Ayn Rand Smears Still Popular with the Left

It would seem that the left still enjoys painting Rand and Objectivists as giggling baby-eaters. A recent spate of disinformation pieces have been circling the internet here and here. The basic gist is that they drop context on some lines taken out of Ayn Rand's personal journals in which she comments on the William Hickman kidnapping murder of a young girl in the 1920s. It's funny too, because they're really just plagiarizing the same drivel that was passed about a few years ago with an 2005 article here. The response should be the same as the response it got then...click the big red x in the upper right of the window. A brief discussion on the Objectivism Online Forum should help clarify how the argument is specious. I've included a link to that discussion here.

I quote the very eloquent summation of one poster, Dismuke:

"To summarize - that article drops several bits of very important context.

1. The fact that the journal entries were PRIVATE, not intended for publication and, therefore, the contents were not written for the purpose of being objective to any audience other than Ayn Rand's own eyes.

2. The entirety of Ayn Rand's explicit philosophy which was consistent across volumes of works written over the span of many decades - including her philosophy's contempt for those who initiate force.

3. The fact that Ayn Rand herself dismissed it all as probable "idealizing."

4. The fact that, Ayn Rand, unlike the author of the article, did not equate self-interest with "walking across corpses" and, therefore, did not regard an out-of-context admiration for certain attributes of a brutal murderer's statements and demeanor as having possible negative implications for a morality of self-interest worthy of giving serious consideration to in the mental exercise the journal entry documents.

Now, if someone who was very familiar with the William Hickman case but had never heard of Ayn Rand before somehow stumbled across that particular journal entry, I can fully understand why he might properly conclude that Ayn Rand must have been some sort of strange, sociopathic kook not worthy of looking into further. But the author of that article very clearly IS familiar with the larger context of Ayn Rand's work and her personal history - so my conclusion is the article is nothing more than a cheap and sleazy "hit piece" designed to smear Objectivism. Don't be too surprised if it is embraced by the likes of David Kelley and Barbara Branden as more "proof" that Ayn Rand was indeed nothing more than a malevolent neurotic kook who somehow, nevertheless, managed to make a few good philosophical points here and there."

I can't think of anything more to add to this, except to express my sincere hope that trash like this will stop popping up in the news results for Rand on the right side of this blog. It is increasingly clear that the Left has no rational refutation of Rand's philosophy and can only resort to character assassination and ad hominem flubbery. Context is everything. ANY quote taken out of context can be read to mean anything you want it to. That is why the process of contextualization is so important in all written forms of exposition and especially literary, scientific, and philosophical exposition. Ayn Rand's journals were none of these, simply personal notes and notations meant to guide her own thought process.

If a man were to find admirable qualities in Obama, it would not make him instantly an Obama acolyte. If a man were to find admirable qualities in Reagan, it would not make him instantly a Reaganite. One can admire certain qualities of a person without admiring their motivations or actions, hence the restriction to certain qualities. Some people admire Rommel, despite the fact that he was a Nazi. They can admire his intelligence and skill without admiring his political ideology. Some people admire Clinton despite his philandering. It doesn't mean they admire the whole person, just some things that he did or said. The only way to be certain of why, in what way, and under what conditions that admiration existed, is to have a properly contextualized account of that admiration. The reasons, the exceptions, the moderations...these elements are essential to understanding the meaning of any given utterance in the English language. Without this account, irresponsible accusations slapped onto decontextualized cherry-picked quotes say no more about the character of a person than graffiti on the wall of a bathroom stall--the very place where such "journalism" belongs...in the toilet.

Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest 2009

Just got the word that I didn't place in this year's Atlas Shrugged essay contest. I look forward to reading the winning essays when they're posted on ARI's website. Anyways, here's my entry from this year. Hope you enjoy reading it. -- American Anti-theist

BUSINESS & PLEASURE: Vice and virtue in the life of Hank Rearden

Hank Rearden runs his business with ruthless efficiency. The standard of value by which every aspect of his foundry is decided is one simple principle: What’s best for making metal? The wage of every worker he employs is balanced against the cost that wage adds to the production process and the necessity of that worker’s labor to the creation of product. The prices of materials are balanced against the market price of steel. The market price of steel is driven up by customer demand for his steel and down by the prices offered by his competitors. The only way to survive, the only way to prosper, is to minimize costs, to increase quality, to honor contracts, to expand his production so that he can further minimize costs, increase quality, and so on. In order to accomplish this he must pay his employees wages commensurate with their value. He needs quality workers to create quality product. He must buy quality materials. He cannot satisfy his customers with defective product. He must constantly refine his production process. He must condemn waste. He must reward efficiency. The highest value, the benchmark of all these other contributing elements, is simply the extent to which it enables him to produce better, faster, cheaper steel in greater quantities and make the greatest profit while doing so. This profit is his reward for organizing the resources of his business in such a way as to generate surplus. It is his reward for creating that which would not exist were he not to have created it. In business, this reward takes the form of money, a measure of the value he has added to the lives of all those with whom he does business.

If Rearden were to live as he ran his business, he would deal with all the people around him privately the same as he would deal with them professionally. Every emotional investment would be balanced by an emotional gain. If every process and function of his professional life is to render him a greater producer of steel, then every process and function of his personal life would be geared to render him a greater producer of his life’s highest values. The virtues of business are to minimize costs, to increase quality, to honor contracts, and to expand production. The virtues of his life would thus be frugality, integrity, honesty, and ambition. Just as he cannot settle for hiring just any worker for any job at any wage, so too he cannot afford to accept just any stranger into any given role in his life as only justified by their just having shown up. Friends, lovers, wives, and even family relationships cannot be based solely on chance, on the arbitrary advent of circumstantial proximity. They must be evaluated in terms of the value they offer and the price they demand. If they demand too high a cost for the value they offer, then they are not worthy of the role. On the contrary, the significance of the meaning of the words ‘friend’, ‘lover’, ‘wife’, and ‘family’ rests on the value that the people who fill those roles contribute to one’s life. A businessman cannot afford to promote an employee to a position of importance in his organization which outweighs that employee’s worth to the company. So, too, no man can afford to promote a chance acquaintance to a disproportionate position of importance within his own life. The objective measure of the success of his business is monetary profit, the value created by the practical implementation of his business philosophy. The objective measure of the success of his personal life is happiness, the value created by the practical implementation of his personal philosophy.

Rearden does not, however, initially adhere to parallel philosophies in his business and private life. Instead, Rearden follows a diametrically opposed moral code in his private affairs. His brother Philip, his wife Lillian, his mother, his “friend” Paul Larkin…these characters all represent the philosophical opposites of who should fill those roles were Rearden’s values applied consistently in both modes of his life.

Philip is devoid of ambition and produces nothing. He lives only to beg resources off others for the sake of others. He is an empty vessel, a conduit to be used by other men. He takes no pleasure in his existence nor deserves it. He has so little integrity that he has the audacity to undermine the brother who has supported him without complaint, to accept his money but condemn his character. Rearden would not even consider him for the job of a cinder sweeper, yet he considers him worthy of the title “brother”. Rearden would not even let him inside his mills, yet he allows him into his home and supports his every endeavor.

Lillian taunts Rearden with her sex. She uses it as a weapon to disarm him and to break him with guilt. Rearden is tortured by his own sense of guilt and hypocrisy every time he succumbs to her wiles. Yet he does not recognize that the source of the guilt is not the act of sex itself, but the act of sex with someone so completely devoid of any of the values he holds dear. His relationship with Dagny is the one truly worthy of the title “wife” but he does not recognize this inversion for what it is—that he has made the whore his “wife” and the woman who should be his wife into a whore.

His mother, completely dependent on her son for subsistence can do nothing but condemn him for the virtues which enable him to support her. His childhood “friend”, Paul, is simply someone he happened to know as a child and now is still somehow a friend despite the fact that there is nothing Rearden can conceivably respect him for and that he actively works against Rearden’s interests. Among these characters who hold the highest titles of honor in his life—friend, wife, mother, brother—not a single one is deserving of any respect. If his highest ideals are indeed frugality, integrity, honesty, and ambition, then Dagny should be his wife and Francisco D’Anconia should be his best friend. Yet those who scorn everything he believes in are his most valued relationships and he must view with contempt those who most closely reflect his own values.

Rearden is guilty of a terrible sin, a gross error of judgment. As Francisco tried to warn, "You're guilty of a great sin, Mr. Rearden, much guiltier than they tell you, but not in the way they preach. The worst guilt is to accept an undeserved guilt—and that is what you have been doing all your life. You have been paying blackmail, not for your vices, but for your virtues. You have been willing to carry the load of an unearned punishment—and to let it grow the heavier the greater the virtues you practiced” (421). Rearden’s willing acceptance of blame for pursuing his highest values has chained him to a philosophical system which will mean his destruction. He has accepted that the values that make him an excellent businessman, an inventor, and an entrepreneur are values which also make him a vile and loathsome human being. He has accepted a false dichotomy which states that productive activity which supports and enriches your existence is evil and that the only good is to support the lives of others. He has accepted the rule which condemns the fulfillment of one’s own desires but praises the fulfillment of the desires held by others. To the exact proportion that Rearden excels in his work, he is evil in his life. This is Rearden’s central error, the one that turns his life upside-down, that tortures him throughout his marriage, that tortures him throughout his affair with the only woman he has ever truly loved, and that eventually forces him to turn over his life’s work and greatest achievement, Rearden Metal, to a thankless mob of thugs as impudent as they are undeserving.

Then, Rearden realizes the weakness of his enemies. That weakness is that they have no power over him except what he has conceded. His sanction is necessary for them to continue their deception. His validation of their moral code is essential to enable them to brand him immoral. Once Rearden withdraws his sanction and aligns his personal moral code with his professional one, he removes the only device by which he could be chained, his own sense of guilt. Guilt is only possible to someone who has virtues, who feels that they have betrayed those virtues and sacrificed a greater value to a lesser one. By removing his acceptance of the slanders against him, he removed the ability of his enemies to pressure him with the guilt he had willingly accepted. By refusing to allow his virtues to be branded as vice, he was at last set free to feel his full worth, to embrace the self-esteem which had been rightfully his to claim from the very first. He was free to embrace his ethical peers as friends and to truly love them selfishly. With that simple realization, he was also set free of the world of decay. For him, the doors of Atlantis were at last opened and his place in the world of the future secured. That simple realization was that one’s virtues really are virtues and that it doesn’t matter who says differently. The only true measure is in one’s own happiness, the profit of a virtuous life.

Why Do People Still Not Get It?

I received the following question that someone sent to my YouTube channel: bakukenshin, and I thought it fit in nicely with the topics on this blog.

"What do you think of people who have read Ayn Rands books but refuse to believe in or accept the philosophy of Objectivism? Are they simply refusing the ability of the mind or are they afraid of the idea of being responsible for their own decisions? Or does it just go against too much of what they have been "taught"?"

My response was as follows:

I think there are several reasons why people could read her books and not accept the entire philosophy of Objectivism.

1. Most people read a book and they pick and choose what they like about it and what they don't like. Most of the time this coincides with values that they have already decided upon. So a lot of people take Objectivism piecemeal, which results in a lot of what you can see in the Republican party. That is a lot of people who try to push for capitalism and free markets (at least when they're campaigning) but at the same time pushing to restrict civil liberties (such as with the anti-abortion movement, domestic surveillance, etc.).

2. To accept Objectivism, people need to accept three basic premises. Reality is. Existence exists. Consciousness is conscious. Unfortunately most of the gatekeepers to modern philosophy (professors, novelists, poets, scientists, etc.) have been indoctrinated in and come to believe the opposite of at least one of these. Since these are axioms, unless they realize that there is no way to disprove these premises without using them, then they cannot be expected to accept them. In order for someone to change their mind on axiomatic propositions they need to start from the standpoint that reason is the final arbiter of their viewpoints, that they cannot resist what their senses and the rules of logic tell them simply based on their feelings or a priori assertions. But, if they accept that already, then they are already half way to Objectivism anyway.

3. The philosophy of Objectivism isn't self-evident. The reaction of many new objectivists when they've decided to accept it, is to assume that because they read Ayn Rand's works and it makes sense to them, that it must therefore automatically make sense to everybody. Unfortunately, this would be a mistaken assumption. Everybody starts from a different starting point. Some people have devoted a lot of time thinking seriously about fundamental philosophical questions. Some people have not. Even among seriously committed thinkers, it took a long historical tradition starting with Aristotle leading up through the founding of America and it took Ayn Rand's genius building on all that to bring the various threads of history into sharp enough focus to formulate Objectivism. Some people just make some honest mistakes along the chain of abstraction.

4. Some people know better and are consciously malevolent enough to deny it anyway. But be very careful before jumping to conclusions about who you place in this category. Sometimes I think Objectivists need to understand their own philosophy better before they start leaping to judgments about others.

I think it's a little like teaching someone a skill at which you are highly proficient, but the person you're teaching isn't. Like your native language for instance. You don't even think about it. But try teaching it to someone who only knows Chinese. You quickly find out that you have to know things about the structure of your language at a much more detailed level than you'd ever have dreamed of having to worry about before. More importantly, the process of clarifying your thoughts, so as to better present them to others, teaches you things about your own mode of thought and helps you understand your beliefs better than before.

If you seriously teach any subject for a significant period of time, you will understand that subject in a fundamentally different way than if you had just accepted that you knew it and left it at that. I think this is true of math, English, art, and especially philosophy. If you want to truly understand why people don't get it, and understand better just what it is that makes sense to you, then try to think about how you would explain it to someone, calmly and clearly. Try to talk to people about it. Try to teach it. Through this process of discussion, through refining your arguments, through thinking about the points people raise in opposition, you will come to understand the philosophy that much better. And you will have a much clearer image of what it represents, and which people are the ones who should truly be morally condemned. But remember, in these discussions, if you find yourself losing your temper, resorting to insults or irrational tactics or agencies, then you've already lost. You need to accept that when it happens (as it inevitably will), go back and rethink it through.

Objectivism is ultimately understanding yourself. You have to start there. And it can be the hardest place to start. Especially when you're wanting to rush out and change the world. But it is central. After all, that's where everything in Ayn Rand's philosophy begins.

I hope this helps somewhat. I know it didn't exactly address the question as you stated it, but I, too, am struggling with the line between people who are mistaken and people who are consciously evading truth. So, until I reach a conclusion on that, I like to recommend caution before leaping into judgments on people. It can be tempting, and it can be difficult to see the distinction. (This by the way is the very issue that led to the split between Kelley and Peikoff and why the "The Atlas Society" and "The Ayn Rand Institute" aren't on speaking terms.) The above is my best attempt to deal with it myself. Read as much as you can on the philosophy, both the good and the bad. Don't get sidetracked on following any one person's interpretation. Remember the most important perspective is your own. Try to form it in as balanced and rational a way as possible.

--I think the only thing I can add to this right now is in this prior blog post here. I am still very interested in the opinions of other practicing objectivists. If anybody has an opinion on this matter please feel free to post your comments.

Best premises,
American Anti-theist

In Mourning for America

Do the math:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-budget7-2009may07,0,4310621.story

A 3.55 trillion dollar budget....17 billion dollars in budget cuts...a deficit of 1.2 trillion dollars...

Now, seriously....any investor....any one sitting at home doing their finances, would they seriously think that these numbers are acceptable? When you're in debt, do you spend more hoping that you'll magically bring in increased revenues somewhere down the line? Do you buy 2 new cars, a GM and a Chrysler with the hope that if you give them some money, they may give you a job, or a raise? Does it make any sense to increase debt beyond our ability to pay it back? If you're in business, do you expand your company's operations when sales are down? If you're managing a household, do you go on a luxurious vacation, when the creditors are knocking at the door?

No, of course not. Anyone who did that would be at least grossly irresponsible, and possibly insane. Does it justify it any more to demand that our children and our children's children, that generations, yes, generations of our descendants will have to pay for these excesses? Doesn't that make it all the more evil, to assign debt to those who have no say in the matter, to burden them with an obligation to feed our folly? Is it satisfying to mark our children with the mark of Obama's breed of original sin?

This madness seems to know no bounds. I do not see a bright future for America until a significant libertarian presence is felt in Congress and the White House. As such, I've darkened the background of my page to reflect the feeling that America has entered a dark age of decline. Hopefully the grassroots efforts of advocates of liberty across the nation will one-day be enough to lift this blinding curtain of self-righteousness and end the orgy of self-immolation which is the American politic.

Just think of it, and does it make any sense:

$1,200,000,000,000 deficit
- $17,000,000,000 budget cuts
=$1,183,000,000,000 remaining deficit

....Just what kind of difference is Obama making?

A Proposal for a Rational Code of Morality

I was just sorting through some old papers and ran across this thought experiment I wrote up almost 10 years ago. At the time I didn't understand objectivism anywhere near as I do now and was still rather tolerant of religious beliefs. At the same time, I was already very libertarian in my political beliefs. I'm posting this, not because I see it as the final word on morality or anything. On the contrary, I'm sure there are more than enough flaws...especially in my all too brief assessment of epistemology. However, I think it still raises some interesting points, and a novel way of thinking about moral decisions. Anyways, if you're interested, you can check it out here:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddt4f3w9_4hmscz7hk

As always, please let me know what you think of it. Good or bad. And then we can discuss it.

Best premises,
American Anti-theist

It's Your Life

Your life is your property. It's not mine. It's not your neighbor's or your spouse's. It's not your God's, your preacher's or your governor's. It does not belong to Barack Obama any more than it belongs to Kim Jong Il. And if it doesn't belong to Obama, it surely doesn't belong to Sarkozy or Brown or Medvedev or any of the other supposed leaders of this world who keep yapping at our heels to give more and more, to sacrifice ourselves to the lowest common denominator, to abandon our independence and enslave ourselves to a self-proclaimed new world order which seeks only to compound the problems of today by magnifying them tomorrow.

The argument has always gone that we haven't done enough. What if we've already been doing too much? What if the smug certainty of our politicians is actually misplaced? After all, are they economists? Are they historians? Are they philosophers? How deeply have they thought about the current crisis? Or are they simply parroting what their economics advisors, steeped in Keynesnianism have told them? Are they simply parroting what their philosophy teachers steeped in Kant have told them? Are they simply parroting what their law professors steeped in moral relativism have told them?

The root issue, the key, the crux upon which the entire scope of the major problems in the world today hinge is one pivotal issue: Do you have the right to your own life? Ask any proponent of central banking. Ask any advocate of public education. Ask any idealogue who advocates any social program where the fundamental and underlying premise is that your life belongs not to you, but to the state and that the state has the right to your life, that they have the right to do anything they want to you as long as they have the blessed "mandate of governance". Ask these people, "Do you have the right to your own life?" Ask them. And they will evade and dodge, and badger, and become indignant. But if you can actually get them to answer that question straight out, the answer will be "No". I've seen this many times, the desperate scramble to evade answering a simple yes or no question. Also, the horror of that single-syllable answer.

Because what does it mean if you do not have the right to your own life? It means that noone does. It means that anyone can be dealt with by others in any way. It means, in effect, that there is no objective standard by which to conceive of justice. It means, in effect, that there is no objective standard by which to conceive of morality.

But there is an objective standard of morality: your own life. What makes it harder to survive as is befitting a human being--this is the evil. What makes it easier to survive as is befitting a human being--this is the good. Life and Death are the simplest moral choices at the base of one's morality. Do you want to live? Or, do you want to die? If you decided to live, then all the things which make that life worth living become values to you. Your children, your family, clean air, and water, working hard to reap the products of that work to gain food and clothes for your family, so that they can live and generate life and so on. Life is an end in itself. Happiness is the consequence of a moral life in that the moral life optimizes one's realization of life. As one philosopher put it, "Happiness is enough to make life desirable and lacking in nothing." But the same philosopher also said, "The unexamined life is not worth living."

Happiness is not achieved by range of the moment actions, based simply on the arbitrary desires of the moment. Happiness is only attainable by examining the consequences of a plan of action over the span of one's entire life. It does not mean a state of prolonged and constant euphoria. It means self-esteem, self-respect, and the contentment that comes from honest living.

But implicit in the realization of happiness is that you are free to decide how your life shall be lived. Implicit in the realization of morality is that you be free to be moral. If you are not free to decide what ideas to support, to dispose of the fruits of your labor as would best suit your personal self-interests, if, in short, you are not free to work for your own good, then you are not free. If you are not free, you cannot be happy. If you are not free, you cannot be moral or immoral. If you are not free, then you are only a slave. If you do not have a right to your own life, then you are only a slave. If nobody has a right to their own lives, then everybody is a slave to the majority opinion holder of the moment and everyone must live in fear that the next majority wave of opinion will target them as the scapegoat to be sacrificed to the mob.

The founders of the United States of America understood this interconnectedness of happiness, freedom, morality, economy, and politics. The one failing was that they compromised on the moral principles and sought to justify the American system on altruistic grounds, on the principle that the justification for such a system is the good of the many. The true justification of the American system is that it rests not on the good of the many, but on the good of the one--you and what is good for you, yourself. Human rights cannot be held by any collective, because any collective is simply a group of individual human beings. If individual human beings do not have rights, then the group also has no rights. Human rights are inalienable, they are independent of the will of the mob, or of individual power holders. Thus, in the American system, political power holders must subordinate their actions within the limits proscribed by the doctrine of human rights. Conversely, American citizens should be free to do whatever they like unless it is expressly prohibited by a doctrine of human rights.

To adhere to a doctrine of human rights is to constrain the politicians and to liberate mankind. To reverse this is to turn politicians into Gods and humanity into slaves.

Your life is your property. If there are no property rights, there is no right to life. If you surrender your right to life, it is the same as committing suicide, a long slow suicide where the killing stroke will come at an arbitrary time and an arbitrary place. If you surrender your right to life, you surrender all the values that come with it. Justice, Freedom, Security....you cannot have one without the others.

Don't surrender your right to life any longer. Demand that the government commit to a doctrine based on the rights of the individual as opposed to the right of mob rule. Instead of forming increasingly expansive world governmental organizations, demand that the governments at home recognize individual rights and act to preserve them. There is too much lip service to rights, and too much sacrifice of them on the altar of a vague and unspecified "good" which we will never see, and our children are expected to slave to pay for. Enough of the political expediency of cake today, and poverty tomorrow. Enough of the sacrifice of the generations to come for some unseen benefit today. Demand your freedom and your rights. Demand the right to hold property, to dispose of it as you will. Demand the right for you to run your own life. Demand that your life is your own and noone else's to arbitrarily dictate to. Demand your right to yourself.

And if you hold that you do not have the right to your own life....kill yourself, and get out of the way of those who want to live.

The Communists Have Landed

I have to say that I am weary of looking in the news and seeing socialist / communist rhetoric spewing forth from Lord Obama and his cronies. Not only is the government buying out US companies on the cheap (a de facto nationalization strategy as illustrated by act such as this: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aqOyfIA14XQ8&refer=us ) but the very question of the propriety of nationalization is a total non-issue in the current political discourse. All that the so-called defenders of capitalism can do is equivocate on the practicality of doing so. All they can do is equivocate on the potential harm to the people. Nobody at all seems to be concerned with whether such action is morally right. Nobody at all seems to remember a little thing like human rights, rights which our nation was supposed to believe are INALIENABLE. Admittedly, most of Obama's supporters probably don't even recognize what the word inalienable even means, much less what the concept of human rights entails. No, they equate rights with an open-ended hunger. Their concept of rights is an infinite demand on what they percieve as a mystically infinite supply of naturally growing wealth. Shake the tree all you want, there'll still be more fruit on it tomorrow, right? But they don't seem to realize that if you cut down the tree, haul it over into your yard and prop it up against a shed--it will not yield fruit next year.

Now, don't get me wrong, I thing Wagoner was a fruitcake. He went crying to the government for help, and sure enough they gave him the help he so desperately deserved--a solid kick in the ass. But the point is that the free market would've sent Wagoner packing anyways and without sacrificing taxpayer money and without setting a dangerous precedent for the arbitrary government nationalization of American industries. Let the idiot CEOs fail, let the brilliant ones prosper, and let us all work to fill the jobs created by the ingenuity and excellence of the very best productive minds around us. The only jobs a government can provide are those which enable it to file, index, sort, encage, punish, and monitor the rest of us. This is because a government's sole function is to maintain and enforce the rule of law. All it can do is threaten, fine, and imprison people. A government doesn't create wealth. It produces nothing of value. It's function is to maintain an environment where people are free to produce freely. By constraining that environment, by bringing it's legislative violence into the private sector, the government in effect becomes a totalitarian force with it's eyes and hands on everybody's life, and the net result is that people are not allowed to be as efficient as they could be were they simply allowed to pursue their own happiness.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness used to be more than just words, they were a dream and an ideal worth fighting for, worth dying for, and more importantly--worth living for. And yet we find ourselves tied down in an age where the last flailing remnants of American idealism are being skinned alive, where the stillborn dream of an American society was sacrificed on the altar of "God and Society" with the self-defiant neurotic cry "For the good of the many!" What is America with no right to one's own life? What is America without the freedom to know your own mind and to act upon the values you decide for yourself? What is America without the moral conviction that one's happiness is an end in and of itself, that one's values have value, that one's dreams mean something? Those dreams mean something, Damn it! They mean something because they are fragile and isolated and occur only fleetingly in the minds of individual men and women all over the Earth. Those dreams that become generators. Those dreams that become companies. Those dreams that become the lifeblood of those who couldn't dream as well or as hard or as thoroughly. Ideas mean something, and the more fragile and fleeting, the more precious those ideas become.

The laughing dreams of children do not have to become the discarded carcasses of compromising adults. For the sake of us all, for your own sake, and for the sake of decency, don't sell out the American dream for a smile and a handshake and the burning coals of "good intentions". Vote libertarian or Vote for Ron Paul in the next election. Protest, speak out, scream out for Obama to stop his systematic, methodical butchering of the human spirit.

Ascension's Gate Part III: Full Circle

Here's the completion of Ascension's Gate. If you'd like to check out Parts I and II, or my other art projects, please check out my YouTube channel:

http://jp.youtube.com/user/bakukenshin



http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=rWT5CJjy1W0

A Decisive Argument Against Religion

This is a video posted by YouTube objectivist Nelapidae. He presents a stunningly clear, precise and cutting argument against faith. Enjoy:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQefreiEQOA

Ayn Rand: Atheist and Advocate of Reason

Here's a nice little collage of clips of interviews where Ayn Rand expresses her views on religion. I wish there were more guests like her on talk shows today.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GS6vxb4H3M

McCain: Hypocrisy in Action

And if there was any doubt about McCain's trustworthiness or moral integrity, well, this should settle it. Please watch the Before and After videos that follow:

BEFORE



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbNImNX8Xuw

AFTER



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8KZpsp04XM

Lara Logan: A Rare Integrity

I live abroad and so I must admit that I'm probably behind on a few things, but I ran across this video on YouTube and this reporter impressed me with her carriage. I rarely see reporters nowadays who express convictions or who seem to be dedicated to rational discourse in the way Lara Logan does. I'll be following up on her work from now on. Enjoy :)



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I420_fPM2E

Daniel Dennett: Hypocrite and Fool

First of all, and despite the inflammatory nature of the title, I would like to say that I came to Dennett's work with a relatively open mind. I had seen some of his lectures on YouTube and I had heard about his advocacy of atheism. He seemed to be a relatively rational thinker and a proponent of similar beliefs. I was wary of his advocacy of meme theory, but nothing in his mainstream presence suggested any hint of what I was to find when I started reading his latest book, my first and last Dennett work, Breaking the Spell.

I thought Dennett might be a safe bet because he comes highly recommended by Richard Dawkins. While I disagree with Dawkins' advocacy of socialist politics and his own claims to meme theory, it has always struck me that Dawkins' attachment to memes is more of a kin to humoring an interesting analogy as opposed to seriously proposing it as a foundation for rational debate. He introduced it in The Selfish Gene, a work otherwise highly commendable for its astute and forthright explanation of evolutionary theory. But after reading Dennett's work, I am forced to reevaluate my estimation of Dawkins' intellectual honesty as well. I will give him the benefit of doubt and withhold my judgement till I have further explored Dawkins' works. As for Dennett....he embodies everything that I feared would happen in the world of philosophy when I first encountered Dawkins' suggestion.

Dennett tries to sell his book as an attempt "to investigate religion in a scientific manner". Now, I am an anti-theist, which means that I not only do not believe in any god or supernatural presences, powers, or forces whatsoever, but it means that I think such beliefs are fundamentally harmful to humanity and destructive of science and progressive humanistic thought. In this sense, I mean "progressive" as in advancing in a beneficial manner and "humanistic" as in pertaining to the notion that the lives of human beings should be the standard and focal point of philosophic enquiry. I came across Dennett as one of the so-called "Four Horsemen" of modern atheism, the others being Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens. It is in fact the recent spate of media coverage in recent years that drew me to start investigating their works, and Dawkins' own sense of consciousness-raising that inspired me to start this blog as an expression of my own beliefs.

Harris, while his arguments against religion are indisputable, leaves much to be desired when he starts to argue for anything. He tends to convey the impression that his assertion is sufficient to justify any demand on our moral judgments and seems quite confident that the majority of his atheist peers are as hopelessly liberal as he is. While he rightfully condemns moral relativism, he unwittingly falls into the trap of being a moral relativist, as he argues in defense of torture. This is an issue which it is impossible to defend morally unless one assumes that one party is always in the right simply for the reason that it is one's own. He blatantly ignores that if one is to relinquish the moral high ground by engaging in the debased tactics of one's moral rivals, that one sacrifices the grounds from which such one-sided moralizing can be justified in the first place. Harris seeks to undermine the universality of human rights and his argument is half-based on assumptions of some vaguely stated moral solidarity with the American vox populi.

Dawkins, as I have already stated, is at his best when he is addressing his speciality of biology and evolutionary theory. Especially as the only pure scientist of the four, this is to be expected. However, as I have also argued elsewhere on this site, Dawkins is comitted to a form of socialist politic which ignores many of his own conclusions. But I see this contradiction stemming from only the slightest of moral misdirections, his lingering attachment to christian morality and his desire to force it into biology so as to rationalize his view of morality in a world that cannot logically accommodate it. But his attachments to Harris who favors torture and now Dennett who is much worse, seriously demand that Dawkins philosophical work be scrutinized more closely. That is a task which I must regrettably leave for later. I also have not yet had the opportunity to investigate Hitchens' work closely, but that, too, will be addressed in due time.

No, the topic at hand is Dennett and his book Breaking the Spell. What it should be called is Hail the Meme and Other Unsubstantiated Assertions. I could not get more than one third through this book before I became physically ill for trying to choke down the slew of outrageous propositions he tries to foist on the reader. A book, I might add, for which Dennett says, "a reader-friendly flow for a wider audience was more important than the convenience of scholars."

Certainly scholars should have nothing to do with this book whatsoever. Of course the first two chapters deal with relatively innocuous subjects like why we should investigate religion and whether or not scientific investigation is appropriate to or capable of the task. It is the third chapter, "Why Good Things Happen" that starts to rank of shoddy (or perhaps even consciously deceptive) reasoning. I was left wondering that if this is the best Tufts has to offer in the realm of philosophy, perhaps Tufts is not quite worthy of the respect it has been accorded.

The reason is memes. Unlike Dawkins' scientifically cautious approach to the concept of memes, Dennett charges head-on taking all sorts of wild conjectures for granted. I quote:

"If boatbuilders or potters or singers are in the habit of copying old designs "religiously," they may preserve design features over hundreds or even thousands of years. Human copying is variable, so slight variations in the copies will often appear, and although most of these promptly disappear, since they are deemed defective or "seconds" or in any event not popular with the customers, every now and then a variation will engender a new lineage, in some sense an improvement or innovation for which there is a "market niche". And lo and behold, without anybody's realizing it, or intending it, this relatively mindless process over long periods of time can shape designs to an exquisite degree, optimizing them for local conditions."

...The italics are Dennett's....the confusion is mine.

First of all, as a linguist, I cannot help but notice that Dennett strategically uses the passive voice to avoid betraying who or what it is that is acting upon the design process of boats and pots and songs. He also strategically places these "customers" in the circumstance of the phrase. An approach that those familiar with Halliday's functional grammar will recognize as being extremely useful for hiding the impact of a participant or obfuscating their role almost entirely. The fact that Dennett is desperately trying to obscure is that boats do NOT design themselves. That the process of copying or innovation is something which is consciously decided by human minds, by active participants in their own existence, by active participants in the contents and products of their own minds.

But to state that humans actually DO something would be to give up the game and declare from the start that what he intends is ludicrous tripe. In fact, in order to substantiate even the possibility of his beloved memes, Dennett must beg the question by first assuming that there is no such thing as free will, as self-modification of one's mental structure, as the ability to choose which ideas one accepts and which ideas one rejects and which ones and how one modifies. Dennett must use the passive voice to obscure these facts because when they are placed directly next to the assertions he draws, it becomes obvious that what he is saying isn't worth the paper on which it is printed.

Again I quote: "Here we have the design of a human artifact-culturally, not genetically transmitted-without a human designer, without an author or inventor or even a knowing editor or critic."

THIS of boatbuilding. Where, one is forced to ask, would Dennett be if there was not some convenient boat to copy? Presumably he would be up the creek without a paddle, because he has already dismissed the possibility that somebody could conceive of a new idea and create a paddle much less a boat to carry him. Without a human designer? How could a boat come to be without a human designer? I am really forced to wonder if not only Dennett but his editor and publisher were not all smoking crack when they were going over this drivel.

If only because they permitted Dennett to start from this rather dramatic and unsubstantiated assumption and progress to "make a point that should be uncontroversial: cultural transmission can sometimes mimic genetic transmission, permitting competing variants to be copied at different rates, resulting in gradual revisions in features of those cultural items, and these revisions have no deliberate, foresighted authors."

No authors? Who is supposedly making these cultural artifacts if not human beings? Of course Dennett has already decided that humans have no free-will or control of their consciousness, so naturally they cannot be an active participant in the creation of anything. Dennett sees some undefined class of artisans who mindlessly copy designs passed down by some mysterious and undefined source and who copy even mistakes mindlessly without appraisal with no judgment whatsoever as to the content of that work. One is forced to question whether this isn't what Dennett truly hopes that humanity is and is desperately trying to substantiate it as opposed to truly scientifically investigating human nature at all.

He then moves on to try and appropriate linguistics to substantiate his 'meme-ological' musings. Language is well-understood to be a characteristically unique cognitive function. The interrelationship between language and thought is anything but a settled issue. And strong versions of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis have been almost thoroughly ruled out by rigorous scientific study. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis basically states that our cognitive functions are influenced by our language. The strong form of this theory would imply that a person's cognitive processes are defined by their language. Theoretically, this would mean that a person cannot conceive of ideas that are not encoded in the language. This is clearly not true, as new words are coined to accommodate new concepts and inventions as they are introduced into the environment. This is a major factor which drives the invention of words, something that Dennet ignores completely. By saying that language evolves itself without any conscious modification, he is ruling out the participation of the actors, the ones who actually voice and write language, us, the human beings.

"On even rarer occasions," he says, " individuals may set out to invent a word or a pronunciation and actually succeed in coining something that eventually enters the language, but in general, the changes that accumulate have no salient human authors, deliberate or inadvertent."

?!

How would Dennett then explain the invention of words like "computer", "robot", "bug", "virus" or the slew of technical computer-based terminology which inundates us today? The invention of these terms was not an outgrowth of already extant phrases that somehow "evolved" through the accumulation of minor changes via the reproduction process and limited by natural selection. These were terms and senses that sprang out of their functional necessity, out of the emergence of new objects which had previously not existed. Objects, machines, devices, which were created, not out of some natural process, but by the dedicated application of human thought to solve real problems in a real universe, not in some magic fantasy land of actorless dynamics like the foggy cloud of disembodied determinism gone mad that rattles around Dennet's echoing chamber of a cranium. Changes in the existential universe mandated changes in language. So, too, changes in modes of thought, changes in our understanding of things have always mandated changes in our language. Language and cognition are intricately intertwined.

However, even though the words we use, through the influence of things like accent, can produce an almost evolutionary shift in language so that German becomes English or Latin becomes Portuguese, the concepts expressed by language remain steadfastly connected to ultimately concrete descriptions of the world around us. As such, the word's meaning does not change as much as Dennett would like us to think. Perhaps words can be shifted to mean things that they were not originally intended to mean, like "gay" or Dennett's pet term "bright". But when they do so, the concepts (for as long as they remain valid concepts in human knowledge) will engender the birth of new phrases which are then needed to express potentially ancient concepts which have been left unheralded by the detachment from the word which had previously served that function.

"Cat" may be "gato" or " neko" or any number of words in any number of languages, but a cat is still a cat, no matter which language you're speaking. And it doesn't take a genius to see that a word is very different from a boat. So, one once again wonders why Dennett doesn't realize this.

After becoming physically ill at this point from trying to understand how someone could present such a mishmash of arbitrary assertions which contrast so starkly with physical reality, I decided to cut to the chase and read Dennett's proffered Appendix which is a reproduction of his article "The New Replicators" originally published in the Encyclopedia of Evolution from Oxford University Press. It was hoped that reading something a bit more technical could help dispell some of Dennett's own mumbo-jumbo.

Unfortunately, fully dissecting that would take another post almost as long as this one, and it would simply be a reiteration of the arguments I have already presented. To sum it up, while accepting that there is no basis in physical reality for the existence of memes, he claims that they are simply because they are possible. However, their very possibility once again assumes that people do not have free-will or active control over the contents of their own minds or the products of their labor. In short, it assumes that ideas are generated by the very processes that would need to be established to prove the existence of the process proposed. If this circle of logic makes you dizzy, then you can sympathize with the motion sickness I got while reading Dennett's book in my living room.

Perhaps Dennett is happy ruminating on his prophesied day "when a cleverly turned phrase in a book gets indexed by many search engines, and thereupon enters the language as a new cliche, without anybody to read it." But if nobody reads it, it is doubtful that it can be said to have entered the language at all. At the very least, it can only be hoped that both Dennett and his abuse of human reason are not long for this Earth. Although with the support and following of so many prominent intellectuals, it may be that he will instead be remembered as the messiah of a brand new breed of totalitarian rhetoric, yet one known to readers of Ayn Rand's philosophical work as the "Aristocracy of Pull." For once you have abdicated belief in you own mind, then you will be very easy to control.

And petty hacks like Dennett have long yearned to pull the trigger in the face of humanity.

The Morality of Fairness: Objectivism and Christianity

This is a continuation of the ongoing debate I'm having with a friend of mine. To catch up on where we started from please see my blog entry here:

A Discussion of American Culture

As before, I have edited out personal references and names. I'll keep the same color coding. T is blue and American Antitheist is green.

T: I actually just finished reading a philosopher discussing "what is philosophy," and he was saying how many believe philosophy to begin with doubt. He believes, instead, that it begins, and in fact encompasses, wonder. To see the world and be caught off-guard is truly the first step of coming to understand some of it. Of course, though, in the end, the word "philosophy" itself means "love of wisdom," and not "wisdom," and so we must find our way towards something that cannot be achieved, if we take the etymology of philosophy to hold any sway at all (which I do). To hold loyalty to the truth, and not one's opinion of the truth, is the true act of the philosopher. Or at least that's how I see it. Regardless, thanks, and know that I see you in the same light. I once described your views to a Catholic friend of mine, and he asked, "You two are friends?" I laughed, and responded, "Yes, of course! We never run out of things to talk about."

I agree with what you said about my diatribe on an ad's use of the word "goddess." Of course, language changes, and the natural phenomenon of such is something that should not be regretted. Mostly. The north eastern American culture (the only one with which I am in contact at the moment) is not exactly, in my opinion, a healthy culture. It seems that for the most part reverence is given to oneself. I understand your views on the individual (or at least I think I do, correct me if I'm wrong), but "oneself" and "the individual" are two very different things. One who reveres "the individual" can look past themselves to others; a person who reveres "oneself" cannot. One of the most unfortunate effects of the growing dissatisfaction with religion in this part of the country is that very few people know how to revere anything.

I'll definitely look into Ayn Rand, regardless of her atheism or her feelings towards altruism. I've read Anthem and loved it, though Atlas Shrugged, with it's size, makes me feel like Atlas himself, haha. Has she written philosophy other than her fiction? I wouldn't mind reading what she has to say without her trying to say it in a story (though, the story is one of the best ways to get one's opinion across).

Though I agree with you on morality, I disagree that religions focus away from the "why" towards the "what." There is a rather large difference between the way in which some religious leaders act and the way that person's religion is meant to be. I will admit that there are many Christians who wish for people to "follow the rules" cause God said so. It's unfortunate in my mind that Christianity encompasses these people and ideas, but, well, humanity encompasses short sighted folks every generation, and we can't argue with a system that, in the end, does not encourage such an opinion for stupidity. I think you will probably respond to this with: "But does Christianity not support the general idea that, because a higher power demands things to be this way, then they ought to be this way?" In one way, yeah, it does, but more along the ways of "because I'm a human being I shouldn't go around acting like a dog." Religion represents in many ways the human predilection of thinking "this can't be all there is!" and directing that feeling, that hope, towards a view of humanity that is larger than the single person. Humans are animals, and we need to be fed, taken care of, etc. Yet if one only focuses on meeting one's physical needs, a person can grow rather focused on "oneself" (again, different than "individual"). Religions developed from the feeling humans have that physical needs are not all there is about life, not all there is about being a true human being. We are not beings locked in the mere environments that surround us. Most religions I've heard of understand this, and they try to remind those who listen of that fact.

I've gotten off track, haha, sorry. Back to the why as opposed to the what. I again can only speak of Christianity, but I believe religions explain more about the why than rational morality does. One can say that "to do good to your fellow man" is an important piece of morality because it solidifies society and prevents squabbling over resources (or whatever the problem might be). But one might ask, "Why is that important?" The answer would then be, "Because we don't want to get everyone in a state of fear of their neighbors, so that we can live in a somewhat peaceful fashion and not get killed." But, then again, why is peace important? Why is life important? Why is protecting one's family important. In the end, a person (any person) has to stop and say "because it is." What religion does is answers the "why" of that statement. Why is it important? What makes it important? Where does importance come from? Or rather, religions allow a person to begin to understand the answer to these questions. In the end, God is quite the mystery, and I can't think of many religions where God, The Great Cause, etc. is anything but a quest (not even in a religion that believes that Being came down and became one with our corporeal reality).

I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean in your paragraph on "fairness," but I'll see if I can say a few things about it. Any story taken out of context is rather worthless, really, whether it is used for finding happiness in one's life or a bit of laughter. Taking a story from a religious text and forgetting what comes before and after, or, really, what the very words meant to those who wrote them, is rather foolish (one of the reasons people got so upset about translating the Bible). The difficulty comes in, though, with what you're saying about where any story really comes from, or, rather, any general feeling that something is innate. Is the sense that things ought to be fair innate? I could say yes and you could say no and we could sit here with unhappy red faces, and that's unfortunately what a lot of people do, haha. I suppose, for me, my reasons come from plausibility. I ask myself what is more plausible: humanity understands innately that they will be dealt with fairly in a spiritual sense and, due to their having both a body and a soul, confuse the spiritual fairness with a physical fairness that does not exist, or do people learn it as "a function of values encoded in our society," to use your words. Well, where do those values come from? I suppose you might answer "from cultural evolution." Yet they had to have begun somewhere. I suppose they might come from a desire to retain life, to stay alive: basically from a sense of survival. Survival is an instinct, but I was already wondering in my last email about how instinct isn't an ought, it's a suggestion. I've probably dug myself a rather nice hole of supposition here, so I'll leave off this paragraph for now.

Your friend's comment on the big three monotheistic religions confuses me, though again I can only speak from a Christian perspective. I don't think Christianity is xenophobic or that it promotes violence against non-believers. In the end, yes, the Old Testament is rather xenophobic, but the message Jesus (the center of the New Testament and of Christianity as a whole) is one that breaks down barriers that had been set up by society. One of his big messages was that religious leaders are not the sole possessors of religious knowledge and that the "kingdom" that Judaism was waiting for was not a kingdom won by battle or that was to be lorded over by a high king above everyone else, but that Jesus, a poor man, was to bring everyone (and that means everyone in the world who follows the path of the spirit) into a spiritual kingdom where all are equal. This thought, developed during the middle ages (as well as before and after) split people's minds from the view that worldly power can conquer all as well as from the ethnocentric viewpoint that most cultures held. Unfortunately that process is still going on, but that is not due to any work of Christians, but the works of men who use religions to hold sway over people.

What a way to end a letter there! I can only say that I don't think his "demands" are that horrible. And I dunno about siding with Satan in Paradise Lost: though his descriptions of heaven weren't as interesting as those of hell, I certainly would rather be quite far from the petty squabbling and hierarchy of the place. And anyway, "serving" and "rule" are just outdated terminology that should be done away with. There's not much serving going on with living in tune, completely, with reality.


American Antitheist: I appreciate the anecdote about your friend's bewilderment at our friendship. I think it's because we only really differ at the very base of our assumptions, the main difference probably being reducible to your belief in religion and the religious moral structure and my non-belief in religion and my belief in an objective moral system derivable from a common reality. But even then, I'm not sure how much we differ there. Like you said, "To hold loyalty to truth, and not one's opinion of the truth, is the true act of the philosopher." This implies that we both hold that there is a common reality, an existence which exists regardless of our perception of it and about which we can investigate and determine its properties and nature. To us, therefore the major difference comes from the God premise. A universe that includes an all-powerful God has to be fundamentally different from a universe where there is none. So, the difference in this premise unavoidably alters our subsequent judgments of what is or is not possible in this testable universe. Primarily, that difference being that our standards of evidence must be somehow different.


For me to believe in something I require proof of existence. Now that proof can take various forms. Of course the most certainty comes from directly observable and repeatable experience. But obviously one can't be bothered to recreate every single experiment that has ever been done to have a secure basis for knowledge. That is why there are certain checks and balances in the world of scientific discourse which make it very hard for an idea to be adopted and make it very easy for an idea to be discarded. Theories, as such, come and go. But the basis behind that is simple. It only takes one counter-example to disprove a theory. But conversely, if a theory can provide no predictive value, or there is a lack of supporting evidence then it is equally dubious. In order for an idea to be accepted by the scientific community it must run the gauntlet of the double-blind peer review process. It must face criticism and attack from all directions. It must be able to stand on the merits of its rational discourse. And if it cannot, then it is discarded or modified as necessary until it can face such criticism. Everyone's career is at stake. From purely selfish motives, the inestimable benefit of scientific progress is distributed to all humanity to use as they wish. And having been vetted through that process, the reliability of science in our current era is greater than knowledge from any other source. This is the basis of belief from rational argument based on the scientific method.


However, I think, that to believe in God, one must put faith at a higher level than reason. That the existence is presupposed to the evidence, as there is none. Believing without evidence is a presumption that one is somehow directly privy to that which is unknown and perhaps unknowable. It means, in short, that at some stage one has to know first and then search for evidence to bolster that belief. Whereas the scientific method is to suspend belief until after one has found sufficient evidence, or to form beliefs that explain the evidence at hand. I think this is why scientific "beliefs" are prone to change more readily than religious ones. This is because the basis of belief is different. If the basis of science is fact, then beliefs must change to accommodate that which we have learned. If the basis of religion is faith, then we must hold our beliefs, despite the evidence. In short, science encourages the humility of self-correction, whereas at some level religion encourages a kind of metaphysical obstinacy.


I'm sorry for going on a tangent of sorts, but I still think it has some relevance to our current discussion, which is why I indulged myself a little to address it. I agree that morality is a code of values for humans. It has to take into account that we are not dogs. It has to recognize the nature of a human being, in all respects. It has to take into consideration, emotions, psychology, genetics, family bonds, loyalty, betrayal, desire, ambition, genius, and incompetence and so on. The problem is, does religion adequately do so? I agree that focusing purely on one's physical needs is insufficient. That, again, would be ignoring human nature, the qualities that make human beings unique, or at least unique as we understand them to be.


I disagree slightly with your distinction between "individual" and "oneself" or perhaps I'm just not clear on what that distinction is. The way I see it, the ability to look past themselves is not necessarily a good thing. One needs to include oneself in all decisions. That does not mean to turn a blind eye to the people around you. That would instead be an evasion of reality, an intentional obfuscation of the necessary facts upon which a rational moral code must be based. Objective reality is quite simply everything that is around you, everything you act upon or that tries to act upon you. To ignore oneself for the sake of others, or to ignore others for the sake of oneself are simply both sides of the same coin, they entail some level of intentional evasion of reality. A truly integrated appreciation of human social existence must take into account that neither side is something to be sacrificed for the other. The individual self is not something which should be sacrificed to others. Likewise, others are not something which should be sacrifice to oneself. The only moral basis for the interaction for people is therefore a mutually agreed exchange of values. One in which there is no coercion or threat of violence of any kind. One in which people are free to decide who they will deal with and on what terms. This is the morality of objectivism. It comes from the recognition that this IS all there is. That there is no rational basis for believing otherwise. That to believe that "this can't be all there is" is to actively suppress everything that your senses tell you, everything that the standard rules of logic and nature tell us about existence. A rational system of morality cannot spring from a source which is decidedly arbitrary in its origins.


If God is not arbitrary, if there is indeed such a being, then naturally we would have to base our moral decisions on its existence. But then the question becomes which god is the one to which we should adhere? How do we make the distinction? Are they all right? How could that be? For me it's hard enough to find a religion that is internally consistent much less one that is consistent with all other religions as well. In fact, they are as diverse as human cultures are, and as varied as language and ideology. So then, how do we know which is the truly moral path? If our decisions for morality must be based on and come from religion must we then assume that those who follow other religions are inherently evil because they follow a moral system that differs from ours? Or must we retire completely from moral judgements and say that they are all equally moral despite their differences? But if we do that, then don't we surrender the concept of morality entirely? After all if all moral systems no matter how different can be regarded as moral, doesn't the concept of morality become meaningless? Clearly, neither of us believes this. So, what then are we basing our moral judgements? What then are we deciding that this religion is moral, or that action is wrong? I am not in the least bit religious and yet I would bet that we would find similar things to be immoral.


Child molestation, murder, theft, rape, fraud, extortion....these are things which are objectively wrong. And the reason they are wrong to us, is because we recognize at some level that they are anathema to life and to the generation of life. They are facets of destruction, they kill life, ebb its luster, and threaten to darken the horizons of the future if unchecked. They attack life. They rob people of the choice to live in freedom. They rob people of the choice to decide how best they should live their own lives. They represent an imposition of an external power upon the life of the individual. No matter what one's personal religious beliefs, acts of this nature are clearly wrong. But why? Not because god says so. They are wrong because they work against everything that is held to be of value to someone who values life. They are wrong because they work against everything that it means to be a human being, to be a man among men, a woman among women. This is the why of morality, and one that I don't think is adequately explained by religion.


I'm sure that you know that there are parts of the bible which at times either condemn or extoll rape. There are parts that promote or admonish against slavery. There are areas which even condone incest and the sacrifice of children, whereas other areas would punish such things. Where then is the explanation as to why it was moral for Lot to conceive children by his daughters, or Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son? And yet Lot's wife is condemned merely for the sin of curiosity? Adam and Eve were cast from the Garden of Eden for the same sin, and yet the Bible states that before they ate the apple they did not know good from evil. So, how then could they have known that it was wrong to eat the apple in the first place? This is one of the things I refer to when I speak of the irrational demands of God upon his creation. If God is a rational, benevolent being, why would he place demands on mankind that we cannot meet by the very nature of our creation? To say it more simply, if we were created with a certain faculty for discerning reality and then we are judged based on principles which are outside the scope of that faculty, how then is this standard of judgement fair or even rational? If I were to put a steak on the ground and tell the dog not to eat it, would it make sense for me to have the dog put to sleep because it didn't understand what I was saying? The answer is no. Either I would have to be irrational or malevolent. In either case, there would be something wrong with me and not the dog. This is the reason why I say that even were there to be a god, I would still oppose him. I cannot revere that which is either malevolent or irrational. And this is also a fundamental reason why I reject the notion of religion as inherently moral or as the source of our modern morality or even our sense of fairness. Fairness is of course intricately intertwined with our notions of morality.


Which finally brings me back to fairness. What we perceive to be "fair" ultimately depends on our concept of reality and our notions of causality. It is natural to expect that if we do good things then we will have good results. The dog expects a reward for doing a trick. The child expects praise for accomplishment. Adults expect a raise for doing good work. The student expects good grades if they study properly for the test. But this is only in relation to the action that we have performed. The results of our labor directly equal the reward of that labor. What, then if we divorce the two from each other? Should the student expect good grades for helping an old lady across the street? Should a man expect a raise because he is a good father? Should a woman expect to have a successful career because she gives to charity? The problem is obvious. The problem is causation. If a person's concept of "fair" divorces the relation between ends and means, if they are perceived as isolated and unrelated events, then saying that "doing good things bring good results" means that we may expect that if we are a good person than we shouldn't get caught in earthquakes, that good people shouldn't get cancer, or that good people should all have happy joyous lives devoid of tragedy or loss. However this would be distinctly unrealistic. Unfortunately, I think this is the root of why the "conventional wisdom" is that life is unfair. The reason is that quite a lot of people hold exactly this metaphysical view. Cause and Effect are dissociated. People don't see the ramifications of their beliefs, and very often they don't see the ramifications of their actions. They think that ideals can never be attained, that perfection is impossible, that compromise with one's morals is the only way to survive. They think that if the world was fair, that people should get benefits from some unspecified benefactor for the very reason that they consider themselves to be a good person. But if this judgement is made divorced of any kind of objective measure, then who is to say that one person is good or another person is bad? In short, it means that all such judgments must be subjective and naturally from any given subjective perspective where a person simply "thinks" that they are better than the next, that person always thinks that they deserve more.


From an objectivist standpoint, however, life is fair. Eminently and unavoidably so. Of course people will still get caught in natural disasters or swept up in events beyond their control, but this has nothing to do with an objective concept of fairness. Fairness can only be conceived in a situation where "good things" and "good actions" have some causal connection. If there is no causal connection then no expectation of results is rational. For any given occurence, situation, or happenstance to be "fair" it has to have a causal relationship to something within a person's volitional control. If there is no causal relationship, then it cannot be fair or unfair, it simply is. Likewise, if there is a causal, volitional relationship and the results do not equal the actions, then we can say that the situation is unfair. But this would ultimately have to be based on our own evaluations of our work, or efforts and the results we are getting for them. Here too it is essential to be rational, otherwise such estimations become meaningless. And ultimately we must decide the terms of our interactions with other people based on our integrated concepts of fairness and value.


And once again the difference in our views of the fundamentals of the universe has led to our difference in a concept so removed as that of fairness. When you refer to the "innate" sense of fairness, or to "instinct" you are assuming that human beings are somehow pre-programmed with a moral compass of some kind. From a cosmological perspective based on God, this is completely acceptable. If we were created by God in god's image, then it isn't too far of a stretch to assume that he granted us some "sense" of right and wrong. But if we don't accept god as a given, then this begs a very serious question. I do not hold that we are programmed with morality through instinct or innate knowledge in any way. On the contrary, I think that human beings have to learn how to be moral creatures. I don't think that we are innately programmed with much of anything beyond our basic conceptual hardware. If we were programmed with morality from birth as an innate function of our existence, then the only way to explain people like Stalin or Hitler would be to chalk it up to a birth defect. And by so supposing, would it then be possible to genetically engineer out of existence immorality?I don't think so, and I would bet you would balk at that idea as well. This is for a number of reasons. First of all, where there is no capacity for choice, the concept of morality once again loses meaning. Good or evil only has meaning where there is choice. If everything is pre-determined or outside of one's control then there can be no conceivable good or evil in one's actions. It just simply is. But if you have the choice between two options, then one must usually be better than the other. In order to get from this simple decision to a whole code of morality requires quite a few steps of logical connection. However the necessary premises are only two.


1) That our perceptual hardware presents to us an image of reality as it truly is for all intensive purposes. A is A. The law of identity.


2) That we value our lives.


From this all else follows. If we value life, then death is something to be avoided. If we value life, then things which sustain and enrich that life are good. Conversely, things which diminsih or threaten that life are evil.


Why is peace important? Because if we all value our own lives, then we don't want to die. But also, if we value our own lives we may find a situation where we are forced to fight to defend that very same life.


Why is family important? It is important in that we value those people in the family. Their existence enriches ours. We value them as people. If we didn't would they then still be important? And what would it say about us if they are are decent people deserving of our respect? But conversely, what about a family which is abusive, perhaps even incestuous? Should we value the family then? Or is it more important to once again look at the individual and how that family interacts with the individual life? If we hold the life of the individual as the ultimate value, then the rest of these questions resolve with crystal clarity. A family is not a value in and of itself. Its value is dependent on the quality of people who form that family and their relationship with the individual. If they are viscious repressive and cruel, then I would say to the individual, "Flee! and never look back!" If they are, instead, supportive nurturing and in essence good, then I would say "Value that bond, and cherish those people". But the distinction is not one of need or absolute value. The family should be valued because the people who make it up represent something worth valuing to a person. But this is a value which is earned and substantiated over a long period of time. It can be just as easily lost. The mother cares for her child not because the child needs care. The mother cares for her child because she values the child. If she did not value her child and truly only cared for it because of its need, what kind of mother would she be? What kind of person? And could we truly call that good?


You see, I don't have to stop and say "just because it is". I can say "it is because I value my life. It is my ultimate value. And all the other values in that life are derivative of that ultimate value." I value people to the extent that they enrich my experience of this life. And such people I call good. To the extent that people diminish or threaten that life, they are evil. And all the others with which I have not interaction whatsoever are simply neutral, they are not either good or evil until their chosen paths of action coincide with mine for good or ill or that their choices and influence affect my life, and at such time I make the moral distinction.


This is another reason why I regard God's demands as horrible. It is because that moral decisions do not have to be an arbitrary guessing game where we try to get into God's head and think of what Jesus would do. It can make sense, and purely based on the observable facts of our existence. The supernatural is extraneous. I know what is right and wrong. And that knowledge is not based on somebody else's assertion. It is based on my knowledge of the world. If that knowledge is in error, then I must modify my knowledge, reassess the moral ramifications, whenever that knowledge must be corrected.


And finally, I feel I should address the concept of Jesus as a moral figure. I'm sorry if I may happen to offend you here, because I realize that this is getting very close to your spiritual center. Unfortunately there's no way that I can avoid the issue as it does lay right at the hub of the problem.


Jesus claimed that all people are equal in heaven. Yet, the Christian notion of equality is one that is debateable. "Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to eneter heaven" seems to be equality of a decidedly communist bent. The richer you are, the more evil. Rich and poor are not equal spiritually. And even then, what does it mean to be spiritually equal? Does it mean we are all the same? Are we all equally good? Equally bad? If so, then once again what does morality mean in a world where all are essentially of equal goodness? Perhaps it refers to the concept that we should "do unto others as we would have done unto ourselves." But is this really an adequate moral principle? What it implies is that we should treat other people in a way such as the open expectation of which is that they will treat us well. The moral principle here is that we should be good to people in the hopes that they will be good to us. That we should surrender our desires to the expectation of some kind of fair return. What then is the evil in working directly for that fair return by refusing to sell one's values short, by refusing to compromise on the open-ended expectation that people will treat you fairly. What is wrong with demanding fair treatment from the outset? What is wrong with holding one's rights as inalienable and demanding that people respect them in their dealings with you?


Why is "turning the other cheek" considered a moral principle? Doesn't this leave us at the mercy of any bully who would come to extort the fruits of our labors? Doesn't this leave us open to any kind of abuse simply for the sake of pacifism as an absolute value? Ghandi is often revered as the most devout practitioner of this tenet. Would it surprise you then to hear that Gandhi advocated that the Jews should have comitted mass suicide so as to deter the Germans from their murderous campaign and that war should have been avoided at all costs? What price in human blood and misery would such a course of action actually have entailed? What was Gandhi valuing in that instance, if not human life? The answer is rather dark. The answer is that these philosophies do not hold life as the ultimate value. They recommend that we abdicate the responsibility for our lives to an external power, they advocate that we value obedience over existence. They advocate our status in death as superior to our status in life. They advocate a successive chain of sacrifices to other men, to God, to anyone but oneself. Even to help others with an eye to helping yourself is considered bad in a way. The purest act is to do something where you have absolutely no vested interest in doing so whatsoever. That is the act of purest nobility from a christian standpoint. And to crown it all, they have selected a symbol of death and torture as the symbol of spiritual enlightenment, the cross. This is why the christian ideal is unattainable in life. This is why perfection from a christian standpoint is impossible. The reason is that we are only able to live in this life to the extent by which we contradict the ultimate extension of that code of ethics, which is death. We are immoral to the extent to which we live and live well, And we are moral to the extent to which we sacrifice ourselves to the benefit of others. Needless to say, under such a code of morality, we can only ever find ourselves in some kind of grayish middle region where we can never live up to our ideals and live well at the same time. To be perfectly moral is to be in a state of perfect sacrifice and that means death. Why are martyrs revered above the people who worked to do good things, without dying? Why is death in the service of good considered a higher value, regardless of the good done? Who actually saved more lives? Louis Pasteur? Jonas Salk? Or Mother Teresa? Who actually did more good?


And yet Christianity does not enshrine the pioneers of the germ theory of illness as the spiritual benefactors of mankind. Who is enshrined in their place? Those who sacrificed everything in their lives, even to the point of death, in the pursuit of the Christian "moral ideal". No, I do not regard Jesus as a moral figure. I regard him as a prophet of death. And I'm sorry if my words seem offensive. Please know that it is not my intent to offend you. This is truly what I think and feel. It is only through the perversion of concepts of morality, good, evil, sacrifice, charity, selfishness, and so on that our world has come to the state it is today. If you're still with me here and I haven't thoroughly turned you off by now, I would like to recommend just two sources that you may find of interest if you want to understand my way of thinking better.


One is "The Virtue of Selfishness" by Ayn Rand. In it she discusses the fundamental principles of objectivism. Especially the essay "The Objectivist Ethics".


The second is a series of YouTube videos that presents the main philosophical soliloquy from Atlas Shrugged. The videos are skillfully done, and may be easier to digest then in writing.


I've included a link here: "This is John Galt speaking..."



Hope to hear from you. I'm interested in what you would have to say.