critique

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: : 1) reason is man's means of survival. asking a human to supress his reason is akin to asking a wolf to stop up his nose and dull his teeth. : Nope. Three fourths of people on this planet never or rarely use reason when blind faith or force of habit are alternatives. Yet they survive OK. A wolf cannot survive without teeth and a nose. : : 2) humans are noble beautiful animals, and should live for their OWN sake, not for that of others. we must act as it is in our nature to act: as the strong, beautiful, intelligent, powerful, responsible, HAPPY creatures we are capable of being. : Noble and beautiful are entirely subjective. Some people find shit perfectly enthralling. That's why we have to ditch subjectivity when we talk about this stuff. : Who is anybody to say for whose sake people must live? Ayn Rand wanted to live all for herself. Fine by me. She hated to see anybody else live another way, and campaigned against it. Not fine by me. : : : 3) a man owes it to himself to adopt a philosophy of life and stick to it unwaveringly. a good philosophy is achieved through reason. : Maybe he doesn't "owe" it? How was this debt formed? : : 4) sacrificing oneself is despicable. NB: sometimes it takes some pain and work to get something great accomplished. many of the most selfish things in life hurt at first. : Anything can be despised. In isaacland, selfsacrifice is one of these things. How is it your beeswax if somebody gives of themselves? : Perhaps, at some level, you feel their very self is your property, to be dealt with as you, not they, see fit. If you consider it, such a sense of property is no less sane than the concept of a man "owning" a mountain. : : 5) EVERYTHING you hear should pass through the filter of critical inquiry. the bible doesn't pass muster. neither even does the existence of jesus himself. (and if you don't see the circularity problems with #5 above, please disregard this and all other messages i post. i'm sorry for wasting our time.) : Often, reasoning is a useless activity. So some people give it up altogether and get by okay. Who's to say they're wrong? : : 6) a man without standards is a man without self-respect, and someone who gives his love to anyone has no standards. : In order to have self-respect, you have to do some rejecting? Interesting thought, I'd kill myself immediately if I thought it was true. Very Randian to observe an attitude antithetical to your own (philosophy is usually just a pompous word for attitude) and react by belittling and excoriating it, using the harshest expressions in your armory. : : in short, jesus was a begging slave who encouraged others to be begging slaves. : : he got what was coming to him. : : don't confuse me for those atheists who agree with the SPIRIT of the bible, but don't believe in the existence of god. i don't care about the existence of god, tho i think it's clear that the atheistic position is the most favorable theory. i despise christianity more than christians despise satanism. : If your belief structure was really different from religion, christianity would be a matter of indifference to you. : Buddhists don't believe in Jesus, but they don't have a beef with him or his religion. That's because their belief system works in an entirely different way, so no friction gets generated. : : isaac

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