Tonix777
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Posts posted by Tonix777
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I wasn't criticizing poetry, imagination, or metaphors--I was criticizing your belief that your particular method would be more effective or good than simply saying what you think.
I have said to a Christian: "Man created God in his own image." They're smart enough to figure out that that means God doesn't really exist, and to say "You're wrong." ...Which the aforementioned Christian did.
Ok ok, you are right, is very difficult in fact convincing anybody about changing his fundamental beliefs whatever they are religious, politics, philosophy, etc. because they involve basic value judgments that are essential for man's mind to work. (It take years to change this)
But isn't it just beautiful try to say things in a different way? Just for the sake of exercise your creativity?
I have observed (and it would be subject for other forum's post) that we Objectivist tend to be too "crude" or direct in our way to say things, as if we had not very much imagination or poetry in our lives. We almost always avoid metaphors or "gray zones" in favor of clarity, because of our way to think and act.
It is essential having strong ideas and convictions but the real World outside is not always pure black and white and sometimes we should approach things and/or persons in a more "balanced" way (compromised if you want), not always straight with a front-strike.
I always try to know and understand other's points of view (understanding doesn't means approval) because knowledge is power, the kind of power that leads to the right choices
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Why do you think this is less threatening than "there is no God"? If you follow your statement to its logical conclusion, it would go: "We invented gods; thus gods are just figments of our imagination--they don't REALLY exist."
I doubt equivocation will help the matter, though. People (worth talking to in the first place) will know you're just being sneaky, and maybe trust you even less.
Um, except that they don't REALLY exist, so they can't have desires or emotions.
Dear Musanji: I am trying here to be a little different than average here, since just saying "God doesn't exist" is not novelty and doesn't deserve a post.
If I had proof of God's non existence certainly I would not post it in a forum, I would instead write the bestseller book of all times and getting immensely rich
A little of imagination or metaphors don't kill your reason nor make you less Objectivist in my opinion...
On the other hand some "poetry" in the texts or in the way you present your ideas don't hurt but instead make things more interesting for other people. Ayn Rand herself understood this from the very beginning and presented originally her ideas in literary form with a considerable addition of powerful poetry on them: I am just now re-reading the John Galt's speech and it is a beautiful prose-poetry literary piece itself.
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Anything and everything you can imagine has at least some reality to it. A dream is real, if you can think it, it is real. That, however, it not necessarily the question. More so, the question is how real is it? To answer, one must decide what exactly god is. I will spare you the details and state that god is power
Dear Sieur Bertrand, God is power and a lot things more. There are many types of believers out there, each one with his own version of God
My initial approach "Gods exist: we created them" is a proposition reversal to the current generalized version of the major monotheist religions that Gods created us.
This reversal proposition is meant as a more clever way to begin a discussion with believers. A simple truth that could be self-evident for us Objectivists, but not necessarily to other people.
Because just saying "God doesn't exist" to a helpless man that has put all his trust in some God that he or other people invented, means probably just closing the door to a further open discussion.
I call "open" to a discussion where people really heard other's arguments, not only trying to win the discussion
On the other hand it is very interesting that in the indispensable process of conceptualization, the man's mind tend always to compare, which is one of its major basic functions. And one way you can always compare anything is against its opposite. In fact the "law of contrast" says that nothing exists without its opposite: light vs darkness, figure vs background, life vs death, etc.
All this means that an important concept about anything is not only what the thing is but also what the thing is not including ourselves.
Following this line of reasoning, it seems that through all the mankind's history Gods had been the "no-man", everything we can't do, can't know, etc. thus when man someday reaches all knowledge and all power, man will be a God and Gods will cease to exist...
Gods should be grateful to men because they exist thanks to us
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Those that worshipped the "Sun god" did so because they viewed the power to create light, warmth and make things grow as being supernatural powers. Similarly those that worshipped the Earth goddess or Gaia did so because of the earths 'supernatural' ability to produce everything required for life. The natural ability of a woman to give birth led to numerous fertility goddess's that produced all man required. The list goes on and on. The fact that today we would not view light, heat, warmth and fertility (both natural and human) as divine powers does not change the fact that those ignorant peoples did.
I am not sure if "they" or better if everyone who believe or believed in these Gods saw these "powers" as supernatural, but it is quite probable that a majority did, specially the less smart or the ones with a more limited mind. It is clear anyway that in most cases the nature of the divine in any historic age is by definition that which is beyond the knowledge of this particular age. More complex concepts of God certainly were thought by more intelligent people that have been a minority in any age (including ours).
On the other hand I am reading now by second time "The Romantic Manifesto" and rediscovering how beautiful and powerful are Ms. Rand's essays compiled there about the psycho-epistemology of art, as one fundamental part of man's mental processes, "closing the circle" by generating real percepts that convey important concepts (mostly ethical) for the creator and later for the spectator.
I think that in a similar way worshiping images of Gods (statues , paints, symbols, etc.) served in the past as percepts that evoked important concepts inside the more smart people mentioned above, who probably don't really believed very much in the alleged supernatural powers of these Gods, and this process worked for them in a similar way as art does but in different fields more related with metaphysics and epistemology.
I will give an example from my own: From time to time I like to go to the cemetery and mentally talk with my dead father in front of his tomb about the current events of my life, even when I know he is not longer there or anywhere else because I don't believe in afterlife, spirits or anything related.
Then why I like to do this? Because the percept "tomb-of-my-father" helps me to remember him better in this peaceful context, and then "talk" with his memories inside my brain in a form of continuing (just for me) a relationship that is no longer possible.
We are beings that relation with the World through our senses and thus percepts help us to remember, elaborate, manage and synthesize concepts, which are the basic material to build our knowledge and our sense of life.
In this apparently simple act my mind is doing several important psycho-epistemological processes:
1-Bringing back to the focus of my conciseness the person of my father an with him the thousand of important (good an bad) symbols he represents in my life
2- From these symbols reassuring of keeping the good and eliminating the bad on ethical basis
3-Comparing all that with the current events of my life and with my own current value judgments
4-Relocating the concept "father" in other geographical and mental place
5-Re-acknowledging he is is gone and will never return, reassuring also my disbelief in afterlife even when I would strongly like the opposite
I know this last example is a little "too personal" but the personal are the things each one of us better know about...
I don't want to do psycho therapy here, but since I have never been a religious person it is the closest thing to the subject I can imagine
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I'll join David in asking for an example. As far as I am aware even the most primitive versions of "God" are supernatural beings.
I already gave up with my original post, but it could be interesting analyzing a central question for this discussion: What is God?
And I will not surely answer this question because this word "God" is one of the more polysemic (and controversial) words of any major language
On the other hand almost all of you are centered in the current concept of God hold by Christian or major monotheist current religions: Creator of the Earth and/or man, ruler of the Universe, omniscient, omnipotent, with power enough to change Nature and natural rules at his whim.
And of course it is logic that your are centered on it because of our current context: These major religions are Objectivism's intellectual enemies today, since they represent (as most religious through history) irrationality, laziness to think and act, fear against knowledge and self-asserted individuals, collectivism and even fanatic violence or plain bloody dictatorship and persecution of the best men.
This said and just if anyone would like to try going beyond I would like to point:
1-That this is not the only concept of God available through history, take for example:
The God Sun (ancient Egypt and dozens of other cultures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_deity )
This God was worshiped because of his natural power to bring light and heat and thus make possible the life on Earth, the harvest, etc.
He had no supernatural powers, nor he was creator of the Universe or omniscient
2-Also and more important the concept itself of the existence of some deity was fundamental for the development of the primitive man.
The primitive cave-man looked at the unknown World in front of him and perceived three major things:
a-Himself
b-The Earth under his feet and extending to the horizon containing mostly the "reachable"
c-The sky over the Earth and himself containing mostly the "unreachable"
Along this primitive man lived, the reachable Earth became a new fundamental concept (1) in his simple brain: Home, which provided food, shelter, etc. and was "controllable" and the unreachable of the sky became another fundamental concept: God, which was the "uncontrollable" more associated with the unknown powers of the Sun, the storm, the thunderbolt, the wind, etc. which at some point he as individual and then the whole tribe began to worship either to thank for the beneficial or ask for the maleficent not to happen
With the centuries this primitive concept evolved in many different ways, one of which are the current major monotheist religions, repressive, irrational, etc.
But the very origin of the concept of God is basically "everything what we don't know (and thus can't control) put in a box" i.e. put in a single concept easily managed by the mind of the common man. Human nature vs divine nature (not-human)
According to this "God" should be shrinking to the extent that human knowledge and man's mind expands, which of course doesn't actually happens because major religions will not give up the the power they accumulated and on the other hand populace are usually comfortable in being guided as a collective by priests that save them from the work of thinking by themselves, making their own choices and having their own values.
One thing have in common Gods from almost every age an culture: They were worshiped.
It is then being worshiped which makes something or someone a God, like the case of the ancient Chinese general Guan Yu who was a famous person that ended being worshiped as a deity.
Men worship because of three main reasons: fear, request, gratefulness-admiration.
In the last case you will probably find the less "supernatural" things, concepts or even men worshiped as Gods which in primitive societies specially prior recorded history was a form of keeping memories, important concepts or knowledge to be passed from generation to generation.
Well... as requested it was my little contribution to somewhat expand the concept of what God with other less known (probably less important) perspectives
(1) Concept for the psycho-epistemology: formation of a single more powerful abstraction from multiple percepts
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This still all keeps the literary vein of your original post. My question to you, is what good does this particular line of thinking get you? It is conceptually very muddy. Why confuse the idea of an omnipotent God (the Christian, Jewish, Muslim god) who the vast majority of the worlds population would characterize as the God, with an super alien race? Why redefine agnosticism and atheism in such a way as to tip you hat to the Christians, Jews, and Muslims and then have to explain to them that you don't really mean God the way they do. Why "pray" to a God of "good fortune" to remind yourself that you are not omnipotent, when the fact that you are not omnipotent will suffice to remind you that you are not omnipotent. It may be literarily romantic, but I think it is conceptually confusing and while you certainly might not claim that it causes any damage (which I would dispute), it certainly ADDS NO VALUE to take the extra trouble to do it.
What this really does is blur the distinction between the possible and arbitrary which is crucial within Objectivism. If agnosticism is now redefined as being belief in the arbitrary existence of alternate complex life in the universe, well then this is a silly definition. As the arbitrary has no basis and should be given no credence until such time as there is evidence for it, and only then does it become a possibility.
OK finally you have several strong good reasons here.
I already made my points before but I give up now taking in account these arguments.
You are right and for most people probably it doesn't make sense my analysis when there is "war" on the streets, the old war of reason against irrationality and blurring the limits between concepts probably doesn't help to the cause.
Anyway it was a very interesting discussion(at least for me). I learned a lot. Thanks to everyone.
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Even if we were confronted with an advanced being capable of manipulating mater or energy in ways incomprehensible to us we would not jump to the conclusion that the being was a god, even if, perhaps especially if that being claimed to be our creator.
I for one will not readily bow down to our alien overlords.
Again: Please note that "Creator" "Omniscient" "Omnipotent" "Overlord" are attributes of the Christian God pictured on the Bible. Other literally thousands of Gods along the human history and cultures have completely different characteristics...
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Just to focus the discussion, your contention is that a proper application of Objectivist philosophical principles leads to agnosticism and not to atheism; I will argue the contrary. You've suggested a line of reasoning that you'll follow in making that case, and I understand what you're claiming well enough to agree that this is a debatable thesis, as long as you state clearly what you think "agnosticism" and "atheism" refers to (this is important just to be sure that you don't have a peculiar definition of "atheism" in mind). So please, go for the gusto and make your case.
OK, good idea
Introduction:
First than nothing the definition given by EC: "atheism is a lack of belief or faiths"
is not correct according to my Oxford American Dictionary which says:
Atheism: The theory or belief that God does not exist
And the same dictionary also says:
Agnostic: A person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God
God: In certain other religions than Christianity, a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes
Lets now imagine that a "superhuman being" could be in relation to us something like we are in relation to ants. Ants cannot understand or perhaps even perceive us as beings since their senses and brains are so small and limited that we practically are "fate" for them in e.g. the case that we kill a dozen with our foot. We are "superants beings" for them "having power over nature and over ant's fortune".
And the extreme simplicity of their brains makes absolutely impossible to understand our life, our mind our goals, motives, science, etc.
My point:
If we define God only as the Christian or other monotheist Gods preached by several western religions an Objectivist has to be atheist
But if we take other expanded definitions of Gods like the one given above, an Objectivist has to be agnostic unless he has scientific proof that Gods don't exist
Because in this last case there is a huge conceptual difference between the two following sentences:
1-I don' believe in Gods (a personal choice that says nothing about the real existence of these Gods)
2-I affirm that Gods doesn't exist (an assertion that would require some proof of the Gods' non existence, specially if arguing with someone who believes in Gods)
PS: I am amazed with the intellectual level and commitment of this forum. Congratulations.
Even when I am newbie and this was my first post, I am proud and happy to be here.
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I disagree, and welcome to the board, and thanks for placing this in a less literary format.
Omnicience and Omnipotence are anti-identity. They are anti-causality. They cannot exist and there is no evidence anywhere in reality that they do exist. Therefore any religious concept of God, cannot exist. Atheism is the proper Objectivist position. Agnosticism is epistemological cowardice.
Thanks for the welcome
I never spoke about "Omnicience and Omnipotence" this is your idea of God (the Christian God probably). I just spoke about some superior beings that by definition can't be known in our current evolution's state. I am assuming here that the man's mind evolution will continue and in a couple million years more our mind will be as incomprehensible for us as ours would be for the Neanderthal cave-man. What will our mind be able to understand in the distant future? We don't know! Carl Sagan once said referring to the old question about Universe's origin: Why don't you stop trying to answer with God the question and just say "I don't know" (yet)
The Christian God is not the only God in history and is far from being a beautiful or creative story. Gods can be very different in shapes and abilities, take for example the Gods of the Mythology of the Ancient Greek Pantheon, isn't it a beautiful representation of man's virtues and evils, truth and lie, passion, struggle, life, death, fate, chance? Even when it is a fantasy?
Aristotle himself said something I totally agree with: "Happiness (Eudaimonia) thus understood is not a mood or temporary state, but a state achieved through a lifetime of virtuous action, accompanied by some measure of good fortune"
Well... Even when agnostic I sometimes "pray" in my own way to the Gods of "good fortune", this act (not any supernatural entity) contributes well to my own psycho-epistemology of reality helping me to remember that there are things that I definitely can't control (the frightening possibility of a serious decease of my 4 months baby, a car accident, an earthquake). It helps me to avoid excessive presumptuousness in front of fate.
I recommend here the Ayn Rand's Essay: "The Metaphysical versus the Man-made" from "Philosophy: Who Needs It"
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So you put omniscient as the standard of true knowledge? Faith is belief without any supporting reason or evidence whatsoever, and trusting the testimony of a 50-year science and not that of a 15-year Christian is not faith.
Besides, one is admitting that no knowledge is possible is faith is necessary.
I believe in reason and science is the best tool for it. Science is my "religion".
But I never lost perspective and I always am aware that science is perfectible, always evolving. So I am very careful when it comes to make absolute affirmations.
By example the 1913 Bohr's model for the atom was oversimplified and in some ways wrong and now obsolete. And anyone who in 1913 blindly believed in Bohr's model was wrong according with our current atom model which in turn will probably also be obsolete in the future.
(The definition of faith that I am using related to science is the one found in in the Oxford American Dictionary "Faith: A strongly held belief or theory")
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Then what do you want to debate, if not your claim about the beginnings of humanity?
Dear DavidOdden:
My original post was in a somewhat literary-provocative format, which I prefer because it triggers more open discussions. But I will put in the following points the topic in a more concrete manner, where the debate statements are under "For debate" and other background points are juts my support-observations which of course are open to discussion too
Background:
1-Atheists to believers spectrum:
a-Full believer: Honesty believes in miracles and in the God pictured in the Bible by example (or any other similar religion), he is convinced that people can fly, walk over water and create matter from nothing, or revive long dead bodies, contradicting all the known scientific and/or natural rules.
b-Half believer: Believe that there are some "divine" entities outside our current human-limited sphere of understanding, but don't believe in magic miracles or in priests from any particular religion. Probably considers the Bible as a metaphoric story
c-Agnostic: With a more scientific approach he is sure that the "magic" God pictured in the Bible by example (or any other similar religion) doesn't exist outside man's mind
But he is not sure if other Gods (superior "divine" entities) exist or not outside man's mind, because he doesn't care or because he has no scientific proof for either position
d-Atheist: Is absolutely convinced that no Gods exist at all outside man's mind, either the God pictured in the Bible by example (or any other similar religion) nor any superior "divine" entities of any kind.
He only believes in what he can "touch and see" or what current science can proof.
For debate:
I affirm that the man pictured in the option c-Agnostic is the more Objectivist of all, since the other possible candidate, the option d-Atheist is also a believer by faith in two things:
1-That outside man's mind don't exists any kind of superior "divine" entities which could be unreachable by our current sphere of understanding i.e. by our current level of mind's evolution.
He can't scientifically proof that.
2-He also believe (with concrete rational fundaments of course) in science, but forcefully he has to put also some degree of "faith" in some science's results, specially about complex scientific maters or everyday's new discoveries since he is not able to check every research, every premise, every theorem, etc. of the whole human knowledge, ever growing, ever changing.
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softwareNerd and DavidOdden:
The whole point of my post is giving a somewhat interesting fresh point of view over a so old discussion as God existence or not that goes so far as to the beginning of humanity... Just saying "God doesn't exists" is not worthy of a coffee's discussion, less of a post in a forum.
Of course most religious people believe (or say that believe) that God is a real entity that governs the Universe and/or our lives, but as I said to DragonMaci I don't want to discuss with this kind of people in their own terrain or under their own rules about what "existence" means in this case. I never knew about a case in which some atheist convinced a believer about the non existence of God in a single discussion. Do you?
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DragonMaci:
I would not take so lightly the "fantasy" of men, it is after all one of the most powerful driving forces that took humanity up to here. Fantasy reflects the exercise of one wonderful quality of man: imagination. As every tool of the mind it can be used for good (projecting things for the future for example) or for evil (denying reality for example).
On the other hand John Galt exists (the character, not the "real" person obviously) and his influence would probably not have been necessarily more powerful or important if he was a "flesh and bone" person...
If religious people can't distinguish between reality and fantasy is their problem and beside that I usually don't argue with worshipers of any religion, it is pointless because they can't prove the existence of whatever their God happens to be and I can't prove otherwise.
More important: Religious people believe in Gods because they desperately need to, their minds and/or souls are not strong enough to stand existence and death or to have their own values, so it is good to have some compassion for those people, I used to be one of them after all...
Finally I don't think being an Objectivist necessarily means having a mind so "practice" that is incapable of distinguishing the shades of gray even and specially in the minds of adversaries. Reality (including man of course) is complex, so our mind have to be complex enough to properly understand it.
An oversimplified discourse is useful for a forum where all people agree with you, but trying to "reach" other people with distinct mental structures is a different challenge.
You talk about how things work, but you are forgetting one of the most wonderful "things" on Earth: Man's mind. And the alleged existence of Gods explains a lot about how human mind works, but this would be surely a subject for another post.
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No, they don't.
Then they don't exist mathematics, poems and the 5th symphony of Beethoven
Perhaps you didn't take the time to read the whole post, I would have hoped a more juicy response...
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Gods exist: We invented them!
The Gods have been there since the obscure beginnings of the humanity, when we finally emerged from the darkness, slowly finishing being monkeys and beginning being men.
Try for a second to imagine yourself in the shoes of these primitive creatures with a brain complex enough for beginning to think, but too simple to understand reality as most of we can do now. What could be then the answers to so many questions suddenly appeared?: Gods!
And we should probably be grateful to religions because they were the primitive (and probably irreplaceable) substitutes for philosophy in the first stages of man's evolution.
On the other hand Ayn Rand explicitly agreed from a metaphysical point of view, with the classic concept attributed to ancient Chinese culture: "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".
Gods have by definition all that we lack and men invented Gods because we are not Gods, i.e. we are not omnipotent nor omniscient and most people needed (still need) someone to take care of which they can't.
I see (at least) three basic dangers in misunderstanding the concept of Gods who supposedly are the ones in charge of the things we really can't change:
1-Believing in Gods as entities with existence outside man's mind and thus believing they are some kind of external, "real" beings with power on their own.
2-Leaving Gods the job that we are supposed to do: The job to change what we can change: adapt our environment to us, develop our own means to survive, use and improve our mind, fight for what we desire.
3-Finally giving to some priests or witch-doctors the supposed ability to communicate with the Gods and then say what should or shouldn't be done.
Conclusions:
Gods have been always there, but they are not responsible for the misuse we make of them.
Never again I will say to a religious person that his or her God doesn't exist, it is a lie because all Gods exist, as literature, mathematical equations or music exist, since for good or worse we invented all of them.
God exists
in Debates
Posted
Musenji: we can agree on almost all that :-)
About the "black and white" subject, even in morality (ethics) Objectivism is a beacon in the horizon to follow, I try to live by it and I normally do (and enjoy) specially in the "big issues" of life, but in the small day-to-day choices I have to say that I am not 100% the perfect Objectivist (90% perhaps?), even when I am conscious that every choice left its small mark in the course of your life. Why this happens? Because of the environment
This leads to a point that I am since sometime thinking about:
Objectivist is a very "idealistic" philosophy that appeal to the best inside men, and is more or less easy to practice in a quite free country like USA, but what about people living in a reality where liberty and individual rights are not so much respected?
Isn't Objectivism a philosophy only for a "developed" society?
Isn't it possible to fully practice only in places where individual rights are sacred?
Perhaps in the past history of the mankind Objectivism was not successful because violence was the normal currency to obtain goods that where very scarce, and other people's lives were one of the most valuable commodities to buy and sell. Ignorance, fear and a poor existence was the price...
Context is the key word here.
I live in Argentina and even when slavery was abolished more than a century ago :-), it is anyway a hard country for an Objectivist to live in, there is a lot of collectivism and little respect for individual liberty inside people's mind and/or government's behavior, and soon they both can unexpectedly turn to coercion to impose their points of view (like the current violent conflict between the countryside people and the government for excessive taxes)
With the years I turned to practice martial arts to be able eventually to defend my own liberty, but it could be useless against an angry mob or a collectivistic government alleging they own your money or your effort or they know what are the best things for you, etc.
Well... It is not a self-justification, it is just to let you know what I mean when I speak about some degree of "grayness" in your everyday life. I know Ayn Rand hated grayness, but sometimes you have just to live with this, finding some compromise between reality and your own ideals (not to speak about much worse countries like Iran, etc. where it seems that it is almost forbidden to think by yourself)