BaalChatzaf Posted February 8, 2016 Share Posted February 8, 2016 Bob writes:Do you attribute Intelligent Design to the Deity that gave us the lumbar section of the spine, the prostate gland and the vermiform appendix? If so you are indeed generous.Boo hoo.Poor baby.Can't rightly blame God for that, Bob.You're the one who f**ked up your own body......so you're the one who has to live with the consequences of your own behavior.GregMy blunder is living into my 80 th year, at least 15 years beyond the design limits of the human body. We were never built to last this long. Wrong, as usual. The human body is less than optimally structured. our spines are better fit for 4 legged animals than bipedal up right animals. The plumbing of the lower parts is dreadful. We are all going to get bad prostate glands if we live long enough. When humans died prior to age 40 as they did for most of our existence on the planet, the lumber regions and the lower down plumbing gave less trouble than they do now. That is because we are living well beyond the structure limitations of the human body. Our low backs go out. Your knees wear out and our prostate gland becomes dicey and cancerous eventually. The appendix has no obvious use. If the risk of surgery we less than it is we could get our appendices removed as routines has we used to have our tonsils removed. But cutting into the low gut is risky so we live and hope our appendix does not become inflamed. Ba'al Chatzaf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
merjet Posted February 8, 2016 Share Posted February 8, 2016 deleted. duplicate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted February 8, 2016 Share Posted February 8, 2016 The idea of original sin can set someone on a malevolent universe premise very fast. I'm sure you guys are aware of Rand's explicit rejection of the idea of original sin, and the various forms it takes: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/original_sin.htmlTo chew on this a bit more, original sin would be considered an anti-concept in Objectivism, and the concept it would take out is the concept of man, that man is doomed to fail by his nature, rather than efficate.Korben,I looked at the link just to review and it became even easier than I imagined. It goes to an excerpt of Galt's radio speech. Let's look at the first paragraph.Your code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice. It demands, as his first proof of virtue, that he accept his own depravity without proof. It demands that he start, not with a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which he is not.Remember, we are talking about newborns. (So it might be a good idea--later if we continue this discussion--to review "The Comprachicos" and parts of ITOE to get her exceptions for babies to her general principles.)Take the first sentence above: "Your code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice."Now take out the rhetorical position of pointing the finger and blaming as evil, but keep in the mental concepts of evasion, subjectivism and intrinsicism, which are defined as evil in Objectivism, and apply them to a newborn.Look at life through his eyes. (I mean her, too, but I get irritated with this quirk of the English language, so I just use the traditional he that I learned. btw - Rand did, too. ) Everything he experiences is subjective and intrinsic. And he focuses on human faces that get close to him, not because he wants to. He can't not do it. btw - This has been proven time and again in controlled scientific studies.How's that for "tabula rasa" (meaning lack thereof)? The newborn evades anything and everything not related to urges he can't control. He has prewired knowledge that faces are the thing he seeks to focus on, nothing else. Whims are his entire world.And what is the cure to whims, evasion, subjectivism and intrinsicism? Reason. But a newborn can't practice reason. And why, according to Rand? Because he is still filling up the "tabula" with experience.So the infant is limited to the main evils in Objectivism until enough outside experience gets piled on and that allows him to make a choice not to be evil. In other words, the Randian form "demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice," at least until he fills up with enough experience to be able to negate some of it.I could go through the other statements like that. (I can't resist mentioning the following idea. Galt later in the passage in the link talks about standard of value. So what is the standard of value to an infant? Once again, urges he doesn't understand and can't control. Then, as time goes on, the very first thing he values is a human face that he starts imitating. Those are not just the urges that make the values, they are the very standards of the values. And volition is not involved--at least not yet at this stage of growth.)I'm not saying this to bash Rand. I am saying it for those who think independently and want to think this thing through. They (or you) don't have to agree with me. And I certainly can disagree with Rand on something I thought through. I've outgrown the wish to make pretzel rationalizations to defend her honor and whatnot. She said what she said and meant what she meant. She got things right and things wrong. And I consider her a great author and thinker--both insightful and inspiring. She had such an important impact on my life, I named my two boys after characters in her novels.That is what and how I evaluate her ideas. If she says something that makes sense to me, I adopt it. If she says something that doesn't make sense to me, I reject it.There's a crossover time, though. I sometimes have to clean out the things that don't make sense to me that I initially accepted because of a strong emotion I had when I first read Atlas Shrugged, then read the rest. This intermediary phase, which surges up once in awhile, is not just for rejecting ideas from Rand. It also includes maintaining ideas I check and find in order. Or even adding to them. (Like the lady said, "Check your premises." )Rand's attack on the Christian version of Original Sin would have stuck with me had there not been an Objectivist version that, with a little bit of thinking, is right there in my face using her own words to arrive at the idea.btw - I reject Original Sin, but not the way Rand did. Christian Original Sin is based on all humans inheriting a bad decision by Adam and Eve. It was a sin of disobedience to God and gaining an awareness He did not want humans to have.There's a lot there to reject, but Rand chose to go a different way. Even when Adam and Eve ate fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, Rand (through Galt) says they learned to be rational beings and she went about blasting that. Actually, scripture says they learned they were naked and became ashamed. That was their awareness. How is that rational?Believe me, there are many, many points that don't add up if you apply the standard of "identify correctly, then evaluate" form of thinking to her words. And I don't mean taking her words out of context, either. I mean giving her the conceptual benefit of the doubt.To me, rather than twisting or rebutting each observation Rand made into a form that validates or invalidates Objectivism (or Rand's greatness, or any of that), I now walk away from the Original Sin thing. To me, that was one of her misfires.Great in scope and colorful as hell, so it was marvelous rhetoric, but as an attack on a myth as people actually know it, and as logic (since she includes newborns elsewhere, i.e., all stages of human development), it goes poof instead of boom. There's plenty good she said that I carry. So I don't need to force this one to keep the flame alive in my heart...Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BaalChatzaf Posted February 9, 2016 Share Posted February 9, 2016 On 2/8/2016 at 4:28 PM, moralist said: Can't rightly blame God for that, Bob. You're the one who f**ked up your own body... ...so you're the one who has to live with the consequences of your own behavior. Greg I rarely complain. Complaining, by and large, is a waste of time. 1. It does not solve the problem about which the complaint is made and 2. who is listening anyway? Blaming God is useless. If God does not exist then it is a waste of energy and if God does exist it is like blaming a tornado for tearing a roof off. God does It's thing and Man does his thing. The Epicurians were right. The gods have little awareness of or interactions with man. Ba'al Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted February 9, 2016 Share Posted February 9, 2016 18 hours ago, merjet said: Typical religious claim. God gets lots/all credit, and no blame. Why would you abandon your personal responsibility by blaming (unjustly accusing) God for the consequences of what you do to your own body? Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
merjet Posted February 9, 2016 Share Posted February 9, 2016 24 minutes ago, moralist said: Why would you abandon your personal responsibility by blaming (unjustly accusing) God for the consequences of what you do to your own body? Greg Being an atheist, I wouldn't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted February 10, 2016 Share Posted February 10, 2016 12 hours ago, merjet said: Being an atheist, I wouldn't. Your original complaint was that God gets none of the blame. What blame do you feel God deserves? Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted February 10, 2016 Share Posted February 10, 2016 On 2/9/2016 at 4:46 PM, BaalChatzaf said: Blaming God is useless. Then why do you do it? Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
merjet Posted February 10, 2016 Share Posted February 10, 2016 5 hours ago, moralist said: Your original complaint was that God gets none of the blame. What blame do you feel God deserves? Check your premises! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonathan Posted February 10, 2016 Share Posted February 10, 2016 Apey love God. Apey mad that you not love God. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BaalChatzaf Posted February 10, 2016 Share Posted February 10, 2016 10 hours ago, moralist said: Then why do you do it? Greg 10 hours ago, moralist said: Then why do you do it? Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BaalChatzaf Posted February 10, 2016 Share Posted February 10, 2016 Just now, BaalChatzaf said: Judging is not blaming. I judge God. He falls well short of my very high standards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BaalChatzaf Posted February 10, 2016 Share Posted February 10, 2016 10 hours ago, moralist said: Then why do you do it? Greg 10 hours ago, moralist said: Then why do you do it? Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BaalChatzaf Posted February 10, 2016 Share Posted February 10, 2016 I assume that a rational person wants to put off the inevitable day of his death as long as it is feasible to so. It must be understood that no matter how well "we take care of ourselves" death will come. This is a manifestation of the second law of thermodynamics to which no know exception has ever, ever occurred. Do not go gently into that Good Night, Rage, Rage against the failing of the Light. Take care of your self. Also save a bit for your eventual funeral. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted February 10, 2016 Share Posted February 10, 2016 5 hours ago, merjet said: Check your premises! Your original complaint: merjet wrote: Typical religious claim. God gets lots/all credit, and no blame. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted February 10, 2016 Share Posted February 10, 2016 3 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said: I assume that a rational person wants to put off the inevitable day of his death as long as it is feasible to so. It must be understood that no matter how well "we take care of ourselves" death will come. This is a manifestation of the second law of thermodynamics to which no know exception has ever, ever occurred. Yup... no one gets out of here alive, Bob! In His wisdom God created all the laws of thermodynamics... which is why no one can violate them. Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BaalChatzaf Posted February 10, 2016 Share Posted February 10, 2016 1 hour ago, moralist said: Yup... no one gets out of here alive, Bob! In His wisdom God created all the laws of thermodynamics... which is why no one can violate them. Greg That means god is also doomed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BaalChatzaf Posted February 10, 2016 Share Posted February 10, 2016 12 hours ago, moralist said: Then why do you do it? Greg Blame??? no. It is Judgement. God falls well short of my high standards. I have weighed him in the balance and have found Him wanting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KorbenDallas Posted February 10, 2016 Share Posted February 10, 2016 I want to start out by explicitly stating my position, which is I do not believe, and haven't found, Original Sin equivalents in Objectivism. Also, when carefully thinking through a response, I couldn't come up with one that couldn't be rebutted from many different angles. So with that said, here are my thoughts... On 2/8/2016 at 5:56 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said: Korben, I looked at the link just to review and it became even easier than I imagined. It goes to an excerpt of Galt's radio speech. Let's look at the first paragraph. Rand said: Your code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice. It demands, as his first proof of virtue, that he accept his own depravity without proof. It demands that he start, not with a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which he is not. Remember, we are talking about newborns. (So it might be a good idea--later if we continue this discussion--to review "The Comprachicos" and parts of ITOE to get her exceptions for babies to her general principles.) Take the first sentence above: "Your code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice." Now take out the rhetorical position of pointing the finger and blaming as evil, but keep in the mental concepts of evasion, subjectivism and intrinsicism, which are defined as evil in Objectivism, and apply them to a newborn. Look at life through his eyes. (I mean her, too, but I get irritated with this quirk of the English language, so I just use the traditional he that I learned. btw - Rand did, too. ) Everything he experiences is subjective and intrinsic. And he focuses on human faces that get close to him, not because he wants to. He can't not do it. btw - This has been proven time and again in controlled scientific studies. I see your formulation here, but I'm seeing an error of going up one hierarchical tree and trying to come down onto another. Peikoff has said in a lecture (I can't seem to find the exact reference, so this is a paraphrase) that philosophical concepts of subjectivism and intrinsicism cannot be applied to children because those concepts were formulated (inducted) off adult minds, that children largely lack the ability to form a philosophy. So the going up one tree would be inducting subjectivism and intrinsicism, which came from adults and can be said of adults, then attempting to go back down another, that to children, which really can't be done because they don't have adult minds. I'll agree that evasion and subjectivism and intrinsicism can be descriptively said of children (sometimes), but is that the process that's really going on? I think it's mostly just learning. Trying to organize the chaos as the essential. That a "something" A is actually A, predicating properly (10 categories), categorizations themselves, differentiation, opposite things, etc. I was having a hard time coming up with an example of a subjective or intrinsic action, but if a child gets something wrong I wouldn't call it that. If a child is arguing "their point", many times its that the child is seeking their identity, and wanting to make their case as a matter of independence. I still wouldn't call that subjectivism or intrinsicism. If they evade, I don't know if I would call it evasion, as such, as again it likely is a matter of the child wanting their own identity, to think for themselves. (These are my own cases I came up with.. no straw man MSK. ) In the case of the infant, On 2/8/2016 at 5:56 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said: Everything he experiences is subjective and intrinsic. And he focuses on human faces that get close to him, not because he wants to. He can't not do it. btw - This has been proven time and again in controlled scientific studies. How's that for "tabula rasa" (meaning lack thereof)? The newborn evades anything and everything not related to urges he can't control. He has prewired knowledge that faces are the thing he seeks to focus on, nothing else. Whims are his entire world. I would say that everything he experiences is objective. He is a new animal experiencing reality on a concrete-perceptual level. However, he's not tabula rasa. The experiment of having the baby crawl over plexiglass comes to mind here, that underneath the plexiglass is what looks like to be a ledge, and the baby stops crawling out of self preservation. But I wouldn't call that evasion (the philosophical usage). It's a hard wired response, inaction, to preserve his entity, to stay alive. I wouldn't call his light or sound sensitivity evasions, either, those are built-in protection mechanisms to help keep him alive. The random focusing of faces, smiles, coos, cries, etc. might descriptively be whims, but really I would say it is a new animal learning sense-perception (consciousness) to the world around him (existence). On 2/8/2016 at 5:56 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said: And what is the cure to whims, evasion, subjectivism and intrinsicism? Reason. But a newborn can't practice reason. And why, according to Rand? Because he is still filling up the "tabula" with experience. So the infant is limited to the main evils in Objectivism until enough outside experience gets piled on and that allows him to make a choice not to be evil. In other words, the Randian form "demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice," at least until he fills up with enough experience to be able to negate some of it. I don't think it was Rand's intention to classify infants or children as evil, nor do I believe she did (explained above). On 2/8/2016 at 5:56 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said: I could go through the other statements like that. (I can't resist mentioning the following idea. Galt later in the passage in the link talks about standard of value. So what is the standard of value to an infant? Once again, urges he doesn't understand and can't control. Then, as time goes on, the very first thing he values is a human face that he starts imitating. Those are not just the urges that make the values, they are the very standards of the values. And volition is not involved--at least not yet at this stage of growth.) I'm seeing the human infant, and as other mammal animal infants, having built-in survival mechanisms. I wouldn't call it volition or value, either, is much less glamorous than that. It's really just a new animal that built in survival mechanisms as a given, just as it has fingers or toes, or a digestive system, a cardiovascular system, a CNS, etc. It's just a fact, that it exists as an attribute. On 2/8/2016 at 5:56 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said: I'm not saying this to bash Rand. I am saying it for those who think independently and want to think this thing through. They (or you) don't have to agree with me. And I certainly can disagree with Rand on something I thought through. I've outgrown the wish to make pretzel rationalizations to defend her honor and whatnot. She said what she said and meant what she meant. She got things right and things wrong. And I consider her a great author and thinker--both insightful and inspiring. She had such an important impact on my life, I named my two boys after characters in her novels. Don't have much to say on this, wanted to quote it as a +1 to Rand and her enormous achievements and contributions, and the fact you named two boys after characters in her novels. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 6 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said: That means god is also doomed. Only if you're a pantheist, Bob. That which creates energy and matter is not what it creates. That which created the laws of thermodynamics is not bound by those laws... ...because It is greater than the laws It created. Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 6 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said: Blame??? no. It is Judgement. God falls well short of my high standards. I have weighed him in the balance and have found Him wanting. And it's His fault not yours. That's blame. You mentioned blaming God for making a lumbar mistake. If you had any self awareness you'd realize that people only have back problems because of what they have in front. Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 Korben, I need a few days to respond (too much to do came in all of a sudden). I can give you a hint of what's coming, though. Rather than get into it over Rand was right, Rand was wrong, (including Peikoff), where there is Original Sin (which I still stand by as I wrote it), and so on, I will give you some ideas as I now understand them about brain development, cognition, values, communication, and so on. Once I do that, you will be able to understand my perspective more. Maybe not agree with it, but at least you will see it comes from some well-thought-out premise-checking--and learning of new information. As usual, my perspective on all this started with Objectivism because that's where I started thinking about these things. So my purpose is never to overthrow it. There's a lot of Rand in my very soul and I love that it is there. My perspective is to build on what works, meaning, Objectivism-wise, what I use from it that I learned from Rand's works (and some others). I'm not too concerned about defending the parts I now find inapplicable or don't work. Nor am I interested in attacking it. It's enough that I mention it for identification purposes when I find it relevant for understanding. Attacking and defending Rand is not where my heart lies. It used to, but now it lies elsewhere. So let me say this. Neuroscience, modern psychology, marketing, Internet, storytelling... Man do we live in exciting times. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
merjet Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 10 hours ago, moralist said: You mentioned blaming God for making a lumbar mistake. If you had any self awareness you'd realize that people only have back problems because of what they have in front. We already knew that moralist Greg has some mystic beliefs. This shows another one -- that all back problems are caused by obesity. He might say the many doctors who contributed to, or even agree with, the content on the following pages is mere myth, but not I. http://www.webmd.com/back-pain/guide/causes-of-back-pain http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/172943.php#causes_of_back_pain Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BaalChatzaf Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 21 minutes ago, merjet said: We already knew that moralist Greg has some mystic beliefs. This shows another one -- that all back problems are caused by obesity. He might say the many doctors who contributed to, or even agree with, the content on the following pages is mere myth, but not I. http://www.webmd.com/back-pain/guide/causes-of-back-pain http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/172943.php#causes_of_back_pain You forgot about the prostate and the appendix. But the main flaw God has is He likes to kill infants. It is one thing to go after evil parents, it is another thing to kill their innocent children Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brant Gaede Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 2 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said: You forgot about the prostate and the appendix. But the main flaw God has is He likes to kill infants. It is one thing to go after evil parents, it is another thing to kill their innocent children This is irrational. God doesn't exist. He can't have flaws--or virtues. You can't eat (your) God and have Him too. --Brant you've abandoned your atheist context for the God context--get back! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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