Sado

So it is. I won't be replying any further here, this is just absurd. I don't talk with people when they poke the muzzle of a gun in my side. Goodbye.

Well, I consider your questions to be a form of a red herring. What use would it be to consider the existence of tea pots around Mars (as Dawkin famously put it)? We're not considering that, at all. By appealing to such questions, you are suggesting that the case of God can be just reduced to something absurd. I don't think this is the case. There is absolutely nothing absurd about people thinking that this world was somehow designed. They observe everything has been caused by something else, so they assume that this world was caused too. Or they see that everything has been designed, so they assume this world has a designer. This is just as 'absurd' as assuming that you will come back to the ground when you jump. You can never 'know' you will come back to the ground which each jump, you can only form a judgment about that based on what you have experienced in the past. You have no true available evidence to 'know' anything for a fact, you can only believe. This form of skepticism is probably what has been bugging us ever since the dawn of the modern age, without anybody being able to really resolve it. And nowadays, this skepticism has evolved into relativism. Although I believe Ayn Rand is not a relativist, her epistemology is seriously flawed (which is a shame, because I consider her politics and ethics brilliant). She completely ignores the skeptical views that have marked our past, and that we will have to deal with. Any appeal to the absolute will be easily refuted by the relativist, and the relativist himself is flawed too, since his view is absolute in itself. Who is right, is a tough problem. As Descartes pointed out in his works, there is no more reason for believing that your body exists, than there is for believing in God. These both seem things that are simply outside the realm of our knowledge. On top of this, there is no use to make a claim about something based on the fact that there is no evidence. If there's a dead body, and the police arrives, do you think they just discard the case as being suicide just because there's no visible evidence of a murder? What have the laws of physics to do with God? On top of that, who says it requires an abandonment of reason to believe in God? It might as well require an abandonment of reason not to believe in God. Who is to be the judge on such a thing? I think it is an abandonment of reason to just reduce God to the absurd. But does this prove anything in itself? It's just a meaningless statement, because we have no standard by which to measure the truth of such a statement. Now, to clear any possible presumptions you have of me, I'm not a religious person. I used to be an atheist myself, but when I became interested into theology, particularly Deism (which is the rational approach to the big G question, which doesnt rely on scriptures such as the bible and such), I found that I could not hold on to my atheism very much longer. It would require an 'abandonment of reason' to remain atheist. I'm not interested one bit in heavens, hells, Jesus, I know what else the Christian faith requires you to believe. I think that Christianity doesn't have the monopoly on God, and that we should all simply at least consider just the idea of God existing, as an entity on itself. Evidence? Well, as I said before, I don't like to rely on knowledge based from experience. As such, I'm what people would consider a rationalist. I try to rely on knowledge that is based on reason. Now, I found that most of the 'evidence' for God is quite... Weak. The kosmological argument (Everything has a cause, so the universe has too), for example, can be refuted on the grounds that there is no reason that God should be behind the universe. It might as well have been your space goats. The teleological argument (Everything has a purpose) is just circular, and proves little. Anthropological arguments (The earth has been designed for us to live in) proves nothing, I mean, it could've been space goats that made our planet habitable. One form of evidence I particularly like myself, though, is the ontological argument, especially because it holds in modern logic, and because it is a-priori-, i.e. not based on experience. The idea of that evidence is that we can imagine a perfect being (one that is all-knowing, omnipresent, all-good, etc), and as such, this perfect being must exist, since existence itself is a perfection. You can find a lot of information (and objections, which you are prolly more interested in anyway) here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ontological-arguments/ By strenght I mean the ability to make rational decisions based on one's own judgements, instead of following the directions of others. Well, I thought I'd just play with the question. My own answer to it is that nothing is 'plain luck', because everything has been caused, so that everything makes sense when the big picture is taken into consideration. There's no room for luck when physical determinism holds true! But then, who or what are we to thank for causality? The answer to this question is irrelevant, the only thing I'd like to point out is that we can't thank ourselves for that causality, because we never caused it. We're in the hands of it, and need to play by its rules. We should be proud of our achievements, but there is a line that can be drawn between our achievements, and the achievements of the laws of the universe. Long post, hope it was worth it!

If you can ask me all those questions, then I can suffice to ask you just one... Why believe there is no such thing as the surpreme being? If you think it is irrational to believe in a God (aside from the question whether it is good for your self-confidence or nto), then a little suggestion from my side would be to at least try to dig some of the argument's that have been given in favour of God, especially the ontological arguments given by Anselm, Descartes and then the argument's update to modern logic by Hartshorne. You might find the belief in God is not necessarily irrational, in fact, I'd say it is more rational than strict atheism. Then as to the topic of self-confidence, I think that in life one needs to make a seperation, like the ancient stoic Epictetus did, between things that are within one's power, and things that are not. We should derive our strenght and self-confidence from achievements we made that were within our power. There are just those people that study really hard for a test to get a good grade and then go like 'Oh, well, I was just lucky'. This is self-defeating; one should be proud of one's achievements, as long as these were within one's power. Now, there's tons of things that aren't in one's power, but are simply matters of luck. Meeting a very important person out of the blue, being a beautiful/intelligent person, happening to have stumbled across the works of Ayn Rand online or in the bookstore, etc, etc. Now, it would make no sense here to be pride of having done that, as it was just a matter of luck. But then when, after having stumbled on Ayn Rand's works, you actually read them yourself, you can say that you have really done something that was done by you and yourself only. This would be a good instant to be proud and to gain self-confidence from such an achievement. But then, what of the other matters that were part of plain luck?

Back already! The Fountainhead cafe, though, is still non-existant... I visited the site where it's supposed to be, but it's not there. Oh well...!

I've been studying and following news on this topic for over a year, and I personally think that if this is true, it is a serious smack-in-the-face for people advocating a capitalist system that is based on infinite growth. Oil running out is a very bad thing for everybody, especially since it doesn't seem like there is a good replacement for such an efficient source of energy. And with other energy sources, especially gas, being linked to oil, we might just need to brace ourselves for some tough times ahead. Even if the solution to this is a market one, we're still gonna get a pretty rough landing. If there's anyone with a private Galt's Gultch around somewhere, now's the time to retreat and start building up the crops.

I dont think the issue with God can be resolved that easily, personally. It depends on one's view of God. Christians, who believe in a God that can actually interfere with there lives, a God that performs miracles and that's counting all the sinning you do will be stuck more in a pattern of self-defeat than for example a Deist would. If you believe that there is a God, but that He has for some reason abandoned us, or isn't able to do anything for us, then there is, I'd say, no harm in believing in God, since you'll have to take care of yourself. One might ask what use it is to believe in a useless God, but there is some sense of relief in believing that the surpreme exists and is, indirectly, the driving force behind all living things. There is a form of strenght to be derived from that, at least, I find myself deriving strenght from it. What harm is the idea of God when you strip religion away from it and look at the idea from a rational perspective like for example Descartes did?

[email protected] for those interested.

I tried to get the Fountainhead earlier this week, but they didn't have it anymore at the Donner bookstore in Rotterdam, so I settled for We The Living instead. I'll probably try to get the Fountainhead next, I might just order it from bol.com. It's funny to see that you are from Delft, Maarten. I have a friend in Delft who likes Atlas Shrugged also, and I myself am from Rozenburg!

Hi everyone! I just thought I'd register to this forum after I stumpled upon it while googling on Ayn Rand. I recently read Atlas Shrugged (I loved it so much, it took me less than a week to complete!) and am currently reading We The Living. I love the books so far, and both seem to have a very common theme. It's funny to see how applicable objectivism is to many kinds of people with all sorts of backgrounds, and that every person, regardless of whether he lives in a system that is supposedly communist or capitalist, has to struggle in order to establish his right to live the way he wants. Oh... I'm 19, from the Netherlands, I like to read (mostly philosophy and english literature), skyscrapers, photography (mainly skyscrapers, of course!) and travelling. I'm going to New York City tomorrow, to skyscraper heaven!

Hi everyone! I stumbled upon this site while googling for things to do related to Ayn Rand in New York City! I'll be leaving tomorrow, and I'll be sure to check this café out! Sounds pretty neat to just walk into a placing knowing it might just be the hangout of objectivists!