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Ten Atheist "Commandments"

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Prometheus98876

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Actually, intellectualammo, you have it wrong. The premise of Dwayne's posts was to be tongue in check, to joke, and as Ayn Rand said in The Art of Fiction the purpose of a joke is to negate a negative, to negate an evil. So, I would say Dwayne joking about commadments is proper because in doing so he negates the concept of commandments.

Joke? This is his opening for this thread (read: premise of Dwayne's post):

I realize that the whole idea of "Commandments" is kind of inapproraite, but I found some Commandments that make a lot more sense then the ones in the Bible. So if we had to have any, these are the sort I would like. I thought you guys might find the following somewhat amusing/interesting.

Joke? How so?

Further, later on he mentions the tongue in cheek thing, but he's still able to speak some of their language at the same time, regardless of where that tongue is placed. Further, he did not negate a negative, he did not negate evil, *because of* the premise he used in his conditional statement, he did not "negate the concept of commandments" because he was speaking that kind of language (using it, including it), and regardless of what he thought about commandments as such, he *still* used the concept on a false premise, and it wasn't a joke initially, nor throughout. So I disagree with what you said, and all of what I just said is my opinion. Oh, and to back myself up further, "amusing" does not mean "joke" or "to joke" as per the dictionary, as per the thesaurus, so where do YOU get that his post was joking, or that it was a joke, when he said it was "amusing/interesting"?

Edited by intellectualammo
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Joke? This is his opening for this thread (read: premise of Dwayne's post):

Joke? How so?

Further, later on he mentions the tongue in cheek thing, but he's still able to speak some of their language at the same time, regardless of where that tongue is placed. Further, he did not negate a negative, he did not negate evil, *because of* the premise he used in his conditional statement, he did not "negate the concept of commandments" because he was speaking that kind of language (using it, including it), and regardless of what he thought about commandments as such, he *still* used the concept on a false premise, and it wasn't a joke initially, nor throughout. So I disagree with what you said, and all of what I just said is my opinion.

Ok, I will take your word over the word he gave me in Windows Live Messenger when he was first writing the post. *Turns off sarcasm.*

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OH no what have I done. I grant it was a silly speculation to have made in the first place. The point of the thread was at the time I found the Commandments interesting in the sense that at least some of them I agreed with and were interesting variations on some much worse ones. Perhaps they were not worth bringing up in the first place

I want to make this very clear for you ammo: I DO NOT SUPPORT THE IDEA OF COMMANDMENTS BEING ACTUALLY RAISED AS SOMETHING ONE EXPECTS ANYONE TO OBEY; NOT IN ANY SENSE, IN ANY CONTEXT, NOT EVER.

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OH no what have I done. I grant it was a silly speculation to have made in the first place. The point of the thread was at the time I found the Commandments interesting in the sense that at least some of them I agreed with and were interesting variations on some much worse ones. Perhaps they were not worth bringing up in the first place

And that further makes clear that the premise of your post wasn't "to joke"...as I stressed to DragonMaci.

I want to make this very clear for you ammo: I DO NOT SUPPORT THE IDEA OF COMMANDMENTS BEING ACTUALLY RAISED AS SOMETHING ONE EXPECTS ANYONE TO OBEY; NOT IN ANY SENSE, IN ANY CONTEXT, NOT EVER.

That's been clear to me, Dwayne. What I have been bringing up has had nothing to do with that. It had to do with the premise of your conditional statment.

Edited by intellectualammo
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Suggestions are OK I suppose, and at least some of the things in the lists in the link are reasonable suggestions.

And yes intellectualammo, I agree with you for the most part. It wasnt amusing, and it was a very inappropriate supposition, I think we can leave it at that if you do not mind.

I wasn't trying to joke really though.

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as Ayn Rand said in The Art of Fiction the purpose of a joke is to negate a negative, to negate an evil. So, I would say Dwayne joking about commadments is proper because in doing so he negates the concept of commandments.

To make a much needed clarification in what DragonMaci said:

I just searched her works, and that particular one you mention that it's in, and she does not say anything of the sort about a joke or joking.

In The Art of Fiction she mentions "humor" but the word "joke" does not even make an appearance in that book.

This is what she says:

Humor is a metaphysical negation. We regard as funny that which contradicts reality: the incongruous and the grotesque.
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"So if we had to have any" ...why even spectulate on something like that? ...when there should never be commandments as such?

What do you think of the following conditional? "If there were a Heaven and Hell, I'd definitely prefer to go to the latter, because the people I'd meet there are much more interesting."

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What do you think of the following conditional? "If there were a Heaven and Hell, I'd definitely prefer to go to the latter, because the people I'd meet there are much more interesting."

I can barely read that kind of language, let alone speak in it. What is your motive for asking it?

Again, this is just like his conditional. The premise of that conditional statement is just like Dwayne's before...it can never be satisfied when checked against the facts of reality, so as I said before - why speculate, why make such a conditional statement in the first place, and CF, why make a statement to me like that one again? Oh, but wait, all this talk about humor, and joking...that statement you made, doesn't have a context that it was made in...but if it was perhaps made by say a stand-up comedian, it may be different... Perhaps that was your motive... But you called it a conditional... and there's no context ... so there goes that... Ayn Rand says something is regarded as funny if it contradicts reality and so forth, but I don' know if that would fall under that or not, so maybe you were trying to make the above fit into that? Not sure. I'll just take it at face value...

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if it was perhaps made by say a stand-up comedian, it may be different...

Of course that's the context. What else could it be? A "true-believer" Christian couldn't say it, since it makes a mockery of Christianity. A rational person couldn't say it seriously, since the condition following the "if" is nonsense. What is left? A rational--and comically inclined--person having his audience imagine a fictional world--a game, if you like--where the game-master sends each participant into either "Heaven" or "Hell" based on how well they scored on the "good Christian" chart. And he uses this fictional game to make a point pertinent to real life: that it is natural for people to prefer the company of selfish, life-affirming people than pious and ascetic ones.

I found it self-explanatory that Dwayne wasn't being serious about the possibility of having to have some commandments. There is nothing in reality making it necessary for us to have commandments. So the "if" clearly introduces a fictional scenario. It could be a game where they split participants into two groups and ask the first group to follow Christian rules and the second one to follow these more rational rules, and see how well both groups do with some assignment. Or it could be a fairy tale for children where a sorcerer casts some spells making people act in specific ways. Or it could be a novel about a king commanding his subjects to act in these ways. And so on--the abstract statement "If we had to have any commandments" subsumes all these fictional scenarios, and what follows after the "then" identifies the common conclusion for all of them--the outcome of the game, the moral of the fairy tale, the message of the novel: that the more rational rules of action are conducive to men's survival while the Christian rules will only lead to death.

Edited by Capitalism Forever
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OK, I understand now as to why you asked.

Now with your question to me, and the subsequent conditions/contexts, there may be very good reasons to speculate in those conditions and contexts, oh hell yeah. I personally know the literary sense, or the fictional very well. But without those specific conditions/contexts, that weren't present in his, why even speculate on it at all?

Edited by intellectualammo
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But without those specific conditions/contexts, that weren't present in his, why even speculate on it at all?

Without those contexts, the statement would make no sense at all--which is why I tend to automatically presume a context like that when I see such a statement made by an Objectivist.

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Without those contexts, the statement would make no sense at all--which is why I tend to automatically presume a context like that when I see such a statement made by an Objectivist.

Whether or not he was/is an Objectivist, I tend not to automatically presume a context...which is the reason I automatically commented, questioned, and later asked him why. Why speculate? If it was for a novel, if it was for a fairy tale, a game, cool. To simply speculate on it, as such, as I said before, was unamusing/uninteresting and I dared say pointless then, seeing how that premise of the conditional should never be satisfied. Unless it was set in the conditions/contexts that you had given, which provided reasons/purpose to speculate on such conditionals, that there was a actual point in doing so, I would have to ask why and did and still do.

Edited by intellectualammo
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Whether or not he was/is an Objectivist, I tend not to automatically presume a context...

Everything that is said is said within a context, so when you interpret it, you have to presume a context--the question is only whether the context you presume matches the one the speaker intended.

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Everything that is said is said within a context, so when you interpret it, you have to presume a context--the question is only whether the context you presume matches the one the speaker intended.

Yes, when you are interpreting.

But would you agree that when you are questioning a context, you aren't presuming one in the process?

Edited by intellectualammo
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