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This paper, written by a Christian, critiques Objectivist arguments in philosophy of religion, including Piekoff's reasoning in OPAR and ITOE. I thought it would be of interest given that the forum has recently sprouted several threads discussing arguments for and against God's existence. http://www.aynrandstudies.com/jars/archives/jars8-2/jars8_2sparrish.pdf

^Fixed.

All respondents so far have made good points, while nevertheless not quite addressing my main motivation for posting this thread. Maybe I didn't make myself clear enough in the opening post. People tend to be focusing on Locke, so let's go with him for a second. In the second chapter of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Locke argues against the claim that there are innate ideas. He bases his argument on quaint facts, such as the fact that children and idiots don't agree with the Law of Identity. Obviously, there's a lot more to the debate over the existence of innate ideas today than there was when Locke wrote this. Locke did not (and obviously could not) incorporate rebuttals to all of the modern thinkers who believe that there are innate ideas, because he was dead before they set pen to paper. Nor did Locke integrate all of the scientific discoveries that now bear on the question of whether there are innate ideas, because he was dead before they were made. This passage does not justify any modern reader in thinking that there are no innate ideas, nor does any other passage in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. It would be irresponsible to base a belief that there are no innate ideas on this passage, because there's been a lot of progress since it was written. My concern isn't so much that there's no value in reading Locke. I'm sure that there's lots of historical value in reading him. It's that Locke might have been refuted. Locke's ideas might be laughable in light of some modern discovery, and you would never know it just by reading Locke's work. Indeed, there is actually decent reason to think that Locke has been refuted or at least rendered irrelevant: other very smart people have had three hundred years to make scientific discoveries and to pick his work apart logically. So, why not just read the modern thinkers? Even if you read Locke, you're going to have to read them anyway in order to understand the arguments relevant today. And if Locke's arguments were relevant, then the modern thinkers will use Locke's arguments anyway.

Objectivists tend to emphasize reading primary texts, including the classics of philosophy, in my experience. So, I have a question: What's the point of reading, for instance, Nietzsche or Locke? Either their ideas were good, in which case they will have been built on by modern thinkers, or they are bad, in which case they will have been discarded by modern thinkers. So, why not just read the modern thinkers?

I deliberately didn't pick anyone out in particular, because I don't know what any of the contributors to this thread have read or not read. I'm just going off of what I can discern from the posts that have been made. I'm glad that you've studied some of this stuff.

I wonder if you've read Swinburne's The Existence of God. I found the argument of that book fascinating. I think it really captures why religious people believe what they do.

(emphasis mine) FYI, no major theologian has understood faith to be belief in the absence of evidence. Seriously. That's an artifact of people like the New Atheists. According to Swinburne, there are three major conceptions of faith in the tradition of Christian theology: The Thomistic view, the Lutheran view, and the Pragmatic view. According to Aquinas, faith is "a form of mental certitude about absent realities that is greater than opinion and less than scientific knowledge." Let me explain - the idea here is not that you believe something without a good reason to believe it is true. The distinction between opinion and scientific knowledge, for Aquinas, works like this. You have opinions about matters of fact when you don't know the principles that make them true. (For example, a caveman would know that a rock would fall when he dropped it without knowing the principles of physics. The caveman would therefore have a mere opinion that the rock would fall when he dropped it, in Aquinas' sense.) You have scientific knowledge about a matter of fact when you do know the principles behind it. (For example, a modern physicist would have scientific knowledge that a rock would fall when he dropped it.) Faith in the Thomistic conception is different from either opinion or scientific knowledge. You first get some good reason to think that God exists, then you get some good reason to think that God informed the world of such and such a proposition. Your certitude of that proposition is then justifiedly higher than in the case of a proposition that you only have an opinion about, because you trust in God's goodness. Notice that Thomistic faith in a proposition is not even possible in the absence of a good reason to believe that God exists and that the proposition is true. The Lutheran view of faith is similar to Thomistic faith, but it adds to the Thomistic conception a certain trust in God as a person. The Pragmatic view cuts out the belief element of faith altogether, and merely requires that you trust God. Neither of these involves believing things for no good reason. I'm not convinced that some of the contributors to this thread have studied the worldview that they are criticizing. That's not a good thing, especially when you are claiming to have refuted the worldview in question.

You're an atheist. Of course you're going to define "all powerful" in such a way that nothing can be all powerful. No one in a theological debate is interested in your personal definition of "all powerful," because the opponents of a concept do not get to define the concept out of existence. That's not philosophy. To refute Christian theism, you have to do more than set up an opposing position on the definition of the concept of "all powerful." You have to look at what theologians have said and address their actual positions. Refutation of a position involves more than just disagreeing with it. It involves constructing an argument against it based upon mutually agreeable propositions.

A few respondents seem to be assuming that one can simply look at the term "all powerful" to divine its meaning. The reasoning seems to go like this: "the phrase 'all powerful' includes the word 'all,' so it must mean the ability to do absolutely all things, including contradictory things." Well, you can't do that. If you don't want to create a straw man, you have to look at what theologians have said about the concept of "all powerful." The term has a technical meaning in Christian philosophy. I think that most people know this, so I'm not sure why you have chosen to address a concept of "all powerful" that very few theologians have held to.

I have a very generalized question about the Objectivist ethics. As I understand it, the central point of the Objectivist ethics is to "focus," but, in spite of trying for rather a long time and reading much of the Objectivist literature on focus (some of it several times), I can't figure out exactly what people mean when they talk about focus. At one point, I identified the concept of focus with concentration. However, a while ago Harry Binswanger made the following claim: "let's look again at Mr. Butler's statement: 'What about Immanuel Kant? He was focused.' I commented on his post: 'Absolutely not! You are confusing concentration with focus. Focus is the will to understand, the commitment to full awareness of reality. Kant had neither.'" (Excerpted from the 7/14/2009 HBL.) So, focus isn't concentration. Looking through the rest of the Objectivist literature turns up useless generalities like, but not limited to, the following: "a quality of purposeful awareness in a man's mental state" (OPAR, p. 56), "a man is in focus when and to the extent that his mind is set to the goal of awareness, clarity, intelligibility, with regard to the object of his concern, i.e., with regard to that which he is considering or dealing with or engaged in doing" (The Psychology of Self-Esteem, p. 41), and "a quality of one’s mental state, a quality of active alertness" (The Ayn Rand Lexicon). I did not simply stop with these definitions, of course, but also read elaborations and concretizations presented by these authors which I did not find very illuminating. At least one critic of the Objectivist ethics has charged that it is vague virtually to the point of meaninglessness: "I simply wanted to mention some of the other virtues that Rand draws from that ever fecund principle: man's life qua man. She draws from it seven specific virtues, out of which arises a kind of Objectivist septalogue. Two of the virtues, rationality and honesty, we have already examined. The other five are: independence, integrity, justice, productiveness, and pride... The problem with these virtues is that they are all rather empty and vague: they fail to specify the precise conduct that is expected to result from following them. This enables the adept casuist to use them to justify just about anything under the sun. And indeed, this would appear to be precisely how Rand proceeded in her personal life. She arbitrarily decided what her moral system meant in practical terms and then expects all the members of her inner circle to act accordingly." (Excerpted from Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature by Greg S. Nyquist, page 270, all emphasis in original.) I have a similar suspicion about the injunction to focus. Maybe it doesn't really mean anything to tell someone to focus. tl;dr - What is focus? How does one focus? How do I know if I am in focus or not? (And so on.)

I know you asked us not to give arguments for free will or against determinism, but you didn't ask us not to give refutations of your argument for an immaterial soul. I can think of a couple. First, if man isn't entirely physical, then there must be some parts of him that aren't physical. But a part is physical by definition. So, man is entirely physical. Second, a nonphysical soul which is free from deterministic cause and effect is not a natural thing. If man's nature is that of a nonphysical soul which is free from deterministic cause and effect, then man's nature isn't natural, which is a contradiction.

The current results are: Give Birth 32.04% (274,325 votes) Have an Abortion 67.96% (581,996 votes) ...4chan has gotten involved, of course.

This misrepresents my argument. I wasn't saying that we, in this world, can evaluate the argument. I was saying that the people in non-dualistic-minds world, whether that world is identical to this world or not, can evaluate the argument. In other words, we don't know how free will could emerge from determined matter, so let's posit a supernatural explanation for it. The Objectivist is content to be empirical and say that he doesn't know how free will emerges. You are, for some reason, wanting to go beyond experience and posit an explanation that's not really an explanation.

I don't see how this responds to my objection. Even if a chain of reasoning is the result of cause and effect, we can evaluate the reasoning to see if it is good or bad. Even if I believe xyz because (in the causal sense of "because") I'm a Republican, we can still evaluate the explicit reasoning that I give for xyz. So, reason isn't actually affected by the disappearance of dualistic minds. Your argument that in the absence of dualistic minds, we would not have free will is basically the common determinist claim that if everything is deterministic cause and effect at the smallest level, then everything is deterministic cause and effect at all levels. But the Objectivist is more empirical than that, and so agrees that everything is determined at the smallest level while still insisting that somehow, free will emerges at the human level.

Our minds can still operate in the same way if they are not dualistic, arriving at propositions that do and do not correspond to reality with the same frequencies. And in what sense is reason and/or the propositions of our mind "invalidated" on naturalism, according to your argument? We can still analyze arguments to see where they go wrong. There's nothing apparently missing from our reasoning abilities once we get rid of dualistic minds. [/Anscombe]

I wasn't cheering for anyone. I was giving my evaluation of the discussion thus far, at Jacob's request. The goal is not "verbal judo." I have no idea what you're talking about.

I've reread everything in the recent flurry of discussion. I think the strongest argument against you is the impossibility of a mind apart from a brain. brian0918 is perhaps your strongest opponent. I think that his arguments in post #164 are pretty forceful (some of them). Then again, you haven't had a chance to reply to that post yet. Theists make this move a lot. The reply is that there is no "first point" in the series. There's just a series stretching back forever.

Thanks. That looks valid. I can see why you feel trapped by this argument - it's more subtle than the argument that the typical theist will give. If I can also offer a criticism, I would wonder why the series of causes would stop going backward at some particular point. It doesn't seem like enough to just draw a distinction between effects and first causes like you do; you need to provide some reason why the series stops. In the absence of such an explanation, I would be tempted to just deny that there can't be an actual infinite. (I would be tempted to deny A.) You rely on the principle of determination in your first post, but I don't see any reason to accept the principle of determination - perhaps there's some non-personal process that creates universes from outside time. It's hard to explain why such a process would create a universe at one time rather than another, but no more so than to explain why a free being acts at one time rather than another.

I know the thread has moved well beyond the OP, but I didn't see anyone make this particular criticism. The first hurdle that any deductive argument for the existence of God has to pass is the validity test. So, let's set this up formally: (1) Every effect must have a cause. (2) There cannot be an infinite regress of causes. ----------- (3) Therefore, there is an uncaused cause. Is the argument deductively valid? Well, no. It's not in the form of a syllogism or modus ponens, or some other valid form; it's just some sentences strung together. There could well be hidden assumptions here that we're not seeing, so I think it's reasonable to withhold belief until we get clearer on what this argument actually is. Why not just use the Kalam Cosmological Argument? It's deductively valid, its premises are better supported than yours (IMO), and it seems to be basically what you were trying to say (also IMO). (1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause. (2) The universe began to exist. ----------- (3) So, the universe has a cause. (2) in the Kalam is supported by the argument from the impossibility of an infinite regress, which is why I suspect that this is what you were getting at, and it has supplementary support from cosmology, which is why I think it's better supported. There's a lot of literature about that argument. If it's roughly equivalent to your intent, you can just read up on it to disabuse yourself of any belief in its soundness. Or if your argument is closer to a different version of the cosmological argument, like the Leibnizian, then you could read up on that instead. At any rate, I think you need to express your argument in some deductively valid way.

This is a good argument, I think, depending on your audience. More sophisticated critics won't be affected by it. They would say that Rand started out very open and gradually became dogmatic, shunning the people you list. In Goddess of the Market (p. 188), Jennifer Burns makes a distinction between earlier, more open Rand, and later, isolated Rand: The long years of labor on Atlas Shrugged, the stress of her relationship with Nathan and her disappointment in Frank, regular drug use and unhealthy personal habits, all had culminated in a mental rigidity that increasingly defined Rand. She was even unwilling to acknowledge her own intellectual development, releasing an edited version of We the Living in 1959 that erased any passages at odds with Objectivism. For years she had sealed herself off from all outside influences save Nathan and Leonard, and it was now impossible for her to communicate with contemporaries. The woman who had written long demonstrative letters to Isabel Paterson and Rose Wilder Lane, trying her best to understand and be understood, had vanished forever. This gels with the approach that some other critics of Rand take. For example, Daniel Barnes says that, "From the previews of the forthcoming bio by Anne Heller, "Ayn Rand And The World She Made" the basic thesis seems to be that Rand gradually invented her own reality; that she came to live in a kind of solipsistic world of her own. If this is the case, I would agree" (source). But maybe you knew all of this, and you're not trying to convince the more sophisticated critics. In that case, the argument is fine. (It's possible that the sophisticated critics are biased and can't be convinced anyway.) Yep. Could you provide a link? I couldn't find this on the Wikipedia pages for Ayn Rand or Objectivism. Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places. You could use her incredible performance in debates as evidence. The three biographies of her which I have read all attest to her persuasive power in person, and one can see it in her recorded interviews on Youtube and in her articles. She didn't simply assert her position. She argued for it, and she argued well. That's not what a dogmatic person does.

Thinking.

Well, the answer you seem to be referring to is that all of the claims in question are just obvious, and they're not. But yes, technically, that counts as an answer. I suppose I could just head off into the sunset at this point with the same impression that I started this thread out with. I'd rather wait and see what else people come up with, though, if anything; what new vistas are opened by current exchanges, what novel propositions are made by new participants, and so on.

I feel like you're trying to intimidate me. It seems like a rather simple issue. Rand made claims that seem to need support from outside her work. I don't think bringing up Bacon et al. has any real relevance, except to scare off people who wonder whether Rand might possibly have benefited from citing sources for those claims.

Well, I also reject that assumption, because (1) it has nothing to do with pointing to other people, and everything to do with pointing to evidence; and (2) I have no idea where the part about constructing a coherent philosophy came from.

I meant standards of evidence, not standards of volume of footnotes. Surely you would not agree that Rand's work doesn't meet modern standards of evidence.