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Objectivist's View on Religion

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This is what makes me think this way: When we die, something must happen. We don't see anything happening though.

I'd love to go to a paradise when I die, maybe see once again people close to me who have already died. But my mind can't believe something I have no evidence of. Hope can be a strong emotion, but the overwhelming emotion that drives people to believe in an afterlife is fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of death, a fear of eternal damnation can take a rational person and scare him into a cowering mystic. I'd ask yourself why you are so intent on not making a logical decision on these issues if it is not out of fear.

Not seeing it isn't proving it's not happening.

Once again, you cannot prove a negative. The burden is to prove a positive. In this case that is impossible because there is no evidence of life after death, or God to get back to the original topic.

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Why is the non-Objectivist continually answering questions on "Objectivism's view of ...." Other than a really poor and muddled explanation for a religionist, how does this answer the agnostic? Sentence 2 and 4 are directly contradictory. You're really done a hackjob explaining this one. Sentence 4 is the agnostic's position almost word for word. You've accepted it.

What?

4:01 into this video, Ayn Rand unequivocally shows how you're wrong.

My point was exactly what she said: That you cannot ever be asked to prove a negative, and that religion is immoral because it is mystical. But if there was 100% solid evidence that a god existed, that wouldn't be mystical anymore, would it?

Quit while you're ahead. This is the easiest of all battles for me to win even without having to stoop to your level of undeserved pretension, pompousness, and name-calling.

Edited by Andrew Grathwohl
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What?

4:01 into this video, Ayn Rand unequivocally shows how you're wrong.

My point was exactly what she said: That you cannot ever be asked to prove a negative, and that religion is immoral because it is mystical. But if there was 100% solid evidence that a god existed, that wouldn't be mystical anymore, would it?

Quit while you're ahead. This is the easiest of all battles for me to win even without having to stoop to your level of undeserved pretension, pompousness, and name-calling.

Rich..

Take he video I pointed you to. With the first point on it that you never refuted from the other thread, and use it against me.

First of all, his response is valid, and she only alludes to the proper, complete philosophical defense of atheism.

Rand: I would say no that there isn't because I've been given no evidence.

Donahue: Well, the fact that I've been given no evidence means that you've not been in the right place at the right time. (applause) I mean it may mean that.

[that's a valid response, if you think God is provable. Basically up until now she's given an argument that would work for a religionist. Donahue counters with the agnostic's response. She then alludes to the more fundamental philosophical reason.]

Rand: It could mean that about somebody else, but not about me. [laughter] Because I'm interested in this.

She's not implying that she has been everywhere at all times (i.e. that she is omniscient) although the crowd takes it as a mark of conceit. She is most definitely alluding to the proper philosophical argument to be found in objectivist literature, which is that God is a non-sequitur. Contextually she cannot get into axioms and that God is anti-identity because her audience is not philosophically trained and she doesn't have 10 minutes to explain the concepts fully. The questioner here started essentially at Donahue's response and you countered by returning to the previous argument. She chose the argument because it works against someone who asserts God. You chose it out of context to someone who had already shown he not a religionist, but an agnostic.

Now, why don't you go back to that other thread where I gave you this link and refute Rand's first point, starting at 0:00.

I wonder who the audience thinks is winning? The victory I think is in your own mind. I realize you think I'm belittling you. That of course requires that you are actually be as knowledgeable as you think you are. Since you've proven yourself in so many threads to not know what you're talking about, this is simply a form of justice, knocking you down a peg to where you actually belong. Shoot, if I wanted to belittle you, I'd pick something arbitrary and unrelated like your University choice to poke fun at.

Btw, I'm not suggesting that it doesn't appear as if Rand is making this argument. But there is a whole body of objectivist literature that would counter this point. I'm not saying she's wrong. I'm saying one argument suffices to someone who asserts God, another suffices to the one who asserts the possibility of God. You chose the wrong one (or technically you chose two and blend them up into mush) to answer the agnostic, as I stated before.

Edited by KendallJ
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So, Ayn Rand says we are not omniscient, which would mean there is plenty we don't know. If we are accepting that we don't know what happens after death, doesn't that mean we are agnostic?

So what your saying is, there are things we don't know through our senses even if we have no proof or indication that we don't know them?

To claim something does happen after death, we also need to claim that we are not only a physical body since that physical body dies and decomposes.

"How do we know, we don't have a soul?" is then what the question boils down to, which creates more issues since where do these souls exist?

How many of them are there, how do they communication and so on?

You could equally pluck an infinite number of ideas that would be undetectable to our senses either directly or through reasoning from what is effected but where does this lead us?

It doesn't lead us to knowledge considering such ideas but to doubt and to no knowledge at all.

Considering something which we have no means of ever knowing by any means is a pointless activity.

The onus of proof to such things is the one who claims them, but if the one who claims them says, "I have no evidence" then my reply is "I have no reason to believe, or even consider such things".

We are human beings with human faculties, human sense and human reason and therefore we have human knowledge.

If something has no evidence of existing to us, it may as well not exist. There is no difference at all.

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So what your saying is, there are things we don't know through our senses even if we have no proof or indication that we don't know them?

To claim something does happen after death, we also need to claim that we are not only a physical body since that physical body dies and decomposes.

"How do we know, we don't have a soul?" is then what the question boils down to, which creates more issues since where do these souls exist?

How many of them are there, how do they communication and so on?

You could equally pluck an infinite number of ideas that would be undetectable to our senses either directly or through reasoning from what is effected but where does this lead us?

It doesn't lead us to knowledge considering such ideas but to doubt and to no knowledge at all.

Considering something which we have no means of ever knowing by any means is a pointless activity.

The onus of proof to such things is the one who claims them, but if the one who claims them says, "I have no evidence" then my reply is "I have no reason to believe, or even consider such things".

We are human beings with human faculties, human sense and human reason and therefore we have human knowledge.

If something has no evidence of existing to us, it may as well not exist. There is no difference at all.

I'm not saying I believe in any of it. I'm just saying it's possible.

If there is no difference at all, wouldn't it be safe to say that agnosticism is compatible with objectivism? Both are non-religous and let us live life as we see it, not as we would prefer to see it.

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I'm not saying I believe in any of it. I'm just saying it's possible.

If there is no difference at all, wouldn't it be safe to say that agnosticism is compatible with objectivism? Both are non-religous and let us live life as we see it, not as we would prefer to see it.

After some thought this is an interesting question.

It is 'possible' since it has no effect to what we perceive, but that possibility gives no knowledge to work with and shouldn't be considered in any decision e.i. misguidedly using it as evidence to some conclusion.

An example for this could be radio waves some two hundred years ago, someone could have stated it is possible with no evidence (before James Clerk Maxwell's prediction).

It would be something we had no evidence or reason to think since our senses cannot detect them and the maths had not been done at that stage or equipment to detect them created.

As far as you could have been concerned back then, it simply did not exist.

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So, Ayn Rand says we are not omniscient, which would mean there is plenty we don't know. If we are accepting that we don't know what happens after death, doesn't that mean we are agnostic?

The agnostic vs atheist debate always reminds me of the conversation between Toohey and Roark in "The Fountainhead" when Toohey asks Roark what Roark thinks of him. Roark's classic answer is "But I don't think of you." When asked about God I prefer a similar response. :lol:

The decision to "be atheist" is not an important decision in my life. That is because I don't go around making lists of opinions of things without proof. I am atheist only in the textbook definition as "someone who denies the existence of god." ( http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=atheist ) To live as a human being one must make decisions and take stances or one is lost to futile doubt. Even in order to maintain a simple survival one must make judgments constantly, if not a nonjudgmental person could equate poison and food. This ability to judge does not end only at physical survival. As one "lives" beyond that, one must continue to make rational value judgments based on evidence and reason.

So if confronted with the theory of a god or no god, one must make a choice. If one concludes there is a god then they should act accordingly. If one concludes there is not a god, then too they should act accordingly. An agnostic is often an atheist who just is too skeptical to know better. If one believes anything is knowable or that knowledge exists, one cannot let the concept of god be a special exception. To quote Ayn Rand from "The New Intellectual"

...God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive- a definition that invalidates man's consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence...
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Agnostic: a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.

Objectivists hold that the universe is known and knowable. The agnostic does not. That is why agnosticism is incompatible with Objectivism.

There is your answer and I won't go into some convoluted explanation or try to prove your negative because you have made the decision to willfully deceive yourself and will not accept reason and fact as an answer.

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Agnostic: a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.

Objectivists hold that the universe is known and knowable. The agnostic does not. That is why agnosticism is incompatible with Objectivism.

We can more precisely distinguish the agnostic from the Objectivist based on the source of knowledge, according to Objectivism. A claim requires evidence, and morally speaking, you should not grant any arbitrary claim for which evidence is lacking. To say that a particular claim is "possible" is to say that there exists some evidence for the claim, but not sufficient evidence to consider it even remotely proven. In order to even consider an arbitrary claim, you must deny the nature of man's capacity to reason -- we reason from that which is known, which is ultimately perceptually given. As Peikoff (OPAR ch. 5) states, "An arbitrary claim is not merely an unwarranted effusion. By demanding one's consideration in defiance of all the requirements of reason, it becomes an affront to reason and to the science of epistemology". Objectivism clearly contrasts with agnosticism, which "is not simply the pleading of ignorance. It is the enshrinement of ignorance". The agnostic "is taking a profoundly irrational position. In struggling to elevate the arbitrary to a position of cognitive respect, he is attempting to equate the arbitrary with the logically supported. This is not merely an affirmation of ignorance; it is an epistemological egalitarianism intent on obliterating an essential distinction."

In other words, the fundamental evil of agnosticism is not a specific metaphysical claim about the universe, but rather is the embracing of a claim about reason itself. The epistemological principle that underlies religious agnosticism applies in zillions of every-day cases in a way that makes morality impossible -- it amounts to demanding the suspension of judgment on the grounds that "we don't know for sure, since we can imagine there being some other explanation".

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An example for this could be radio waves some two hundred years ago, someone could have stated it is possible with no evidence (before James Clerk Maxwell's prediction).

It would be something we had no evidence or reason to think since our senses cannot detect them and the maths had not been done at that stage or equipment to detect them created.

That wouldn't even defy (then) current knowledge, only add a hypothesis to it, since there was nothing at the time that suggested radio waves couldn't exist.

Asserting that a deity exists or can exist not only defies current knowledge, it defies what we know about reality as such.

Edited by L-C
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An example for this could be radio waves some two hundred years ago, someone could have stated it is possible with no evidence (before James Clerk Maxwell's prediction).

Someone could've stated that what is possible? That radio waves (as later decribed by Maxwell) exist? That is exactly what Maxwell did: he described something new, in theory, and called it radio waves.

Someone could've arbitrarily stated the collection of sounds "radio waves", but that would've been a phrase that meant nothing. I'm sure people make arbitrary noises all the time. But a description of radio waves could only be made the way Maxwell did it, not through a random collection of sounds. If someone were to be extremely lucky and write down everything Maxwell wrote down exactly, without understanding it, that would still not be a meaningful description of radio waves-you would still need someone like Maxwell, who understands what it means, for those random symbols in a notebook to be turned into knowledge.

Knowledge of something unknown, like a caveman's knowledge of radio waves (which is what Jutley93 is talking about, as opposed to a description that is random, never understood or known by anyone, like the products of a million monkeys typing on a million keyboards), requires more than extreme luck: it requires Maxwell's ability to understand. And making the assumption that arbitrary things are possible is in no way part of the process of understanding existence-it is its mortal enemy: it turns a rational mind like Maxwell's into a monkey typing away.

Before Jutley93 jumps in with what he already said (that agnostics say things are possible but they don't act on them), I'd like to direct his attention to the post which he typed in, where he is speculating about how there must be something unknowable that happens when you die, dismissing all the knowledge we do have of death -- that was an action that he took (and time on this Earth he wasted) as an agnostic, instead of spending it as an Objectivist, studying knowledge of all subjects, instead of being a typing monkey when it comes to certain subjects like death.

I'm sure he has a profession in which he's not using arbitrary statements (he's just an agnostic on the side), but there are quite a few people these days, in many professions (government, philosophy, art, even science), who waste most of their lives on false premises such as "let's consider what could happen when we die, completely removed from all the knowlege we have of death", or "let's pick an arbitrary definition of the good and run with it", and leave the rest of us to support their existence. (through government force)

If you want to find out what can and cannot be known, I suggest investigating what knowledge actually is, first. Then you will realize that agnosticism, and everything that's built on that premise, is not knowledge.

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Zip, I think you nailed it there.

Thanks, but David did a far better job, and he didn't miss what I did. The essence of the agnostic position is not to have us suspend our disbelief but to have us abandon reason.

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Axioms. If you've not studied the objectivist concept of an axiom you should.

That all things have identity is an axiom, for example. Axioms are the fundamental characteristic of all things. They are not taken on faith. They are validated by sense perception. I tis a unique form of knowledge because they are not proven, but rather you look around and see that.

What you can say generally about all things then is that htey are something. This is true regarless of wether or not you've sensed it.

However that does not mean one has to see all things to know that all things will be something. All things have a specific nature. Every concept of God that is meaningful has him being omniopotent, omniscient. Infinite categories have no identity. Something that is supposedly infinite, has no specific identity. There is no entity that is infinite. It is a violation of the idea of a specific nature. To say soemthing is infinite is the same thing as saying it is an orange and and apple at the same time. It means nothing.

If God is bounded, then God is not a God in any of the theistic conceptions of him. God as a really powerful alien is unsatisfying to every theist out there. God as a really powerful alien, because it is something specific, is possible. God as an unbounded non-entity is impossible. I dont' need to be omniscient to know that everything is something specific.

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This is what makes me think this way: When we die, something must happen. We don't see anything happening though. Not seeing it isn't proving it's not happening.

Why must something happen when we die?

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Someone could've stated that what is possible? That radio waves (as later decribed by Maxwell) exist? That is exactly what Maxwell did: he described something new, in theory, and called it radio waves.

Someone could've arbitrarily stated the collection of sounds "radio waves", but that would've been a phrase that meant nothing. I'm sure people make arbitrary noises all the time. But a description of radio waves could only be made the way Maxwell did it, not through a random collection of sounds. If someone were to be extremely lucky and write down everything Maxwell wrote down exactly, without understanding it, that would still not be a meaningful description of radio waves-you would still need someone like Maxwell, who understands what it means, for those random symbols in a notebook to be turned into knowledge.

Knowledge of something unknown, like a caveman's knowledge of radio waves (which is what Jutley93 is talking about, as opposed to a description that is random, never understood or known by anyone, like the products of a million monkeys typing on a million keyboards), requires more than extreme luck: it requires Maxwell's ability to understand. And making the assumption that arbitrary things are possible is in no way part of the process of understanding existence-it is its mortal enemy: it turns a rational mind like Maxwell's into a monkey typing away.

Before Jutley93 jumps in with what he already said (that agnostics say things are possible but they don't act on them), I'd like to direct his attention to the post which he typed in, where he is speculating about how there must be something unknowable that happens when you die, dismissing all the knowledge we do have of death -- that was an action that he took (and time on this Earth he wasted) as an agnostic, instead of spending it as an Objectivist, studying knowledge of all subjects, instead of being a typing monkey when it comes to certain subjects like death.

I'm sure he has a profession in which he's not using arbitrary statements (he's just an agnostic on the side), but there are quite a few people these days, in many professions (government, philosophy, art, even science), who waste most of their lives on false premises such as "let's consider what could happen when we die, completely removed from all the knowlege we have of death", or "let's pick an arbitrary definition of the good and run with it", and leave the rest of us to support their existence. (through government force)

If you want to find out what can and cannot be known, I suggest investigating what knowledge actually is, first. Then you will realize that agnosticism, and everything that's built on that premise, is not knowledge.

I do agree that taking such "let's consider possibility X with no reason to think it is so other than let's just" is a pointless activity which leads no where.

Yes it took someone like Maxwell, Maxwell specifically to predict radio waves and give them the name they have and I agree someone could utter the words without the meaning and this would be meaningless without a definition.

That wouldn't even defy (then) current knowledge, only add a hypothesis to it, since there was nothing at the time that suggested radio waves couldn't exist.

Asserting that a deity exists or can exist not only defies current knowledge, it defies what we know about reality as such.

I agree there was nothing at the time suggesting otherwise, I meant 'possible' under the terms where neither side has evidence for or against such a claim.

Would a cave man have any evidence for or against the idea of radio waves existing and using them in such a fashion to transmit sound inaudibly over distances?

I don't think he would and rightly so because in one statement there is no proof of how it would work, how you could convert sound to radio waves, what radio waves are, the need for electricity and what it is so on. He'd probably laugh off the idea as impossible.

What I'm trying to say is just because we can't sense it as yet, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Things could be possible, 'possible' only if we have no evidence of it not being so.

Of course the idea of god itself brings up contradictions and different interpretations of what god is.

"The all powerful god creating an immovable object that he then tries to move"

Radio waves and the like are things that are knowable and I concede that if someone were to say X is possible but its existence is unknowable(Never will be/Never was) then it clearly is not possible.

Also stating X exists because it is merely possible (making that jump) is an error as well.

To counter the existence of God argument or the possibility, we first need a definition of what God is which is the main problem since there are a lot of difference definitions.

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The thing that I never feel is answered is how can we not be omniscient and still know there isn't a god. Do you know there isn't one, or do you choose to ignore any possibility?

I don't have to omniscient to have an idea what the extent of your knowledge is. I know for a fact that you have no knowledge of any entity described as God, or a god. So yes, I know that whatever you may be describing, it is not real, not because I am omniscient, but because I know you and the sources of your claims.

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The God issue is my only problem with Objectivism and the reason is that the line of logic doesn't seem to make sense.

The reason it's such an issue for me is this: when an Objectivist looks at a railroad, they say "this railroad was built by a man." Even though they have no absolute proof of this being true. It's a good assumption based on the known history of the world, but there is no direct and absolute proof. So then the logic is "what else could have built the railroad?" and so now you're left with the old argument of proving a negative.

When an Objectivist looks at the question of the galaxy, they say "this galaxy exists." OK, that's great, it does, but where did it come from? The big bang? Well that's a good theory but there's definitely no direct proof of it. (I believe the big bang is probably very close to how it happened but I digress.) So even if it is ok to accept the big bang as truth under Objectivist principles then you have to ask the question: what caused the big bang? How did it happen? Did someone or something initiate it?

I personally don't believe in God the way the Bible teaches us to, but I do believe in God. I think knowing what we know about the space time continuum there is a scientifically plausible existence of a supreme being that operates outside of the known dimensions of human perception. However, there is absolutely no way to prove this.

I admit that I'm not an expert in Objectivism, I'm just a regular guy that's just now getting interested in reading all the Ayn Rand I can find. I know that just about everything I've read so far makes absolute, 100% sense to me, even the stuff about how organized religion makes people dependent, brainless subjects to power. However I am having a hard time just dumping the belief in God simply because I can't prove it absolutely with means of perception currently available.

If you were standing on a railroad track and someone said "hey, a train is coming, you should probably move" would you say "what train? there is no train. existence exists, and no train exists." Or would you move? Sounds silly, I know, but A is A doesn't provide an escape that I can figure out, yet.

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