bluey

I think you're the one looking for something that isn't there. Nothing in the nature of the object being observed necessitates its being identified correctly. If you think we or Rand would say that it does so, then you misunderstand the Objectivist position. In fact Rand is quite clear that knowledge is not automatic - that is, you have to do the work of observing and reasoning in order to have knowledge, and that you are responsible for making sure your knowledge is correct. It works like this: I observe an object - the first object of its type that I have ever seen - and it happens to be red. I come to the conclusion that all objects of that type are red. In this case the observation is completely correct, but my interpretation of that observation is incorrect - in fact I was never justified in thinking that all objects of that type would be red after seeing only one object. That is a logical mistake on my part, and is an example of fallibility, even though my observation of the object is correct, direct, and knowledge-imparting (I now legitimately know that at least some objects of that type are red). Even if all objects of that type were, in fact, red, it would still be a logical error on my part and I would still not "know" that all objects of that type are red. I would expect them to be - perhaps even correctly - but I would not know that they were. That is the difference between "opinion" and "justified true belief". You're right that the statement is true regardless of the source, but you're not correct that it is therefor knowledge. Knowledge means much more than a one-off correct prediction. It involves understanding - grasping the truth and being able to use it across contexts, on purpose, with an end in mind. The idiot in your example might babble the truth, but probably wouldn't be able to repeat the same sentence a day later. That's not knowledge. The expert, on the other hand, knows what he is talking about because he has arrived at his conclusions. He won't forget them, he will be consistent in them, any new information will not contradict his knowledge but will only flesh it out - give it a wider context. This is what Newton would have found if he'd hung around long enough to learn about relativity. To reiterate, knowledge is not the same as truth. Truth is identity, whether anyone has correctly identified it or not. Knowledge is justified true belief. If you read something true in the newspaper it is either true or not; but whether you know it is absolutely a matter of the content of your own mind. No, you're not that bad. You're wrong, but you're good practice I still think you're confusing "knowledge" with "truth". "Knowledge" is not "symbol-strings in books" and I have no idea what you mean by that. Words in books represent knowledge to the extent that they demonstrate someone's mental grasp of the facts of reality reached by observation and reasoning. Just reading a book doesn't give you knowledge. I bring up babies because you brought up innate knowledge. Do you think we have innate knowledge that we just don't ... what, know about until we hit a certain age/developmental level? But that it's somehow still there, not learned, just latent or something? Since infants are the only people who haven't had a chance to learn anything - and therefore any knowledge they demonstrate would be innate - I assumed that's what you must have been talking about. I don't see how you could posit innateness without reference to infants. In any case, I don't know why this "innate knowledge" would supply any more "logical necessity" than induction. If you mean that an observation of an object floating doesn't necessitate my identification of that object as something that can float, whereas if I innately think that an object can't float then I necessarily think the object can't float ... then I'm not sure what your point is. If my aim is to correctly identify things (i.e. "think"), then it is logically necessary that I identify the object as something that can float. Gaining knowledge is a volitional effort, it's not something that takes place automatically. You're still not describing "emotive knowledge", you're describing knowledge of emotions. I'd say that recognition of emotional signals is something we learn in infancy ... but I'm sure you won't agree. The ability to do so is already there, but the knowledge isn't. It's like a blind person trying to understand the concept of colour; he is able, cognitively, to understand, but still can't understand because he can't make the necessary observations. If you didn't cut off my quote mid-sentence, you'd see that "come directly from" refers to observation, not to the objects of observation. I put a label on something after I observe it, then the next time I observe something similar I go back to that last observation and put the same label on the new thing. There is nothing correct or incorrect about the labels themselves; what is correct or incorrect is my grouping of the two objects under the same label. We have all kinds of labels and hierarchies for "filing" the identities of what we observe. I have no idea why the process of cognitively filing things according to the observed identities of those things would make us infallible. Sometimes we're wrong, sometimes we lie, sometimes we don't take all the relevant information into account for whatever reason, and sometimes we don't have access to all the relevant information. That doesn't invalidate our observations of whatever information we do have. Yes - we generate our hypotheses based on "lower level cognition". We still don't make stuff up out of nowhere. Again, I don't understand how correct identifications are undermined by the fact that we can potentially make wrong ones. We have an interest in making the right identifications, so we do whenever possible. It's not because the identification of the object itself somehow communicates itself to our mind, whatever that would mean. It's because there's a certain threshold of certainty beyond which information is demonstrated to be reliable and useful to us (at which point we call the information "knowledge"), and in each particular case we take steps to reach that level of certainty. It seems, again, that you're the one who is looking for some sort of "guarantee". The fact is that you don't need any sort of "absolute" or "infallible" knowledge of an entity in order to have reasoned, reliable, useful knowledge of that entity. The fact that you can reliably and repeatably use knowledge, validates that knowledge. I don't know what else you're looking for or why you think we expect to have anything more than that.

Just pointing out that you're creating a huge gap of possibility in between "there is no reason why our identifications MUST be correct just because we observe reality correctly" and "all our identifications are just stabs in the dark that might just happen to be right once in a while". Wouldn't you agree that with each initial and subsequent observation of a certain thing, our identification of it would tend towards greater accuracy? This is not because we edit our pre-existing, non-observation-based identification to match what we find to actually exist in the world; it's because we build our concepts based on observation of existents and their qualities. There is no logical necessity to make the specific, correct identifications that follow from what we have observed. The difference between making correct identifications and random identifications is thought. Of course we can still be wrong, because reality is a totally integrated whole and it's not possible for us to have observed absolutely all of reality - which is what infallibility would require. However even if we could do that, we still wouldn't be infallible, because we could choose to ignore what we know or just outright lie or what have you. Just because we aren't always right doesn't mean that when we are, it's just a matter of luck. Re-reading your posts again I think what you're saying is not that we take random guesses that may or may not turn out to match reality, but that we build identifications of entities based on what we know about them and that on further observation those identifications could turn out to be incomplete or our initial observations could have been misleading. But I think you're making a bigger issue of that sort of uncertainty than is necessary. Sure, there are lots of things that we are only in the process of identifying (like the human genetic code), and other things that we've barely begun to observe (like matter on scales far larger or smaller than we're naturally able to observe) and other things that we haven't even had a chance to take a look at yet (like certain underwater life forms). But for most things, the things that comprise our ordinary, day-to-day experience of the world, we don't have that kind of uncertainty. We do all know by now that heavy things can't float under ordinary circumstances. That knowledge is valid and is logically necessitated by our x number of years' observation of heavy things. Sure, maybe there's something about gravity or mass that we missed and that would change our knowledge of it, in which case it's our knowledge that changes and not gravity or mass, but this doesn't somehow make induction invalid. Heavy things still wouldn't float under normal circumstances. Maybe we could find some circumstances under which they would float ... we were still right not to expect the kitchen table to start levitating. Anyway, that's my input, but imo you're going to have to go way back to the basics if you're going to make any sense out of the Objectivist positions on anything. If you don't see how induction is valid then no, you aren't going to be certain about anything. Nonetheless, we do currently know things and we didn't start out life with instinctive knowledge, so you've got a gap to fill.

Really? We're supposed to argue with someone who both does and doesn't know anything? You're already dismissing the premises of Objectivist epistemology out of hand, so I don't know what else anyone here could give you. Objectivist epistemology is predicated on inductive logic - knowledge is "a mental grasp of a fact(s) of reality, reached either by perceptual observation or by a process of reason based on perceptual observation". Think about it ... babies spend a lot of time just looking around at things before they are able to do anything. They observe for months before they're able to "generate and test", as you say. I don't know why you would think that a baby "innately" knows that something heavy won't float - they spend months observing heavy things not floating before they're able to do any testing, through which they observe still more instances of heavy things not floating. Babies think you disappear when they cover their eyes, for god's sake, and you can trick them into thinking you stole their nose without being too sly about it, and you think "most of our knowledge is instinctive" and that we have an "innate" grasp of "folk physics"? I also think you're conflating observation of displays of emotion by other people with "emotive knowledge". If I look at you and know how you're feeling, it's you doing the feeling and me doing the knowing, of facts I observed through observation and integrated with knowledge I gained from past experience. I may have an emotional reaction to your emotion, but I do not "know" your emotion through my own emotion. The logical link between the identities of existents in the world and the identifications we make of them, is that the identifications we make come directly from our direct observation of existents and the qualities that comprise their identities. We don't make stuff up and then look around to see if anything resembles the stuff we made up. The stuff is there, then we observe it, then we reason based on our observations. Without the stuff being there in the first place and our means of observing the qualities of that stuff, our consciousness would not have any content (consciousness is consciousness of something) ... kinda like a newborn baby who hasn't had a chance to observe anything yet.

The question is, how could some kind of "intelligence" that is composed of nothing but "empty space" exist in the first place, before matter or energy or life existed (according to you, a couple paragraphs down ... does that mean you're saying that god exists but isn't alive?)? Do you have a satisfactory explanation for that? Or any evidence that it is at all the case? Because even if we can't explain how or why existence exists, we do know unequivocally that it does exist, and that's basically what you are denying by arguing that the existence of every single known existent in the existing universe is contingent on the existence of some completely unknown and theoretical third party. Why, why, why?? Is there some reason why you need to know how life began or the specific chemical details of the origin of the universe? If those questions were answered next week, with papers and proof and all the explanations you're asking for, how would your life be any different? Why do you think you need to personally possess information that you can't possibly have plans to act upon, and why is it any comfort to you to explicitly make up some storybook explanation that you know isn't true, because you just made it up, in order to stop asking?? You know it's okay to ask or not ask these questions, right? You know that it's entirely possible and acceptable for you to take some concrete actions to help find the answers if you're interested, right? You know that regardless of what the answers are, they're out there to be found, right? So if you're so interested, go find them! If you're not interested and just want to stop thinking about it, then by all means go ahead and never think about it again! There's no imperative that says that every person who's ever had a spark of curiosity about the origins of the universe must continue to harp on the subject until they're able to make themselves "believe" a particular explanation. If you care, go find out! If you don't, go do something more fun! It's okay! No, not to be taken seriously as conjecture or art or dreamy imaginings. But you need to decide whether you're talking about science and asking for a scientific answer, or whether you're talking about imagination and asking for a more interesting story than "god did it". Because "god did it" has proven to be a compelling story, one you can tell to children without using big words or complicated concepts - kinda like saying the stork just dropped off your new baby brother. The only difference is that we do pretty much know how babies happen - but even before modern reproductive science, they still knew storks didn't have anything to do with it. If it's just the story you're interested in, you may not find what you're looking for. If it's fact you're interested in, then yes, observation and other sciencey stuff is what's going to get you there. Yeah, TV is pretty impressive. I turned it on today and saw this guy wearing tights who could fly! Seriously shook my belief in gravity. As for actual research into the paranormal, have a look at this here. Either no psychic in the world has any interest in making money from their "talent", or it's total bullshit. Again, no one has made this claim. You don't need science to exclude the possibility of a creator - at least not the possibility of any creator that would actually be a satisfactory answer to the questions you're asking. By which I mean, even if we found some sort of alien creator of this part of the universe, science could still go ahead and try to find an explanation for his existence - even if we found god, sooner or later we'd still be back to wondering about the big bang. Whatever the answer is to life, the universe, and everything, if it's going to be found then it's more likely to be by scientific means than by regular people just racking their brains without regard to the context of what life and the universe actually are. If you just want to settle at some answer and stop thinking, you're better off with "42" than with "god".

Sure, fine. That's exactly what it is. The thing is, now we have other, better, more reliable ways to explain the universe - and yet people keep wasting my time and our money with this bullshit (I'll assume you can think of some examples of this). You aren't going to earn my respect by trying to defend the bible's legitimacy, even if you think you're just taking some sort of moderate position. The facts that a) context needs to be added from outside the text in order to "understand" the statement and b ) that adding said context makes individual words mean something other than what they are legitimately defined to mean makes the context-adding arbitrary. You can't compare this to, say, words written by Rand as said by Toohey, because the context in any of those cases can be found directly, concretely and without any variety of interpretation through reading the surrounding text. That is non-arbitrary context. To equivocate the two absolutely undermines the importance of context. If there is a non-contradictory meaning to a passage, then only one can be correct. If there can be no possible consensus as to which meaning is the correct one and if two apparently legitimate meanings are contradictory, then that is certainly the same as having no meaning. If we can't possibly be certain of the meaning of a statement then we absolutely should discard it all together - what else could we possibly do with it? Fight wars over who's right? And why would you think that the academic study of history is to find the one correct "meaning" of past events, rather than simply to learn from the facts of past human experience and make sure the future is better? I have not once used the word "doubt" in any post I've made in this thread. Other than that last sentence. I, personally, as a matter of policy, don't doubt - I find out. Then why the hell are you arguing??? "You're wrong to think they're wrong. Of course I also think they're wrong, so don't get mad at me. I'm just saying ..." Pussy. Yes, it does. See Romans 1:26-28 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 - it's not only in the Old Testament, it's not just a carry-over from Judaism. Symbolically resurrected? Did they "symbolically" or "literally" preserve their bodies? Are you saying that fire is a symbol of a literal, room-temperature eternal destruction? Or just a symbol of a mild pre-death depression? Or that it's a symbol of nothing at all?? Look, you've already stated that you're half-assedly defending a position that isn't even yours, and I know that on a level where I'm interacting with you (rebelconservative) as an individual, I'm wasting my time. But seriously, I've heard this bullshit on a daily basis from people who actually give a damn for my entire life, and I've had it with nodding politely. You're wrong, you're spewing garbage, you're defending an ideology that is factually, provably totally frigging incorrect, that is ruining lives, wasting billions, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RNfL6IVWCE, impeding progress* and is just plain obnoxious. Sure, go ahead and "think" whatever muddled nonsense you want. I'll go ahead and think you're an idiot. * Just a few quick links - not the best, just the first to pop up in Google.

Sounds like no one has any idea what any of it says, then. This is exactly what the poster above meant by adding arbitrary context to defend your position ... which, by the way, becomes a non-position since apparently none of it means anything or says what it should say. Plus if there's no hell, then who gives a flying f*ck about any of it? Stop wasting your time! So in which cases do you take a "literal" view of what the Bible says? When it says or implies things like "God exists"? Or things like "don't lie or else"? Or things like "gays are evil"? Or that humanity is hopelessly flawed and we can't hope for happiness without first dying? When it says something you like, but not when it says something you don't like?

Kinda like this? The problem isn't that there was never any logical basis for religious conclusions. The problem is that we now have more information, a wider scope of experience and observation, better logic and actual values at stake, yet people are unwilling (to the point of violence) to give up these unwarranted conclusions.

It's because people who don't understand what they're talking about constantly equivocate. They go back and forth between "God is unobservable, unknowable, undefinable yet inherently meaningful to human existence" and "God is potentially knowable though currently unknown, potentially observable though as yet unobserved, and potentially definable if only we had a chance to find, observe and describe it". They conveniently leave out the fact that the second definition, even if it weren't 100% arbitrary conjecture, would still leave you with a being who is completely irrelevant to human life and utterly meaningless except as a historical artifact or perhaps - someday - after all those "potentials" come to pass - at most, a national security interest or something. God is either supernatural, powerful, and non-existent; or natural, currently speculative (imaginary), and of absolutely no moral significance even if some being fitting that [non-]description were discovered someday. So you end up with the majority of North Americans holding some conflated mixture of these two imaginary possibilities and the rest is ... modern political history.

Can you give an example of a non-human rendering of "God"? Or a human rendering of "God" that is non-arbitrary? Or any evidence that "human renderings of "God"" are indeed renderings (which implies that a being exists to be rendered) rather than random conjecture?

Proof isn't the same as certainty. I assume you're absolutely certain that there is no Santa Clause, but I doubt you have absolute proof that he doesn't exist - unless you have some way of seeing the entire North Pole all at once or something (and even then it would only constitute proof if you could enable anyone else to make that same observation). Atheists are absolutely certain that god doesn't exist, and the question of absolute proof is irrelevant to that certainty.

No. We cooperate through trade because we recognize the advantages this provides us as individuals (that is, I can see why cooperating with you through trade is an advantage to me, so I do it.) All the environmental conditions you listed are factors which you take into account when making your choice. They do not dictate your behaviours. The same goes for childhood experiences, etc - they are factors which affect your choices, but at any time you can choose to evaluate the choices you are making, why you are making them, and decide to make different choices in the future. If you choose to just let yourself develop according to whichever external pressures are strongest with no introspection or self-direction, then you, as an individual, are choosing to have little say in how you turn out. You could have chosen differently and could choose to reevaluate and act differently in the future. It might not be easy but you can still do it. Independence means recognizing that you have to do your own thinking, that no one else can do your thinking for you (see here). It doesn't mean physical isolation.

"Natural" means the entire set of things which exist. "Supernatural" means something outside of the set of things which exist. Something "supernatural" is by definition something which does not exist. It doesn't matter if it's "physical" or observable with current technology. You are literally saying that something may exist which doesn't exist but we just don't know about it yet. God either exists - is something specific - or does not. Supernatural does not mean merely "outside of the scale or range of human observation" as you suggest in the above quote. That is why we can confidently say that there is nothing supernatural - because nothing exists which doesn't exist. If you want to use "supernatural" to mean "something outside the scale or range of human observation", then you're going to run into a problem if you call this supposedly potential being "God". It's then definitely not the god that is indicated by the Bible, the Torah, the Qur'an, or any other religious imagining. It's basically an alien. Just another individual in a universe of x number of individuals plus you. If the god of the Bible turned out to be some jerk of an alien from another dimension, would you still imagine you have some obligation to obey him? If not, then who cares if he exists or not? Who cares if he "created" the human race at some point in the past? Would that knowledge really give you a reason to sign your life on earth over to it/him? If not then ... who cares if it exists or not? The reason why anyone cares whether god exists, is that there's a big threat riding over their heads if he does and they feel that the threat of eternal torture is worse than the certainty of a wasted existence in the present. Yet for all speculation of "life after death" (despite the fact that every part of you that is currently engaged in living will at that point still exist but by observably buried or destroyed, leaving it unclear in what sense you could possibly be "living") we have no - zero - evidence or reason to think that anything like that actually happens. We have lots of people imagining that it's possible. Surely you can see the difference between "imaginable" and "possible", never mind "probable". So that's why we can comfortably say that the concepts of "god", "life after death", etc. do not refer to actual existents. Because we know, concretely, that these concepts came not from observation of reality but from human imagination. We can show the historical development and evolution of these concepts, where they came from and how they have changed. We can show that none of the changes in the concepts of the supernatural came from observation of the supernatural, but only from increased knowledge of the natural world that slowly squeezed and constricted the concept of god from the idea of real, physical entities in literal control of natural events to today's vague "something, somewhere, that does something, that we just don't know the details of yet". I know that god doesn't exist because I can introspect about back when I believed that he did and can recognize that I simply chose to believe in something I created in my own imagination, not in something I could observe or learn about in any sense. That's the same method I used to stop being afraid of the dark when I was four. You're saying here that either we demonstrate that the universe has no beginning, or we have to give you a better explanation for how it began than "god did it". Well, of course we don't know anything about the origins of the universe because we weren't there and haven't yet been able to replicate the model in a laboratory. But we do know that it wasn't god. How? Because the universe is the location of the set of things which exist. The universe is the container of nature, in its entirety. That's what the concept refers to. If god exists, then it exists within the universe. If you want to say that some being that you're calling "god" created the part of the universe that is known to human observation, then that's a different claim. It's not supernatural, it's not religious, and it's not at all relevant to the topic of atheism vs. agnosticism. Atheists are agnostic about the existence of aliens, for the most part. It's a different claim altogether and if there are aliens, we wouldn't worship them. Then you're not talking about god, you're talking about aliens. Go do some science and bring something back that we can talk about. You shouldn't confuse the religious concept of god with simply another life form in the universe. Atheists are atheistic about a specifically omnipotent (omniscient, etc.) being. If you take away the infinite stuff, then you're not talking about god anymore, you're just taking a lazy approach to a question about reality. Go find a way to observe (or demonstrate the existence of) other dimensions. Go do some laboratory research on telekinesis, telepathy, etc. and let us know what you find. You're just going to end up frustrated if you expect the products of your wild imagination to be given serious consideration on this board.

The reason you're having trouble arguing, is because these aren't arguments at all - they're the denial of the possibility of argument. Basically they're saying "you could bring me all the proof there is, but all I will ever see is the possibility that you could be wrong, and I will choose to believe whatever I want to believe". At that point in the conversation they are talking about one thing (the supposed impossibility of certainty) and you are talking about another subject altogether (the objective falsity of religious claims). If you want to make any headway with someone who makes this argument, you'll have to begin waaaaaay back at the basics.

I saw this program too. They hardly mentioned the government at all in any context. There was also a point where the host said something like "The borrowers say they have a little bit of the blame, the brokers and underwriters each say they have a little bit of the blame, the lenders accept a little bit of the blame. Well, that's not good enough, we want someone to blame!" The object of the investigation seemed to be to find a new law to make or someone to put in jail, because if you can point at who is to blame for your problems then you don't have to wonder if you have any responsibility for it yourself. The other interesting aspect that they seemed to ignore was that despite all the pity we are supposed to have for the "victims", i.e. the homeowners, who fell victim to the greedy bankers because they were too "trusting" and are now left without homes, is the fact that without all the sketchy activity they still wouldn't be homeowners, because they couldn't afford the homes in the first place. Where are they going to live now? - well, I don't know, where were they living before? But of course it's only the bankers that are greedy, not the individuals who evaded reality because they wanted homes they couldn't afford. That's not greed, it's some kind of endearing innocence. Right??

I hear this argument a lot. The question is, who has a right to take it from him? You have a right to your own production not because you need every material item you produce, but because you need the mind that produced it and also because you are the only one who can decide what you, personally, "need" - no one else has a right to decide that for you. Humans "need" extraordinarily little to simply survive, is anything above that up for grabs? By whose right?

I am loving I Know You Know by Esperanza Spalding right now. Here's a video: I love the melody, it's so jazzy and cheerful. Just like love!

I haven't listened to any of these courses yet and if I do I will probably start with either "Understanding Objectivism" or "Objectivism by Induction". I'd rather spend $300 on understanding the principles for myself than on learning to communicate them. I'm reading the Art of Nonfiction right now though, which covers some of the same topics, and I agree with Grames that book formats are far more efficient for studying.

I voted for single-sex bathrooms. Women's bathrooms do tend to be cleaner and sometimes nicer, and it's just an added element of privacy that is nice to have. It wouldn't be a big deal if separate facilities weren't provided, though, and I totally agree that it is much more important to have a coat/purse hook on the back of the door!

Ahh, well I haven't read The Jungle so I can't comment on that. I thought it was a novel, though? I think we can be pretty sure that most people before the creation of the FDA weren't dropping dead from rat poison in their food. Here are some reasons: - no evidence of entire families dying around the dinner table (as they would if their food sources were poisoned) - no sudden drop in cancer or other fatal diseases after 1906 - no subsequent discovery that the symptoms of rat poison are confusingly similar to the symptoms of hard work - no evidence of a sudden increase in diet-related deaths after the industrialization of food and before the creation of the FDA I know you were just throwing that out there as an example but it's complete and unfounded speculation and, even if it weren't obviously untrue, it wouldn't be evidence that food was more dangerous before the FDA. Your imaginary opponents keep arguing that business owners are only out for themselves and will do whatever they can to make a buck, but who are they going to make money from if all their customers keep dying? What motive would a businessman have to provide a lower quality product than its customers could afford? In fact if he did that he would soon lose out to a competitor. If his customers can't afford a better product then how could he afford to provide it to them?

You're loosing me with the Slaughterhouse-Five references. Is there a different Slaughterhouse-Five that has something to do with food? Why would he need to prove that food wasn't generally dangerous before the FDA? People ate a lot of it and most of them died from other stuff. Do you have some evidence that a lot of people died from tainted food sources (which is different from food of inferior quality, which is clearly an issue of affluence rather than regulation)? And that those deaths would have been prevented by a regulatory agency, rather than through the advance of technology?

I've been reading The Romantic Manifesto where Rand states that art is "a selective recreation of reality according to the artist's metaphysical value judgments". She says that one defining characteristic of art is that it have no utilitarian value but simply be an end in itself. So if your website is there to provide a platform for publishing your blog articles, for example, then no, according to Objectivism this wouldn't be art. Hopefully that helps as a short answer. I'm still reading the book and I don't think I completely understand the distinction yet. I guess basically according to Rand maybe 2% of the stuff that's presented to us as art today actually qualifies as "real" art. I'm starting to think that maybe I've never actually seen any art, just a bunch of crap that is supposed to be "artistic", and that's why I can't tell the difference

Well, which is it? Are we all doomed because no modern human can gain the skills necessary for survival that everyone everywhere has managed to develop up until the last hundred years? Or are you specifically doomed because you either can't or won't acquire the skills to survive if your predictions come true (which is a lot less likely than you're making it out to be)? If it's the first then frankly I don't believe you, I think people (or at least I) would gain whatever skills they had to. And clearly they could since people just like them have met the same challenges (living in a pre-industrialized state) for thousands of years. And if it's the second then you need to stop panicking and figure out what exactly the issues are and what you can do about them. And if you just refuse to 'cause the big bad universe is picking on you and it isn't fair, then (at least on this board) you're going to be accused of being a troll and not really taken seriously.

Evangelical Christians (and as far as I know, most other Protestant Christians) don't use scripted prayers because they believe in prayer as a conversation with God, not as some sort of chant or ritual. Instead they make up original run-on sentences and try to sound as much like whining children as possible. I guess my point is that if you're aiming at something an American Christian audience would recognize, you might want to go for a hymn rather than a prayer (check into the lyrics for "Onward Christian Soldiers" or "Nothing but the Blood", for examples that might fit your storyline) Catholics and others do use formal prayers though so you could go with that as well depending on the effect you're going for.

Do you think the results would be more positive if they could word that question without saying "believe in"? Belief doesn't apply to a concept you accept on the basis of scientific evidence and I know my first reaction to the words "do you believe ..." is always negative. In fact when you ask the question in the first place you're really asking about how the person being questioned comes to conclusions - on faith or by reason/evidence? - so it's a biased way of phrasing the question. If you say yes that's the "right" answer, but then you've also sanctioned the assumption that everyone necessarily goes around "believing" things. I don't think I would respond to a survey asking that.

Have you read any Rand? The founding of the US itself is viewed as a pretty majorly positive historical event. Any time anyone uses their brain to decide on a course of self-interested action that doesn't violate anyone else's rights, that's a positive event. That's a lot of positive events. Any example of industry, productivity, effort, or thought that an individual undertakes in order to reach a goal in his/her own rational self-interest is a positive event. The founding of the US ... any example of entrepreneurial effort ... any example of anyone reaching goals and enjoying life, those are all positive events. Marxism, anti-trust laws and other instances of government interference are negative because they interfere with human life, because a free human life is the ultimate positive. Sorry if that's not specific enough, but I'm not sure what else you're looking for. Probably someone else can point to specific events in the history of the US that Rand cited as examples of good things. But you have to realize that her entire philosophy is based on the idea that life is good and that anything that systematically inhibits an individual's freedom of life is therefore negative. [edit for double post]