Harrison Danneskold

Yeah; lavey himself was pure slime. But watch what you say about satanists in general; some of them are searching for Rand but haven't found the words to articulate it, yet.

And the assertion that satanism advocates the sacrifice of others to oneself is false; read what lavey had to say about harming the innocent before you pass judgment on all of that "lion" rhetoric.

Yeah, um, I think the description of "satanism as blind Objectivism" is completely accurate.

There are many big differences, to be sure; mainly the primacy of consciousness (and however many times they call themselves atheists, levayans believe in magick). But satanism considers faith and humility profoundly evil- which is a prerequisite for ever properly grasping Oism.

And in my experience satanists are motivated by profound hatred for- guess what? Evasion and self sacrifice.

There's some highly superficial pettiness in this thread.

Satanists are different from Oists (and wrong) because they believe in magick, just like, hmm. . . Every single altruistic religion in the entire world?

The MN taxpayer rapers. Mascot: Mark Dayton.

J: Because I'm not primarily referring to "productive effort"; I see it as good but not nearly as important as cognitive effort.

If you'd prefer a different term I'd be happy to oblige.

And taxpayer rapers is out; what would the mascot be? What would it do???

The Minnesota Vikings should keep their name, btw; it suits the new stadium.

All I want is for a cigarette to go onto the logo.

J: I'm deliberately using "survival" to refer to continued metabolic function and "life" to refer to doing so as "man qua man" because I'm not entirely comfortable assigning a purpose to a whole species.

And by vegetable I meant a braindead person; please excuse the ambiguity.

I think not, Daunce.

As someone who sneered at traditional stereotypes, I think she'd be shocked and appalled by what some of her admirers are saying.

Hell; I wonder how that belief impacts suicide bombers!

J:

I'm sorry to hear about your experiences. There's a very perverse sort of irony in those who defend Rand regardless of reason.

I hesitate to generalize there, though, because I've only dealt with a handful of outright evaders on O.O and numerous sincere and rational people.

On Christians: I wonder how belief in the afterlife influenced the children's crusade?

A vegetable is not alive; a curious and rational person is.

Is a concrete-bound stoner more like the former or the latter?

Nothing against stoners, in general, but some of them (who eat, sleep and breathe apathy) are perfect examples of this.

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The survival argument for being rational doesn't strictly apply to every single individual and this is where some Oists, unfortunately, are prone to twist the facts to fit theory.

But consciousness must be conscious of something; the alternative is mindlesness.

And anyone who intentionally spends their lives that way isn't alive and is, frankly, not human.

Moralist was saying this but, in the thread he began on O.O, also ventured to say that certain thoughts are masculine or feminine.

To which I say: why not take that premise further? Why not consider certain thoughts intrinsically rich, white or blonde?

A man who retires to golf his days away could survive on previous earnings quite nicely, without having to think.

But to survive permanently "zoned out", on autopilot, is not living.

What hat trick?

Since existence, for a conscious being, is experienced as a conscious process, to truly live (qua man) is to think.

Life qua man is simply awareness.

And this SHOULD exclude anyone who doesn't care to think; in what sense are they human aside from opposable thumbs?

Rearden had taught himself to assume unearned guilt. So long as he gave the parasites his silent sanction and accepted their guilt, he couldn't realize the nature or cause of his burdens.

Dagny thought that she could single handedly save her railroad and took some time to realize why she shouldn't.

Both flaws stemmed from their egos distorting their cognition.

What's scary is that putin was voluntarily elected (not to mention Obama).

And I don't think he's just a general pushover; Obama seems perfectly capable of taking a stand against freedom, selfishness ("greed") and prosperity (keystone). He only becomes spineless when dealing with miserable people.

You're welcome! :-) And thank you, MSK and Selena.

And Selena: I wholeheartedly agree (obviously).

I actually watched Atlas Shrugged before I broke down and read it (I had to know who the Hell John Galt was!) and was very upset when I reached that part, that it hadn't been in part 2.

I mean, yeah, he isn't completely essential to it, but he's a freaking philosophical pirate! There is nothing cooler than that!

And that's an accurate observation; one can continue to postpone death by all sorts of coercive means.

The quote provided does seem a bit of an exaggeration, in that regard. But Objectivist Ethics isn't about simply avoiding death.

I don't think that murder is very conducive to love of one's own life. Theft is debatable there, precisely because a thief recognizes objective value (failure to think actions through, I think) but armed robbery, as in a dictatorship, is much closer to murder than actual theft.

But if kinetic energy is motion, and thermal energy is subatomic motion, then wouldn't it stand to reason?

I think it's just that being the voice of reason is exciting; reexamining your oldest premises is hard and boring. So people tend to find Rand and take her word as the "gospel truth", just like they were taught to as children; it's a fairly common automated response.

And when Objectivist conclusions get thrown on top of garbage premises, without any real integration, well. . . You end up with people calling homosexuality immoral, essentially "because Rand said so".

Hey! I'M one of those O.O brats! :-P

Some of the people there need to stop and grasp the contextuality of knowledge. I was lucky; shortly after that little outburst I linked to one of the moderators started asking me about epistemology and really got me thinking about it.

And honestly, these fanatical tendencies you're referring to aren't caused by Rand or Objectivism; it's just kids like me who were raised Christian (intrinsicist), discovered Rand and started running around preaching Rational Selfishness while still carrying that mystic baggage.

There's a very simple solution: put more emphasis on context and objectivity, because those are what they still drop every now and then. Hell; I still do it sometimes, too.

But even aside from that I'd still take one of those O.O brats over a Christian, any day of the week- at least they're trying to be more rational.

Those Christians want to get to their after-life, and you can't pretend this doesn't affect their derivative values.

http://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?showtopic=24954&page=6#entry309805

If you look back a few pages I think you'll see what I think probably deserved censorship. Granted, it was directed at some Christian wacko who was going off about how the dark ages weren't all that bad but still, I wasn't being exactly rational or coherent either.

And that's really wierd, Johnathan; especially since you're clearly right.

If artistic value was based in ethics as such then Rand's explicit praise of Victor Hugo would be wildly inconsistent- especially since she chose to include it in the Romantic Manifesto.

Anyway. When did this happen? Because I've actually had several debates with that guy about IP rights and, while I don't think he was completely willing to follow things to their logical conclusion, I was saying outright that Rand was wrong (in that specific instance) and he didn't censor me.

Maybe O.O wasn't always what I know it as, today?

Tangential: isn't all energy ultimately kinetic?

Baal: The fluid theory of heat was wrong, because heat is kinetic energy (instead of matter)?

But E=MC2!

As far as science-versus-philosophy is concerned, is that even a valid dichotomy?

I thought they were opposite and complimentary methods of inquiry. A scientist takes percepts, breaks them down and analyzes them in increasing detail; a philosopher takes percepts, omits the details and analyzes the "big picture" in increasing scope.

So if that's what distinguishes science from philosophy then science is impossible without philosophy and- I think that implies- wouldn't philosophy be impossible without some science?

For example: Rand wrote about abortion at times, which revolves around fetuses and zygotes; entities which are barely or completely impossible to know about without some detailed (scientific) inference. This means that those essay (s?) were based on a scientific framework, just as that framework required a rational epistemology.

I don't know if it's a valid generalization yet; something interesting to consider.

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In any case, it doesn't seem accurate to even concieve of it in terms of "philosophers in general" versus "scientists in general" because the abstracted differences are fairly major.

The impact Kant has had is radically different from that of Aristotle or John Locke, and the impact of Thomas Edison is different than that of the Soviet scientist (don't remember his name) who was attempting to interbreed people with monkeys.

And then there are guys like Newton, who wrote about epistemology in the morning and formulated universal gravitation in the afternoon, who'll throw off everyone's scales altogether. :-P

So anyway, I don't think the question has even been framed properly.

And MSK: your dissection didn't seem at all like a preacher's; far too much logic.