Tonix777

This is probably one of the most terrible mistakes people can make in their lives, and the mistake that is possibly hurting the most the modern Western Civilization. Legions of persons, living in the protective umbrella of developed countries/cities/societies have totally lost the perspective about what it is really living in this World, what it takes to any individual of any living species to survive, flourish and ultimately to die They have lost their reality checks and can go away with this because the "society" (the tribe) protects them from their own mistakes. But reality, the final unappeasable, unappealable arbiter of everything usually comes sooner or later with the truth on one hand and a swath in the other and the candid smile of a child in the face to make accountable everyone for the mistakes made. Then "life is unfair" when it doesn't match my whims... Examples: -"This cougar is just a big cat, let's have one in our backyard" or -"Rich people are responsible for the existence of poor people in the World" or -"Doctor Smith must save me from this strange tumor, otherwise I will sue him" Of course everyone needs opinions because they are essential to make the infinite choices that allow us to keep ourselves alive and move forward. But of course the cougar killed one of their kids, poor people existed before rich people and doctor Smith is not God. And it gets worse since erroneous opinions are like transmissible diseases: They travel fast from person to person, hosting specially in brains not used to check information against the only a final judge of everything: Reality. Some people of this kind are fortunate and can live all their lives in this sort of "pink lie" supported by the effort and thinking of other people. Other less fortunate just die or live unhappy because of their mistakes, without finally knowing what happened This essential mistake is in big part responsibility from the default and ultimate failure of the ones supposed to help to guide the course of humanity's mental evolution: Philosophers, who contribute everyday to this confusion of Metaphysics with Epistemology allowing the fundamental mistake of taking one opinion of the World as the World itself. They are supposed to be the enlightened, the best thinkers, the beacon in the night but instead they resigned from reason and engaged in the same mainstream fallacies and faults than the "common citizen" who they were supposed to help. Mysticism, grayness, subjectivism, ignorance, magic-thinking, laziness, cowardice, to name a few are the vices supposed to be fought by philosophers but they mostly don't. It is up to everyone of us to correct this, because the future of the World and our kids is in our hands...

Totally agreed, but what about parents that don't care about their children? My point is that children "belong" to their parents but at the same time they are persons in development who are not capable of self-support or to take proper decisions by themselves. Who protects them from force or fraud if this comes from their own parents? So to me childhood is a grey area probably not covered extensively enough by Ayn Rand. Leaving all children "alone" to their own good or bad luck in the roulette of life is probably not in the best interest of any society, and I mean society as the sum of all individuals constituting it

Hey, since we are talking about the Ten Commandments... Here it goes my version of the Ten Commandments of Objectivism! 1- You shall have no gods before Reason. 2- You shall make for yourself an idol in the form of the Hero of your own life In heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall always bow down to Reason for she is a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who dare not to think, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who think and keep the power of the mind. 3- You shall not misuse the name of the Concepts, your essential resource to understand the World, for the concepts will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses theirs names. 4- Remember the Learning day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is for Learning. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days Nature made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but she rested on the seventh day to learn about she did. 5- Honor your father and your mother only if they deserve it, so that you may live long in the land of the World. 6- You shall not kill, except in self-defense. 7- You shall not commit adultery because you choose not to, according to your own principles. 8- You shall not steal the fruits of other man's work or reason. Make your own instead. 9- You shall not need to give false testimony against your neighbor. Because need of lying come from fear and weakness in Reason. 10- You shall covet your neighbor’s house, wife or servants or his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor, only if you are willing to acquire the skills and make the effort to get the same or better things by your own.

Thanks for the lesson about history, I wonder where the Judaism inherited the concepts from. In human history there is almost always some precedent for everything... http://www.crystalinks.com/tencommandments.html "Some historians believe that the Ten Commandments originated from ancient Egyptian religion, and postulate that the Biblical Jews borrowed the concept after their Exodus from Egypt. Chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead (the Papyrus of Ani) includes a list of things to which a man must swear in order to enter the afterlife. These sworn statements bear a remarkable resemblance to the Ten Commandments in their nature and their phrasing. These statements include "not have I defiled the wife of man," "not have I committed murder," "not have I committed theft," "not have I lied," "not have I cursed god," "not have I borne false witness," and "not have I abandoned my parents." The Book of the Dead has additional requirements, and, of course, doesn't require worship of YHWH"

Well... A "fairly decent" education in NYS can be something quite different in price than in India, but with all the distortion already introduced by the intervention of the Government in the education environment/market it would be almost impossible to know how would be the panorama without public education in the US. I live in NYS in a very high quality public school district and my daughter (13) goes to public Middle School here. But going sideways in the topic I am still very concerned about the real "quality" or level or contents of the education today, public or private. They teach a lot of of stuff, values and points of view that I don't completely share or sometimes don't share at all. And the methods of teaching are also quite suspicious for me to be not very effective in forming an adequate conceptual mind in our children. But this is another topic anyway. I am just reading an essay from Leonard Peikoff about this topic, it is an old essay but probably still quite valid in the present which makes me even more suspicious and concerned about the education that my kids will receive... Fortunately I still believe that the biggest part of a child education begins at home. I am also thinking in sending my 2 years old son to some Montesori early school that is probably closer to Objectivism

Thanks!

Orthodox Objectivism maintains that: "The basic social principle of the Objectivist ethics is that no man has the right to seek values from others by means of physical force—i.e., no man or group has the right to initiate the use of physical force against others. Men have the right to use force only in self-defense and only against those who initiate its use. Men must deal with one another as traders, giving value for value, by free, mutual consent to mutual benefit. The only social system that bars physical force from human relationships is laissez-faire capitalism. Capitalism is a system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which the only function of the government is to protect individual rights, i.e., to protect men from those who initiate the use of physical force." Thus Objectivism rejects any form of collectivism, such as fascism or socialism. It also rejects the current "mixed economy" notion that the government should regulate the economy and redistribute wealth" I am an Objectivist (probably a Neo-Objectivist whatever this loose term means) but I was born in a country with a "mixed" quite socialized economy and I am a product of its public education and health systems without which my middle-low class family probably couldn't have had the possibility to afford my education and proper grown up when I was a child... If I unreservedly support the Ayn Rand's doctrine of a full laissez-faire capitalism, am I going against my own historical survival as living organism? It is probably a question that I will never be able to answer in the same way that nobody knows if Ayn Rand would have been the same person if she wouldn't have been educated in the Leningrad State University of the disappeared USSR. And when I say "the same person" I mean the same rational mind and the same hate against the socialism which she was a product of, the same hate that latter in her life impulsed her mind toward individualism and finally created the conditions for the discovery of Objectivism. Destiny exists: It is what already happened... Needless to say that in the big picture I support capitalism as (until now) the only political system capable of fully defending individual rights, and the freedom to grow based of your own effort and intelligence But there is a detail in which I have some doubts about a full totally unregulated laissez-faire capitalism: Children Almost every book, essay and principles of Objectivism are addressed to "persons" to men, to a man or better "the" Man, you, I. Did you note that in Ayn Rand's novels there are almost no children? So my central question is: Are children really "persons" in the full philosophical sense of the word about what Objectivism speaks? Are they free to choose? Are they capable of bearing total responsibility for their acts? Can they be left to their own effort? In any case at which age? From my very personal point of view a person doesn't born as a person, it takes a process to become a person This is by the way the main reason why I am not against abortion: an unborn baby is not yet a person in the total sense of the word, he is a "promise" for a future person. Anyway at some hard-to-define point between 10 and 20 years old a child become a man depending on his life's circumstances, it is a slow gradual process that takes years to happen, from the very moment of the birth until you are capable to face existence by your own. In fact in most countries the law says that you are some kind of "property" of your parents until at least 15 years old or more. In most modern western cultures by example you are nor free to choose even the color of your shoes until you are 8 or 10 or your religion until you are 12, nor your high-school, your ideas, or your bedroom until you are 14 or more, and your parents are responsible for your crimes in front of the law until you are 16 or 18. So it is reasonable letting these "persons-to-be" only in the hands of their parents? Are potentially bright children "guilty" of the eventual low capacity, poor educational level, or laziness of their parents? On the other side it is reasonable that parents are full "proprietors" of their children? That they decide all about them from type of education to diet? I don't know if it "reasonable" but it seems to be fair, since children are born only by their decision, their desire, their sole responsibility and right. And after the children are born and for several years parents are the only supporters of their lives with their own effort hope and sometimes sacrifices. So it seems parents have earned the right and freedom to decide over their children's future, but for sure in modern societies this freedom shouldn't be the same unlimited kind of freedom that people have to decide about any other of their properties, since children are potentially and progressively persons, men. What can then do a capitalist system or government in order to balance this delicate equation? And first of all should the government do anything at all about this? In my opinion yes: Government should find the way to guarantee to these persons-in-formation gradually the same individual rights that must guarantee to grown men, including the fundamental right of freedom and defense against unjustified aggression of others. But what freedom could there be in modern societies without education? I have always associated very closely freedom with knowledge. So I deeply believe that government should encourage an facilitate (not guarantee by law) the access of children to knowledge and education that from my point of view is probably the best form to guarantee their future freedom, and the best bet in order to ensure the continuity of the free capitalist system itself over the centuries

This man who lived 2,000 years ago is one of the most clear demonstrations of the long range power of ideas His concepts modified the history of the World for the last two Millenniums, and specially during the last two Centuries due to the strong influence of the United States of America on the so called Western civilization. Almost all the Christian commandments are harmful in one way or another to the Mind, the Reason, the Progress and the Self-steem of men but two of them are specially evil in modern times: 1-"You shall love your neighbor as yourself" 2-"You shall not kill" The first one gives place to consider altruism or un-selfishness as one of the alleged highest virtues of our society, and is often stretched to the even more insane "You shall love your neighbor more than yourself" as the pinnacle of virtue But who is "your neighbor"? The commandment doesn't mention anything about your relation with him: Is he your friend? your relative? someone you admire? someone unknown? someone known but despised by you? your enemy? Does your neighbor deserve to be loved by you? Is he wise? idiot? honest, thief, criminal? brave or coward? helpful or useless? hard-worker or lazy? nice or indifferent? The commandment doesn't specify anything, so we should assume that we should love everyone, anyone. This commandment is deeply affecting the politics and economics of the World because no one dares to defend Capitalism on moral grounds, simply because it goes against this commandment which is taken as some kind of axiomatic truth, some revealed supreme virtue that everyone seems to agree with... Why? Simply because it resonates deeply in our brain, in our soul where we have genetically hardwired thanks to our evolution as species other virtues like kindness or compassion or sympathy which are (were at least) essential for our survival as group and individuals because these virtues allow us to live in tribes and societies which in turn has the potential to greatly improve our chances of survival and our standard of life But I say it is not possible to love your neighbor as yourself, it is an evil ideal impossible to comply in real life and thus created only to make people feel guilty. I say it is not right to love your neighbor as yourself without knowing who your neighbor is, without knowing if he deserves your love or your indifference or scorn or even your hate or your fear or whatever he could deserve according to your own values and to his virtues, his vices, his merits, his faults or his crimes... The second one "You shall not kill" is a blind blank check extended to your current or potential enemies in order to allow them to harm you, is an invitation to become a sacrificial lamb for anyone that doesn't share the same ridiculous principle You shall never kill? Not even in self-defense? Or in defense of your loved ones? Or to defend your property, your village, your country? I hate pacifists almost as much as I hate ecologists. What kind of man offer the other cheek to his aggressor? A coward. The "combo" of these two commandments exempt people from the responsibility about their own safety, and from the need to analyze more carefully the World and the people living in them, the need to discriminate between others, the "neighbors", on the naif belief that if one is good everybody will somehow love or appreciate us and nobody will finally or seriously harm us, or the mistaken idea that there will be always some one there to defend us. These commandments also encourage anyone else to act with impunity knowing that we are sacrificial lambs ready to be their next victims.

You are right: Every man or woman has these values in some degree, they are inherent to our nature as beings. They are "hardwired" in our brain/body that is the hardware where our soul/consciousness (software) runs. Any person without even a little bit of reason, purpose and self-esteem would be dead in five minutes And you are also right in that these virtues are gained in part thru repeated practice as almost anything else in life

A friend of mine recently wrote me the following: Personally, I've been struggling with the idea of predestination lately. Not in a traditional sense, but I have trouble finding a good defense for the idea of free will; for example, if you think of the universe as a chaotic system, it seems random. As if at any moment any number of things could happen. I think that's a problem of perspective, though. If you break everything down to a series of events, starting with the big bang or whatever you think started the universe, there's really no possibility of randomness. Everything follows certain rules (physics, etc.) that have no exceptions. So, a point of matter explodes, creating stars, planets, and galaxies that are constantly interacting and expanding outward. Then, out of some chain of events certain carbon based compounds started self-replicating by eating certain chemicals around them. As some reproduced successfully and some not so successfully, evolution allows for certain organisms to continue to act in certain ways, and here we are (whew!). The problem I have is that as a result of that chain of events, my genetic and personal history dictate the choices I will make in any given situation. For instance, if I have to chose between two roads to get to a destination, I'll take the one that I think will be faster, because I know it is from past experience and I think how fast I get somewhere is important. Every decision is dictated by my knowledge and genetic predisposition. And at this point people always reply "well what if you chose to go against that? You can decide to take the longer road just to avoid doing what you 'would' do." But, of course, my decision to go "against" my predisposed decision is just another decided decision. I would only go against myself if I was the kind of person that tries to go against what his tendencies are. So, if I can never act outside myself, how do I have free will? That's where my thoughts have been lately. Still, I think everyone has to live as if their choices are important and not predetermined. After all, I might as well enjoy my life while I'm here. My response: Well... very interesting thoughts Here they go my opinions: I am not an expert in quantum physics but I am sure there is nothing really random in the Universe. What we call random are usually chains of cause-effect events too complex or numerous to be tracked but I don't believe that these events were somehow "planned" or predestined So from now on I can change anything I want " as long as I want it black" paraphrasing the famous statement of Henry Ford about the Ford T :-) "Wanting it black" in this context means that I should restrain my actions to the mechanical laws of matter and physics: The laws of reality Any other approach is whims, wishes, fairy-tales, make-believe, etc. This is the reason why Objectivism is strongly reality-oriented, meaning: Some chain of events made any thing/person the way it is, and the only way to change it is using real-physical methods which implies that of course not everything I would like to change in myself (or in any thing of reality) is really possible to be changed. Or perhaps it "is" possible to be changed but resources, knowledge, time, etc. are not enough But the topic get far more complex when we talk about the human animal because we are probably the most sophisticated machine ever built So following "real-physical methods" with ourselves requires an important degree of mastery in several subjects that most of us don't have: Psychology, Brain-chemistry, body mechanics, etc. What most people seem not to accept is the fact that there is nothing "divine" or supernatural in our nature, we don't scape from the laws of mechanics and physics. What we call our "soul" is just our consciousness product of the mechanics of our brain, memories, emotions, instincts, etc. Ultra-complex mechanics indeed to the point that can take ages to understand, but mechanics in the end... On the other hand there are other people that tend to simplify too much the human animal (including most orthodox Objectivists) ignoring the essential role that our subconscious, emotions, etc. play in our life and our perception of reality and ourselves inside this reality If we were to assimilate the human animal to a computer our body is the hardware and our soul is the software. As in any computer the most important part is the software but no software can function without some hardware to run on And following the same line of analogy all software is influenced and limited by the hardware it runs on, so our genetics greatly influences our behavior choices, etc. This finally meaning that there is some degree of "predestination" in our choices that are limited by our body, genetics, environment, previous experiences, etc. So our free will is not "unlimited", as nothing in Nature is anyway But as a last note of hope I am by example a good proof that change is possible I was "predestined" by environment, education, some genetics, etc. to be a stupid and I was for a long time, but slowly thru my childhood, adolescence, youth and a good part of my adult life I learned how to be better than myself, smarter and different from what I was meant to be... And certainly Ayn Rand played a key role in the last stage of learning to be myself

Few more words about the very concept of science: 1-My concept of "science" or "scientific" comes from the general definitions or public knowledge, it means that if you are an expert in the field, like an epistemologist or a scientific researcher, this discussion is out of my league because going into very technical details is not inside my current field of knowledge/interest and will probably be boring for everyone 2-If we stay in the general definitions of science and scientific, you will provably agree with the following I copied from Wikipedia: "Scientific method refers to bodies of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.[1] A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.[2] Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, identifiable features distinguish scientific inquiry from other methodologies of knowledge. Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and design experimental studies to test these hypotheses. These steps must be repeatable in order to dependably predict any future results. Theories that encompass wider domains of inquiry may bind many hypotheses together in a coherent structure. This in turn may help form new hypotheses or place groups of hypotheses into context." 3-Unlike you I have read Alper's book and formed my own opinion about it. And my opinion is that his work and research, with all the evidence, proof, data and logic analysis he shows in the book is scientific (which is not synonym of "infallible"). Science has never been "infallible", all the time new theories replace old ones proven to be wrong or inaccurate. Finally one of the things that makes some knowledge/research "scientific" is certainly the approval of other peers in the same field, but as Rand's life proves, some times it can be hard to get approval of the "official" mainstream academic circle, specially when you are proposing innovative theories

1- The thing that "makes this un-knowable (God) so important" is obvious and we as Objectivists should be able to see it: Gods have been essential for humanity since its origin, they have been (and still are) the cause of wars, infinite pieces of art and architecture, funding and growing of towns, cities and countries, trillions of lives have been modified for better or worse by things related to Gods and religions (if you don't believe me ask to the thousands of "witches" burned alive by the Inquisition in the Middle Ages...) The US it self was founded mostly by people running from religious persecutions and intolerance in the old Europe. So if we Objectivists can't see the importance of Gods in concrete reality... Who can? God is essential for 90% of humanity, it can't be denied even when God doesn't "really" exists. But it's consequences do exists and are overwhelmingly important for men, even for the few of us that don't believe in Gods since we have to live in this World 2-The very concept of God is used to explain what we don't know. If something believed to be supernatural becomes scientifically explained it stops belonging to God's realm and is included in Natural realm. There is NOTHING that is out of the laws of reality, nature, physical laws, etc. There NEVER was and there NEVER will. What happens is that our knowledge of reality is limited so we label as "supernatural" just natural things that we can't explain yet. Every time Man discover or can explain something new, God dies a little bit.

If you mean Jake-Ellison's last post there is nothing more to reply because we don't share the definition of science and I will not change his mind. He believes he is infallible and will not accept any ideas coming from me. On the other hand I find not very "scientific" speaking about a book without reading it, just based on the "accepted" opinions of other people. And beside all this I am not a "fanatic" of Matthew Alper and he doesn't need me defending him. I just found his book very interesting given my own mental structure and my experience. I don't judge authors of books just by their background otherwise I would never had read Ayn Rand who after all was just a Russian novelist who gave herself the title of philosopher. Certainly Jake_Ellison would not have read Rand in the '40s when she was still unknown and/or rejected by the academic mainstream (a big part of which still says that she is not a scientific, a philosopher or even a good writer) What makes Ayn Rand a philosopher after all? First and foremost her own desire to be one and her passion, effort and seriousness in doing her work. On the other hand I don't understand very much the aggressiveness showed by Jake_Allison and other people in this forum that is after all a place for discussion and learning not for attacking and denigrating. Don't you think?

Your logic is correct but you don't need to use logic to convince me about the non-existence of God. I don't believe in God. And nobody needs to prove the non-existence of something that apparently doesn't exists, in any case the believers should be in charge of proofing the existence of God and they never have been able to do this. What is interesting about Alper's book is that it goes further than just saying "God doesn't exist", it propose a credible answer to the question: "Ok Gods don't exist but why men keep inventing them and believing in them since immemorial times?"

Well... I think that the existence or non-existence of God is a central topic concerning Objectivism since Rand so clearly fought against the irrationality of the concept of God and religions. On the other hand it is funny that "you" are against Alper's theory because it is the most scientific proof I ever read in my 45 years against the existence of God. Alper is an atheist and in his book he finally explains why Gods are an invent of men. Objectivist organizations should promote Alper's book as the ultimate proof of the non-existence of God. I have read the book and I guess you didn't. Am I right?

Agreed in part, you have to add the concepts of our mind that Rand brilliantly analyzes in her treatise about Objectivist Epistemology. These are entities that only exist in and are the base of our Reason Gods don't really exist outside men's minds. Gods are inventions. But inventions so powerful that have shaped the whole history of humanity since our remote beginnings as species. Wars, travels, art, architecture, foundations of cities and countries, etc. had happened in God's name, so I would not take so lightly these inventions, they probably deserve further analysis. I am not in favor of the cult of uncertainty, but I know that uncertainty exists as part of our human experience, fighting against uncertainty is the fight of Reason. But you can't erase uncertainty from the face of Earth just by decree, it has to be done rationally and I think that Matthew Alper did a decent effort in this direction. I am Objectivist and I have read and analyzed Rand probably more than you. But Rand gave us just the big principles, sometimes in rough strokes. You still have to fill the gaps and personalize Objectivism to your own existence and take responsibility for your own ideas. Her legacy is also about being brave enough to have and rationally defend your own points of view. I try to do it every once in a while here and in my own blog about Objectivism.

Well... it is a luck for me that you don't manage this website, otherwise I would be kicked off instantly I generated this topic more than one year ago and it has had a lot of response from persons interested in the debate (228 posts so far to be more accurate) I don't agree with your opinion that this is a "carny show" in any case you can start anytime your own topic do discuss your point of view about the existence of God and we will see in a year from now if it generates interest or not among other people, it is finally what forums are supposed to be for

You don't like bold letters? OK I will keep it simple The word/concept Agnostic is clearly defined in the dictionary: You DavidOdden, Jake_Ellison, brian0918 and Gruff are trying to extend the meaning of the word/concept to an area I don't agree with And Matthew Alper is a scientist even when Jake_Ellison disagrees and he wrote a great book that could change the way humanity sees at the ancient discussion about the existence or non-existence of Gods and the origin of religions. His scientific approach to the "problem of God" is a turning point in this issue.

Hey man where so much angry comes from? Agnostic in the context of our discussion is only about God. It does NOT means being "agnostic" about science, reason, principles, ethics, etc. You are wrong.

I love science, it is the only light that illumines my path, but you have to admit that its mistakes sometimes have gone far beyond than "this theory doesn't explain everything" I don't believe in God the way this concept is traditionally understood/accepted. And this traditional concept of God is not scientifically acceptable ok. But there is something very important beyond the falsehood of the concept itself and you can read bout it in Matthew Alper's book "The God Part of the Brain" My personal approach can be found in the this post of the Agnostic Church of Reason

Well... There could be several different reasons to be agnostic: 1- Cowardice, as you said: If you are really convinced there are no Gods but still you don't want to admit it openly to others or yourself 2-Scientific honesty: You can be old enough to know that science is not perfect and today's truths can be false tomorrow as it happened by example with early models for the Atom and thousands of other things along human history. So you are very carful when it comes to be so sure about some things. 3-Priority: Some people just doesn't think that the existence or non-existence of God is important enough to have a definitive opinion formed. They usually believe that there are much more important issues in "this" life to waste time thinking about hypothetic problems of the afterlife

Check Seven Deadly Sins Against Reason

Well... You are right BUT the concept of "crime" itself is not a fact, it is an opinion of the society The concept of what is crime depends of the laws of some specific territory at a specific time And at some point the edge between murder and killing can get blurring. By example in Spanish (my main language) the commandment is in fact "No mataras" = "You shall not kill" which gives more ground to my point On the other hand the National Socialism of Adolf Hitler killed 6 million Jewish "legally", i.e. supported by laws approved by the government, so you can see that the concept of "crime" is not an absolute parameter to rely on so easily

As promised the Agnostic Church of Reason attacks again The problem with this guy called Jesus of Nazareth

You are right! I was never aware of this possibility of interpretation of the title Perhaps it should be "Atheist Church of Reason"