Posted on 06/06/2013 9:36:05 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
I don’t think it is easy at all, almost all humans sense that God exists.
both contain lurid accounts of adultery... of course one glorifies it and the other doesn’t
It is good to grapple with such questions.
For a Christian the greatest commandments are these: (1) Love the Lord with your whole being; and (2) Love your neighbor as yourself. Of course, in Jesus’ day, these two commandments were well know to every Jew. Jesus expounded on “neighbor.” He said your neighbor is he who acts as your neighbor, not somebody of your ethnic or religious group.
Let’s turn to Rand. Supposedly her greatest commandment is to love yourself. BUT ... coming in number two is to love others who share your values. Now, what about the God thing? Rand would say there is no God. But, if you follow her novels, you find that objective truth is her God, and the objective truth is that we are made to be free. This is such an enormously important thing, that it is rational to give one’s life in witness of it.
So, in my book, here’s the difference: First, as Christians, we have a personal relation with a loving God and assurance of salvation. This speaks to our emotional needs. Atheists have an anonymous relation with nature and no assurance of anything. Atheists must have very strong characters. I don’t know how they do it. Having been in the military, I’ll just say that without God I don’t think I could handle it.
Second, as Christians, we love others as ourselves. For followers of Rand, they love others as instrumentalities of their own happiness, not as ends in themselves, not because they share with us in the same dignity that comes from being a child of God. I think I exaggerate this difference. I really sense from her writings that Rand’s characters come to truly love others. So, maybe there really is only one difference and his name is Jesus.
BTW I think the movie “Life of Pi” did a good job in contrasting belief in God and belief in reason. The rational self and the emotional self are both valid and both good. And, it is important to tie one’s emotions to reality.
ping
If you're a Christian, you're bound to think of Rand as (at best) rudimentary and incomplete. If you're a Randian, you'll probably think of Christianity as wrong-headed.
I can't see what difference it makes. It's like knowing how old you are--you just have to take someone's word for it. If you are off by a year or two, who cares? What's important is that you always know what you are doing and why.
bump
What year is that pickup? Looks like it has lead a hard life.
Logic and emotion are both gifts from God; I suspect they were intended to balance our souls, and placing more emphasis on one over the other seems to invariably lead to dysfunction.
Per Rand, it - the Creator - is nature, nature made us rational. The only way we can live at all is by our mind, and by using our mind we can live exceedingly well.
Let me digress. In the Jewish perspective both we and the animals are animated or move, hence we both have souls. But, we have a distinctly human soul. The missing link is not to be found in bones. It is all around us. The smartest animals register something like an IQ of 40. An IQ of 60 would be an imbecile amongst us humans. We are amazingly off the charts. There is a huge enormous gap or missing link between us and the closest thing to us. So, simply on a scientific basis, without invoking any religious reference, we are amazing. It appears, in particular, that we are pre-wired for language and for reasoning. Now, I will interject that in addition to our wonderful mind, we humans are equipped with a couple marvelous hands. To be sure, so are some other creatures. But, the combination of our mind and our bodies to include our hands enables us to act by which I mean to purposely do things that make the future probability of things different. OK, ignore probability, let’s just say make the future different. For example, we can fashion a tool. With a tool, we can become more efficient in our work. Imagining that possibility, we forego immediate satisfaction and make ourselves better off in the future. There you have it. We are neither ruled by instinct nor by immediate gratification. Hence, we are moral creatures with the power to choose between right and wrong. Ayn Rand argues that right and wrong are not choices, or social mores, or pronouncements from on high, but are scientific facts and that acting based on morality is the most selfish thing you can do.
There is a certain emotional hollowness to the argument. You are honest, productive, prudent, courageous, etc., because you are selfish. Kind of turns everything upside down, doesn’t it?
upchcik, 1980 Ford F250 Ranger (yes Ranger which at the time was a trim level).
it’s a daily driver. As reliable as a new Honda Accord except that instead of getting 32mpg, it gets 32ypg (yards per gallon).
sorry for the typo on your name Upchuck. Breaking up a fight amongst my 2 kids right now.
I was guessing 1982. How many hundreds of thousands of miles?
RE: Per Rand, it - the Creator - is nature, nature made us rational. The only way we can live at all is by our mind, and by using our mind we can live exceedingly well.
Well, that’s all relative isn’t it, this “living well” thing?
If I decide that I want to be more like a Nazi because nature made me the way I am, what “objective” natural law tells me this is irrational?
Let’s put it this way to Ayn Rand -— if we came as a result of random collision of matter and atoms, then a random collision of atoms called Nazis just happened to “hit on” a random collision of atoms called “Jews”... why is this not “living exceedingly well” for the Nazis?
Thank you, yes, emotion and reason, being from God, are good. But, we generally feel reason is more secure and emotion more prone to error. As Christians, we want to discipline our emotions during the good times, so that they help us to deal with the tough times. Rand would say we want to fall in love with what is good. Yet, in her novels, it doesn’t always work out that way. Rand’s characters are flawed. But, aren’t we all. In Christianity, we say there is forgiveness. For us, the victory is won and our salvation is secure. In Rand’s novels, there is drama.
Look, I am very forgiving of Rand. She wrote at a time when socialism was ascendent and the church corrupted by Marxist thinking. So, she was strong against collectivism and strong for the heroic individual, when that was what was needed. Today things are different, or are they? The prior Pope skipped over Centisimus Anus in his social teachings and returned the Catholic Church to its accommodation with the welfare state, or so it seems. And this current Pope doesn’t sound like an advocate for free market capitalism. So, if church leaders are so wrong on matters of economics and physical science, why is Ayn Rand held to the standard of perfection?
RE: I can’t see what difference it makes.
Well I think I can.
If we simply exist because of nature, then our ultimate end is the same regardless of whether we decide to be like Ayn Rand or Osama Bin Ladin.
Since one’s destiny is ultimately unrelated to one’s behavior, you may as well just live as you please. As Dostoyevsky put it: “If there is no immortality then all things are permitted.”
On this basis, a writer like Ayn Rand is absolutely correct to praise the virtues of selfishness. Live totally for self; no one holds you accountable!
Indeed, it would be foolish to do anything else, for life is too short to jeopardize it by acting out of anything but pure self-interest. Sacrifice for another person would be stupid.
In which case, I don’t see why either desiring to subscribe to Ayn Rand’s philosophy or not would matter in the end if her idea of how we came into being is right.
For in Ayn rand’s universe, REAL good and evil, rationality or irrationality do not exist. There is only the bare valueless fact of existence, and there is no one to say you are right and I am wrong.
The metaphysics and epistemology of Objectivism and Christianity are irreconcilable, but they are allies in the war against statism and socialism.
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