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Can Objectivists be religious?

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bluearmy

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Agnostics grant possibility to that which is cognitively meaningless. We require that there be some non contradictory basis of evidence - even theoretical - to grant any credibility whatsoever to a concept.

Where no basis exists, we cannot draw *conclusions*. We simply reject the claims as arbitrary.

First statement - exactly. Yet you appear to be taking that position.

Second - we are not talking about "no basis." All evidence points to the non-existence of a God.

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When the irrational present arbitrary claims of experiential evidence, we cannot prove them to be liars or deceived - we do not have their context. All we can do is point out that their claims are not supported by evidence and cannot be reproduced in any conclusive manner, thus they cannot be accepted as evidence of proof.

We do not *believe* there is no god and rationally we cannot *conclude* there is no god because there is no evidence on which to base a conclusion. You cannot prove a negative without there being a positive that contradicts it.

We simply *reject* the notion of god on the basis of the lack of evidence. We are atheists because reason refuses to accept as valid any premise without basis in reality.

There is only 1 difference in our views. To me, the lack of evidence that leads to rejection should also lead to a conclusion that there is no God. Again,that is not saying that God is dis-proved. There are a lot of things (X)that I cannot prove (beyond negatives), but the lack of evidence still leaves me to conclude that X does not exist.

Objectivism denies a God, thus concludes there is none.

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This is an issue of terms. I don't have OPAR in front of me, but read on about agnosticism and what Peikoff says about the arbitrary having no cognitive value.

In logic, a conclusion is the outcome of an argument based on valid premises. A valid premise must be based in objective reality. Your "conclusion" is based on the inability to prove that God exists - but a lack of evidence is not a proof of lack. If I say, "there is no X here" I cannot say "there are no X anywhere". It's invalid reasoning. This rule of logic exists REGARDLESS of the value of X - Camels, trees, or God alike. The difference between Camels, Trees and God is that the 3rd is arbitrary, the first 2 are not.

Thus I do not believe there is a God because there is no evidence to support such a conjecture. I do not believe a God is possible, for the same reason.

But I cannot logically conclude there is no God because there is no evidence to support THAT conjecture. To define something as Not X you must be able to define X, and when X = God, X cannot be defined rationally.

I have dismissed all claims thus far that there is a God because those claims have been irrational and arbitrary. This is not a conclusion - it is a *rejection* of arbitrary premises.

Edited by Greebo
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But I cannot logically conclude there is no God because there is no evidence to support THAT conjecture. To define something as Not X you must be able to define X, and when X = God, X cannot be defined rationally.

I have dismissed all claims thus far that there is a God because those claims have been irrational and arbitrary. This is not a conclusion - it is a *rejection* of arbitrary premises.

Find a quote! Otherwise, enough has been said.

When all evidence says no God, one can conclude no God - as God is defined.

The fact that "God" is irrationally defined makes the conclusion easier to make; i.e. an arbitrary & philosophically contradictiory concept is necessarily referring to a non-existent.

Again, I can rationally believe (thus conclude) there is no God while I cannot prove so.

The only alternatives are believing there is or not being sure.

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As I said before, I don't have OPAR in front of me, but read on about agnosticism and what Peikoff says about the arbitrary having no cognitive value. It's in the first few chapters - I'll find it tonight if you haven't by then.

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Find a quote! Otherwise, enough has been said.

When all evidence says no God, one can conclude no God - as God is defined.

The fact that "God" is irrationally defined makes the conclusion easier to make; i.e. an arbitrary & philosophically contradictiory concept is necessarily referring to a non-existent.

Again, I can rationally believe (thus conclude) there is no God while I cannot prove so.

The only alternatives are believing there is or not being sure.

Typically, [the agnostic] believes that he has avoided taking any controversial position and is thus safe from attack. In fact, he 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.

Ask yourself what evidence is to begin with. I have evidence of a computer in front of me. I have evidence of hardwood floors beneath my feet. I can perceive it. Others can perceive it.

What the heck does evidence for "something that isn't" (pot-o-gold @ the end of a rainbow, tooth-fairy, etc) look like? This is a misuse of the concept 'evidence' which grants the illusion of logically supported in the absence of a validation of the concept 'evidence'.

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Find a quote! Otherwise, enough has been said.

When all evidence says no God, one can conclude no God - as God is defined.

The fact that "God" is irrationally defined makes the conclusion easier to make; i.e. an arbitrary & philosophically contradictiory concept is necessarily referring to a non-existent.

Again, I can rationally believe (thus conclude) there is no God while I cannot prove so.

The only alternatives are believing there is or not being sure.

There is a third alternative - if a statement doesn't qualify as an actual claim, then one can reject it without the concept of belief even being applicable.

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. In the absence of evidence, there is no way to consider any idea, on any subject. There is no way to reach a cognitive verdict, favorable or otherwise, about a statement to which logic, knowledge, and reality are irrelevant. There is nothing the mind can do to or with such a phenomenon except sweep it aside.

... f a parrot is trained to squawk "2 + 2 = 4," this does not make it a mathematician. The parrot's consciousness did not attain thereby any contact with reality or any relation to it, positive or negative; the parrot did not recognize or contradict any fact; what it created was not truth or falsehood, but merely sounds. Sounds that are not the vehicle of conceptual awareness have no cognitive status.

Saying "God exists" is as cognitively meaningful as saying "Mork bleegle marno foo." The response to the latter statement isn't "That's incorrect," it's "Unless you can make that cognitively meaningful, I'm ignoring it" (or, more likely, "Right... I'm going to go stand over here now."). In fact, since believing that the statement "God exists" is false is equivalent to believing that the statement "God doesn't exist" is true, anyone who responds to an arbitrary claim merely by asserting its falsity, without establishing some sort of cognitive context or doing any justification of their own, is just as guilty of making arbitrary claims.

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OPAR: P 32-33 "If one is to postulate a supernatural realm, one must turn aside from reason, eschew proofs, dispense with definitions and rely instead on faith. Such an approach shifts the discussion from metaphysics to epistemology.

-//-

[Objectivists] ... reject every [supernatural idea]. We accept reality, and that's all.

Note - there is no conclusion drawn in this statement - because conclusions are epistemological. We reject contradictions - that's metaphysical. Leading up to P32 Peikoff addresses numerous contradictions presented in spiritual concepts, and identifying those contradictions, rejects them as impossible. However, in the quote given, he sets the groundwork for the concept of the arbitrary. That is continued on 163 in the entire section on The Arbitrary as Neither True Nor False. I will not reproduce that section here - but I will point out certain key statements.

"An arbitrary claim is automatically invalidated. The rational response is to dismiss it without discussion, consideration or argument."

Note - DISMISSED, not disproved. Conclusions are proofs and are established *only* with arguments.

"There is no way to reach a cognitive verdict, favorable or otherwise, about a statement to which logic, knowledge and reality are irrelevant."

You can't prove it false if it can't be proven. You cannot conclude that which is meaningless.

"Philosophically, the arbitrary is worse than the false."

To consider it possible to disprove the arbitrary is a denial of reason.

"The onus of proof is on him who asserts the positive, and one must not attempt to prove a negative."

The only valid way to prove a negative is to show a contradiction with established facts of reality. Since the arbitrary has no basis in reality, there is nothing in reality one can point to with the arbitrary and say, "This proves it false".

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"To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious." - Dawkins

"I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion." - Einstein

"I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism." - Einstein

----

Yes. Objectivists can be religious; HOWEVER this is only a feeling of reverence for material existence. It could be argued that Ayn Rand herself had a 'religious' formidableness towards the New York skyline, but she was clearly an atheist. I'll stress it again: Objectivists must necessarily be atheists. The quotes above are stated by atheists, whom have had religious feelings for the natural order of existence and science. However, for an atheist to call himself religious is misleading, and thus should not be stated so explicitly, as religion generally implies faith.

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"An arbitrary claim is automatically invalidated. The rational response is to dismiss it without discussion, consideration or argument."

Note - DISMISSED, not disproved. Conclusions are proofs and are established *only* with arguments.

"There is no way to reach a cognitive verdict, favorable or otherwise, about a statement to which logic, knowledge and reality are irrelevant."

You can't prove it false if it can't be proven. You cannot conclude that which is meaningless.

"Philosophically, the arbitrary is worse than the false."

To consider it possible to disprove the arbitrary is a denial of reason.

"The onus of proof is on him who asserts the positive, and one must not attempt to prove a negative."

The only valid way to prove a negative is to show a contradiction with established facts of reality. Since the arbitrary has no basis in reality, there is nothing in reality one can point to with the arbitrary and say, "This proves it false".

Final response.

You don't need all the quotes. Never said disprove.

Ch.5: "One can demonstrate that the idea of God contradicts all the fundamentals of a rational philosophy. Thanks to such a process of integration, what was initially arbitrary attains cognitive status—in this instance, as a falsehood."

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Ch.5: "One can demonstrate that the idea of God contradicts all the fundamentals of a rational philosophy. Thanks to such a process of integration, what was initially arbitrary attains cognitive status—in this instance, as a falsehood."

Thank you for posting this quote. I have a hardbound copy of OPAR (1991). To give a little more information, that quote can be found in Chapter 5 ("Reason") under the section "The Arbitrary as Neither True Nor False" (p. 163) in the last paragraph on page 166. To quote that paragraph:

"Now let us note that some arbitrary claims (though by no means all) can be transferred to a cognitive context and converted thereby into true or false statements, which demonstrably correspond to or contradict established fact. It is not mere words that determine epistemological status, but their relation to evidence. A savage's memorized recital of an arithmetical sum, for example, would be like the parrot's; but the same utterance by a man who understands the reason behind it would constitute a truth. Or consider the claim that there is an infinite, ominipotent creator of the universe. If this claim is viewed as a product of faith or fantasy, apart from any relation to evidence, it has no cognitive standing. If one wishes, however, one can relate this claim to an established context, as I did in the opening chapter: one can demonstrate that the idea of God contradicts all the fundamentals of a rational philosophy. Thanks to such a process of integration, what was initially arbitrary attains cognitive status—in this instance, as a falsehood."

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George H. Smith, in his book, "Atheism: The Case Against God," makes a few important points with respect to atheism (and theism) and agnosticism.

From Chapter 1. The Scope of Atheism, section II The Meaning of Atheism:

"Theism" and "atheism" are descriptive terms: they specify the presence or absence of a belief in god. If a person is designated as a theist, this tells us that he believes in a god, not why he believes. If a person is designated as an atheist, this tells us that he does not believe in a god, not why he does not believe.

There are many reasons why one may not believe in the existence of a god: one may have never encountered the concept of god before, or one may consider the idea of a supernatural being to be absurd, or one may think that there is no evidence to support the belief in a god. But regardless of the reason, if one does not believe in the existence of a god, one is an atheist; i.e., one is without theistic belief.

In this context, theism and atheism exhaust all possible alternatives with regard to the belief in a god: one is either a theist or an atheist; there is no other choice.

From Chapter 1, section III Agnosticism:

Properly considered, agnosticism is not a third alternative to theism and atheism because it is concerned with a different aspect of religious belief. Theism and atheism refer to the presence or absence of belief in a god; agnosticism refers to the impossibility of knowledge with regard to a god or supernatural being.

The term "agnostic" does not, in itself, indicate whether or not one believes in a god. Agnosticism can be either theistic or atheistic.

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Relating to this discussion, Dr. Peikoff, in his podcast Episode 28, addresses the following question:

03:42: "'In one of my neighborhood churches, someone placed a sign with the following statement: 'The absence of evidence is not an evidence of absence.' ... Now I know that we have to reject claims to the arbitrary without further consideration, and I agree, but can you give a proper answer to this argument? Is or is not the absence of evidence an evidence of absence?'"

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From Dr. Robert Efron, M.D.'s "Biology Without Consciousness–And Its Consequences" in "The Objectivist," February 1968, a cogent explanation of the detriment of accepting ideas on faith:

"To accept any idea on faith converts it into a not-to-be-questioned (mystical) dogma which cannot be modified, extended, or discarded as a result of further knowledge. It is the mental equivalent of a straitjacket.

In particular, the acceptance of an explanatory concept on faith causes disastrous epistemological consequences because it inverts the very purpose of an explanation. The epistemological role of an explanation is to account for some aspect of reality which we do not understand on the basis of concepts which have already been validated. An explanation based upon arbitrary assertions represents an attempt to account for some aspect of reality by using concepts which have not been validated. A rational scientist relies on man's knowledge: He accounts for the unexplained in terms of the known. The mystical scientist relies on man's ignorance: He tries to account for the unexplained in terms of the unknown. To attempt to "explain" a phenomenon by means of the unknown severs epistemology from reality: The thinking process is not anchored in fact.

Only when a hypothesis is based on fact can it be checked for error: The scientist can discover that he is led to factual contradiction, that additional knowledge is needed, and that his thinking process must be checked. When a hypothesis is not based on fact, the scientist has no means of discovering that an explanation is erroneous: Its validity cannot be discovered by him until a full explanation is discovered by someone else. Until that time, the scientist who operates on faith has no motivation or methodology to check his thinking process. He already has his explanation.

The acceptance of an idea on faith inverts the epistemological process in one other way. Instead of forming concepts which correspond to reality, those who accept an idea on faith much now make reality correspond to their not-to-be-questioned dogma. Since reality will not, in fact, accommodate itself to a man's beliefs, such a man distorts his view of existence so that it appears to correspond to the idea which he holds on faith."

"In sum, the acceptance of any idea on faith leads to restriction, stagnation, paralysis, and distortion of the thinking process."

Edited by Trebor
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Final response.

You don't need all the quotes. Never said disprove.

Ch.5: "One can demonstrate that the idea of God contradicts all the fundamentals of a rational philosophy. Thanks to such a process of integration, what was initially arbitrary attains cognitive status—in this instance, as a falsehood."

You claimed that the lack of evidence in favor of a statement is sufficient to judge the statement as false. That's incorrect, and the OPAR quote above doesn't support your claim. Here's the full paragraph containing your quote:

Now let us note that some arbitrary claims (though by no means all) can be transferred to a cognitive context and converted thereby into true or false statements, which demonstrably correspond to or contradict established fact. It is not mere words that determine epistemological status, but their relation to evidence. A savage's memorized recital of an arithmetical sum, for example, would be like the parrot's; but the same utterance by a man who understands the reason behind it would constitute a truth. Or consider the claim that there is an infinite, omnipotent creator of the universe. If this claim is viewed as a product of faith or fantasy, apart from any relation to evidence, it has no cognitive standing. If one wishes, however, one can relate this claim to an established context, as I did in the opening chapter: one can demonstrate that the idea of God contradicts all the fundamentals of a rational philosophy. Thanks to such a process of integration, what was initially arbitrary attains cognitive status - in this instance, as a falsehood.

Peikoff isn't saying that a proposition is false by virtue of being arbitrary. He's saying that in some cases, one can make an arbitrary proposition meaningful by bringing one's own knowledge and context to the table. He goes on to say that "Even when it is possible, however, this kind of integration is never obligatory." And just two paragraphs up from the quote you gave is this sentence:

The arbitrary, however, has no relation to evidence or context; neither term, therefore - "true" or "false" - can be applied to it.

The point is that while "There is a God" is provably false given an understanding of the term "God" as it is commonly used in the culture and its relationship to reality, an atheist need not undergo the process of judging the statement as false to rationally reject it.

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Final response.

You don't need all the quotes. Never said disprove.

You demanded the quotes ace.

However, you are correct, you did say conclude, not prove. And I will grant that in proper context I have been using conclude as a synonym of prove where it really isn't.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I don't think what Ayn Rand means by Atheism is the exact same definition a lot of self-proclaimed Atheists use. A lot of Atheists I know are anti-god or against anything that preaches morality. Ayn Rand herself disagreed with the libertarians of her time because she believed they were amoral. Aristotle does have some religious aspects to it, and that is where she derives her ideas of morality from. I don't find this to be in any way shape or form contradictory to my own personal religious beliefs, and in fact they enforce them. We can't exactly prove man has a soul or a conscience, but one does and a lot of being your own person is being in align with your conscience. The reason why some religions are bad is that they actually expect you to disobey or go against your conscience to follow the rules. They expect you to ignore whom you really are. They also make you feel like a good person for simply following the rules when you may not be true to your heart. Of course those versed well in Christianity know Jesus was against this way of thinking, but unfortunately this idea doesn't come across in many organized religions. The "good" people are the ones that go to church a lot and do what they are told, and often these individuals tend to chastise individuality. If you are a person that chastises individuality you cannot be an Objectivist. There are a some of religions, even Christian ones, that do support and praise the individual.

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What exactly do you mean by "anti-god"? Objectivism is certainly opposed to any such ill formed notion of a deity, though if you mean the people who go around ranting every time somebody so much as mentions the word "god", then that is not the sort of attitude and behavior suggested by Objectivism's position on the matter; we have far better things to spend our time on, better ways to change minds, and we should know how to pick our battles. Obviously Objectivism isn't against morality as such as it has a whole set of positions on morality itself. It is however opposed to altruism, which many people mistakenly equate with being the entirety of what morality subsumes.

"Aristotle does have some religious aspects to it, and that is where she derives her ideas of morality from."

Aristotle was a big help for Rand in making advances in her philosophical learning, but her ideas are not ultimately primarily derivative of Aristotle. Her ideas are ultimately about derivation of knowledge and making choices based on reality. She could and did disagree with Aristotle on some things, any religious aspect falling under that heading of disagreements. Just because Aristotle said so doesn't mean it must have been right.

"We can't exactly prove man has a soul or a conscience, but one does and a lot of being your own person is being in align with your conscience."

Objectivism regards the soul as an arbitrary concept because it has no credible evidence of any kind and consequently does not support the idea that such an (also poorly defined) thing exists. As for a conscience, this is one of those things validated by direct observation, being that it is a function of consciousness, rather than proved. Here is an explanation of what Objectivism regards as "proving" something and why not everything needs to go through a process of "proof" per se to be regarded as real. Check out some of the related links at the bottom too. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/proof.html Furthermore, your conscience is not something where the contents are always the same or born in or anything. You get the contents of your conscience from observations and thinking on it. We're not infallible, so just because we have a thought pop into our head and it gets mushed into our conscience doesn't mean it is in line with reality. Just following whatever your conscience happens to say without questioning the basis for these ideas and making sure they are solid is a bad idea, dangerous even. It's a form of hedonism actually, which Objectivism is opposed to. Conscience is what we call feelings in relation to the ideas we have about morality in relation to what one is doing essentially and thus it is subject to all the rules of treatment that come with feelings in general according to Objectivism. (You can probably look up "emotions" in the Lexicon too for more info.)

Edited by bluecherry
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Aristotle does have some religious aspects to it, and that is where she derives her ideas of morality from.

Do you have any kind of sources and/or rationale to show for this idea that Rand derived her ideas of morality from the religious aspects of Aristotle?

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  • 2 weeks later...

About a religious "Objectivist" and the affects of his religion:

I was utterly terrified to get familiar with the Israeli Jewish who regards himself a "representative" of Objectivism: Ohad Kamin.

He works for a political movement (i.e., a movement attempts to determine and define (in case, compared to the other 'political' groups, coming from the same (non-)philosophical roots, justify) my social freedom using my tax payments without an explicit philosophy of morality and individual rights, primarily on the grounds of faith) named "Manhigut Yehudit".

"In spite of officially being a self announced atheist," he considers Miss Rand's philosophy to possess "some significant religious sources."

(What a mystic! He actually brings the religious Commentary culture, which means "logical methodology has not been invented yet, so let us use subjective anti-reason and reasonably unnecessary metaphors as to be proofs and COME-ON, everyone explain this meaningless vague absence of clarity as he wills to," into rational philosophy~!

Objectivist philosophy is influenced by Judaism due to some inconsistent artificial coincidental quotation just as much as by Kant since he claimed to be "the advocate of reason" or by naturalism since it claimed to "a study of reality".

It is just a remarkable proof to how destructive "logical" inference ignoring Law of Identity is: Mr. Kamin derives such complex a new conditional about Rand's psychological status quo and her philosophy's fundamental nature ignoring the fact that its very basis is man's rational faculty and validity of perception.

Furthermore, it is sort of collectivist logic to telepathically, mystically determine one's collective and beliefs (if he has any of them), never mind how confident and logical his hierarchy of knowledge is, a very primitive form of collectivist logic.)

In addition, I was researching a bit, and finally found that, on the base of Objectivism, he evaded paying income taxes as an "intellectual rebellion" (what's so "intellectual" in it?), spent a couple of months in jail, and blamed the altruist pro-sacrifice code of values.

This, in particular and in itself, demonstrates his abstract understanding of it.

Now, I was listening to a lecture of him (well, partly, I got a life), something like his equivalent of "Philosophy: Who Needs It," he made to his movement.

"We need philosophy," he said, "in order to determine whether we should act selfishly or selflessly," and to illustrate the case, he gives---you see it coming---WHETHER ETHNICALLY JEWS ARE BETTER THAN NON-JEWS as a concrete instance!

What does that have to do with individualism?

Nothing. It is collectivism. It assumes that never mind how (literally) virtuous and valuable you are, if you are set (set by whom?) a part of the Society of Jewry (capital S Society apart) you got it---if you aren't, ya ain't.

How fun that morality is thus demanding!

Moreover, even if Jewry were a living entity that can be "selfish" or "altruistic"---it cannot be called "individualism" since it serve as nothing but an inconsistent and ultimately irrationalistic amoralism, not a healthy self interest.

Overall, it exposes the cognitive haze and the philosophically subjectivist apprehension: he allegedly advocates selfishness, but what is selfishness and what does "advocacy of selfishness" actually means (a way more basic question) is a subjective matter, a subject to interpretation,

so that you could state, as far as he is concerned, that you think that 1+1=2, but two could also mean i to you.

This is absolutely amazing that a man with no sense of epistemology allows himself to be an "Objectivist," and please remember that epistemology has primacy over ethics.

But more than all, the most revelational findings about what an ignorance he plants on his crowd can be represented in the q&a period of the lecture---

"But isn't that, Mr. Kamin, that faith is always more certain than knowledge?"

Mr. Kamin, you are participating in a "political group" for individual right's sake while other participants do not implicitly understand that A=A?

Existence is Identity. Mysticism's validity is mystical; knowledge's validity is known.

More certain? Oh, hella! Well, stay in your cave of Platonism until you will find that you are a tiger's prey.

More "certain," less adoptive, but least secure.

And you can only guess what his eventual answer was---

"If your knowledge is an [epistemologically] well knowledge, than it could be just as certain."

(What is a "well knowledge"? Is there any "negative" knowledge? Is that intended to mean "a knowledge that does not fit-in my arbitrary ideas? No answer is given.}

Well, thanks a lot, you're giving reason the same status as mysticism? As a pro-advocate of rationality I've always dreamt of it!

It is so great that I have a source of aspiration.

Edited by Tomer Ravid
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"To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious." - Dawkins

"I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion." - Einstein

"I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism." - Einstein

"There is no such things as "values" or "concepts"---there is only the divine Selfish Gene to control our lives according to his [its] whims." - Dawkins

"Socialism is the best political system because it's rather the best for Society" - Einstein

"We can know nothing; only the uncertainty and introspection are the advantage of scientific research . . . Oh, yeah, and we're evil and to destroy the nature [now, environmentalists, stand on your own and state that your philosophical views are scientific!]." - Einstein.

----

Yes, Objectivist can be collectivists, relativists and subjectivists; HOWEVER some very bad examples, dude.

It could be argued that Ayn Rand herself had a 'religious' formidableness towards the New York skyline, but she was clearly an atheist.
Very emotional, arbitrary and undefined a comparison.

The fact that someone admires someone or something else does not imply that he is a mystic, sacrificial animal or that he lacks values (or else prove it).

There is nothing religious about the aspiration to objectivity: this is not an essential characteristic of religion, in effect it does not characterize that at all (faith is NOT another word for reason).

It is but an evil package-dealing of people who want that the only thing religion can possibly constitute is consistency (or that the only thing consistency can possibly constitute is religion).

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  • 1 month later...

Do you have any kind of sources and/or rationale to show for this idea that Rand derived her ideas of morality from the religious aspects of Aristotle?

I thought it was general knowledge. She studied Aristotle in college. He was her favorite philosopher. I read it in one of the bibliographies written about her. However, it also says so in the Wikipedia.

Rand acknowledged Aristotle as her greatest influence[111] and remarked that in the history of philosophy she could only recommend "three A's"—Aristotle, Aquinas, and Ayn Rand.[112]
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