Choosing your values

[Peterson]

I pose a question, Can a person be religious and an objectivist. If the religious person find happiness in the faith that they hold, does that not qualify as source of happiness. The argument from me is that most religions, especially the ones that rely on faith, lack reason in the manner in which come to the conclusion of their faith. I personally am a objectivist, but raised as a Christian. I currently hold that the Christian faith is mostly without reason within it ranks, and the followers blindly follow the leaders, most of which manipulate and bend the teachings to whatever they want. I'm currently a student at Liberty University, and continually have difficult time reconciling the requirements of the school, with my own personal beliefs. I consistently hear from the instructors and other students that one cannot be virtuous without " christ" as the center. I disagree with this idea, Using what Ayn Rand said in Objectivist Ethics, as she quoted from Galt's speech "Man has to be man,- by choice, hold his life as value. by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues-by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality."

Is she supporting a evolutionary thought here, that say, I learn and accept these Christian values, by choice, then it becomes my code of morality? The christian values for the most part are natural law, Don't murder, don't steal, etc... social norms accepted throughout most if not all societies. Anyone have thoughts on this??

[Jules Troy]

Yup. Hide in plain sight.

One day atheism won't be a subsection of religion or disbelief.

One would hope the term atheism becomes a redundant term and the world will be filled with mostly normal people with a sprinkling of crazy "True Believers". You know the half schizophrenic ones that stand on a street corner screaming "end times are upon us!!" Maybe I will even toss a couple of quarters!

[Brant Gaede]

I pose a question, Can a person be religious and an objectivist. If the religious person find happiness in the faith that they hold, does that not qualify as source of happiness. The argument from me is that most religions, especially the ones that rely on faith, lack reason in the manner in which come to the conclusion of their faith. I personally am a objectivist, but raised as a Christian. I currently hold that the Christian faith is mostly without reason within it ranks, and the followers blindly follow the leaders, most of which manipulate and bend the teachings to whatever they want. I'm currently a student at Liberty University, and continually have difficult time reconciling the requirements of the school, with my own personal beliefs. I consistently hear from the instructors and other students that one cannot be virtuous without " christ" as the center. I disagree with this idea, Using what Ayn Rand said in Objectivist Ethics, as she quoted from Galt's speech "Man has to be man,- by choice, hold his life as value. by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues-by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality."

Is she supporting a evolutionary thought here, that say, I learn and accept these Christian values, by choice, then it becomes my code of morality? The christian values for the most part are natural law, Don't murder, don't steal, etc... social norms accepted throughout most if not all societies. Anyone have thoughts on this??

Don't be an Objectivist, simply use Objectivism where you find value--be yourself and live a life of integrity. You don't have to deal with anyone's "Christ" issues outside a personal relationship unless your instructor expects you to in answer to test questions. You might do what I do. I don't call myself an atheist. That's just a negative. I call myself a pantheist. If someone asks you, what's that? Say, look it up. This is like not calling yourself a Christian but using it where you find value. Now, raised as a Christian you are either culturally Protestant or Catholic. Ayn Rand was culturally Jewish in that sense albeit an atheist. Culturally I cannot set aside what I came out of and early life influences. I cannot make myself into either Catholic or Jew nor do I waste time trying. No reward. Living as rationally as possible is hard enough.

--Brant

[Guyau]

Hi Mark,

I live on the other side of town here in Lynchburg. We retired to here from Chicago. Are you a pastoral student? Or for some other profession?

In the Objectivist philosophy, faith, insofar as it suspends rational criticism of beliefs, is understood as an erroneous procedure for getting to the truth. I have written quite a bit about the logical relations between this philosophy and others in the history of philosophy from ancient to contemporary. Rand like others such as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant takes up the challenge of purely rational defense of the propositions maintained for true in her philosophy. This you know in her case for sure already. There has to be an argument for the moral virtues in the philosophy, and such reasoning needs to be well enough grasped in the mind of anyone living such a philosophy. It’s not a sleepwalking, implicit way of existence. So Rand has a system, written out, trying to rationally trace the nature of human existence and mind in our world and the setting and content of ethics within that. An Objectivist does indeed share the belief that murder and theft are moral failures. But what a moral failure or a moral success is and how one knows it and lives a good life by that knowing, there is where there is much difference concerning ethics of this philosophy and ethics revealed in a religion.

I gather that the “by choice” aspect of morality is a strong element in Baptist Christianity. I first read Rand’s Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged when I was eighteen (I’m sixty-seven now). They had been a Christmas gift from a cousin-in-law. On a fly page of Atlas, he had written “Let your actions be guided by rational choice.” That qualifier rational is essential to the exercise of choice Rand speaks of in your quotation (in #26). And there is something to some degree selfish, a mind-selfish, about insisting on rational life, rather than much of what would pass as Christ-centered life. As you know, there’s reason to think that bit of selfish is a good thing.

On your question, can a person be religious and an Objectivist, I’d say No. That is not to say the Objectivist has nothing sacred and not to say the religious do not rationally know and value anything.

Stephen

[Selene]

I'm currently a student at Liberty University, and continually have difficult time reconciling the requirements of the school, with my own personal beliefs. I consistently hear from the instructors and other students that one cannot be virtuous without " christ" as the center.

Welcome to OL.

Folks have clearly been virtuous without Christ as the center. Hell prior to his "immaculate conception," there were certainly men and women who were virtuous.

Unless your instructors have a specific definition of virtuous that exclusively has a true belief in Christ in the definition. That would be tautological.

Off topic, were you at Cruz's speech today?

A...

[BaalChatzaf]

One does not have to hold with a religion to reject (as evil) murder, theft, rape, .... etc..... knowing the difference between Right and Wrong does not require religion.

Ba'al Chatzaf