About the best thing that can be said about Ayn Rand is that few people take her seriously. Although her books are still widely read, Rand’s pseudo-religious cult—Objectivism—is largely ignored or disdained even by the fans of her work. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case, as Alyssa Berznak relates in a heart-breaking tale of when her father fell under Rand’s selfish spell:
My parents split up when I was 4. My father, a lawyer, wrote the divorce papers himself and included one specific rule: My mother was forbidden to raise my brother and me religiously. She agreed, dissolving Sunday church and Bible study with one swift signature. Mom didn’t mind; she was agnostic and knew we didn’t need religion to be good people. But a disdain for faith wasn’t the only reason he wrote God out of my childhood. There was simply no room in our household for both Jesus Christ and my father’s one true love: Ayn Rand.
[. . .]
What is objectivism? If you’d asked me that question as a child, I could have trotted to the foyer of my father’s home and referenced a framed quote by Rand that hung there like a cross. It read: “My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.” As a little kid I interpreted this to mean: Love yourself. Nowadays, Rand’s bit is best summed up by the rapper Drake, who sang: “Imma do me.”
(Note: Berznak’s story is a prime example of why I think it is important to continue to denounce Ayn Rand. The novelist’s resurgence in popularity is due in large part to people who self-identify as Christians. The fact that otherwise sensible believers continue to support the weird cult leader is simply inexplicable to me. As Rand herself would say, you can side with her or Christ—but not both.)
April 5th, 2011 | 10:23 am
Waiting for the nuttiness to begin…
April 5th, 2011 | 11:07 am
Ayn Rand — the Jim Jones of libertarians.
April 5th, 2011 | 11:55 am
Denounce all you wish. Her readers aren’t going to care.
April 5th, 2011 | 12:05 pm
Maybe not, but some who might otherwise take her seriously might care.
April 5th, 2011 | 12:24 pm
I read her books at University. (I was also into the band Rush who glorified her writing in their songs -anyone remember “the Trees” and 2112?) If you don’t believe in God then living for yourself is as logical as any other philosophy. She acknowledged the consequence of her philosophy that the devil take the hindmost and anyone born with illness or deformity would have no claim on others. Ayn Rand was, let it be said, a good antidote to socialism of which my country had its fill in the 1960s and 70s. However, ultimately her philosophy does not chime with human life. Luckily I saw the error of my ways.
It is sad that Ms Berznak’s life has been harmed by her selfish and foolish father.
April 5th, 2011 | 12:27 pm
So we have one bad “Objectivist” dad — or maybe only a daughter who perceives him as such — and THIS is a “prime example” of why we must denounce Rand? How about the hundreds of thousands of kids who blame their Christian parents for ruining their childhoods?
This is a story, if true, of a rationalist (i.e., one who adopts ideas without understanding their relationship to reality) with a poor grasp of Ayn Rand’s ideas — and of parenting skills. Nothing more.
April 5th, 2011 | 12:36 pm
I agree with Mark. It sounds like her childhood was ruined by lousy parents, who would still be lousy if they were reading Rand, Dostoevsky, Karl Popper or Thomas Aquinas. Blaming a philosophy for one persons practice of it strikes me as trash– condemnation by anecdote not by substance, just like those Christians who cherry pick the data to prove that gays are bad parents. Neither homosexuality or Ayn Rand have anything to do with raising a well adjusted kid. Providing them with security and visibility do. I feel sorry for the author, all the more so because she’s still deflecting blame– which belongs on the man reading the books, not on the books themselves.
April 5th, 2011 | 12:40 pm
You find the tremendous celebration and support of Ayn Rand inexplicable? You are sutured into your axiom: “God Is.” You cannot imagine a healthy soul utterly free of that root belief.
So, we just send you a telegram from afar: we exist. We are happy. We thank Miss Rand as the ardent champion of life in reality, on this earth. And yes, millions take her seriously.
Note about the cited case above: Not only is this a picture from only one side of the street, as Mark wickens just noted, but you cannot hold Ayn Rand nor Objectivism responsible for the actions of any particular human being, just as you can not hold God or religion responsible for the actions of any particular Christian. Do you agree?
April 5th, 2011 | 12:43 pm
Joe:
I don’t think it is at all important to denounce Rand, at least no more so that any other set of bad ideas. Objectivists do pretty well at denouncing themselves, simply by the fact that Objectivism isn’t a “functional” philosophy, it can’t actually be lived, it doesn’t produce joyful people. In other words, you can’t argue with Objectivists, since by the end of her life Rand tended to regard disagreement as a sign of irrationality, a tendency which large numbers of her followers seem to have adopted. If you can’t argue with Objectivists, then I think it is best just to let the fruits of their ideas speak for themselves.
April 5th, 2011 | 1:05 pm
Mark Wickens This is a story, if true, of a rationalist (i.e., one who adopts ideas without understanding their relationship to reality) with a poor grasp of Ayn Rand’s ideas — and of parenting skills. Nothing more.
You can always tell a Randian who doesn’t actually know anything about Rand. The father in the story was following Rand’s ideas to their logical conclusion. He was following exactly what she taught.
Richard
Like I said, no one takes Rand’s ideas seriously.
John Donohue So, we just send you a telegram from afar: we exist. We are happy. We thank Miss Rand as the ardent champion of life in reality, on this earth. And yes, millions take her seriously.
Note to Gary Keith Chesterton: You have to wait no longer. . .
arty I don’t think it is at all important to denounce Rand, at least no more so that any other set of bad ideas.
The reason I think it is necessary is because she Rand has so many Christian supporters. If a fellow Christian were to recommend that someone read a book on Wicca because it “changed their life,” we’d recommend that they get pastoral counseling. But when someone recommends Rand’s books—which are essentially the same, just less coherent–we just shrug. We need to start calling out our own when they are helping to spread a cultish, anti-Christian philosophy.
April 5th, 2011 | 1:16 pm
Rand has only ONE merit to her philosophy.
She espouses individualism to the point of making any totalitarian collectivist movement impossible.
THAT……..is the sum total of the positive contribution of Objectivism to human thought.
The negatives are extensive and malignant.
First off……..human happiness as the standard of morality is less than a house of cards. Most people could not even truly identify real happiness if they had to, and their definition may change over time. Happiness is an EMOTION, which is insufficient as a standard for any type of real morality.
Objectivism teaches that each person is their own god and center of the universe. How destructive is that? Present day America sufficiently addresses that misguided principle.
Dostoevsky’s Kirilov states…..”If there is no God……then I am God.” I think that pretty much sums up Objectivism.
“People should not strive for happiness, even a lion gnawing on a carcass can be happy. Humans should try to establish relationships among themselves based on brotherly love.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s……Cancer Ward
Rand is nothing but a New Age re-incarnation of a pagan priestess. I’d go on…….but I consider this dead horse beaten enough.
April 5th, 2011 | 1:20 pm
Joe: I am with you on this, that Ayn Rand’s philosophy is antithetical to the human good and ought to be rejected and critiqued whenever possible. However, the young lady’s story is not the best means by which to do this. Her narrative reads like a penitent seeking absolution in a liberal confessional: “Forgive me, Father, for I said foolish things about Michael Moore’s documentary while I was a little girl.”
April 5th, 2011 | 1:25 pm
I see what you mean, Joe, but I guess I’ve never had the general sense that Rand was particularly influential among Christians. Possibly this is due to the demographics of where I live, or some other factor that makes my own experience less than generalizable, but Objectivists are rather up-front about their atheism. You couldn’t read the website of the Ayn Rand Institute, and get any other impression, for instance.
To the extent that Rand appeals to people who want to be Christians, too, my guess is that those folks are just saying “hey, I’m against big government and she is, too.” The only way you can be both an Objectivist and a Christian is to be a dilettante at one of them, and while dilettantes are irritating, its hard to see them as particularly dangerous, particularly since most Objectivists grow out of it by their early twenties, before they can do any real damage (your case above sounding like an exception to me, rather than the rule, though you are certainly right, that the folks above are deluding themselves if they think that your example isn’t Randianism followed to its logical end).
April 5th, 2011 | 1:32 pm
The father in the story was following Rand’s ideas to their logical conclusion. He was following exactly what she taught.
No, but his actions were pretty close to a Christian caricature of her ideas.
April 5th, 2011 | 1:33 pm
Actually, Christians do not take “God is” as an axiom, but as a conclusion reached from (inter alia) the observation that kinesis exists in the physical world. Granted, most folks don’t have the time for this any more than they have the time for runnning colliders in their basements, so they take the word of others regarding God and hadrons on faith. However, it has always been the case among the traditional churches that the existence of God can be known to reason.
Basically, one deduces the necessary existence of an unmoved mover (where “motion” is actually kinesis) and that such a being is necessarily purely actual. Its essence is to exist, and so is called Existence Itself (I AM). And Existence exists and cannot not exist.
April 5th, 2011 | 1:37 pm
Francis Beckwith Her narrative reads like a penitent seeking absolution in a liberal confessional
Indeed it does. I suspect Salon would have never published the article unless it had some kind of pro-liberal slant.
But I can’t help but like it because it is part of a genre you don’t see much anymore, the “I was in a cult!” confessional. When I was a kid in the early 1980s you’d see that stuff all the time. Now . . . not so much. I can’t even remember the last time I saw a Hare Krishna. Whatever happened to them?
April 5th, 2011 | 1:43 pm
re: Francis Beckwith’s comment
The drafts for Atlas Shrugged originally contained a priest character, who himself was hearing the confessions of one of the book’s main villains, but who finally rejects the villains as irredeemable.
As in, at one point, Rand specifically intended to include a confessional mode in the book, but took it out because she feared the readers might interpret this as having somehow been a sanction of religion, in some small way.
April 5th, 2011 | 2:12 pm
It is easy, and remotely plausible, to explain that this is just an incidence of an insensitive father. That conveniently ignores that the central tenet of Objectivism is self-interest.
Like the author, I grew up in a house with a father who idolized the philosophy of Rand. For a time I too embraced it. I didn’t experience trials like the author, but in lesser ways the philosophy is a stain on otherwise good childhood memories. What someone believes has profound impact on how they behave.
Over the years I’ve met many Objectivists and to date I have yet to meet one with a compassionate heart. Rand famously said that Objectivism would do nothing to prevent *you* from helping the poor. We know as Christians that service to others is our calling in life and we do well to remind believers and non-believers alike that Objectivism is part and parcel of the wide road we dare not take.
April 5th, 2011 | 2:20 pm
“Actually, Christians do not take “God is” as an axiom…” etc.
Scratch 1000 Christians and you would be lucky to find one that has deluded himself that his belief in God is a conclusion, not axiomatic. And that one person is indeed deluded. The other 999 are at least unembarrassed that their belief in God is primary, axiomatic, and on faith.
Belief in God is only on faith, and faith is an emotion. It is by definition irrational.
April 5th, 2011 | 3:22 pm
Scratch 1000 Christians and you would be lucky to find one that has deluded himself that his belief in God is a conclusion, not axiomatic.
Actually, I’ve worked with a number of Christians, and virtually all of them believe that the existence of God is a conclusion, not axiomatic. On the other hand, the Christian revelation regarding our relationship with God is somewhat different — more experiential and requiring faith.
April 5th, 2011 | 3:25 pm
I do think God’s existence can be concluded. However, I would guess, based on experience of other Christians, that most Christians’ belief in God is based on their personal experience of Him. As Kierkegaard puts it, “How can there be no God when I know that He has saved me?”
The arguments tend to arise later. I think they are for the most part successful in establishing God’s existence as a conclusion, but whether or not they are successful does not disturb the belief based on personal experience.
April 5th, 2011 | 3:59 pm
“Concluded?” Does this mean ‘proven to exist in the real world as an existent?”
It’s still one in 1000. And it is only a delusion. Objectivists are highly aware that some Christian intellectuals posture that they “arrived at” belief in God through reason. They receive heat from us because we know this to be dishonest. Attempting to construct that God is antecedent is cheating. It is the equivalent to the parlor game of “Don’t think of a 4000 pound blue mouse that can fly. Now start reflecting on what your senses tell you about the world (Reason — the non-contradictory identification of that which exists) until you come to believe in the real rational existence of a 4000 pound blue mouse that can fly.”
If I were God I’d be furious that the souls I created and incarnated on earth did not accept me as axiomatic and primary. In fact isn’t there are a Commandment, chiseled in stone by the fiery finger of God, that “you shall have nothing before Me?”
April 5th, 2011 | 4:42 pm
I read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead rather breathlessly forty years ago, although I did not become a libertarian. Recently, after seeing the trailer for the movie based on Atlas Shrugged, I started rereading the book. Was I ever disappointed! Rand’s dyspeptic view of (among other things) family relations would be laughable if it weren’t frankly risible. I stopped reading after the party at Hank Reardon’s house, roughly 1/20th of the way through.
Rand’s caricature social reality is so absurd that only a twisted ideologue can possibly stomach it–or a clueless 18-year-old, which is what I was the first time I read Atlas Shrugged.
Admirers of Ayn Rand are either hopeless ideologues or else young and stupid.
April 5th, 2011 | 5:03 pm
You know, after reading these comments, I am so proud that I’ve spent the last 2 decades educating myself.
I am so proud that I really understand reality and recognize people who hold to their own whim worship and prefer slander over dialog or wishes over productivity.
I am so proud to see clearly and be open to facts of reality and existence.
And so unmoved by those who genuinely lack a healthy relationship to the world, but I do fear those who base their lives on mystic ideals. For fantasy is a dangerous seducer, and I do morally condemn all those who hold fairytales as truths.
I am proud, very proud, to call myself and Objectivist. So help me god!
April 5th, 2011 | 5:08 pm
If I were God I’d be furious that the souls I created and incarnated on earth did not accept me as axiomatic and primary.
Well, John, you’re not God, and neither am I, and everyone here is all the gladder for it. :-)
Arguably, I created and incarnated my children, and they don’t accept me or my beliefs as either axiomatic or primary. I am not especially furious about that; if I can tolerate freedom in my children, perhaps God can tolerate freedom in his.
April 5th, 2011 | 5:16 pm
I think she was a great author and her philosophy gets far more right than wrong. I’m not much a religious believer, but not an atheist either. The problem I have with her and every really smart good (and sometimes not so good) philosophers is that they are human, which means they are sometimes full of it (with two letters in front of “it” for the less prudish readers). I’m very much an anti-cult person in this regard. I don’t care how good or smart you are; you will have your moments where you are just full of you know what. I take no philosophers’ utterances as “gospel,” just looking for any good ideas they may offer.
April 5th, 2011 | 5:22 pm
I recently read “The Fountainhead.” I was struck not only by Rand’s atheism but by her misunderstanding of capitalism. She seems to think the essence of capitalism lies in the products of genius rather than in cooperative enterprises and in marketing. Her hero, Roark, is true to his ‘art’ rather than the bottom line and can’t abide selling his skills as a product. He’s more like William Blake than he is like Adam Smith.
And the prose was terrible. Just terrible.
April 5th, 2011 | 5:26 pm
Many Objectionivists have a weak spot in their logic when dealing with children, since children often can’t be a heroic being, are ill-suited to making their own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, can’t engage productive achievement, and lack reason and so can’t make it an absolute.
And children really are absolutely necessary to any society.
April 5th, 2011 | 5:29 pm
This argumentum ad hominem is, alas, typically of Objectivists, however much they vaunt “reason.” You find it in her non-fiction works: however highly she talks up reason, her actual “argument” does not proceed from premises to conclusions but merely reiterates her views over and over and over again.
April 5th, 2011 | 6:09 pm
“They receive heat from us because we know this to be dishonest.”
Dear John Donohue: Part of the genuine scholarly life is accepting the good motives of those with whom you disagree. You cannot overthrow an argument for God’s existence by telling its promulgators that you know they don’t really mean it.
April 5th, 2011 | 6:10 pm
“I am so proud that I really understand reality and recognize people who hold to their own whim worship and prefer slander over dialog or wishes over productivity.”
Dear Sparrow: Please see previous comment to Mr. Donohue.
April 5th, 2011 | 6:53 pm
Mary: You never heard of the “Ayn Rand School For Tots”?
April 5th, 2011 | 6:56 pm
“…by telling its promulgators that you know they don’t really mean it.”
On no, wrong, they indeed ‘really mean it.’
They BELIEVE they mean it. they CONSTRUCT that their belief in God is not based on faith and was arrived at by reason. But it is just bluster and what Ayn Rand calls the Fallacy of the Stollen Concept.
There can be no such thing as a rational proof of the existence of God, based on the apriori arbitrary definition of God as being above reason, above understanding, capable of all uncaused miracles, etc.
that is why I used the term “deluded.”
April 5th, 2011 | 7:03 pm
“Arguably, I created and incarnated my children, …”
In the context I use it, souls created and possessed by God, yet incarnated by Him on earth, you did not incarnate your children. That is blasphemy.
“…if I can tolerate freedom in my children, perhaps God can tolerate freedom in his.”
So….since I am exercising my free mind and soul with no reference, belief or respect for “God”, I am good to go? There are no consequences for me?
April 5th, 2011 | 7:53 pm
I see the adoption of Rand’s method of argumentation just as I described it above: the actual “argument” does not proceed from premises to conclusions but merely reiterates the views over and over and over again.
And flat assertions like this, handed down from on high, were also a favored tactic.
Reason? Not so much.
April 5th, 2011 | 8:15 pm
I’ve always thought Ayn Rand’s philosophy was attractive to Americans generally rather than Christians particularly, maybe because Rand’s ‘happiness’ doctrine slots in with that other sacred text, concerning it’s pursuit.
Personally, I think it would have been helpful to surround both slogans with a bit more context, but that’s just me. Such texts, which seem so benign, fail for me, in that they are concerned only with what one is owed, rather than what one owes… I can’t imagine a society working well without that balance.
As to Rand, I worked in a bookshop where we had her philosophy categorised as ‘Selfish-ism’.
April 5th, 2011 | 8:37 pm
In the context I use it, souls created and possessed by God, yet incarnated by Him on earth, you did not incarnate your children. That is blasphemy.
Completely irrelevant to the point at hand, especially if someone does not believe in God: by your apparent reasoning, I would have all the more motive to be intolerant. (In any case, the Christian view is that parents are co-creators with God.)
So….since I am exercising my free mind and soul with no reference, belief or respect for “God”, I am good to go? There are no consequences for me?
I’m afraid you’re changing the topic. You originally talked about God being “furious”; not you imply that the existence of consequences for misbehavior implies God is “furious” with us.
No. My children’s misbehavior rarely makes me “furious” with them, just as it does not make God “furious” with them. All parents laugh hysterically at least on occasion at some of their children’s misbehavior, even while they impose punishment. At other times, they weep.
As for the new question, are there no consequences for my children when they act with no reference, belief, or respect for “me”? Of course not. But that doesn’t imply that I’m “furious” with them, and in fact “fury” is generally considered a sin in the Christian tradition.
April 5th, 2011 | 10:09 pm
The Salon.com piece was a silly article about a father who seemed to know nothing about what Ayn Rand actually advocated.
How refreshing it would be if her critics could actually get it right and criticize her real beliefs. For example:
“I know Rand advocated the values of reason, purpose and self-esteem, but I don’t like that. I want to be irrational and self-destructive anyway.”
I guess if you can’t pursue an argument on rational grounds, you resort to distortion. Sorry, folks: pathetic.
April 5th, 2011 | 10:27 pm
Yes, folks, you are all, according to objectivists:
Anti-mind, anti-reason, anti-reality, anti-mind, anti-reality, anti-reason!
The only thing we can do at this point is pray. I really think we are dealing with a psychological illness; I, unfortunately, was not spared from the objectivist cult in my familial relations. That absolute, hard-line, “my way or the highway,” no compromise view does wonders for solving family rifts.
April 5th, 2011 | 10:30 pm
It’s too much work to correct all of the evasions and errors made to my posts. Too pathetic, as if trying to converse with people wandering in the wilderness.
But this is of interest: “…the Christian view is that parents are co-creators with God.”
Before I would comment on this, can anyone else confirm it? in context the word “incarnate” was used. Is it true that you believe that parents co-create their children?
April 5th, 2011 | 11:23 pm
Many Objectionivists have a weak spot in their logic when dealing with children, since children often can’t be a heroic being, are ill-suited to making their own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, can’t engage productive achievement, and lack reason and so can’t make it an absolute.
If society were made up only of able-bodied healthy adults, Objectivism might be a nice plan.
But – is it just me, or does Objectivism seem to appeal most to people who have the most incentive to want to discount the importance of what they were given by others?
“I earned this. It’s mine….what? My mother didn’t have to give me anything…she chose to…I still earned it all myself….”
April 5th, 2011 | 11:34 pm
God is the Creator but uses the act of the parents to bring about children. That’s why it is called “procreation”–a “creating along with.”
According to most Christian theology, however, the physical act of the parents cannot bring about a non-physical spiritual nature. That is the work of the Creator, with Whom the parents cooperate.
April 5th, 2011 | 11:35 pm
P.S. I would agree, however, that the terms “incarnate” and “incarnation” have too much technical meaning to be used to describe the act of procreation.
April 6th, 2011 | 1:00 am
From the Ayn Rand lexicon:
First, this is an absolute nonsense straw-man argument. I can’t think of any religions or philosophers that says someone does “not have the right to exist” if they don’t give to others. This a simple-minded absolutist distortion.
Most religions do believe we have a moral obligation to help other, but because we might have a moral obligation to do what we can to help others doesn’t mean we have an obligation to give away everything. There’s a balance to be had here.
Hillel, the Elder:
And yes, some forms of philanthropy are more worthwhile than others:
Personally, I never give money to people on the street who may simply use it to buy drugs or alcohol. I give money to organizations that feed street people and provide drug treatment and job training.
Implied in Rand’s argument is that a wealthy person has no moral obligation to help the poor. That’s just garbage. we sure do have the right to say that a billionaire who gives nothing to others is a cheap bastard who deserves our contempt.
April 6th, 2011 | 2:06 am
Do Ayn Rand’s followers ever wonder why her philosophy/movement never grew beyond a small group of followers? Apparently, Rand kept excommunicating anyone who disagreed with her. She ordered Murray Rothbard to divorce his wife. He refused and left the movement. For a champion of individuality, Ayn Rand often behaved more like a cult leader. Apparently, she could be selfish but everyone else had to subordinate their own desires and interests to her whims.
Anyway, Rothbard got his justice with this hilarious sendup of Rand and her sycophants, which was performed in 1986, http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5404826610265339909#
April 6th, 2011 | 4:54 am
I once took part in an online discussion focusing in part on Ayn Rand’s work. At one point, the users tried to come up with a definition for “Objectivism”; one user suggested that Objectivism was based on the idea that “selfishness is humanity’s natural state”. Another responded, “I thought *nudity* was humanity’s natural state.”
I realized that the comparison was interesting and not inaccurate. Human beings, after all, are indeed born completely naked and completely self-centered. Also shitting ourselves.
I would be concerned about a human being who could not, or would not, learn as he or she matured to control his or her bodily functions.
I would be concerned about a human being who could not, or would not, learn the appropriateness of wearing clothing in public places.
And I am deeply concerned about human beings who cannot, or will not, learn to have reactions that range beyond a two-year-old child’s shriek of “MIIIIINNE! MinemineminemineminemineMINE!”
April 6th, 2011 | 5:50 am
Apparently, she could be selfish but everyone else had to subordinate their own desires and interests to her whims.
Funny how the people who preach the virtues of selfishness seem to object to other people resist.
Apparently some
pigserr people are more entitled to self-interest than others.April 6th, 2011 | 8:28 am
“She ordered Murray Rothbard to divorce his wife. He refused and left the movement. For a champion of individuality, Ayn Rand often behaved more like a cult leader.”
Yeah and there is a cult who developed around Murray and around Strauss. Cult-leaderism is really just a big acting out of the fallacy of “appeal to authority.” I hope Murray put his single digit two inches from her face when he left because that’s how I would react if someone told me to leave my wife (if I had one).
April 6th, 2011 | 1:49 pm
Yet another argumentum ad hominem, even in the middle of bowing out. . . still hasn’t provided any rational arguments.
April 6th, 2011 | 3:22 pm
JohnD: Belief in God is only on faith, and faith is an emotion. It is by definition irrational.
YOS
Sorry. Existence exists. Obviously, some will take that on faith. But so what? Scratch 1000 people and you’ll find most of them take particle physics on faith, too. It’s just that for most folks, it’s not necessary to reinvent the basics. They’re too busy mowing your grass, or fixing your car.
+ + +
JohnD
“Concluded?” Does this mean ‘proven to exist in the real world as an existent?”
YOS
Yes. But you may have a restricted a priori notion of “real world.” Does pi exist in the real world?
+ + +
JohnD
They receive heat from us because we know this to be dishonest.
YOS
For someone who claims to be an evidence-based rationalist you seem to take a lot on faith.
+ + +
JohnD
If I were God I’d be furious
YOS
We all heave a sigh of relief.
+ + +
JohnD
There can be no such thing as a rational proof of the existence of God…
YOS
And you have a Gödelian proof of this nonexistence of a proof? Or is this something else that you simply believe on faith?
JohnD
…based on the apriori arbitrary definition of God as being above reason, above understanding, capable of all uncaused miracles, etc.
YOS
This is weird. Elsewhere, I had an extended conversation with an atheist who denied the existence of causation. (He did so in order to deny a first cause.) So which is it to be?
Fortunately, the rational proofs do not start with an a priori definition of God. As previously noted, they start with the existence of motion in the world, with the ordering of efficient causes, with the existence of laws of nature, and so forth. They conclude with the necessary existence of a being whose attributes are indistinguishable from those attributed to God. (And quite different from those attributed to Zeus, Thor, or Flying Spaghetti Monsters.)
Once reason has gotten you to a being of pure act, the rest follows like toppling dominoes. A being whose essence is to exist is Existence itself. And “Existence exists, and cannot not exist.”
PS Miracles are not “uncaused.” They are caused by God, just as electromagnetism and gravity and all the rest.
+ + +
JohnD
But it is just bluster and what Ayn Rand calls the Fallacy of the Stollen Concept.
YOS
That reads like what John Searle called the Give-it-a-Name Fallacy. Presumably, Rand spelled “Stolen” correctly, but no wonder she is seldom if ever taught in philosophy departments. Why settle for Rand when you can go straight for Nietzche?
+ + +
JohnD
In the context I use it, souls created and possessed by God, yet incarnated by Him on earth, you did not incarnate your children. That is blasphemy.
YOS
One of the tragedies of the Postmodern Age is the notion that everyone can concoct their own definitions of things. These always turn out to be incoherent (contradicting other premises) or at best result in the triumphant pummeling of a straw man or of a grade-school perception. But the Latins who wrote of these things back before Descartes began mucking things up used the term “anima,” which translates as “alive”. Thus, the question “Does X have a soul?” should be rendered “Is X alive?” This can be answered empirically. This leads to the distinction of several sorts of souls; that is, to different ways in which beings might be alive, from petunias to poodles to people.
+ + +
JohnD
But this is of interest: “…the Christian view is that parents are co-creators with God.” Before I would comment on this, can anyone else confirm it?
YOS
It is long-standing doctrine of the Roman and (iirc) the Orthodox churches. I’m not sure of the Oriental or Coptic churches, but I’m inclined to suppose the same of them. That is why it is called “pro-creation,” as in “pro-praetorian,” “pro-consular,” “pro-curator,” etc. “Pro,” in the sense of “coming forth from”.
Hope this helps. It is curious to see an actual request for factual information before you pronounce anathemas. You should also double-check “blasphemy.”
April 7th, 2011 | 8:49 am
Not a Rand fan, but I must say her short essay on “Psychologizing” is excellent.
April 7th, 2011 | 4:21 pm
Hi Sparrow. Glad you’ve spent twenty years teaching yourself and that your continuing all that by reading First Things, but “His eye is on you. . .”, you know.
April 10th, 2011 | 3:07 pm
Poor girl. Considering that she writes for Salon and cites arguing against Michael Moore and global warming as part of her “foolish youth” phase, it seems that she responded to Dad’s nutty Objectivism by embracing nutty left liberalism, the denunciation of which is probably the only sane thing to be extracted from Rand’s book-length ranting.
I suppose this is the life in the post-Christian jungle. We meander from one madness to the other and back again, and think we feel relief.
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