Tonix777
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Posts posted by Tonix777
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I 'm a Quentin Smith naturalist pantheist- in awe of Exiistence. We ignostics find that theologians and theistic philosophers of religion merely use guesses and it must be's to define God. Aren't Objectivists new atheists, anti-theists? Whilst Miss Rand was right that this is a small matter in her sense, it is a gargantuan one as it affects public polilcy and people being superstitious- anti-rational.
Some cannot stomach that we let others know that even theistic evolution is nonsense [ Eugneie C. Scott, herself a naturalist].
It takes mockery and such contempt to get to theists to see reason, as philosophy and science alone don't suffice. This is a spur to their reason, not contempt for it, as I see it.
Objectivist George Smith in " Atheism: the Case against God," notes the anti-rationality of faith, the we just say so of credulty.
Well...
I am creating an "Agnostic Church of Reason"
I invite you all to join
Next post: The Seven Deadly Sins against Reason
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... That's why it is important to push for a resurgence of reason and individualism -- capitalism and freedom will follow from that.
I came here to USA looking for the ideals of freedom, individual rights, and capitalism but know that I know better this country my big question is: Is USA going slowly but inexorably to some sort of socialism like UK and other countries of Europe? Is there any way to prevent this to happen?
As I said" Is there finally a civilized way to protect minorities from the majority? (being the individual the smallest minority)
I have an 1.5 years old baby. Which will the future for him?
I took my part of the job to try to correct the current course of history, I have my Objectivist blogs, I write in forums. I talk about my ideas whenever opportunity arises. I don't want to be pessimistic and I hope we can contribute to the influence of Ayn Rand's and similar philosophies in the future. But would it be enough? Or are the tribe bound to win over the individual?
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Society (the tribe) plays to the adult a role similar to that of parents about the child, providing care and guidance, supplying context, limits and support. But just as parents are good, mediocre and bad, so does societies.
Probably a large majority of you are nowadays in agreement about that extremely overprotecting parents can be enormously damaging for their children. But the same majority seems to agree that the more protective it is a society with its members it is better. What not everyone perceives is the inverse relationship that inexorably exists between the social protection (control) and freedom.
The axis protection/control sooner or later ends up suffocating the axis freedom/responsibility, exactly as it happens in the relationship between parents and children.
Fleeing the often pathetic history of South America, I am living for now some time in the United States, a country that 200 years ago, just yesterday in historical time, was born as a symbol of freedom and individual rights (the real human rights) against the absolutism and collectivism of the old monarchical Europe.
But in the last 100 years it began to imperceptibly derive into the collectivism of a society which is becoming everyday a little bit more oppressive and controlling (it's still more free that South America and Europe, not to mention Middle Eastern countries and other semi-medieval cultures)
United States, once the bastion of freedom is going slowly and perhaps inexorably in the same direction they took (and failed in) the great collectivist experiments that delineated much of the macabre story of the 20th century of genocide and massive unnameable deprivation: The National Socialism of Adolf Hitler, the Fascism of Benito Mussolini, and the Communists of Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin, just to name a few.
Why?
Why the vast majority ends up preferring safety over freedom?
Is there finally a civilized way to protect minorities the majority? (being the individual the smallest minority)
Constitutions are Amended and governments grow and grow as the decades pass, because people (the majority) is requesting this, and those same governments end up growing so much to crush the people who are supposed to protect.
All these people demanding more and more security and giving up in exchange their freedom, what a sadness...
They want the government-society-father to take care of their problems and provide everything necessary and even the unnecessary and then they duck his head obediently accepting orders for this same daddy who cares for us but of course also ends by telling us how we must live our lives and die our deaths.
The process of gradual loss of freedom in most western societies has been advanced over the years in a way similar to the "boiled frog syndrome"
A frog will jump out of the pot if thrown into the boiling water, however if the water is heated very slowly the frog does not realize and dies finally boiled.
In the ancient conflict between the pressure of the tribe and the individual, it appears that the individual continues to lose because he "needs" of the tribe to survive, as he needed from their parents when boy. When then will the great majority of humanity reach the majority of age?
That day will come some day? I hope yes
I hope that when my son is grown up they don’t come once again the dark centuries of the Inquisition or the Stone Age as they want all these ecologists- mystical-collectivists, dreaming to create a "perfect world" through decrees and laws and rules increasingly stifling our freedoms. Many even say they love the poor but they treat them as idiots
Fortunately the final and incorruptible judge was, is, and will be the Reality that accepts no magic solutions or whims so they are going to lose now or within 500 years, but how much evil they can do in the meantime? What kind of world will live my son into? I worry a lot, so I write.
As they should be worried the ghosts of over 100 million men, women and children who just talking about Hitler, Mao and Stalin were tortured and murdered in the name of a "Better World".
Better for whom?
They all started the same way: by telling people they had a "perfect solution" to the alleged social problems, that if people surrender their freedom they will take care of all.
And people believed them...
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My dear dear thinkforyourself:
I appreciate your energy and your intention of participate, but you are trapped in your own prejudices:
A man who thinks is not necessarily a "walking computer", feeling and thinking are not necessarily contradictory and an artist can also be logic
These kind of prejudices you have are spread by the current mainstream way of thinking
My advice: Try first to eliminate as much as possible your apparently BIG internal contradictions, it leads to a happier existence
You can start to do it now by buying a copy of Atlas Shrugged and do the effort to begin a new stage in your life
Believe me, in a couple of years you could be a new and better person. I speak by my own experience.
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thinkforyourself: We are not responsible for your inferiority complex, we Objectivists "are" superior people, but it is not big deal, anyone can be a superior person as long as he/she wishes, all it takes is being committed to rational constant evolution of oneself.
I am superior to the person I was five years ago, and I am inferior to the person I will be five years from now. The biggest challenge is not being superior to other people, but becoming superior to yourself.
Volco: I think your hypothesis is interesting and quite possible to be true at least in part. However I recommend again the book of Matthew Alper "The God part of the brain" http://godpart.com/ which would even explain the alleged "cult" component of the Objectivist movement in the middle 20th Century, since we all have a "spiritual/religious instinct" genetically hardwired in our brains.
My advice in this matter is to find a way to rationally exercise our "mystic muscle", to use our "religious instinct"
My opinion is that it is healthy in fact to exercise every instinctive part of oneself in some way compatible with one's own rational values and moral principles. Sex, curiosity, fighting, parenthood, to name a few are other instincts that should also be exercised in order to be more in harmony with what we really are. A is A no matter how strong we would like to be other thing.
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Hi all
Maximus's recommendation has been VERY interesting, I bought the book "The God part of the brain" and although I have read only 30% I can surely recommend it too
As a bonus for us as Objectivists there are some insights in the short Kant's chapter which lead to me to rethink a little my evaluation of this philosopher that was 100% influenced by Rand's hate of him
Now I could think that even if he was wrong in several aspects of his approach he was probably pioneer to analyze our own perceptual system as part of the problem of the relation between metaphysics and epistemology...
On the other hand the books leads me to certain similar ideas about a possible "collectivist" part of our brain that I will elaborate later and write in this forum for further discussion
PS:
I am from Argentina and I am moving to live in Great Neck, NY
beginning next year with my wife and two kids
(I am writing this from a hotel in Tarrytown, near Yonkers)
Do you know some place to contact Objectivist people interested
in friendship? It is a new country for me and making new
friends would be important for this new stage in my life
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I've always found Matthew Alper's theory interesting, you can read the premise here: http://godpart.com/
Hey Maximus, thanks for the recommendation!!
I read the premise ant it sounds very interesting, I will buy the book today
Did you read the whole book? What about the Kant's chapter?
Since Ms Rand hated Kant so much I tried to read something from/about him a couple of times but it was impossible, he gives me just headache and revulsion ...
About Alper's theory I agree in principle, I will tell you more after reading the book
I am 45 now and I just had a baby that is now one year old, and honestly only since my late 30s or 40s I feel more comfortable with the idea of dying and completely disappearing form the Universe, perhaps because I feel now more "complete" meaning I have done the main and more important things I liked to do in my life, I already lived "a lot" of things, experiences, travels, stages, etc. so I could die tomorrow and it would be ok for me
I am now an agnostic/atheist and I have been a believer only for a short period when teenager, but anyway in my 20s the problem of my own death caused to me a lot of painful anxiety several times a week, I felt that I had so much things to do...
So in line with Alper's position, my current way of dealing with my certain death (tomorrow or in 40 years more) and my consequent ceasing of existence is not appealing to God to save me from death thru immortality, I already saved my self living and exciting, diverse and productive life, my own adventure where I did everything I wanted (still do) taking everyday new challenges and improving myself as much as I can. I am following the basic premise "Be ready to die tomorrow" which makes the need of God almost unnecessary. The immortality "need" is also greatly covered by my little son that one day, in some way will "continue" my life after I am gone because a part of me will follow with him...
Did you ever wondered why an individualist like Ayn Rand wrote all those wonderful books? Why she shared her wisdom with others?
For me it was her way to be "immortal", those extraordinary books are her sons that she left in the World after dying
BUT you probably will agree that having this kind of approach when you are still in your 20s or less is much more difficult since you still have a life to live and death could suddenly deprive you from that
On the other hand people living boring unchallenging lives can be also afraid of death on their 60s because they basically didn't really enjoyed life, they probably still feel like a teenager in this matter
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By exist I'm assuming that you mean they "exist inside our consciousness". Right?
1. If so, don't you think "always" is a pretty long time? What if Putin decides to press the button, and we all go bye bye tomorrow? Won't the Gods also stop existing?
2. Why not mention what you mean by exist in the title of the thread, and save everyone a lot of hassle?
Yes of course I mean "exist inside our consciousness"
1-Well... Even if Putin do so it is almost impossible that the entire human race would stop existing, it would occur only if the Earth explode or something like this (BTW did you know that in some ancient ice age they remained only a couple of thousand primitive humans in Africa? We were probably close to disappear... Wow!)
2-Well... It had been fun to post this forum in a not-that-clear way because it invited more to discussion.
I am surprised about how much different perspectives exist about this matter even between Objectivists
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But the essential aspect of the alleged god is not that he creates but what he allegedly created, the universe, life and most specifically us as beings with a soul. (If this all is true then it logically follows that he must have had an inordinate fondness for beetles and shitheaded politicians.)
No man did any of that, so I agree that kainscala's formulation is more appropriate. It should be unnecessary too but unfortunately there are plenty of non-manlike men out there.
Since Gods are invented, "we" the inventors say what they are
And human race had invented quite different kind of gods along its history
The point of view of AllMenAreIslands is very interesting also, but I still maintain that gods are invented for a reason:
They cover our weaknesses, they are what we aren't.
We made them to be what mankind needed in each age
And since only a very small portion of human race are strong or intelligent enough to stand in their own feet Gods will always exist, as long as they are needed for the weak, the hopeless, the simple-minded or even worse: the controllers, the tyrants, or simply the ones who make their business selling the god's idea and "benefits" to others
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Tonix777,
The closest you come to reality in your argument is in the fact that the CONCEPT of god is real. But a god or gods do not exist, as far as we know. Same goes for vampires or werewolves. They are make believe, not actually existing.
Rob
Yes you are right, it is the "concept" of God what I am talking about. I am just now finishing Rand's "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" and it is now more clear for me.
Anyway going further and following Rand's advice of keeping always in mind where any concept comes from, it would be very interesting try to discover why human race made a concept about something that doesn't exist. Why human race invented Gods?
Here is my guess:
Implicit in whatever concept we form about any existent are also all things that this existent is not, this is what I call "Law of Contrast" and it means that everything that exists, exists "against" something, some background or context which is the opposite, the different
Dummy example: Apples exist because there are other fruits "non-apple" like pears or oranges, if not "apples" wouldn't exist, they would be instead just "fruits", the only fruits
In this case the concept "God" is just the non-human, it is an anti-concept converted in concept
God is everything that we aren't: We are finite, he is eternal. We are in one place at a time, he is everywhere. We are not omniscient, he is. We have not infinite power, he has. We can't change natural laws, he can. etc.
Human race took all what we are not (an anti-concept) and made a concept: God
Probably a concept psico-epistemologically necessary to recognize and differentiate ourselves from the reality and to deal with our own limited
physical power in contrast with our unlimited mental power. We men use the concept of God to confirm and reassure our own limits and to be able to deal with them in different ways according to each one's resources.
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Dear Flagg:
Thanks for take your time and energy in answering my previous post
The thing is that I don't believe in God/s as supernatural beings that created anything
I was referring in my post to the exact inverse notion:
We, men, created Gods. All of them.
But we, the human kind, created different kinds of Gods along the history
and they are NOT all the same type
Y like to think that the Greek Pantheon by example is far more beautiful that
the sinister christian God of the Bible who basically represents punishment
and irrationality and in which name the Church made in the past so much atrocities
(The same goes for other modern Gods like Muhammad or whatever)
In my opinion, Gods from polytheist Pantheons represent more interesting
concepts of men's life, society, virtues, values, etc.
So even when the Pantheon of the Nine Divines is clearly invented
(by the team at Bethesda that created Morrowind for Xbox), I like it a lot.
Probably because I liked so much to play the game some years ago...
So I "worship" these nine Gods that for me represent interesting concepts
to keep in mind in the everyday life
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Mistake Number 2
"Mistake Rule and Exception"
(The most used strategy to hide one's own laziness)
I see a lot of people outside there using the few exceptions to some obvious rule in order to dismiss the truth and continue believing whatever unreal arbitrary fantasy they have made for themselves or for the whole World.
It is a strategy that can be easily used to deny or justify almost anything, any point of view, any idea or whatever.
Example:
-"Dogs walk on four legs"
-"Yes but yesterday I saw a dog walking on just three legs, so it is not true that dogs walk on four legs"
For practical purposes if 99% of dogs walk on four legs you can safely say that dogs do walk in four legs.
This tactic is used by example to attack capitalism:
"Last Sunday I saw on TV the CEO of that big corporation going to jail for fraud: All the capitalist system is corrupt, money and ambition are the roots of all evil!" (quite fashionable these days with the current financial crisis going on)
Meaning: I don't believe in capitalism because I was told since my childhood that it is evil, then I will try to find any little justification to sustain my wrong opinion and never see the reality that 99% of the CEOs of a vast majority of companies are honest, competent, hard-working people, sometimes brilliant. (more brilliant than me for sure...)
Mistaking rule and exception is most of the times a way to hide our own mental laziness for accepting the rules, the facts, the reality and learn and change our mind.
It is failing to see the "measure" of the facts and the reality. It is failing to see the big picture and take the appropriate perspective in order to avoid a tree obstructing the view of the whole wood.
In practical life, specially concerning human affairs, it is imperative knowing the "statistic incidence" of an occurrence in order to form a correct opinion. It is not enough to feel unsafe just seeing in the news that someone in your neighborhood was robbed...
How much people are robbed in a month or a year?
1% don't worry, your neighborhood is still safe
10% your neighborhood is not that safe...
30% your neighborhood is definitely dangerous!
70% move now!! you are about to be robbed!!
The same thing occurs in the real-physical World with "tolerances", since perfection rarely exists.
Perfection is a delusion depending of the detail of measurement.
You could think that the surface of the glass of your living room's table is perfectly smooth and flat, but if you see it thru a microscope you will discover that at some scale of measurement this seems to be not totally true...
It is not flat and smooth anymore? Yes it is!
(Between the logical tolerances in a given context it is)
For all your practical purposes it still is
Conclusion: Only people not willing to be aware of the "measure" and the context of reality can dismiss a rule because of an exception, living in a world of delusions, always judging the reality by unreal "lifeboat" exceptional situations that finally never occur.
The same lifeboat that will not save their failed lives, when someday just before to die they finally realize that they wasted their existence.
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Seems like you're saying (and I agree) that pity is a sort of sympathy you feel for a person of thing of little or no value to you, and compassion is a sympathy you feel for a person of moderate or high value to you. In other words, you might pity a criminal, (though you should not act on that pity) but you are compassionate for the construction worker, or your friend.
Well... I probably wouldn't feel pity for a criminal (jut hate or precaution maybe)
But I make emphasis in that pity is a feeling that makes your soul "smaller", since I consider it is used by mediocre people as a way to feed their self-esteem without any other merit than some supposed "superiority" compared to the person/s they are feeling pity for.
On the other hand I am also against the general idea spread by some of the mainstream religions that pity is some kind of "positive feeling" which is supposed to be the base of altruism that is also a virtue for these religions, but the root of several evils for Objectivism
Perhaps most people were told since childhood that they "have to feel" pity, it is something like an "unnatural" feeling...
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While I think the essays will be interesting, I'm a little confused as to why they are in the debate forum?
This introduction is perhaps not very polemical but probably the articles themselves will (hopefully)
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I will do even more to get attacked by classical-traditional Objectivists
(sometimes too small minded for my taste)
I propose an interesting exercise:
Worshiping The Nine Divines (an invented mythology of the video game Oblivion).
Isn't it funny sometimes inventing some magic around us?
As long as we keep in mind that it is our invention?
It isn't interesting to exercise a little our "mystic muscle" in order to better understand first hand what believers really believe in?
What they feel when they deposit a coin in the shrine of some forgotten God, with the ancestral hope of being helped?
In the shrine of someone-something in the sky that can take care of the matters that he or she can't control?
This pantheon represents the essence of nine important ideas that are for me fundamental aspects of the human culture
and thus interesting concepts to always remember:
Akatosh: Creator of the Universe and soul of World
Arkay: God of the cycle of birth and death
Dibella: Goddess of beauty and arts
Julianos: God of wisdom and science
Kynareth: Goddess of the air and the ghosts
Mara: Mother Goddess of love
Stendarr: God of mercy
Talos: The Man-God, the Emperor, the Warrior
Zenithar: God of work and commerce
Enjoy!
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Mistake Number 1
"Mistake Compassion with Pity"
(The ugliness of pity-based altruism)
Or perhaps the correct phrase would be "The ugliness of altruism-based pity", because for me pity is ugly.
And this is a clear case covered by the statement I made in the introduction: words used for everything become confuse and very influenced by the mainstream ideas of the time: Pity and compassion seems to be synonyms nowadays, but even when (thanks in part to long bad use) the etymology is not very clear, they are not.
Pity is more close to mercy and misery, it is a feeling born from the supposed superiority of the non-suffering over the (supposed) suffering who is seen as permanently helpless and unable to recover by himself. Pity is normally a feeling without respect for the others. And there is a lot of people that like to feel pity just to feel somehow superior to others and then having a reason in their mediocre lives to increase a little their low self-steem by sacrificing themselves to "help" those others while in reality they are only helping their own poor and guilty souls to survive one more day trough their boring lives.
Compassion on the other hand is a feeling more born from sympathy, from identification with other's temporary misfortune, from identification with his merits and his struggle for improving. Born from the though "it could be me", born from realizing that finally we all are on the same game: The Life.
All struggling for survive, for happiness, for our particular values. Each one with his own good or bad fortune, abilities, willpower, energy, intelligence, but finally all under the same rules: The Reality.
So now when I see a hard-worker digging a hole in the street sweating under the hot sun of the summer for a small salary, I no longer see him as a victim of some obscure and unfair "system", I see him with his dignity, with respect. He is earning his living as we all do, doing his effort to survive, to feed his children, taking his risks everyday or not, as we all do.
Are you completely safe from dying tomorrow? No. Not even the richest man in the World is. Not even the wisest or the stronger. Not you, not me. So why do you feel pity for this man working on the street? Are you so superior? Is your life so much better? By which standards? Yours? Ok congratulations if you are better or happier from your own point of view, but pity is still an ugly feeling, respect would be much better.
Respect for yourself and for every man trying to win his own rewards in this old game called life.
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Introduction
Confucius in his "Analects" wrote 500 years before Christ that we should recover the meaning of the words.
Indeed. Words are arbitrary representations of things, ideas, etc. thus a word is more useful when its meaning, the "concept" it represents, is more clear.
Take by example the word "fascism" which was born as a definition for a left-wing collectivistic form of government leaded by dictator Benito Mussolini around the 1930's Italy. Today this word is used (specially by left-wing and/or progressive people) to design almost the opposite: Their enemies on the right-wing, or whatever the occasional user of the word happens to intent.
The word "fascism" has become some obscure synonym of evil. And evil is an opinion. The word lost its original meaning into multiple, even opposite concepts, and meaning too much is often meaning nothing.
We have to recover the meaning and clarity of the words, which means recover the meaning and clarity of our minds.
If everything is the same in the muddy clouds inside your head, it is easy for your mind to get bored and go to sleep, forever...
(For and Objectivist definition of what "concept" is please refer to Ayn Rand's "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology")
In five following topics I will try to analyze what I consider the 5 most common mistakes of men:
Mistake # 1
"Mistake Compassion with Pity"
(The ugliness of pity-based altruism)
Mistake # 2
"Mistake Rule with Exception"
(The most used strategy to hide one's own laziness)
Mistake # 3
"Mistake Facts with Opinions"
(Failing to difference oneself from reality)
Mistake # 4
"Mistake Cause with Effect"
(The stupidity of pretending being by having)
Mistake # 5
"Mistake Individualism with Arrogance"
(Avoiding the mirror of the best)
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Don't bother. That chinese quote is way too vague to have any meaning. Obviously if you can't change something you shouldn't bother trying. What that has to do with being humble is anybodies guess. It's like saying "You have to be humble enough to stop banging your head against the wall" or running for president on "Change we can believe in".
It's an empty slogan, so you won't find it in Ayn Rand's works.
Dear Jake:
As you see in JMeganSnow's response Ayn Ray YES wrote about this, (JMeganSnow is right about "humility" my mistake sorry)
And about slogans they are not necessarily "empty words", sometimes they carry important conceptual synthesis
What are most of the times "empty" are the minds of the people repeating them without really thinking
Words and phrases are epistemologically valuable (ones more than others) since they represent and transmit ideas and concepts
What is sad is the modern trend to use some important words for anything, stealing they meaning (meaning anything is mean nothing)
or using phrases thought by other people without analyzing their real significancy...
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The lie is that Ayn Rand explicitly subscribed to the qoute you said she subscribed to: "Be brave enough to change what can be changed, humble enough to leave what can't be changed and wise enough to recognize the difference".
She said no such thing. in fact she would obviously have a problem with that statement, vague as it is.
If you want to have a rational argument, you need to rely on facts, you can't provoke a rational argument by making something like this up.
Your are almost totally wrong, she in fact was referring in her essay to some example of the Anonymous Alcoholic Association if I don't remember wrong, but the meaning of the phrase was exactly the same
I am on travel but I will look tonight at the hotel on my Ayn Rand's library and will give you tomorrow the exact book and page of my quotation
I am reading just now "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" but it is not the book I am talking about, perhaps The Romantic Manifesto...
More news tomorrow
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Did she now? At least if you hadn't said explicitly, you'd be a somewhat clever liar. This way you're just an idot.
This is a 6 page thread, and even though I'm interested in the subject I decided to bail out at the third paragraph(quoted above). If any of you guys feel that you have made some valid points, please start a new thread (one that doesn't start with a blatant lie), because I, and probably many others would love to read your take on this without having to sift through garbage.
Hey: I am the starter of the topic and I would like to know what is the "blatant lie"
My main point was that we men invented Gods, and denying their existence is being blind to a big part of the human culture and history even when we objectivists don't believe in Gods, they are still an interesting (fascinating) matter to analyze. The proof is that my "stupid" topic has got a lot of discussions along the 7 months it is alive
Gods are important for a vast majority of the human race, why are you so afraid of rationally discussing about them?
Your perfect rationality doesn't want to deal with the irrational?
I have bad news for you man: A vast majority of the human race and its behavior is highly irrational, so we objectivist and rational people would do an intelligent favor to ourselves beginning to pay more attention...
Discussion is always interesting even when discussing with people with different or even "stupid" points of view. You always learn something...
I started this topic trying on purpose not to be impeccably logic or super-clear since the ultra-clear-logic kind of posts normally don't move very much o further discussion: they are closed in themselves
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Dear king of avocado:
You are quite near the truth from my point of view. I was just talking in my original post about that all Gods "invented" by men somehow exist, at least in our minds.
On the other hand I am agnostic about "real" Gods, but logic would indicate they don't "really" exists outside our minds.
This logic is: since the non existence of things non perceivable by men is likely the general rule in the Universe, then someone claiming that some such thing like a God really exists should prove it and not the other way around.
By example: Someone tells me that there are tiny red persons living in holes under the grass of my backyard I would think at first that it is not true unless it is proven otherwise
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I believe that there is no existence without meaning...it doesn't I was just looking for a forum to chat in with people who had different ideas then mine had intelligence and might one day see some of what I believe in
Dear US12345:
This long discussion seems to me a little "byzantine", the last place to discuss about the real existence of God is an Objectivist forum.
Beside this neither God nor love exist outside human mind. Both are our invents.
The entire Universe is neutral to the existence of men on this little rock called Earth. Universe is not inimical against us, nor "love" us. There is no consciousness (like ours at least) outside man's mind, only the cold eternal? Universe that don't care if we live, die, love, do good or evil, make planes, satellites, Bibles, Giocondas or whatever.
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Is it John Stuart Mill that said that? That's surprising.
Occam's Razor, or the law of parsimony, makes a lot of sense in this case. By creating these superfluous "Gods", we take the focus off man, and what for? What is your hypothesis based upon?
My personal evolution regarding faith was a follows:
1-Childhood passed in an atheist and social-liberal family
2-When teenager I enrolled and even baptized in a Christian-Protestant church because I liked a girl from there (!)
3-After some years atheist again (still social-liberal) , the kind of atheist that believed that EVERYTHING that happens to me and in the World was my responsibility or the responsibility of "powerful people", including the "unjust" living conditions of everyone else in need
4-Ten years ago I slowly turned by myself against social-liberalism. Disoriented and without philosophical roots I studied for a while some old traditions and religions in search for some basic truth, specially very old ones like the ancient Summer and Akkadian Gods and oriental mysticism from ancient China and Japan
With the time I became by my own intellectual growth very close to several principles of Objectivism but still mixed with other contradictory philosophies
5-Three years ago (I am 44 now) I finally knew about Ayn Rand and found the definitive "home" for my reason and my soul in Objectivism.
But even being Objectivist today, I still don't want to return to the mistake I made during great part of my life, described at point 3.
It is a hard load to carry over your shoulders thinking that EVERYTHING that happens to you is your sole responsibility, and more important it is NOT true. There are a lot of things you can control about your life, but there are a lot of things you can't.
You can associate these last things with "chance" "fate" "gods" whatever you want (diseases, accidents, government decisions, other people's actions, been born in this country in this age, my 5 months child born complete and healthy, etc.)
I choose just for fun to invent some Gods and make them "responsible" for these things that are obviously never causeless, but which real causes are out of my reach in practice.
But why in the hell I like to invent Gods?
Because this little harmless game helps me to conceptualize things and symbols and remember my wrong past in order to be now more "balanced" between the things I can change and the things I can't
This is the case of the "God" Akatosh I described before which is obviously an poetic irony, just to play a little with ideas
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"Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life."--Aristotle
This was the quote on the top of the forum. I think this is what the OP is trying to say?
More or less yes...
But of course Aristotle has far much more authority and elegance than me
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OK I come again, this time I will finally reveal my own theory about Gods, "Hard" Objectivists please open your minds:
Hypothesis:
There is some kind of "mystic instinct" in all men: Some kind of natural tendency to associate the things they don't understand or value very much to some "kingdom of magic" (Gods, angels, demons, spirits, reincarnation, gnomes, divination, astrology, whatever)
Thesis:
It is better for an Objectivist to know more about these "kingdoms of magic". Knowledge is personal and the most real knowledge can be only acquired by personal experience or proof, otherwise you just repeat by faith what other people said or wrote
Thus we Objectivists should know more closely about Gods or even worship some one (!), as long as we keep always clear in our minds that they are our invention: The God of money, the God of Wisdom, the God of Technology, the God of Love...
You can and should create Gods and these kind of Gods, your own Gods, should be concepts that you particularly value, admire and want to keep in some special place within your soul (your self-made soul as Ayn Rand said)
These "Gods" serve as an important part of the process by which your conscious mind constructs over the years your sense of life. (For an explanation about what I mean with "sense of life" please read Ayn Rand's essay "Philosophy and sense of life" in the Romantic Manifesto)
This extra knowledge about mysticism (and any other subject by the way) is also very useful to your mind in order to expand its limits an be able to extrapolate more concepts, based on more "points" of reliable reference-information
Explanation:
How can an Objectivist exercise his "mystic muscle" without renouncing to his principles?
Simple: Using the imagination, but always controlled by reason
Imagination is a powerful tool which importance is perhaps a little diminished in our Objectivist context where it is usually associated with fantasy, unreality, no-objectivity, no-reason
But correctly used imagination is one of the most powerful tools of reason. It allows to induction, to think about the not-yet-created. Imagination is essential to inventors, to discovery, to the thinkers of the not yet thought.
Unfortunately imagination is also essential (along with fear, ignorance, laziness, etc) for all sort of mystics and believers in the non-real
and I suppose it is the reason for its "bad fame" around Objectivists. Imagination, like a wild horse, can easily get out of control, out of the control of reason.
Thus a fine mind uses a lot of imagination but always under control of reason. There it resides the huge difference
I particularly propose worshiping a new God: Akatosh (from an invented mythology of the video game Oblivion)
I propose Akatosh be the "Soul of the World", this means all the knowledge accumulated by the effort of every individual that ever existed. The knowledge we inherited and which sum allows us to live in the wonderful World we live now, with internet, motorcycles, microwave furnaces, skyscrapers, guns, poetry, roads, satellites, medicine, movies and the Macbook computer in which keyboard I am writing just now these words.
God exists
in Debates
Posted
You are right, my Agnostic Church of Reason is somehow ironic
But anyway useful to point some truths
I am planing also a post about "The problem of Jesus" and how his altruistic commandment "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" is ruining our western civilization