Steve D'Ippolito

This is what god made options for. People who want to build roads can take out options on the property they want to buy--they pay the owner a small amount of money, well in advance, for the option to buy the land at a set price. If they do this over a wide enough area, chances are good they will have a continuous route. If not, they haven't spent nearly the money the would have spent if they chose to do it the silly way you seem to imagine they'd choose to use. But if so, they then exercise the options that they want simultaneously. No holdouts because people agreed to the sale long before.

False alternative here. If someone were to make something up out of whole cloth that would be something with no rational origin, derived outside of perception or reason--but would not make it an innate concept. Or perhaps you really did mean "derived", akin to deduced... but if so, in saying so you assume what you seem to want to prove, that there is a logical reason to believe in god that doesn't ultimately hang on some admittedly subtle fallacy. As for your enumeration of the ten commandments on the assumption that god should be understood similar to Spinoza's god or in a pantheistic way, I don't believe even the author of Exodus understood it that way; he would not have personified such a god and given it a voice. (You point to this issue, actually, by discounting the burning bush tale.) So even if your analysis makes some sense for someone who believes god=reality, I doubt _anyone_ back then thought that way so it makes no sense to claim that Judaism as practiced today is somehow a corruption of something much purer in the distant past.

It could be two separate rectal database extractions.

No. But like Paul Ehrlich they can probably make all the wrong predictions they want--Paul Ehrlich is so unreliable as a prognosticator I wouldn't trust him tell me where the fricking restroom was--and no one in the major media will ever call him (or them) on it.

I'm not completely unsympathetic to that point of view. On the other hand, a handful of well placed nukes set to go off simultaneously could hose us far worse than we have been so far from enemies domestic (look at the damage a well-placed two large aircraft did to our economy). This is not a completely implausible scenario and I like to think whoever is in office is willing to at least contemplate what to do to avoid such things.

I am not unsympathetic to this idea. I ran into a far leftie the other day who was fine with "entrepreneurship" but didn't like "capitalism" (he associates the term with the sort of pull peddling that is bad here in the US and worse in other countries). Of course he wouldn't be such a leftie if he didn't think that almost all business in the US was enthusiastic pull-peddling (as opposed to pull peddling only because that's the only method left to survive), but it was interesting that in many respects we had common ground as to what was good, and uncommon vocabulary for labelling it.

...not to mention Giordano Bruno.

But that's okay. You shouldn't not use them, as long as you aren't inadequately careful. *tries really hard to make sure he got them right.

The worry amongst many of us is not that he'd refuse to spend trillions of dollars repairing countries--we are against that... but that he'd refuse to destroy countries that are actually threats and consequently, badly need a destroying. He seems to be in denial about Iran, in particular. But I will admit that I could be wrong about Iran being an objective threat. Sure, under our constitution congress ought to be declaring wars before we go making war.... but in general, the President _asks_ Congress for such a declaration. Would we have to wait for a mushroom cloud over a major city, before RP would do so? Or would he be willing to change his mind about Iran _before_ that happens, if he is presented with intelligence data showing Iran is an imminent threat? (Or that they will be once they have a nuke, and they are very close to getting one, after which it will be too late for pre-emptive action?) Unfortunately he strikes me as the sort who has his preconceived notion that every hostile act towards the US is our fault (the libertarian Murray Rothbard school of "blame America First" which is just as noxious as the leftist Noam Chomsky school by the same name), and would simply dismiss such intelligence data as either irrelevant or a fabrication put forth by "war mongers." I was once a member of the Libertarian party. Mere days after 9/11, their 1996 and 2000 presidential candidate (who I had voted for enthusiastically) sent out a mass e-mail titled "When will we learn?" and you can imagine the contents. It's our fault, etc., etc. I now consider those two votes the biggest mistakes I have ever made in the voting booth and I am now suspicious of ANY libertarian (big or small L) running for federal office and want some pretty good evidence that they don't have the Rothbard Delusion so strongly that when we are attacked, or under imminent threat of same, they won't go around blaming us for the attack or refusing to believe there is any threat because the worst player in global affairs is us and we deserve to be killed.

I would be curious if TrueMaterialist thinks that Objectivism is opposed to government as such.

I tend to agree. I'd put her high up on a list of people I wish had been influential. But not yet on a list of people who actually have been influential. I once heard John Lewis state that as of today, Objectivism wouldn't even rate a footnote in some future history book written about our times. And I am forced to agree. Hopefully a century from now, this will have changed.

Duh. Well thank the Lord God Tarskyte it is out of print!

1) Whoops... Sorry for the misgendering, but well, you weren't telling your gender. 2) I didn't even watch the video (my bandwidth has its limits and I sometimes forego things as a consequence), so I had no idea what it was about and I admit I thought it would show a nutty atheist. (Alas youtube URLs give no indication of what they are about). So I mistook a peace offering for another bullet point and thought you were continuing to argue. By the time I finished writing, I had forgotten to go back and watch it. 3) I think our only source of remaining disagreement might be on the creche issue specifically (whether there is or is not a rights violation in attempting to remove them from public property). Hard to say since you've not specifically said where you stand on it (and now I finally realize that). I don't see why you apparently think I don't acknowledge the existence of nutty over the top atheists, which is what you seem to be claiming is the remaining disagreement. It isn't. Other than that, we are good to go.

I don't disagree that some atheist individuals are getting out of hand. And some organizations are too. I've said so. I said so at the end of my previous post and at least one time before that. (You can stop strawmanning me any time you like.) How does one interfere with people's rights except by the use of force? To be sure it's not a "ban" unless the government does it. But then actually you did say I cannot see how "strip[ping] other of their rights to belief" is any different from a ban on having that belief, given that you cannot violate a right except by force and stripping someone of a right is usually a reference to a legalistic government maneuver declaring that someone has lost a right. So... you said it, I've been responding to it ever since. I pointed out in my first response that the creche issue was not an attempt to strip people of their rights--and remember, up to that point the thread was about the creche issue, so what else was I to figure you were talking about? And your response was to bring up a totally different instance about Walter Reed as if it were somehow an additional (as opposed to the first such mentioned) example of over the top antitheism. So I think I can be pardoned for assuming you considered the two issues parallel and both an attempt to violate the rights of Christians. (In point of fact you still haven't explicitly said otherwise; you don't seem to want to discuss the creche issue as such but rather these nutty instances.) And those organizations getting out of hand (and there are others that haven't) again has nothing to do with the creche scene issue. I am realizing this blowup has been over a mis-communication--caused in part by your change of subject and and in part by my failure to fully switch context and fail to realize that you simply weren't addressing the creche issue at all. I had been assuming you were. Meanwhile on your actual topic, the nutty other things some atheists and atheist organizations are trying to do, I have no disagreement with--I simply deny that the creche issue is such an instance--and again you, sir, are strawmanning me claiming that I don't see it.

Of course it is not that common. At least not in practice. (And here I refer to an act performed specifically because it will make one worse off and in the knowledge that one will be unhappy about doing so.) I am going to distinguish here between full altruism where you are not anticipating any gain for ones self, not even a sense of satisfaction, and pseudo-altruistic acts, acts that an altruistic person would do, but which are being done for a reward in the afterlife or because they make the doer feel like they are a better person, or whatever). It is impossible from the outside to determine whether an apparently altruistic act was done out of altruism or pseudo-altruism, so I will refer to such actions collectively as "nominally altruistic acts". Pseudoaltruistic acts are much more common than true altruism. There's an obvious reason for that. But either, practiced utterly consistently, will lead to one's death (which is why consistent practice of either altruism or pseudoaltruism is really, really rare). But it is quite common to uphold true altruism as an ideal and show disapproval for those who fail to practice it, or at least to only show approval for those instances where one acts altruistically (whatever their motives might be). This has two effects: 1) It induces guilt in those who are not perfectly altruistic but themselves have bought into the notion that altruism is good if unattainable. (And that would be everyone who has bought into the notion.) 2) It leads to the actual doing of more pseudoaltruistic acts. And whether or not the act was done altruistically or pseudo-altruistically, the result is the same; someone has in fact made a sacrifice even if he does not perceive it as such, and more than likely was driven to it by either guilt or being programmed to feel good when they do something not in their true self-interest.

Fair enough, you have made it clear now. (Edit: On reading back it looks like I lost the context of your first post, which I misread and over-reacted to in one place, in reading your second post, which came across to me far worse than the first one did--but it appears I gave you some cause for that, for which I apologize.) I've yet to find a group of any real size explicitly trying to do so. I am sure that all such groups wish people would give up their religions, but of course that is hugely different from working to compel them to do so. And I don't doubt that some in those groups would like to do so but it's not the group's stated policy. Just as there are other totalitarian governments who have a favored religion and want to stamp out competition. Both are wrong. But how is that an attempt by this group to ban religion? I fault these groups for mixing a bad cause (socialism) with a good cause (fighting "Christian nation" nonsense), but my admittedly casual look see doesn't show that it's their policy to force people to give up their religions. Yes, this is obnoxious behavior and often unjustified (although it might be appropriate in those cases where it is clearly a response to genuinely obnoxious behavior from the "other side," this group isn't limiting it to those cases). But where is the attempt to get state compulsion to ban religion? Basically I see no good reason for anyone else (and you have now satisfied me that you are not among their number) to believe these groups are after a ban on Christianity. I see plenty of other reasons not to join them however. Again not a reason to oppose doing the other, proper things that those groups (and others) propose doing. Done. It was not intentional and again I apologize for misunderstanding you. And so here you strawman me. The only thing I deny is that there is a large (i.e., not fringe) activist organization that has a policy of trying to ban religion using government force. You haven't shown me one yet. I don't deny that there aren't atheist organizations and atheist individuals that also push for socialism (see the last part of my previous post), I don't deny that there are some advocating in-your-face rudeness (I didn't know about that particular organization though), and I don't deny that there are individuals that do want to ban religion. And even if such an organization were to exist... it would make no difference and your entire argument--even if completely correct and you prove that all these groups want to ban religion--would be irrelevant to what I was arguing with Avila about. Is it in principle appropriate to put creches or other religious displays on government property, or not? Bringing up what some extremists might want to do (once this question is answered correctly and the answer is implemented) is utterly irrelevant. It would be like refusing to advocate cutting the size of government on the grounds that there are anarchists out there who want to get rid of it entirely and they really rile up the people who vote for a living. Now whether it is tactically wise to fight such a battle (a point SoftwareNerd brought up) is a different matter, and one that can be answered without reference to the things some nuts want to do in addition to fighting that battle.

A not unreasonable question, but you should first ask: 1) should the government be providing roads and railways? Assuming solely for the sake of argument that the answer is yes (and Objectivists would disagree with this!!) then I still believe it is wrong for government to do this. It's somewhat better if the government provides compensation, but even that is a sticky issue. They pay "fair market value" but the mere announcement of a possibility of seizing the property puts the title under a cloud and lowers the fair market value, so the government ends up getting the property at a discount anyway. I happen to live in a state where private companies providing toll roads, power lines, etc. are allowed to use eminent domain to seize private property. If anything, that's even more obnoxious, and it so happens I've been under both the perceived and actual threat of this happening at times in the past. The perceived time was when someone showed me an inaccurate map of the planned route of a power line going through my property--it was never the power company's intent to do so. Rather than going through my neighbor's property the power company ended up figuring out how to put more capacity in a right of way it already had (i.e., had previously seized). The actual time was when I found myself in the twelve mile wide "corridor" within which a proposed toll road could be routed, and said corridor has been reduced to 3 miles wide and shifted well east of me (I think the road builder decided that going over the steep terrain immediately north of me was a bad idea for the railroad he wanted to put in the median). Which got me off the hook but everyone in that new corridor is screwed; their titles are under a cloud until this guy either builds the road and decides which particular 3/8ths mile strip of land he wants to seize (and it has been a vaporware project for 30 years already) or gives up his claim. Meanwhile this guy is wrecking the property rights of thousands of people for a business (operating via political pull) that may not even get started.

Let's take it as stipulated (for now--I will justify it later so you will not think *I* am being inconsistent in accepting this) that this policy was mistaken. Is this some overzealous literal minded bureaucrat behind this screwup, or does some atheist organization advocate forbidding people from bringing their own bibles into the hospital, for their own use? If the former it does not speak to any claim that atheists want to ban Christianity, only that there was a bureaucratic screwup; someone was careless writing a policy and someone else enforced it literally. If the latter--i.e., that some atheist group (which one?) pushed for this as written and implemented--you will note that their rationale still is an attempt to keep religion off of public property. So it still doesn't address these wild claims--that you appear to accept, at least you sure seem to be trying to argue for them here--that atheist groups here are trying to ban Christianity. I've made no pronouncements about your character. I stated that there are people out there pushing a lie. You appear to believe that lie; that does not make you a liar, it makes you mistaken which is not a moral failing. Now yes, I am stating something about your beliefs, but it's on the evidence that you yourself are arguing that atheists are trying to abrogate Christians' right to be Christian. Now if you are only arguing that sometimes they appear to be doing so, well you weren't clear. (And I will grant that I don't think many of these groups make the point about public/private quickly enough and it's easy for it to get lost in a soundbite-driven media.) No, wrong, wrong, wrong. They are attempting to deny the non-existent right of Christians to do it with government property. Even if the case you mentioned here and above were the result of a push by an atheist group rather than bureaucratic stupidity, it would still be a misapplication (again, I'll explain that below) of the principle that Christians (and anyone else) may not use government property in order to propagate their creed and is therefore not an attempt to ban Christianity. This is the key point that the Christians screaming that atheists are trying to "ban" Christianity do not want people to realize. To my knowledge no one has tried to use the government to ban the practice of religion on private property. No, but that is no reason to make it a policy to add to the pile. Well you have for the first time properly identified the issue as being public property (up to now you've been repeating the claim that this is an attempt to ban Christianity without qualification). But... Burdensome? Asking the government not to violate the bill of rights is burdensome? How does that make them wrong on this specific issue? Again I claimed nothing but that you believed a lie told by others, which is not a moral failing. It's possible I misunderstood your belief, but if so you gave me every reason to think that you had accepted the line that atheist groups were trying to ban Xianity. And without any further qualifier on that (such as "except in private places" or "on public property", which both they and you failed to provide) I had to assume you believed along with them that the attempt was extending into the private realm. Until such happens, I will fight on their side when they are right and against them when they are wrong--just as I do with conservatives. That's what we have to do day to day in our society when there are no suitable groups we agree with 100% of the time. A reasonable thing to do. It so happens that I believe allowing the broader culture to absorb fully the assumption that this is a nation based on Christianity (rather than founded by individuals who were mostly Christian with many prominent exceptions) is extremely dangerous. Whether it is more or less dangerous than rampant leftism is certainly debatable. But regardless of which way that argument goes, I choose to fight both. There's no reason to assume you cannot fight one without accepting the other. OK. I promised an explanation of why I think forbidding someone to bring their own personal bible into the patient's room at Walter Reed was a misapplication of the principle I am upholding here. (And also why banning an Xian cross on a gravesite at Arlington would be.) That is because in neither case would the government be putting its imprimatur on the religion. If PFC John Doe is laid up in a hospital and has his own bible (or one lent to him by a loved one) on the table next to him, there is no implication that the government endorses that bible, so by all means he should be able to access it. (But by the opposite token John Doe should be free to chase pastors, etc. who come into the room, the heck out if PFC Doe happens to be an atheist, without repercussion.) If the government actually provides the bible, that could be a different story. Ways that the government could still do so without providing an endorsement would be if the bible came out of a thoroughly stocked hospital library, or if the government otherwise provided the book of the patient's request, at the patient's request. "Do you have a Koran I could borrow?" or "Do you have a copy of 'Atheism the Case Against God'?" One could argue over whether the government should be providing the service, but at least it is not a violation of the first amendment. Similarly for tombstones. People get one each, presumably of their or their family's choice as part of their veterans benefit package, and it's pretty clear the choice was theirs, not the government's. (If--hypothetically--the government were to mandate that everyone get a Chrstian Cross on their burial site, or even add a surcharge for non-Christian markers, that would be an egregious violation. I haven't decided whether a policy allowing either a cross or a generic tombstone and no other choices would qualify as such.)

And the tangible leavings of Rome continue to crumble, even as we continue to lose the best of the classical culture. http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/12/27/romes-colosseum-collapsing-amid-restoration-delays/

Whose rights am I stripping if I ask them to do their displays on private, not public, property? [And yes, this is part of the issue of public property invariably becoming a political football and yet another argument for having as little of it as possible--but I don't imagine courthouses are going away any time soon.] Including lying and claiming the atheists (anti-theists) are trying to ban Christianity? You've apparently bought into the lie yourself, SapereAude. It's not merely the waste, it is the use of tax money (on those occasions when such is used) but more importantly from a cultural standpoint the imprimatur of government to advertise a religion that many of the people who pay taxes and are subject to the authority of that government do not accept. And that imprimatur exists even if private parties pay for the scene, erect it themselves and even pay the bill for lighting the thing at night. If it were a Santa Claus I'd have no issue with it at all if it were done for free by private parties, and only the issue of waste if paid for by the local government, and there, of course there are always bigger fish to fry! But of course if someone did that, somebody would start puling about how they are taking Christ out of Christmas and insist that the courthouse host a manger scene. I am much more interested in why many Christians who do understand that this is the issue still raise hissy fits and demand someone leave the country (rather than saying, "you've got a point, but really, get a life" which I could at least understand--I do get it from Objectivists) when one suggests that the display should be on a church lawn instead. Why is it so important that their sky god get advertising on government property? There's something in the psychodynamics here, which I suspect would be instructive. We've had a poster who conceded there was a point here even if he himself disagreed with it, nevertheless demand that people who complain about the manger scenes leave the country, and it looks as though at least some of his posts have been rude enough to get deleted. Wouldn't you find it odd if you were arguing with someone on some other issue and they said, "you have a point, but you should move to China for raising it"? What's going on in these folks' heads, really? Absolutely true but irrelevant to the point at hand. (It is very discouraging though, to find someone who rejects the chief silliness of our age only to pick up another one just as dangerous... if not more so, since it's almost always virulent.) I note that Hairnet broadens SapereAude's observation from "Atheism" to "Non-Christian" and even there I have to agree (but still, irrelevant to the point at hand); in particular most Wiccans I have met are refugees from really horrid Xian upbringings and I wonder to myself why they didn't go whole hog on the solution to the problem that afflicted them. Instead they rebel against their religious upbringing by picking another religion. Edit: Somdeay I iwll elrna to type.

[Edit Wow! Three other people got their replies in while I was working on this. Hopefully one of us answered your question adequately.] You seem to think it's somehow inconsistent of Rand to oppose atheism in spite of the fact that it was a feature of various dictatorships that she also opposed like Communist Russia and Communist China. (It was not in fact a feature of Nazi Germany--religious apologists' sometimes-ignorant but usually-dishonest claims to the contrary notwithstanding.) Or possibly, that agreeing with part of what Communists profess means one ought to agree with all of it. That would only be an inconsistency if such dictatorships were an inevitable consequence of atheism. If, instead, it is possible to be an atheist and a capitalist, or an atheist and in favor of freedom, there's no inconsistency between being an atheist and an anti-communist. Needless to say, I believe such is possible. Well let us look at what atheism actually is: It is simply the lack of belief in god and the term says nothing about the person's other beliefs. Out of all the beliefs and opinions that a person has on everything from who was right in the Civil War to whether or not people are entitled to keep the money they earn to whether chocolate is better than vanilla, not one of those beliefs is a belief that god exists. (And sadly there are way too many atheists who do not think people are entitled to keep their own money, but they don't think so because they are atheists.) Atheism, being simply a declaration of one opinion that one does not happen to hold, gives one a huge latitude in what other opinions one can hold. Clearly there are _some_ logical consequences to atheism, such as the fact that no atheist could rationally try to hold that the bible is the word of god or that god will sit in judgment over you at some time in the future--the non-existence of god would logically imply the lack of words spoken by god and the lack of judgment rendered by god. But whether or not capitalism works? Whether or not someone should live free as opposed to under a dictatorship that believes it owns you? That has nothing to do with the issue of whether god exists. No, I haven't explained why Ayn Rand was an atheist--I will leave that for others. I am simply trying to make the case that atheism and anti-communism are not inconsistent. Not being certain whether the atheism or the perceived inconsistency was bothering you, I chose to try to discuss the latter.. particularly since it is an example of a confusion many theists seem to have about atheists.

Toyo, You didn't have to dig up a letter from some random Xian where you live to try to make your case. (I imagine it took about three seconds, but oh, no it's not common, not at all!) Avila himself has already invited those who disagree with him on this issue to leave the country--unfit to be Americans--after denouncing in the same post such an attitude as something only extremists and nutcases would have. He has got to have his tax paid creche scenes because he likes them. He's got to have them so badly that if you don't think your tax money should be used to pay for them and you have the temerity to actually voice the argument, well hell you can just pack your bags. If it's that important to you, Avila, why not build your own? Why does it have to be in front of the courthouse? Why do I have to pay for decorations that you want? Hmmm? (And by the way, why are so few of these on private property--where I would have no need to demand their removal--if they are so bloody popular? Maybe they in fact aren't?) You can try to hijack this thread into a discussion of whether protestant doctrine is more or less consistent than catholic doctrine--which is utterly irrelevant as my use of the word "consistent" was in reference to how consistently a professed follower of a doctrine actually follows it, not over how consistent the doctrine itself is. Or you can continue to harp on my use of the example of the Christian Dominionists, which I have already conceded I should not have used. (Maybe I should have picked the Catholic League--which assiduously works to suppress criticism of the Catholic church in our culture and is just as dangerous for different reasons--instead.) But you have not satisfactorily explained why I must be compelled to help pay for creche scenes and why I must consent to have my government host them, or be unfit to live in the United States. No, "it has always been done this way" and "I like it and most other Americans do too" are not satisfactory answers. But they are the only answers you've given.

There may or may not be more or less consistent than the other groups on specific niggling points of doctrine... but it would NOT be news to most Catholics and Orthodox who have ever lived that the church of their choice should not be in charge, claiming the authority of God. In point of fact Catholics and Protestants today continue to shed blood over this issue, a tradition that goes all the way back to the original reformation. About a third of the population of Germany was wiped out over a period of thirty years, in what is essentially an argument over which version of Christianity should be in control. The pope still claims authority over all the world. So are Catholicism and (Eastern) Orthodoxy. Pot calling the kettle black. I've looked into each enough to see that there is plenty of inconsistency and overlap between the three, but I won't argue over which one is the most inconsistent; I frankly don't understand all of the nuances of the differences between them, nor care all that much.

No pretense needed, I've had it said to my face. I've even had well-meaning more tolerant Xians send me such stuff wanting to know what I thought of it. If I had to guess I'd say it's somewhere between 10-20 percent of the population. I do know that atheists are the one group of people that most people would refuse to vote for. Gays and even Muslims (yes, even post 9/11) score much higher on the list of characteristics people would be willing to vote for. Multiple polls. Want to sink someone's campaign? Prove--or make a credible accusation--that he or she is an atheist, if you happen to know they are. http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=101;t=000185;p=0 http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=George_H.W._Bush_and_the_Atheists They don't have him on tape or anything, but he's been quoted by an accredited journalist and he or his staff has refused to deny saying it. I would wonder why retaining such symbols on public land is so important to you even though you recognize the principle that you are willing to tell those who point out the principle, to leave the country. Oh, but only fringe whack jobs would do that.

That would depend on how good (and how diligent) we are at detecting nukes on ships or planes. And I suspect that sort of information is VERY classified.