OK. Personally, I'm cool with that. I'm not too sure about Karma, but there is no doubt that we can dialog without getting into the age old battle of religion vs non-religion.

I agree that my belief in God is based on faith and my personal experience with objective and subjective revelations. It seems to me that Objectivism is based on rational interpretation of existential reality. I like AR's Objectivism, regardless of where it is based. It makes the best of human nature, with a measure of Karma thrown in for the good of all. I think it works well with both evolution and creation.

I wouldn't denigrate your beliefs. However, please remember that what you believe is based on faith and not actuality. You believe because you believe. Objectivism is based on rationality, not faith..

Early in life I knew I could not just accept anything blindly. Seventy years later, I am much more the same, except for my faith in God. While ARs Objectivism pretty much agrees with my political beliefs, I know there is no one other than God who can inform me or anyone else about anything outside of time and space.

Weird. Intelligent. Capable.

And they are still liberals.

Here's to Hope!

Jan

Weird? There's hope for them.

Yeah, but all of my liberal friends would have laughed; they are all weird too.

I like the Holy Chao reply.

Jan

This Topic has been an amazing set of threads and posts. I had no idea I would get so many responses. The ideas come flooding in and bouncing around like an overturned bucket of Ping-Pong balls on a marble floor. This is a brilliant group regardless of the topic. I'm gonna be up all night contemplating what I have learned here.

Good answer! Not very Randish, though. I find myself close to your assessment. I was pretty much settled in my beliefs - or lack of them, until I got into quantum physics as a hobby and discovered that Plato might have a point. In any case, the Universe is iffier and less certain than Objectivism can account for.

Saw The Martian. It was better than I anticipated. I have been debating & arguing with libs for 50 years. I no longer bother. When pinned down in a discussion, I tell them I'm a follower of Eris, the Greek Goddess of chaos, and I worship the Holy Chao. Some get the joke, others immediately change the subject and the rest decide that I'm too weird to consider. After all of theses years, I know lib ploys & premises so well, I could answer them with a recording.

I had not heard that Bohr quote - Love it! The humor of scientists is often a lot funnier than other types of humor. (Have you seen The Martian?! Talk about geek humor...)

My conclusion is close to yours: The functional is the test of the theoretical. My divergence from Objectivism is that some of the descriptions of what an Objectivist world would be like do not seem to me to be workable. What ever 'real' is: It Works.

I tend to call myself an Objectivist or a Randist when talking to my liberal friends, because that is the best shorthand for their knowing where I stand. On this site, I dodge those terms because I do feel I have a good fit for the definitions that other people have for them.

Jan, a jan-kinda-randist

I believe there is more than what we can see, touch, taste and feel and that that "more" will be revealed once we are no longer of the physical realm. Whether we are a soul returning to its Creator, or we start again as another form of being, or we become energy returning to the universe I'm hoping that whatever new consciousness we have allows for some of life's mysteries to finally be settled. If not, I won't know it. :)

Many folks have fantasies about the world, the universe, etc. Rational people can differentiate between the fantasies and the realities. As a child, I felt I was covered with layer after layer of unreality, but everyone I knew seemed to understand and deal with them. Then I read "The Fountainhead." Later Atlas. As I read more, the layers of unreality fell away and things started making sense as I was able to deal with the comparison between reason and reality as opposed to non-reason and fantasy. But you are quite right, it takes work. Non-reason lays easy traps before you so you must tread carefully.

I previously mentioned that I am mostly in agreement with Objectivism. We are now getting into and area where I find it to be inadequate. You can't beat the big "O" when it comes to the macro world, but it is inadequate in the micro world. I like Nils Bohr's description of an atom. "An atom is something, we don't know what, located someplace, we don't know where, doing something, we don't know what." Just about everything in the quantum world is conjecture at this point, but in many cases when put to use, it works. I'm sure that in the millennia that stretches before us these problems will be resolved, but until then, we must be satisfied with what seems to work without knowing why.

Reality does not change, but our perception of it does. We used to think that sub-atomic particles were like little planets orbiting the 'sun' of a nucleus, for example, not probabilistic clouds of energy that might decide to take a vacation in Alpha Centauri at any given moment.

The change in this perception is significant, since it philosophically reflects that the universe itself is a fluctuating matrix where things are only 'probably' at a given location, and we cannot, by definition, both see something and know where it is.

So while I am quite in accord with you that Truth is a fact, not an opinion, my ability to grasp the truth of even simple things such as 'the location of an electron' is...cloudy.

Jan, struggles gamely with this

“People don't want to think. And the deeper they get into trouble, the less they want to think. But by some sort of instinct, they feel that they ought to and it makes them feel guilty. So they'll bless and follow anyone who gives them a justification for not thinking. Anyone who makes a virtue - a highly intellectual virtue - out of what they know to be their sin, their weakness and their guilt... They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don't know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be able to bear”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Well.....in a way, it's not unfortunate. Those who label a novel as racist on hearsay probably wouldn't have understood it. Better they should continue wandering about imbedded in their cloud of concrete.

Now I'm lost. Truth beyond knowing? I think I missed that in Basic Premises 101. I have found your posts to be on target and quite profound. However, this is a bit profounder than I get.

That's a Bradbury I haven't read -- or don't remember. Thanks for the info, I'll find the story & read it.

Which only affirms what we've been posting about.

When I hear of so many similarities between the men and women of the Gulch, I realize that no matter what genetics seems to be saying, we're all brothers, sisters, and cousins. Too melodramatic? Take it from me, life is one huge melodrama.

Flootus5: Well stated!

And a large influence - unfortunately.