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New Atheist Should Debate Objectivist

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I would love to see somebody from ARI especially Peikoff or Brook debate the four Horsemen. Could it ever happen?

Edited by brian0918
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Alas going to any site that is primarily an "atheist" site will show that virtually everyone there is an altruist of some flavor or another. And that was my experience with atheist groups in the past. Even within the small minority of people who are out and out atheists, Objectivism is a vanishingly small minority--you generally run into leftist after leftist after leftist....

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That's because atheists generally take a positivistic approach to spirituality. 'life meaning' shouldn't be embraced unless it's precepts are empirically rigorous. Thus, a la Kant, individual sense of life is completely invalid.

They resort to an almost gnostic or manichaen 'transcending' of reason (morality as idealism as oblivion). Otherwise it's a dull live and let live, which always translates to: thou must capitulate to agitators, thou must not agitate.

These are morally pathetic people who deserve less respect than the run-of-the mill theist - for at least the concept of heaven provides man with an open ended aspiration for which he can purposefully live.

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Give me a man who rejects something based on actual reasoning over someone who rejects it by faith.

You assume people adopt principles on faith without any correlation to reason. In highly oppressive and theocratic societies, and in religions that frame faith as a social construct, then, yes, faith is that. For the same reason that societies and governments that reject individual rights also must reject reason.

Despite many intellectual short-stops, most people in America who are people of faith are committed to their faith because they reason that there is a tangible benefit to doing so. Not just in the hereafter, but that their faith produces a commitment to principles that result in a happier and better life.

Faith in general can produce enormous difficulties for people, but is not the most important issue.

Give me a man who upholds meaning and value in his life, whether through faith or reason alone, than any number of pretentious atheist collectivists.

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Despite many intellectual short-stops, most people in America who are people of faith are committed to their faith because they reason that there is a tangible benefit to doing so. Not just in the hereafter, but that their faith produces a commitment to principles that result in a happier and better life.

Another one of the "New Atheists", Daniel Dennet, has argued that part of the reason religion has stubbornly hung on for as long as it has is that there are large numbers of people who see advantages to professing a belief in god (note, not necessarily actually having a belief in god). These can run the gamut from simply not wanting to have all of your neighbors hate you (which can still happen in some parts of the US--fortunately, in spite of its reputation, the nearby city of Colorado Springs isn't one of them) to believing that most other people need religion because they are too simplistic to understand morality otherwise, to simply believing that while false, religious belief has positive psychological consequences.

I believe he gave others but those are the ones I can remember (and are probably the ones that reflect worst on those who argue them).

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