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Struggling w/ my love of Rand and my past w/ God.

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Adleza

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BreathofLife--yours comments are true in general if you change every instance where you state "matter" is conserved and change it to energy. Matter and energy constantly change back and forth in form via E=mc(squared) and other formulae. It is energy and not matter that is the conserved quantity in physics. I just wanted to make that small correction. :dough:

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But here is the most interesting part. By thinking as reasonably as I can, I still cannot debunk a belief in God. Not God as a higher man, but God as everything that is working around us, nature maybe.The laws that define our reason. The reason of nature seems to me to be God. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I feel that heaven is here and God is right outside your window, under your bed, and tickling your nose.

I went through this phase while reading Atlas Shrugged. It lasted a few days. Then I realized that I was engaging in nothing but senseless sentences. That day I gave up God.

IMO, the fear of leaving God lies in the fact that you have been taught to believe that a Big Daddy is caring for you in the sky. That he will always take care of you no matter whatever happens and after death, your consciousness will not die but pass on to heaven. It seems to be a very attractive proposal at first sight - eternal life. However it is not based in reality but only in one's imagination.

Didn't Ayn Rand say that she did not believe that man is nothing more than a collection of atoms.

Never heard her say it. Could you provide a quote and a reference?

Man's consciousness may be nothing more than the arrangement of matter of his

existence. But how is it that this particular arrangement created my consciousness. 

That is the question that scientists are working on.

It seems that there is a formula for ME. But if that is true is it not true that formula has and always will exist. Just as any other law of nature or science. I find it troubling to relegate my existence in eternity to nothing more than 70 or 80 years.

It might be possible that only a special arrangement of matter can produce your consciousness and no other(Nobody knows). If it does though and if there is some way to find it, I would be very happy indeed. Then life on this Earth after death will seem like a possibility to me.

One tip: Don't think about when you'll die. Think about the present and into the future of your LIFE, not DEATH.

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But here is the most interesting part. By thinking as reasonably as I can, I still cannot debunk a belief in God.

[snip]

It seems that you are going on the premise that the concept of God is either true or false. The problem is, God is neither true nor false. No evidence has ever been found which shows that a god or gods exsist. Since no evidence has ever been found to prove a god, no evidence can be found which can disprove a god. As such, the concept of God is arbitrary. That is, it is neither true nor false. In fact, the concept of God is a conglamaration of various mythic traits which men have believed were the best for a being to have.

As to your assertion about God being "everything," this is very close to the Native American's belief in animism. Animism is a religion which believes that the spirit of god is inherient in all matter. The problem is, this is once again an arbitrary assertion. You are making this assertion based on your feelings and not on objectivie facts. The biggest problem with this is that, by implication, you are saying that all matter is on an equal playing field as yourself. To admire the world around you is one thing. To believe that it is "God," though, is a completely different thing. The metaphysical can be turned in the man made. It has no choice in the matter. However, the metaphysical cannot use you.

Objectivism and religion are completely incompatible. The Objectivist ethics tells us that each of us is our own highest being. Any belief in a god or gods, even a simple belief in animism, is a slap in the face to yourself and your self-esteem.

Be your own highest being, your own God, your own hero. That is the ideal in life.

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BreathofLife--yours comments are true in general if you change every instance where you state "matter" is conserved and change it to energy. Matter and energy constantly change back and forth in form via E=mc(squared) and other formulae. It is energy and not matter that is the conserved quantity in physics. I just wanted to make that small correction. :dough:

Either way it's conserved and that was my point. Thank you, though. It's been a while since my last physics class. I just started taking it again this quarter. In the fall it's on to engineering (calculus based) physics. I will probably love it and drive myself completely nuts with it :thumbsup:

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Thank you for the responses and I'm sorry if I sidetracked Adleza'a post. I'm beginning to see the relevance of having no proof for or against God. The arbitrarity of the argument is starting to sink in. It is a huge pill to swallow.

Edited to remove accidental quote

Edited by critchelow
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Never heard her say it. Could you provide a quote and a reference?

There is an interview clip on the documentary "A Sense of Life" where she makes this comment. I'll go to the library today, if they have it I will re-watch it and tell you exactly how far into the tape she makes this comment.

Edited by critchelow
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All right, so it has been a few days, and I am not completely content yet, but I have got my blanking-out under control and am actually ABLE to stand back a little and think. I have lost my unshakable belief in God. What I haven't lost is the habit of having a belief. :huh: What is left is that fear everyone talks about. Fear of losing something, fear of the unknown, superstitious fear of God's retribution, etc. The same way that I'm afraid of the dark shortly after watching a horror movie.

That being said, the feeling of forcing a blank-out out of existence makes me want to hunt down all my other 'blanks' and toss them out on their ears, too.

For example: Yesterday I had to meet with the president of a student club I am running (or trying to run). She is a particularly difficult person because as President, she is doing absolutely nothing, and additionally is on a power trip and is interfering with other people doing anything useful. I was going to meet with her so that she could tell me to stop doing her job. Now, the club members are preparing to vote in a new President, which she is unaware of, so I needed to keep myself under control and my mouth shut. So, on the way to talk with her, my habit of asking God's help/guidence/whatever through a difficult situation kicked in, but! I was able to stop myself, and realize that it was very much up to me to determine how I handled the situation. It was fantastic! What is likely obvious to most of the posters on this forum, and something I know in my head, is that when a person is given control (even the illusion of control) of any situation, they are more likely to succeed. That is what this was. I'm in control of myself, something I have always known, but this darn blank in my head was keeping me from using that knowledge.

So anyway, once again I appreciate the little push you all gave me to start thinking. :)

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I read your post and wanted to reply. You think about God pretty much the exact same way I thought about God when I still believed in him. I went through that some process of loving it, rejected organized religion and turning my faith into an individualistic spirituality, and then a friend slapped me in the face (he said, "just because you dont know what it is doesnt mean you can just give it a name..") and I became an athiest. What you feel when you pray, that great reverent feeling, is the admiration you have for a being that created someone as great as yourself, correct? That's how I felt, I identified it properly. Since you've believed in God your whole life, it's like you have subconsciously mixed concepts. You place the reverence and happiness of superb self-esteem upon the being you have been told from jump street created you. Logically, that makes sense, if there was a God, but sense the concept of a God is logically impossible you should be reserving that emotion for yourself, period. I was afraid that that happiness would go away once I became an athiest, but it only increased a million fold, once you realize that the only cause for the greatness in your life, the efficacy of your own mind, the organization of your thoughts, is your own self, the idea of a God that you can't see, hear, touch or understand becomes.. silly. And you drop it.

I read more of your posts.. you're doing well! You should be proud of yourself for facing reality despite your fear. Good job buddy.

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The first lecture of Leonard Peikoff’s taped course, “The Art of Thinking”, is a good reference for this discussion. (The 15-tape course is available from the ARI bookstore. But it is pricey, I believe over $200.)

Lecture 1, Volition as a Means to Clarity, is described as, “The problem of clashing contexts; why some students are unable to fully accept what they know to be the truth. The perpetual ‘clarity-seeker.’ Why the only solution in such cases is will (not more arguments or questions).” Dr. Peikoff says that this is an extension of his book, OPAR.

My interpretation is that in cases of clashing contexts, such as Objectivism vs. religion, and even if one is (intellectually) certain that Objectivism is right, there can still be a painful transition period where neither context is convincing. One has to get through this before Objectivism can be automatized as an actual guide for thought processes in daily life. The only way to get through this period is by will. The old context must be deliberately suppressed, and this can take more than a year. (Dr. Peikoff emphasized several times that one must be intellectually certain that the new context is correct before using this process.)

Several examples were given:

10-fingered method of typing vs. the 2-fingered method. You know that the 10-fingered method is more efficient, but if you are used to the 2-fingered method, you will have a tough transition.

The question, where did the universe come from? He said many students have trouble with this, and they must suppress their old way of thinking.

Another is that the universe is finite, but what’s outside of it? He said that he discussed this several times with Ayn Rand, and it took him a long time to change his way of thinking about what would happen if you went along a straight line until you hit the edge.

Another is that we know that the primary choice of free will is to focus or not. He says students continue to ask why one person chooses to focus and another doesn’t. (“Primary” means it can’t be broken down further.)

I hope this gives you the idea of the lecture, but there’s no good substitute for hearing a Peikoff lecture.

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By thinking as reasonably as I can, I still cannot debunk a belief in God. Not God as a higher man, but God as everything that is working around us, nature maybe.The laws that define our reason. The reason of nature seems to me to be God. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I feel that heaven is here and God is right outside your window, under your bed, and tickling your nose.

[. . .] I feel like I've gotten past the traditional beliefs and reliance on God. Now though, after discovering and studying some tenets of reason I feel like I have found another.

I want to point out that when a person gets to the point of saying that "God is everything," he's just a stone's throw away from outright atheism.

In the mind of a thinking person, this statement represents a final, desperate attempt to reconcile a belief in God with the Law of Identity; to assign Him some kind of metaphysical status — even a redundant one which only further demonstrates the untenability of the concept.

Whether one intends it or not, to say that something is "everything" is to acknowledge that it's nothing. To be means to be something specific — something, as distinguished from the everything all around it.

Only one thing is "everything," and that's the universe — or existence itself.

Funny thing is that, in a very real way, God is the universe. More precisely, the universe (existence) is God: It's God in the sense that it's the ultimate, the supreme — as well as the starting point: the alpha and the omega — the uncreated, eternal axiom on which all things depend, and by which all things are made possible.

(Just think: If existence didn't exist, none of us would be here!)

Of course, once you explicitly grasp the axiom of existence, it becomes rather silly to call it "God." Other than the ways I mentioned, existence shares almost none of the attributes and actions commonly ascribed to God. Existence doesn't "create" anything (ex nihilo or otherwise), it doesn't defy logic or ask the irrational of anyone, it doesn't make you sing God-awful hymns on Sunday or spy on you when you're taking a shower, it's unimpressed with sacrifice and self-abnegation, and Lord knows it could give a rat's behind about anybody's prayers.

About the only other thing that God and existence have in common is that both exact a toll on those who violate their laws — though one's laws require of man that he open his eyes and use his mind to the best of his ability, while the other demands that man blind himself, debase himself, and place his faith in the eternally unknowable.

I know which one I'd rather believe in and worship . . . :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

So I have been away for a while, missed these forums. I'm typing from a hospital computer.

I think this God thing is addictive. The prayer habit is strong . Even so, I'm feeling more stable and more whole, and am begining to see that praying- asking for something, whether it is help, general guidance, an object, whatever- is potentially dangerous. Asking a god for something removes the responsibility, even the possibility of achieving it yourself. If you fail, a god can be a scapegoat, in the same manner. This distorts reality in a serious way, renders the individual helpless in their own minds. That's so screwed up it gives me the creeps.

About a week ago, my boyfriend of 5 years started having abdominal pains, suffered for a couple days, and I finally dragged him to the hospital. (He will be fine, but it was terrifying for a few days even after we got here.) When I decided he was going to the hospital, manly pride or no, was when the destructive power of prayer really hit me. The habit thing to do would be to pray that he feel better. Since we aren't completely gone, he would have eventually got to the hospital, but allowing ourselves to remain helpless (through handing control to an imaginary being) would have prolonged the time that we stayed at home (I don't know by how much).

To be honest, I felt VERY helpless. My 'other half' was suffering, I could do absolutely nothing to help him (I thought). Again, my first reaction when I feel helpless is to pray for strength, guidence, etc., but without prayer I had two choices. Sit and do nothing while he lay on the floor in pain, or figure out something to do. Obviously the first choice is not really even one to consider. So I figured out something I could do (take him to the hospital whether that made him feel wimpy or not). Once I made the decision to kick myself and use my rational brain, it was a rapid, obvious choice, and only possible in a timely manner because I HAD TO take responsibility for my own actions.

Brilliant. I love you guys. Another day and he would have been in intensive care, not bored and getting better in the normal hospital wing.

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You did it all yourself. I think no thanks is necessary.

My regards to your boyfriend. Send him over here sometime to hear a lecture about why going to see a doctor when you're in pain is NOT wimpy. :)

As for the destructive power of prayer: yes, you are right on the money.

The prayer gives you the FEELING you're doing something, when in fact you're doing nothing to solve your problem. So even though it does not PREVENT you from acting, it does lower the emotional urgency of solving the problem yourself.

In more serious cases, not acting immediately can result in death.

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For Objectivists, wouldn't it be "Joy to yourself?"

In what context? If I say, "Joy to the world," I am including myself. I am also expressing the benevolence that naturally arises from consistently practicing the virtue of selfishness -- that is, rational self-interest, which includes wanting to see others around me reap the benefits of living well at their own expense. The better off they are, the more I can gain from them by trading with them.

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In what context? If I say, "Joy to the world," I am including myself. I am also expressing the benevolence that naturally arises from consistently practicing the virtue of selfishness -- that is, rational self-interest, which includes wanting to see others around me reap the benefits of living well at their own expense. The better off they are, the more I can gain from them by trading with them.

You know...every once and a while...It's perfectly okay to LAUGH. :lol:

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So I have been away for a while, missed these forums. I'm typing from a hospital computer. 

I think this God thing is addictive.  The prayer habit is strong .  Even so, I'm feeling more stable and more whole, and am begining to see that praying- asking for something, whether it is help, general guidance, an object, whatever- is potentially dangerous.  Asking a god for something removes the responsibility, even the possibility of achieving it yourself.  If you fail, a god can be a scapegoat, in the same manner.  This distorts reality in a serious way, renders the individual helpless in their own minds.  That's so screwed up it gives me the creeps.

I'm glad reality is dawning for you Adleza! :)

In my opinion, a real conception of "the real concept" of god is not incompatible

with objectivism. Just as a real conception of the real concept of anything is

rational.

I see god in the same way as I see John Galt. They are both ficticious characters

who were created for the purpose of illustrating something to me.

I consider myself a christian. I agree with only those things about "what I call

christianity" that I have a rational need for.

When the things that I need my "christianity" for are shown to be answerable

(solvable/understandable) by my own self-work, I experience "the greatness of

god" that is the realization that yet another marvelous understanding of reality has

been given to me.

This makes god (the ficticious character) MORE impressive to me, as uncovering

more wonderful fiction that actually enlightens me is a good thing.

If god is seen as a "giver" of anything other than enlightenment (the discovery of

the wonders of reality with it's concomittant "emotions'), then one will act

inappropriately toward god, and will be continually disappointed and confused in

relation to god.

"Mommies and Daddies", which are the usual actual concepts seen as god, are

addictive, not the real concept of god.

If I'm not seen as a "real" objectivist because of my liking ("belief" is from an old

concept meaning "to love" or "holding onto because of love" [indoeuropean "leubh-"])

for this concept, that's fine. :D

I'm certainly not seen as anything approaching a "real" christian by "normal"

christians.

But I do have enourmous fun and joy in the way I am, and consider it entirely

rational (and userful).

-Iakeo

Edited by Iakeo
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In my opinion, a real conception of "the real concept" of god is not incompatible

with objectivism. Just as a real conception of the real concept of anything is

rational.

I see god in the same way as I see John Galt. They are both ficticious characters

who were created for the purpose of illustrating something to me.

I consider myself a christian. I agree with only those things about "what I call

christianity" that I have a rational need for.

If you call yourself a Christian, you are condemning yourself to partake in the same lot as they do. You have assummed that there are things you need from Christianity. In fact, this is not so. You see, there is nothing good you can get from Christianity which you cannot obtain elsewhere and with much less evil.

I am truly baffled by your position as, by your own admission, you pick and choose what to believe out of Christianity. I am sure you could find some points in Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and every other world religion with which you agree with. Why, then, do you not associate yourself with those religions?

When the things that I need my "christianity" for are shown to be answerable

(solvable/understandable) by my own self-work, I experience "the greatness of

god" that is the realization that yet another marvelous understanding of reality has

been given to me.

This makes god (the ficticious character) MORE impressive to me, as uncovering

more wonderful fiction that actually enlightens me is a good thing.

If god is seen as a "giver" of anything other than enlightenment (the discovery of

the wonders of reality with it's concomittant "emotions'), then one will act

inappropriately toward god, and will be continually disappointed and confused in

relation to god.

Which "things" do you need God for? Why do you need God for these things?

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If you call yourself a Christian, you are condemning yourself to partake in the same lot as they do. You have assummed that there are things you need from Christianity. In fact, this is not so. You see, there is nothing good you can get from Christianity which you cannot obtain elsewhere and with much less evil.

There is, in truth, nothing I need from christianity, or god. I also do not need to

hear John Galt's speech, or the many accumulated words of Ayn Rand, as the

principles of objectivism can be found by simply dealing with reality as reality.

But I appreciate it very much that a very smart person was motivated to observe,

collect, and publish their observations about how one might deal with reality wisely.

I am truly baffled by your position as, by your own admission, you pick and choose what to believe out of Christianity. I am sure you could find some points in Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and every other world religion with which you agree with. Why, then, do you not associate yourself with those religions?
It is the human way to "pick and choose" what we accept as useful. I do find

points of "agreement" with those other "religions", and others, mostly because

those points all seem to come from the same rather small set of concepts that

various cultures have teased out of reality "as they saw it".

I associate myself with christianity simply because it is the cultural background

of "my people", and is the easiest one from which to sensibly throw out the

nonsense. Though, I don't actually "throw out" the nonsense, as I simply can't

accept nonsense as non-nonsense, just as no one can. What I do with the

nonsense, is to observe for the reason for the nonsense, and find the truth that it

points to.

Most religion is paliative. Why the huge need for a paliative? Is that need real?

Yes. What is the best solution to an irrational (not as effective as it should be)

need? An understanding of reality.

But does that make the need any less real? No.

Which "things" do you need God for? Why do you need God for these things?

The reason we strive for understanding of reality is to more effectively deal with

it, for our own selfish reasons.

This "god" that I refer to is "that which I don't know about reality" that I strive to

know.

This relationship with my god of utter and complete impotence gives me comfort

and motivation to continue acting to understand and use reality to make my life

happier.

As stated before, I don't need god. I choose god.

Now,.. where does Jesus fit in with this for me, as he's rather the central point of

christianity? Essentially, he's the great fool who points at reality without knowing

that he's doing so,.. so he's pretty much the central metaphor of why irrationality

is in fact the greatest assistant reality has in helping man to SEE THE FREAKIN'

LIGHT.

-Iakeo

Edited by Iakeo
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