and quality in a culture that looks to quick fixes, mysticism, and coercion for answers. 3. “Market of Ideas” This is just rewording the previous argument but trying to make a market case to justify it. In addition to my last point, I’ll point out that the best product may win out in the market place but not necessarily so. What sells is what is in demand. What is intellectually demanded is determined by the current culture and its predominant standards (or lack thereof). It is not surprising that a rational philosophy that expects reason would be in less demand in a society that mass markets the Kardashians, an orange goblin known as Snookie, or “Duh… Winning!” Still in doubt? Turn on your television and tell me that the best product always wins. It obviously does not. If it did Fire Fly would still be on my TV while most of daytime programming would be Smithsonian curiosities. 4. Happiness I have no idea what the heck you mean by happiness being self-delusional, or at least I hope your wording this very badly because of what it does say. If not then you have a very ugly view of people as a whole. The idea that the happiness I get from my marriage is a psychologically defective illusion, something that I’m kidding myself on, is so wrong and so monstrous I’m simply stunned. It would explain however why you consider productive work applicable only to earning money while the “market of ideas” (i.e. everyone else’s opinion) a determinate of value. I hope that is not what you meant; I’m only adding this to let you clarify such a statement.

As someone who works in the trucking industry I can tell you that truck drivers are very much in demand. We have a 100,000 employee shortfall which is projected to get worse between regulations, medical standards, and the retirement of the old guard. You can easily make more than a person graduating with a B.A. in this economy and companies will line up to hire you. Recruiting is in overdrive since so many companies need drivers. More importantly though, is that if you wish to finish your degree you could do it online. There is down time and most truck stops or terminals have wireless internet hookup so you could do this from the road too - Save money and finish your education. It might not be ideal (it's a lifestyle) but it could help you out for several years and get you some savings. Just do your homework and make sure you get a good company. Finding out you don't like your employer when you are 1,000 miles from home is no way to start a new job.

To say that we need perception and logic is imply that we as a species always knew how to do both, which is impossible. We use booth now because we have the privilege of knowing it and can do so to save (a lot) of time, but it was not always so. It seems to me that your answer is really a struggle to find the missing link in human cognitive evolution. It is the point that we as a species went from perception and reaction to perception and integration. The point we stopped acting like an animal and the point we took the first steps in becoming humans. Everything starts with perception since that is our method of perceiving reality. As the earliest human brain continued to learn it started, through trial and error, to form concepts on a primitive level. The first hunter/gatherers couldn’t separate concepts because they hadn’t discovered logic. Life was the immediate perceptual experience. Logic at first entailed the concept of man as something simple, like when we first separated men from women: “Ugh, me man and you man, but you man not-man because you have little man and look better…” or some such thing. It was primitive but slowly man built upon his perception through trial and error to build concepts, including logic. He noticed his world and started to build upon it. This would have taken centuries for early man to sort out as he built the most primitive forms of thinking. It took millennia to go from primitive hunting tools to agriculture. Today we went from telephone wires and party lines to synchronized satellites and instant portable communication world wide in the span of decades. Today the work is done and we build knowledge automatically with the privilege of everything that was learned by our ancestors before us, including the logic we use to learn so fast. The speed our minds can process information is instantaneous since our minds automate it, as we should since concepts are supposed to save time, but it doesn’t change the fact it took a long time to build that knowledge in the first place. The struggle of early man to go from animal perception to the most basic building blocks of learning must have been painfully slow. It would have been measured in generations if not ages. Early man did it and he HAD to do it through the trial and error of sense perception. He had to learn how to learn by trial and error of his senses. To say otherwise is to assume he awakened one day with full logic faculties and started to use it with perception instantly out of the gate. He didn’t have logic implanted in him by revelations, God, his tribe, and he certainly wasn’t born with it. He had to learn it one step at a time and pass it to the next generation - he had to earn it the hard way. To assume less is to ignore the one outstanding achievement of early man – The epoch to learn how to learn and discover logic one direct experience at a time, so we could go from animal to rational animal. Does that help you?

Greetings. Real name is Dan. the posted name is, outside a great Black Sabbath song, reflects a combination of ideas in how I have to work with others in business plus how other people treat my views. Being a student of Objectivism seems to get a combination of confused reactions, but I'm sure you are use to that. Personally, I like the image of builder since that how people should live combined with the chaotic culture that results from the views others attempt to live. Simply put, to succeed one must first rip down the mess one finds oneself in before you bring purpose to the project. As a manager it is an apt metaphor to get the job properly and not half-way. That leads to my passions, one being basic philosophy applied to business and management/leadership. The field is a wasteland in objective views so I've made it my mission to try and reinvent the field from the ground up. Some day I'll get around to writing up reviews on the many existing books since the shelf at the book store is filled with the good, the bad, and the very ugly. In fact that movie would be better than most of the books. I also love music (many kinds but obviously hard rock and metal which I consider the sound of the industrial revolution), sci-fi, ideas, kayaking and camping, reading, and working with people (I do a lot of training which is a joy when done rationally). I've worked in the trucking industry for almost 20 years, from truck driver to vice president with many jobs inbetween, and currently started over after some personal and professional revaluing due to the market. That is another post. Today I'm a trainer and safety instructor for a divison of a major truck company. You can see it was easy for someone to hand me Atlas Srugged all those years ago and get me to read it. Interesting website here with lots of great posts. I'm looking forward to the discussion here!

Exactly. Follow those ideals consistently and you will come to the conclusion the people here have been trying to make.

Sorry if this breaks some etiquette for new members. I ran into this post and simply had to create an account and respond. Christian Dominionists are the most consistent in logically following the ideals of Christianity, easily and by a country mile. Catholics are not consistent when you look at their ideology as a whole or historically from where it came. Oh, they may claim to be followers of the original teachings, and I know they think this since I grew up one, but the truth is it has been shaped due to interpretations (organizational) as well as “customization” due to culture. For an example of the later see America – Our brand of Catholicism is for more liberal than most the world, a fact my polish grandfather use to lament as À la carte Catholicism. Religion for them is a mix of faith and thinking to live, the religious equivalent of the mixed economy but with a worse soundtrack. are more consistent followers of Christianity as seen through the ideal of faith as a source of thinking. The “Creator” of the enlightenment was the worse affront to religious thinkers because “God” was a non-entity that basically set up the universe then exited stage left. It was up to us to think and discover the world, via science, not sit around and wait for mandates from a higher Authority. Basically they paid lip serve to God and moved on, and religious thinkers knew it. Kant was a reaction to the reason and science of enlightenment thinkers as his theories cut reason off from the outside world, all so religion could play safe and sound outside of the reach of science. What is scary about Dominionists is that they get this. Not in those terms but they know and admit that the enlightenment is “the enemy”. They are the most consistent because they get and wish to practice life on this level. They know that classic liberalism is founded on reason and that is why they want to go Amish intellectually to freeze thinking at Dark Age levels. When you have a religious movement dedicated to rolling back cognitive thinking to pre-Renaissance levels they should be dismissed as crack-pots but the ideas need to be put down with authority. While this group might be a minority, the issue is that fundamental ideals are heavy weights in the ring of competing ideas. Nobody took Kant or Heidegger very serious when they were a minority but their thinking dominates today. Nobody took Marx serious when he put Hegel “back on his feet” but over 100 million people paid the price when someone took his ideas seriously. In fact, thanks to those so-called intellectuals the Dominionists are pretty much unopposed academically which should speak volumes. Yes, they will be opposed due to the slandering that entails religious divisions but their ideas will not be. Not their ideas, just that they are “extremists” or “fringe” Christians. Not the principle but that they “go too far”. The ideas need to be addressed before someone decides to run with them, which might not even be a religion. I can easily see an environmental group picking it up since the anti-science world of the pre-Industrial Revolution is the same objective. Just replace “God” with “Green” in the Dominionists code and somewhere an activist is getting moist inside. As for the nativity scenes,they are the smaller issue. The real issue is the preponderance of public property and everyone’s willingness to just let it stay public then argue over what to do with it. Nativity scenes are just a symptom of the bigger problem of public property - One size fits none indeed. Return most of the property to private hands and the owners can do with their resources as they wish. Edit ~ Need to learn new forum interface. Arg.