18 minutes ago, EC said:
Please I am being slowly murdered […]
Call the police. They will direct you to the appropriate help facility
On 3/30/2024 at 2:33 PM, monart said:
Ayn Rand’s noble romanticism, as she says in her Introduction to The Fountainhead, reclaims the emotions of reverence for the sacred back from traditional theistic religions’ monopoly on them. Is this Objectivist romance for real ideals what attracts some Christians/theists to Ayn Rand’s work, despite their Christianity/theism?
Christianity’s “transcendent reality” is God, and human earthly affairs are mundane. Galt’s triumphs are “transcendent” in that they are heroic realizations of his highest ideals, the exalted becoming of his rational productive being. To be inspired by this noble, uplifting romance of Galt, is to “breathe in” and be energized by that “spirit”.
Where does the reverence come from? Did the theistic monopoly imbue those who contacted their subjects with it , or is it that reverence was misplaced? If reclaiming infers a misplacement what is the genesis of the reverence?
20 hours ago, AlexL said:
Call the police. They will direct you to the appropriate help facility
The “help facility” needed is the protection of the federal government. This is a huge Midwest (at the minimum) crime that is occurring that is a threat not just to my own life but every individual’s life. This is domestic terrorism, no police are capable of doing anything about it nor stopping it. Again this is terrorism. Seriously, are they just waiting for these people to murder myself and others openly, instead of just a slow destructive murder? Why is it so hard for people and the government to believe and act on the truth. It’s like nobody wants to act until I’m actually murdered.
8 minutes ago, EC said:
20 hours ago, AlexL said:
Call the police. They will direct you to the appropriate help facility
The “help facility” needed is the protection of the federal government.
Then call them, see to what help facility they direct you, and keep me posted. TIA
2 minutes ago, AlexL said:
Then call them, see to what help facility they direct you, and keep me posted. TIA
I have contacted the FBI and the CIA about this. There is no police force that has jurisdiction over countless cities, counties, and multiple states. This is the job of the federal government to protect Americans from domestic terrorists. How does nobody care about the safety of the country while this is occurring? I would only go with the FBI or a federal agency to a place where I’m protected while they eliminate the terrorist group and bring them to justice. What part of immediate, wide-spread, and ongoing threat to national security isn’t being understood?
44 minutes ago, EC said:
There is no police force that has jurisdiction over countless cities, counties, and multiple states.
I thought I was clear: I did not recommend that you contact the police to solve the problem, but to direct you the the appropriate competent authorities/organisms.
3 hours ago, AlexL said:
I thought I was clear: I did not recommend that you contact the police to solve the problem, but to direct you the the appropriate competent authorities/organisms.
I’ve contacted all those people myself, and nobody will respond. The death of an innocent man being savaged by an underground network of domestic terrorists will be on the hands of everyone, those agencies, my friends and family who won’t help protect me, and everyone that has read everything I’ve posted about this national security threat threat that has destroyed my life randomly and will come for other random victims next. Again, concretely right now I’m being destroyed and murdered but why would a massive terrorist group limit itself to just me, *everyone* is in extreme immediate danger if one man is by a terrorist group regardless of whether they make their methods hard to prove (on purpose and by intentional design) and report or not. Every American life is currently being threatened by this terrorist group.
13 minutes ago, EC said:
3 hours ago, AlexL said:
I thought I was clear: I did not recommend that you contact the police to solve the problem, but to direct you the the appropriate competent authorities/organisms.
I’ve contacted all those people myself, and nobody will respond.
My point was precisely for you to let the police determine which is the appropriate organism you should contact for help, and not for you to decide this.
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my friends and family … won’t help protect me
How do they explain this refusal?
On 3/24/2024 at 9:48 AM, monart said:
. . .
Whatever the cause of the animosity, I want to suggest that it is unwarranted. In fact, I want to present 6 reasons that Christians should reconsider Ayn Rand.
She Had a High View of the Mind . . .
She Promoted Spiritual Values—Even Above Material Ones . . .
She Worked Hard at Integrating the Spiritual & the Physical . . .
She’s Had a Lasting & Growing Influence on the Culture . . .
. . .
Believe it or not, there are a lot of Christians who have benefited from reconsidering Rand—but many of them feel the need to hide it. We’re working to change that. And we’re working to help Christians understand Rand’s thought in order to take full advantage of the potential value hinted at above. In fact, we’re starting a course to explore Rand’s ideas from a Christian perspective.
-----------------
In summary: We are orthodox, Protestant Christians with a great appreciation for Ayn Rand’s thought. Rand has done more than any other philosopher (Christian or otherwise) to point out key categories, questions, and concepts needed for a rational philosophy. We do not agree with all of Rand’s ideas. But we believe Rand was onto something important. (See John Piper’s article The Ethics of Ayn Rand.)
To make our own viewpoint clear, we found it helpful to title our project For the New Christian Intellectual. This is a reference to Rand’s first non-fiction book. Anyone familiar with Rand’s work will also recognize the Atlas figure in our logo. It is a nod to Rand’s masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged.
While we believe that our perspective is fully Christian, we give credit to Ayn Rand for her role in helping us develop our own philosophical perspective. While there are some similarities, the views we express are not the same as Rand’s. We speak only for ourselves. We encourage our readers to explore Ayn Rand in her own words, starting with her novels.
Rand did not invent political freedom. But she has been its best defender. The same is true for other topics of importance, including the four ideals we explicitly advocate:
Reason—Rational Self-interest—Individualism—Individual Rights
…
Many within the Christian tradition will view our project with skepticism. That can be a good thing. Let the skepticism lead to careful questions of discernment.
Find out why we believe as we do. If we are mistaken, make sure you know why. If you find dissonance within your own ideas, do the work. Do the thinking.
As Ayn Rand would say, “Check your premises.”
I remarked in 2009:
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I can’t buy that one is a Christian who never turns to faith in contradiction of reason.
I can’t buy that one is a Christian who never turns to mercy opposed to justice.
I can’t buy that one is a Christian who pursues monetary riches for himself.
I can’t buy that one is a Christian who never sacrifices his own judgment to a higher-than-human intelligence in the universe.
I can’t buy that one is a Christian who in no way believes he and his loved ones will arise from the grave and live forever in happiness in the presence of Jesus Christ (the son of God and savior of the world) in the kingdom of God.
A Christian can’t be any those five ways. An Objectivist must be all those ways, except the third is elective in degree.
An Objectivist may elect to pursue monetary riches for herself, provided she understands the rightness of it.
One cannot be a Christian and an Objectivist.
1 Like
I think many in the world are pivoting away from old conflicts defined in terms of polar opposites which are not at play right now as they once were.
When the world is seen as filled with mostly “good” cultures and societies which generally value peace, autonomy, family, life, happiness, for everyone… the philosophical quibbles over just what the good is and why, and how best to achieve it can be real and indeed can be very contentious and stark: Atheism versus Religionism, Capitalism versus Socialism, but in the end they are not existentially and urgently crucial.
Christians have been quite harsh on “heretical” or “heathen” thinking for quite some time and the vehemence with which the Atheists “rebelled” against Christianity, religious and mythical thought is quite breathtaking. But over recent times I think many feel that the animosity between generally good people over these issues is rather small potatoes.
For the world is now seen as having a sort of “thing” working in the background, of people whose motive is sheer political and economic power, whether governments and bankers or oligarchs and powerful families etc. or all of them… it possesses an unmistakable “evil” culture which does not value peace, autonomy, family, life, happiness, for everyone… instead valuing those for some: personal friends and family, and are happy to “pay the price” of consigning everyone else to their antitheses : war, authority, isolation, misery and death.
What point is there to fight over just exactly what good is and how to get there when a faint but clear harbinger of cultural evil… atheist non-moral anti-human post-modern evil that is arising. Whether or not consciously emerging from the nexi of power, or whether unconsciously emerging in the psychology of culture which has lost the basis of its morality and has not discovered objectivism, the inhuman evil is now at work here.
It makes sense for those that hold humanity, human life, individual life and liberty in high esteem to band together for humankind. It has been happening.
Craig Biddle debated with Denis Prager a few years back putting forth the position that they should not fight… Prager at that time was stuck in the mind set that he must scare people back into religion with the bromide “without religion morality is impossible”… as if membership in the good camps was more important than sheer numbers of good people.
Richard Dawkins has announced that he is an “Atheist Christian”… quite a claim to unpack but nonetheless one which is symbolic of a real spiritual and mental alliance … good people who still value humanity and life on earth as free individuals with peace, autonomy, family, life, happiness, for everyone, NOT just some people, should and will come together.
Of course the “thing”'s activity in sowing divisions is accelerating, men against women, blacks against whites, left against right, atheism against religion, Christian against Muslim…
Christians citing Objectivism and Objectivists reaching out to good religionists is a good thing and all individual human loving people need to come together.
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There is such a thing as “agreeing to disagree” but this requires both sides to give up the use of force.
Giving up force means that persuasion has to be used instead, which gives the long-term advantage to reality and reason.
Some people don’t want reality and reason to win.
Others just don’t want to wait; they think they have the advantage when it comes to force, so they seek to use it.
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SL,
There is a widespread good in people of wanting to know the truth. Aristotle thought that even ALL people desire to know (the truth). One widespread thing people want to know today, as thousands of years ago, is what becomes of one’s inner self and that self of one’s loved ones when we die. Is it really just the absolute end as it might appear from the successive states of the deceased body, or is there future life, perhaps one brighter or darker than the earthly life (and for some an opportunity to sell post-death prizes and penalties for power and money in earthly life)? Decline the fake insurance policy of Pascal’s Wager. Prize the truth come what may.
As for widespread desire for protection against dangers, the main danger is not from interpersonal conflicts, but from nature. Getting to the discoveries and developments that can rescue one or one’s loved ones from this or that particular occasion of bodily catastrophic failure (mostly from disease or old-age cascades) is not helped by prayers and blaming death on human moral failings, but by rational investigations into nature. I mention this vast sort of danger due to Objectivist-types’ widespread knee-jerk salience of dangers from interpersonal conflicts as first concern among dangers and politics as top aim.
There are plenty of religious people with whom I form political alliances. More importantly, religious friends and family and I (I purely naturalist, atheist) love each other very much. Those are choices open based on common values, including the value of truth, even as one keeps straight what are one’s differences on what is true and how to get it.
Nietzsche became so popular in the culture of Germany in the 1890’s and up to WWI that there were some theologians serving up bowls of unity between Nietzsche and Christian religion in Germany. When I was first in college ('66–'71), there was Christian Atheism of Altizer.*** **More recently and probably more durably, there is The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality (2007).
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23 hours ago, AlexL said:
My point was precisely for you to let the police determine which is the appropriate organism you should contact for help, and not for you to decide this.
How do they explain this refusal?
No. I’ve contacted all the appropriate authorities myself about an extreme terrorist threat against the country and to save my own life from their attack on my life and ability to live it. Again, this is a mass regional threat to both myself and every American which falls far outside the jurisdiction of any local police agency. Everyone needs to be in fear of what is happening when the government isn’t responding to an extreme threat and a citizen is being terrorized and destroyed by evil with seemingly no one to come to their aid. Also, as a side note, please notice those that keep trying to bury this subject in this and other threads and/or seem disbelieving or hostile to a man attempting to save his life as they have a likely chance of being apart of this group any crime and are committing an act as part of this group proscecutable under the RICO act at a bare minimum. Again, a slow torturous murder and destruction by a million pinpricks of each engaging in relatively tiny crimes that are hard or nearly impossible to prove without the entire context is still a murder.
I need help getting the feds to immediately do their job or I will be dead with two weeks or less because of this and everyone reading all of this and understanding the truth will be at least slightly complicit in my murder. (Which again whomever these hacking terrorists actually are through up an upside-down emoji on my phone because they seem to think that my destruction and slow murder is somehow “funny”). This is how evil this group is and what not helping a man begging for help from terrorists attacking and destroying me in our own nation is at a minimum passively endorsing and allowing to occur. Again, *nobody* is safe and this is occurring. There is a terrorist group here now in the Midwest murdering me and none of us our safe. Why is this so hard to understand?
You did not explain why your friends and family won’t help you. Or you simply don’t want to follow their advice?
28 minutes ago, AlexL said:
You did not explain why your friends and family won’t help you. Or you simply don’t want to follow their advice?
29 minutes ago, AlexL said:
You did not explain why your friends and family won’t help you. Or you simply don’t want to follow their advice?
One they are denying the evidence of everything I’ve provided or change it all, and there "advice " is complete nonsense that in no way applies to the facts that have occurred and/or are being influenced somehow by this criminal element and are afraid of the terrorist group. What part of this being a terrorist organization conducting a criminal operation within the United States against myself and all American citizens not being understood? Also, possessing a 180 IQ, having experienced everything that has happened in detail, and via proper usage of epistemology have properly evaluated what is happened at every level and in a much much better position as a result to understand what is happening and how it needs to be resolved then "family members " all of whom far less intelligent than myself, don’t know every fact in detail and are far less capable of properly evaluating reality.
Also, there are many legal precedents that those that are in communication with the victim of a major crime such as myself and do not provide legal help or report it, especially if it leads to an individuals death can be found at least partially at fault. And again, this is completely dropping the context that this is 100% a terrorist group engaging in this crime against myself and is therefore an immediate and extreme threat to every single American and National Security. This is not some random story or “delusion”. This is real, it is happening right now, my life is at immediate risk, and any terrorist group operating somehow “semi-underground” threatening the life of, destroying the life of an American is not simply an extreme threat to not just myself but every individual American and the entire nation right now.
9 minutes ago, EC said:
57 minutes ago, AlexL said:
You did not explain why your friends and family won’t help you. Or you simply don’t want to follow their advice?
… there "advice " is complete nonsense
There is no reason for them ALL to wish you harm. Follow their advice. Especially if all of them have the same advice.
Spoiler
2 hours ago, AlexL said:
There is no reason for them ALL to wish you harm. Follow their advice. Especially if all of them have the same advice.
Under no circumstances ever would I do something like that for many many reasons, not the least being that they are being manipulated somehow by the terrorists, they don’t know all the details of the situation as I can only provide snapshots, I’m highly intelligent, not a secondhanded thinker who would ever under any circumstances consider what I know with absolute certainty to be extremely horrible "advice ". And last but not least I think at a minimum my mother is involved in the murder plot, possibly through a life insurance policy taken out on my life without my knowledge and at this point I have zero trust in any of them. Let’s just say one of the places I worked at during this put a hundred thousand dollar life insurance policy on me without my knowledge that she got angry that I didn’t put in her name then their were tons of vary strange occurrences that threatened my life and safety including what seemed like set ups in bad weather, people attempting to stage vehicle accidents, being sent to bad situations in bad areas, I could list ten thousand weird circumstances, events, strange set ups etc just from that one job including constant messing up of the GPS, extremely strange reactions from entire neighborhoods in cities daily but this isn’t the place for 10000 things explained in explicit detail.
6 hours ago, EC said:
extremely horrible “advice”
What is it, that advice?
18 hours ago, AlexL said:
There is no reason for them ALL to wish you harm. Follow their advice. Especially if all of them have the same advice.
There is only essentially one. Also I don’t fake reality nor lie for the sake of anyone. Why does nobody care about a massive terrorist threat to the United States and against my own life?
8 minutes ago, EC said:
18 hours ago, AlexL said:
… all of them have the same advice.
There is only essentially one.
Which is…?