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Stunning previously unpublished letter of Ayn Rand (On Christianity)

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Ninth Doctor

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You must mean something else.... Can you give an example of what it would mean For "faith" to be a means to knowledge? Revelation and feelings yes but faith?

Just curious who holds this strange belief.

Faith as an enduring state of mind, (as contrasted with reason) is what most Oists mean when they say faith is not a means to knowledge, I think. Ive heard (and said) it before, and it isnt the clearest way of getting the intended message across.

Edited by JayR
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The misquote is a mistake. I removed the URL links because for some reason my whole response was a giant link to the lexicon. I couldn't find where the code problem was, so I removed all URL's. Must have deleted the rest of the sentence when I did that.

Thank you for explaining what happened. I thought that the links to the lexicon, for key words, would be helpful, if not for you, then for anyone else who might read my post. But I do understand how, given that you wanted to remove those links, it could get confusing, trying to locate code snippets and delete them.

Seems that we have some disagreement, but I'm not certain what it is. I use the term "Faith" as defined by Dr. Peikoff (Faith): '“Faith” designates blind acceptance of a certain ideational content, acceptance induced by feeling in the absence of evidence or proof.' - Leonard Peikoff, The Ominous Parallels, 54

Whatever the justification, whether it is revelation or authority or emotions, etc., faith is the term for blind acceptance of the arbitrary [or false] as true, and I believe that all such justifications are fundamentally rooted in the view that emotions are a tool of knowledge, a means of knowledge. The fundamental alternative is: reason vs. emotions - two different actions of consciousness, one the means of acquiring knowledge, the other reflecting what one has accepted as knowledge, true or not. (I "see" - rationally grasp - that something is true, or I "feel" that it's true.)

We do at least agree that Reason is man's only means of knowledge.

Edit: clarity

Edited by Trebor
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