Posted on 07/29/2002 7:27:13 AM PDT by Gumlegs
You appear not to inderstand the implications of the existence of a Creator.
At the same time, I find it quite interesting that you've vested so much faith in -- and ascribe so much power to -- a few words scrawled onto a scrap of parchment by a guy wielding a pointed bird feather.
The Creator cares little for the Constitution. OTOH, the Constitution quite clearly presupposes the existence of a Creator.
In point of fact, the Creator cares about the very things that imbue the Constitution with its power: what's in the hearts of the people.
If the Constitution fails, it's because the people have failed in the eyes of the Creator.
--- We have free will, and thus a difference between good and evil, because we have a soul from God that knows between right and wrong.
It does not take a belief in a god to know right from wrong.
Really? If you were born in atheistic China, you woudn't regard drowning your infant girl as wrong, would you?
Yes.
It's happened millions of times, according to USA Today. Why is drowning an infant child you don't want morally wrong?
If you don't know, I will not bother to explain. If you do, You're just playing a baiting game. For shame, sir.
After all, if you're an atheist, it's nothing more than animate material. If you're a Christian, it's a unique sould from God...
Whatever. -- I think we are nearly done here. I don't need any 'lawyer' preaching at me .
John Adams, Federalist 51
I find that the most common cause of flame wars on the internet is the inadequacy of ASCII in conveying tone of voice. If something I wrote sounds heated, try rereading it in a different tone of voice. Picture me across a table at a bar, holding a Yuengling Lager.
Mmm...Yuengling.
It figures that you're one of those guys who likes beer he can see through. As for me, I prefer the kinds you have to drink with a shovel..... ;-)
Yes, I have read all of Rand's works, and there are disagreements: look at Leonard Peikoff and David Kelley. They both have effectively "excommunicated" each other from Objectivism. Kind of like Protestants (whoops, sorry, sorry I like Protestants...).
Hey, at least the Nazis never came up.
P.S. So YOU'RE the guy who got the thrashing from the union thugs! Nice to meet you at last.
At the very least you could pay attention to the full post, which addresses your alleged concern. The fact that you didn't (and never do) suggests an unwillingness to venture into areas that require you to think about the foundation of your beliefs.
Speaking from personal experience I know exactly how dangerous it can be to do that: one often ends up becoming something unspeakable -- a Christian.
Because you make Guiness out of barley, not potatoes, silly!
(Guiness is wonderful stuff, but give me one of those thick, mellow German monk-made beers any day. Another reason to rejoice in Christianity!)
Probably not at all.
Of what practical worth is deism as a moral concept?
If you're selecting your metaphysics based on its practical ethical utility, you're putting the philosophical cart waaaay before the horse. Reality is the way it is, not how we would wish it to be, and not how might be most useful to us.
For example, if I say that "Might Makes Right" is a valid and objective morality that is both completely logically consistent, and in perfect concord with observations of nature, how are you (or Rand) going to demonstrate that it's wrong?
Sigh. More remedial Objectivism. The basis of morality is value judgments. There is no standard of value to "might makes right". "Might" is not a value in the moral sense; the sun is mightier than anything on Earth, but to say that the sun is therefore more right than anything on Earth is a category error.
Rand's answer boils down to "because I said so"
Not remotely. This is reason, not religion. Try reviewing Chapter 1 of Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff before going further.
Three, actually, and you've guessed exactly why my post was so regrettably terse.
P.S. So YOU'RE the guy who got the thrashing from the union thugs! Nice to meet you at last.
Well, not thrashed, exactly. More like roughed up. Don and Teri Adams were the ones who got thrashed by the Teamsters--and that's nothing compared to what they faced in court! But that's a longer story than anything I might write about philosophy.
Yes, Hillary!'s semantic piracy did not change this fact.
Libel violates the rights of an individual. Next.
What redress does this individual have? Does the individual determine the amount of punishment? I mean some individuals are more affected by, sensitive to calumny than others...
Oh, but there is: it's how well you can force your will on others to get your own way, and the measure of success is wealth, power, lands conquered, wives, or what have you. If a pharoah can die old, rich, and happy, then he's moral man regardless of what he did to others. That he achieved his ends by violence and oppression is simply proof that Might Makes Right is as viable for humans as for all other animals.
We must acknowledge the logical implications of recognizing that reality is the way it is, not how we would wish it to be, and not how might be most useful to us. And Reality is that Might Makes Right is quite obviously the preferred mode of operation throughout nature.
To say that this is not also true for humans presupposes that there is something about us that makes us morally different from other animals.
Unfortunately, neither atheism nor (according to you) deism provides us with any means of making such a moral distinction between humans and the rest of nature. In a non-theistic world reason is no more or less an evolved trait than the predator's fangs, and as such cannot be used to differentiate us in any abolute way from any other predator.
Far from it being a case of putting the cart before the horse, the only way to make moral distinctions in such a world is through consideration of practical results.
But even then, we can make such judgements only by comparing results to a set of subjective criteria. We must not only choose what constitutes "success" from a set of viable contenders (at this Rand failed dismally when she claimed that "happiness" was an objective measure), but we must also content ourselves with looking at the relative results of one system or another with respect to our criteria. There's no right or wrong in such a world, merely a subjective measure of how well certain systems meet a set of subjective criteria. Morality is reduced to an engineering problem.
The bottom line is that Rand's objectivism fails precisely because it is explicitly atheist. (IMHO, Rand's atheism is why she invented her house of cards to begin with.) To believe Rand's claims requires us to ignore -- in direct contravention of Rand's own philosophy -- the blindingly obvious fact that Reality does not work the way she says it does. Her conclusions concerning proper human behavior are directly contradicted by her claims that humans are part of and subject to nature (i.e., observable reality) -- and nature favors the use of force.
The only way to rationally justify the sort of moral system that is codified by the Constitution -- and earnestly desired by all of us here -- is as the Founders did it in the Declaration: to acknowledge that our rights were "Endowed by [our] Creator."
Do you know what self-evident means?
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