/atheism/ - Atheism

Hardly any difference between closed thought systems like this and religion. They all discourage curiosity and suppose certain things to be true independent of criticism or opposing evidence. Marxism, nationalism, Judaism, whatever. All the same shit. We'd be better off if no one described themselves as a member of these groups and came to their own conclusions.

If their ideas were more coherent, they would be able to play nice. Incidentally, she can't write.

>>9300

To be fair Russian literature isn't known for pithiness. (Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is 1100+ pages.) Tolstoy's War and Peace stretched into 1200+ pages of unapproachable purple prose. When Germans wrote great work they tried to save their remaining trees. You can probably read either the Communist Manifesto or one of Einstein's Theories of Relativity in under an hour (and realize the author's mind.)

>>9302

She could try to learn. Look at Galt's speech. The conclusion was the only important part, she addressed the everything else in the rest of the book.

But dogma needs repetition.

As far as comprehensive philosophies go Ayn's was arguably the best one. Other than our reality existing beyond our consciousness she offers the best approach to life. Morality is pick and choose anyway so I might as well have my morals guide me to more happiness for myself. It's good to be free from slave morality and if it takes objectivism for some then I'm ok with that.

>Objectivism's central tenets are that reality exists independently of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive logic, that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness (rational self-interest), that the only social system consistent with this morality is one that displays full respect for individual rights embodied in laissez-faire capitalism, and that the role of art in human life is to transform humans' metaphysical ideas by selective reproduction of reality into a physical form—a work of art—that one can comprehend and to which one can respond emotionally.

>>9297

It's too dogmatic. I think most things are relative.

Almost nothing is black or white.

>>9307

2+2 is 4

>You don't like, know that, man. It could be 5. Hell 2+2 could equal the universe, man. Man, nothing can be true, man.

>>9306

>if it takes Objectivism

It doesn't. If you're picking based on happiness for yourself shoggy doggy then pick that, without her views on politics and conciousness

>>9312

Real life isn't like mathematics. You can't know for sure that your "2" is a 2 and stays that way.

Same with morals. I don't trust people who claim that they know the right thing to do a 100% of the time.

>>9319

Real life is like mathematics. But morals are different.

If x is y then do/don't do x

>>If stealing is wrong, then don't steal

A man who wants his neighbor's car steals it, is he in the wrong?

A child who is starving steals some food, is he in the wrong?

>>9322

I think we are talking about the same thing. With RL I mean human lifes and their meaning, morals , choices and so on. I'm not trying to argue if a chair is there or not. Reality is as it is.

Objectivism says there is only one right way. But there are infinite shades.

>>9323

I am a moral relativist, but I can see why people subscribe to objectivism, and it's for the same reason that you subscribe to your moral philosophy.

Objectivist = Theist "My god is the right god and the only true god!"

Relativist = Atheist "I don't think so, but I might be wrong."

>>9297

They're cults, plain and simple.

>>9298

>marxism

Drop by /leftypol/ anytime.

>>9297

>What are /atheism/'s thoughts on "new philosophies" like Objectivism?

I don't know what you mean by philosophies "like" Objectivism so I'm just going to ramble about Objectivism. Also posting what I think are the best summaries of Objectivism, just because.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ayn-rand/

http://ellensplace.net/ar_pboy.html

>Believers of this philosophy meet At ann rand institutes or form cliques to discuss her verbose books in detail, not unlike a bible study.

I don't see anything inherently wrong with fans of an author meeting to discuss his or her work. I've never been in one of those clubs though, so I can't attest to what they're like.

>She also threatened professors who tried to critique her work with lawsuits

Source? I've never heard this before.

I think Rand had a pretty good philosophy that was ruined by her personality. She was stubborn and close-minded and ended up turning what should have been just a set of ideas for consideration into a special club, helped along by her absolutism such as discouraging Objectivists from allying politically with libertarians who didn't share the entire philosophy even though their political goals are pretty much exactly the same. She was also far too careless in presenting radical ideas, such as naming her book "The Virtue of Selfishness" allowing her to be easily misinterpreted, which she was. She also talked shit about other philosophers like Kant with only a superficial understanding of their works and made it sound like she was the first philosopher since Aristotle who was worth a damn. So yeah. She was a bitch. All that being said, I personally owe a lot to Rand's works. Like many people, I read a lot of her stuff in high school and I think it did me a lot of good. Most relevant to this board, it helped move me away from faith and towards a more rational approach to life. I still remember that this specific paragraph in Atlas Shrugged that was the final nail in the coffin of my belief in God.

>Whenever you committed the evil of refusing to think and to see, of exempting from the absolute of reality some one small wish of yours, whenever you chose to say: Let me withdraw from the judgment of reason the cookies I stole, or the existence of God, let me have my one irrational whim and I will be a man of reason about all else-that was the act of subverting your consciousness, the act of corrupting your mind. Your mind then became a fixed jury who takes orders from a secret underworld, whose verdict distorts the evidence to fit an absolute it dares not touch-and a censored reality is the result, a splintered reality where the bits you chose to see are floating among the chasms of those you didn’t, held together by that embalming fluid of the mind which is an emotion exempted from thought.

Because "let me have my one irrational whim and I will be a man of reason about all else" was exactly what I had been thinking (and simultaneously trying to evade the fact that I was thinking it). Rand's books also introduced me to philosophy in general, something realized I had been wanting to learn about for a long time. Finally, the protagonists of her novels inspired me to be more confident and less shy and as a result I flourished socially in my last few of years of high school and onward in a way that I hadn't ever before. Also, I thought The Fountainhead and Anthem were pretty good as novels. Not Atlas Shrugged though.

1/2

I think the problem too many people, especially young people, have with Objectivism is that they get "sucked in". They let it become their identity and stop looking at things said by Ayn Rand as critically as they would look at things said by anyone else, and they end up thinking they have all the answers. Instead of becoming more interested in philosophy as a whole, they lose interest in any philosophy besides Objectivism. Instead of merely becoming more confident, they become self-righteous dicks. And as I said, this is somewhat encouraged by the way the philosophy is presented, both by Rand when she was alive and by the surviving "community". I cringe when I hear people online talking about "accepting Objectivism" as a belief system or a way of life. I've come to the conclusion that if there should be such a thing as a comprehensive belief system that relates all branches of philosophy (which is what Objectivism attempts to be), it should be slightly unique to each person, since we all have different experiences and different knowledge to base or worldview on.

I think the problem is not totally within Objectivism, but that there's an innate desire in everyone, even individualists, to stand united with a group of people who believe everything exactly as you do, a desire that motivates people not to challenge the beliefs of whatever such group they've come to identify with for fear that they'll lose that feeling of connection. It's a feeling that I don't think can be found by uniting with people around just one or two issues and is the main factor that leads almost everyone to adopt some form of partisan or denominational dogmatism. In fact, sometimes I feel a profound loneliness at not having a group to fall in with in that way because I've resisted being too "sucked in" to anything. And I think that dealing with this kind of philosophical and political loneliness is an issue that those who advocate independent rationality have to address. Does anyone know what philosophers have written about this? It sounds like the sort of thing that might interest existentialists.

tl;dr Objectivism is pretty shit but it's also pretty cool.

2/2

Objectivism seems very silly to me. I like to walk the middle path. Others that feel the same should join me over at >>>/enlighten/

>>9297

>derisively shunning contradictory outside ideas

Into the trash it goes. Fair's fair.

>The author also had an affair with a younger man when she was married and convinced her husband to accept her love was supported by "Objectivism", similiar to when Joseph Smith told his wife God told him to cheat on her. She also threatened professors who tried to critique her work with lawsuits like a coward, thereby not allowing her to improve her theories while she was alive.

This is funny but has nothing to do with the validity of her work, which is shit enough in its own right. Calling Ayn Rand a philosopher is insulting even to shitty youtube philosophers.

>>9312

>Almost nothing is black or white.

And you not only miss the almost, you make the mistake the guy is pointing out and assume that his position is an extreme one, i.e. black and white thinking.

>>9340

I never said that his position was extreme, just that if it happens most of the time, that doesn't really warrant "almost", now does it?

>>9332

>She also threatened professors who tried to critique her work with lawsuits

>Source? I've never heard this before.

It's mentioned in one sentence on this page. It also says she refused a suggestion to publish an academic paper because she was "looking for intelligent agreement", and in the next paragraph it says that she wrote the author of

"The Ayn Rand Companion" and threatened him with a lawsuit if he published it.

I haven't figured out if the website is trustworthy, but wikipedia does cite this page, and I suppose if she did threaten to sue it's probably talked about in the preface to that book. I also could drive over to the nearest Ayn Rand institute and ask them, but I don't have any other questions to ask them, (if they would even talk to me) and I don't see a reason to care that much.

http://www.mclemee.com/id39.html

Here's a great post about what it's like to be born to a parent who follows Objectivism to the point of being a jerk toward his kid.

http://www.alternet.org/culture/how-ayn-rand-ruined-my-childhood

And it turns out that /philosophy/ has discussed her.

https://8ch.net/philosophy/res/256.html

>Dogmatic philosophy

You mean like atheism?

>>9343

>if it happens most of the time, that doesn't really warrant "almost", now does it?

You didn't say that anywhere ITT.

>>9297

is this a critique of her philosophy or her person OP? If it is the latter then there's nothing to discuss.

About objectivism, can you name a single philosophical posture which doesn't present its particular explanations as truth when in fact it's just unsupported claims??? Of course you make ardent claims about capitalism and whatnot when you are desperate about stopping communism. It's the whole kantian thesis-antithesis phenomena.

I disagree with specific things she said, like her weak arguments in favour of abortion (I am pro-abortion myself) and the striking supremacist discrimination against native Americans, but I personally like objectivism very much, not the USA right wing and everything it implies, just objectivism.

The objective, materialist metaphysics not uncommon in other philosophical schools, the case in favor of capitalism as economical freedom; but I specially like the ethics. I think rational egoism comes right above the platform of moral relativism and nihilism to account for all forms of ethical systems. I do think rational egoism has a lot of explanatory power. Everything from christian "altruism" to utilitarianism and kantian categorical imperatives is explained in simpler terms of individuals carrying their personal duty to decide what the best course of action would be.

But liking a philosophical theory doesn't make you a fundamentalist. Of course I cannot give irrefutable proof or evidence that reality is objective, etc. I simply suspect some hypotheses are more likely than others.

If tomorrow science finds compelling evidence that the universe is in fact created inside our brains, and that the asyrian gods created me, and that good and evil are metaphysical entities just like atoms and that good is better attained when you make your decisions based on what you think is worst then that's it… I change my mind.

>>9312

I would never ever say math or science aren't knowldege, or close to it. And I would never ever call any of the other existing approaches to truth to be on the same level as science and math…

BUT there's no such thing as absolute truth. It's not like math or science solved the fundamental problem of epistemology. As a computer science undergrad myself I am well aware that mathematical knowledge rests upon operative, pragmatic yet arbitrary axioms in a logical system. Sure if you assume some things about logic you can show that 2+2 is 4, not 5.

>>9462

>I think rational egoism comes right above the platform of moral relativism and nihilism to account for all forms of ethical systems. I do think rational egoism has a lot of explanatory power.

So you're saying she dumbed down existing philosophy to reach the masses? Also, it was a bad idea for you to use sage.

>>9392

I'm sorry, most people know this from dealing with other people in the real world. I forgot that you're a hikki.

http://youtu.be/_8m8cQI4DgM

Objectivists are le joke.