RationalRationale

One of the unfortunate side effects of being an evolved organism is that we fall short of being perfectly rational people. Different parts of our brain can conflict with each-other in a battle of wills. Sounds to me like you have several rational reasons for choosing this woman as your partner in life, but your emotions won't fall in line. This is not a rare problem... in fact I think it is a nearly universal problem. The hormones that trigger the state of mind we call "Love" don't last forever. We, like many animals, are not genetically engineered for monogamy. That is not to say that monogamy is bad, or polyamory is better. I would prefer to save that for another discussion since it is not relevant to your situation. I personally have experienced a similar, though opposite, internal conflict of interest. At one time in my life, I very much loved a woman who was a very bad choice indeed. She treated me poorly, cheated on me, and still I found myself emotionally attached. This was all very long ago, and those emotions have passed. In the end I made a rational decision to leave her even though it hurt to do so. I wish I could offer you an easy fix, but I don't believe that hormone driven love lasts forever. You now have to decide which half of your brain you will obey. Do you want a marriage, children, and all that? If you're looking for that kind of long term commitment then you'll do well to rationally choose a partner that will support you in those goals among others. If your looking for that jolt of hormone, you will probably have to look elsewhere, or at least be very patient and hope for a second dose. Can it be enough for you to spend the rest of your life with your best friend? I wish I had that opportunity. One thing to consider... if you do move on... don't expect that the next love will last forever. Lifelong commitment is an endurance game, no matter who you're with, you will eventually wake up to the reality that they are not without flaws. I think it's better to make the rational choice, but it is damn hard to shut up those pesky emotions! As for cheating, well I hope you are not so irrational as to consider it an option. You can stay, or leave, and still hold your head high... but if you think that you can fake reality by having your girlfriend and your sex on the side too, you are truly lost. It's not the infidelity that bothers me, it's the dishonesty. DISCLAIMER: I am not a psychologist, therapist, or love guru. Please take my advice with a spoonful of salt. -RR

I got an email from someone claiming to be the person who made that post, I'm fairly confident that it is the right person. I would like to keep a dialogue going with her, but I'm trying not to be too pushy, it seems there has been a digital torrent of messages coming to her from both sides ever since she made that post. I'll post updates here if anyone expresses interest, however I won't be giving out her email address so please respect her privacy and don't ask. -RR

Well it seems I should have spent a little more time checking my premises, I have always imagined the majority of the worlds gold supply sitting on shelves collecting gold dust in vaults like Fort Knox. It seems I made quite an error, one which seems to undermine my entire analysis of gold as a currency. This may raise a more valid issue than my original query. If gold is too finite a resource, it could never serve alone as a currency for a steadily increasing population. As more people enter society, the money supply would effectively deflate. I think Jake had it right when he said that a free market would choose it's own currency, or perhaps a combination of different currencies. It also occurs to me that my "gold on a desert island" scenario is a little unfair to gold, I certainly wouldn't be any less hungry with a treasure chest full of copper. There are other currencies that we trade today, if you consider corporate stock a form of currency. I buy stock in a company that I expect to retain (and hopefully increase) it's value. The share price is an exchange rate between US Dollars and the corporate stock. I suppose that no form of currency such as gold, or paper bills, or stock, would do anyone much good in my doomsday desert island scenario. So perhaps what gives currency a value is not much more than our universal agreement to honor it's value in accordance with civil law. From there it's just a question of what serves as a more reliable form of currency, and even if it's not gold... gold seems a whole lot better than an unlimited supply of green paper, or a bouncing balance sheet on a computer. That being said, how do you reconcile a gold (or other material) standard with an electronic economy? After all, if I sell a product on ebay, and receive electronic payment... no gold has changed hands. Wouldn't the gold supply inevitably fall out of step with the flow of electronic money. If I make a 10$ profit on a sale, who is going to put aside 10$ worth of gold for me when the entire transaction was nothing more than bytes in a database? -RR

In Atlas Shrugged, the Midas mint is stocked with Gold, and Gold coins are the currency in Galt's Gulch. My question is this, why should gold be considered the optimal standard for currency, I am not proposing that our current Fed backed system of paper money is better. Instead I am asking "Why gold" as opposed to silver, or wheat, or steel, or coal, or oil. Gold is a curiosity to me because it is valued so highly, and while I understand that it is a rare and precious metal. I wonder how much gold it would take to feed a starving man on a desert island. Gold has some productive uses, as a conductor in electrical systems for example. But aren't their other materials that are far more valuable in terms on their usefulness to me. Of course it is impractical to envision walking around with a wallet full of wheat or crude oil, but so are bars of gold. When I envision a gold standard economy, I don't imagine that all coins and bank notes will be made of gold, but that there will be a store of gold of equal value in the vaults of the currency issuing bank. So I am wondering why gold is the best material for this purpose, If I cash in my productive efforts and receive in return a wheel barrow full of gold, my only hope of putting that gold to use is to sell it back to someone else. Since gold is rarely used in production, I would be left with only Jewelers and a few other industries to sell to (excluding the banks themselves). An illustration. If I dig a mine and take from it a large sum of copper or iron, I can easily find uses for these metals. I can also find a large number of businessmen who wish to buy my copper to make wire, or iron to make tools. But if instead I mine for gold, the general consensus is that I have procured something even more valuable, yet how many uses are their for gold? What if instead of a gold standard, we had an arrowhead standard. Arrowheads from the native american era are rare, yet like gold, they have few uses other than the aesthetic. Can anybody help me understand from where the value of gold comes? -RR

The pontiff's irrationality is not his rejection of wealth, but his belief in a heavenly life after death. If everything the Bible/Koran/Torah claims is true, then there really is nothing moral about accruing wealth. The only possible use for wealth would be to give it away in bouts of altruism, in the hope that God is watching and will secure you a place in the glorious afterlife. It seems to me that the old catholic practice of selling "indulgences", a monetary purchase securing Gods forgiveness of earthly sins, would be quite rational if you truly believe in Heaven and Hell. Anyone should want to beg/bribe/buy their way out of eternal fire. 100 years of comfortable wealth is pointless in comparison to an eternity of suffering. A true believer should hope to die young, before having a chance to taint his/her soul with earthly sins. In practice, most religious believers don't strictly adhere to these goals, they go on leading relatively normal lives despite the futility of doing so. As an atheist, I see my 100 years as my one chance to enjoy this fragile, marvelous state we call life. Therefore I pursue wealth as one way of attaining comfort and pleasure for the time I have left. I fully intend to spend my wealth, and my time, with the knowledge that my rational self interest is the only measure of value. If I die and find that I face the judgement of some God, be it Yahweh, Zeus, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I can stand proud and state that I lived by the highest moral code any human mind could conceive. -RR

These scenarios sound very similar to the "Trolly Problem" credited to British philosopher Philippa Foot and used as a thought experiment in ethics. It is explained in detail on Wikipedia and was used by Richard Dawkins (Athiest, Author) in the book "The God Delusion". The Trolly Problem Consider these scenarios and try to explain your judgement as to which are morally permissible. 1. A trolley is running out of control down a track. In its path are 5 people who have been tied to the track. Fortunately, you can flip a switch, which will lead the trolley down a different track to safety. Unfortunately, there is a single person tied to that track. Should you flip the switch? 2. As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by dropping a heavy weight in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you - your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed? 3. As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. As in the first case, you can divert it onto a separate track. On this track is a single person. However, beyond that person, this track loops back onto the main line towards the five, and if it weren't for the presence of that person, who will stop the trolley, flipping the switch would not save the five. Should you flip the switch? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem In studies, researchers have found that the majority of people asked came to the same conclusions as to which scenarios present an ethically permissible action. However many people have difficulty articulating the essential difference between them. The organ transplant scenario you proposed is also mirrored in the Wikipedia article referenced above. It makes for interesting reading. -RR

I will propose three scenarios, and ask which of these is just cause for the use of force. 1. A nation, with the economic and military power necessary to attack mine, is intent on our destruction. This nation is planning an attack in the foreseeable future and we are aware of it. Should we intervene? 2. A nation, with the economic and military power necessary to attack mine, is dominated by an irrational regime, and violates the rights of it's citizens. This nation has made public it's desire to see our destruction, but we have no evidence that they intend to use their military assets to attack us in the foreseeable future. Should we intervene? 3. A nation, with negligible military capabilities, openly intends our destruction. This nation lacks the military capability to make good on its threat in the foreseeable future. Should we intervene? Instinctively, I think only scenario 1 is justified, but I am open to any persuasive arguments. -RR

Since he is still unwilling to name his "censor", I'm thinking that their isn't one. This is what I was trying to find out, and now I know with minimal doubt. Thanks Shylock. -RR

Thank you for your advice, I was aware that this thread was inactive. My post is a carbon copy of an email I sent directly to Shylock, since he specifically invited email contact in his final post. I also realize that my arguments were not completely original, I attempted to restate them all in one place, while eliminating the the confusion caused by the different meanings of the word faith. This confusion led to many posters telling Shylock to "read a dictionary", even though the issue here was not his reading skills, but his logic skills. I expect that we will most likely never hear from Shylock again, but it seemed worth the effort. I have been looking forward to flexing my mind muscles on this forum, if anyone finds fault with my arguments, besides there tardiness, I would appreciate being shown the error of my thinking. Personally I think my arguments were clear and objective. I look forward to getting involved in future debates, I'll have to keep an eye out so I don't miss the boat again. -RR

I have read through this thread, and a lot of the argument has been over the definition of the word Faith. So before I present an argument I want to clarify the confusion. It is easy to get into long debates over the meanings of words, because words often have many meanings. These meanings can depend on the context in which the word is spoken, or the locality of the speaker. Often there is a blurred line between possible meanings. See the quote below, this are the definitions that the original poster Shylock refers to. This dictionary lists 7 more definitions of the word Faith, and lists the Random House dictionary as its source. It is safe to say that these are acceptable definitions of the word faith. However, Shylock seems to use definitions 1 and 2 interchangeably. I propose that these definitions are mutually exclusive, and therefore we are not really arguing about the word Faith, but about either or both of these concepts. So I will no longer use the word faith by itself. Here are my terms for the purpose of this argument. Faith1 = confidence or trust in a person or thing Faith2 = belief that is not based on proof: Now I can speak about the concepts, avoiding the confusion over definitions. First I think that Faith2 is certainly not axiomatic. However Skylock seems to suggest this with his examples of "faith" in learning to walk. His argument relies on a concept of proof that is so strict as to be impossible to fulfill. You can argue that there is no proof the sun will rise tomorrow, but only if you ignore that it has succeeded in rising to millions of previous days. It is true that there is no absolute proof that the sun will rise tomorrow, there is a miniscule probability that a major solar catastrophy, such as the expenditure of the suns fuel, or it's expansion into a super-nova, or it's collision with a large extra-solar object such as a theoretical dark matter planet, could ensure that the sun does not "rise". However we are not ignorant of these probabilities, we can enumerate them, estimate them, and calculate a probability of disaster so low that by any scientific standard we conclude that the sun will rise tomorrow (with a .00000000000000000000000000000001 (estimated) percent margin of error). This is not Faith2. Faith1 does not specify the source of "confidence or trust", therefore Faith1 must rely on one of two other concepts. 1. Faith2 (confidence or trust in person or thing, that is not based on proof) 2. Reason (confidence or trust in a person or thing, that IS based on proof being a preponderance of rational argument) Option 1 refers back to the above argument against Faith2, while option 2, be it or be it not axiomatic, is certainly not what Shylock is referring to when he uses the word Faith. I predict that a nationwide gallup poll would also show that the Reason concept of Faith1 is NOT the generally accepted definition of faith. So my conclusion, Faith is not a necessary prerequisite of life, and therefore not axiomatic. Finally Shylock, I hope that no admin on that site has discouraged you from engaging in a debate on the "Debate" forum. I have not found your arguments to be malicious, just wrong. I encourage you to continue engaging people in debate whenever you can, because not only might you change their minds, but they just might change yours. Would you care to name the admin who chastised you and post his communication? -RR