| | Oh yes. Let's choose the cheap and easy scapegoating path. By all means. I am accusing you of no evils but those you have yourself announced in print. Have you or have you not, objectively, called for "use of the state to prevent the young from being exposed to ideas you don't want them to hear" and "and literal, mass-murder, extermination, genocide of Arabian human beings for the crime of having been born," quoting my own accusations, which I stand by.
These are your words. And they are, objectively, both false and vicious.
The human race would no likely ever have heard nary a peep from you in objection to the countless evils of religion, but as soon as someone stands up to object to a mass kink that veils itself in virtue, you come out, guns-a-blazing.
What I object to is not your denunciations of religion, but your totalitarian fantasies of state-managing education to prevent the young from being exposed to ideas you disagree with.
As for my view of religion, I have stated much of this elsewhere in this forum:
Now, for the record, I do not believe in any irrational sources of knowledge. I do, in precisely the manner of Locke, believe that there are private sources of knowledge- i.e. that one may perceive objects of consciousness in "the mind" not derived from sensation that are not publically available to others. I agree, with Locke, that nothing derivable in any necessary part from private sources of knowledge is admissable as public evidence, although I do believe that knowledge originally derived from such sources but demonstrable without regards to it can be publically defensible (and unlike Locke, I do not admit the possibility of "miracles". My view was a common Enlightenment position, and I fail to see why it is irrational, even if it disagrees with Objectivism.
It is true that I, additionally, hold a somewhat different view of causality and 'mind-body interaction' problems than Objectivists. It is true that I have a view on ontology and of "the self" radically different from Objectivists (although Rand never really put forward any theory on the issue herself). It is also true that I think the term "god/dess" has a valid reference, and though this I will not debate here; I will say I do not believe in any transcendant or epistemologically prior entities and that I feel more akin with spiritually serious atheists (Rand definitely included) than most theists. By the definitions of George H, Smith's Atheism: the Case Against God, I am an atheist. Which is to say that I think his arguments are valid but that there are other meanings of the term "god(/dess).
I do not believe in the validity of faith in any but the metaphorical sense of trust or friendship. I do not belive in mysticism, do not belive in an altruistic ethic, and do not believe in religious sources of morality. I am an agnostic as for as the issue of an afterlife is concerned. Yes, I do describe myself as a religious person, I do worship a goddess. Yes, I have found immense spiritual, practical and aesthetic value in the immersion in practices with a solidly religious base... I leave it to the intelligence of readers to figure out the particulars, as my free excercise of religion is a losing supreme court case waiting to happen.
In formal terms, my views are close to universalism, Latitudarianism, Spinozan pantheism, and deism. They are not far off at all from the views of Bacon, Newton, and Locke. But I really cannot say more, as my views relate to personal experiences which I firmly believe cannot be publically validated and will not try to do so.
Actually, I support the notion of a secular education, and oppose any exclusive training of the young within a religious tradition unless they desire it. I do think it is wrong for parents to seek to insulate their children from opposing ideas. My views on religion on childteaching are that children should be encouraged to explore for themselves and reason for themselves all options; a parent should present their best rational arguments and living examples for their own worldviews, but should not use the child's dependence as a lever to pressure a set of values.
What I defend in religion is essentially the practise of practicing life within a poetic framework, what Nietzsche called 'giving style to one's character'. It is in this sense that I object heatedly to the vilification of Jews, or Moslems, Buddhists, or whoever, and having 'irrational' stories that are unacceptable. I believe spirituality grants depth to life, and would distinguish between religion primarily concerned with establishing values for a social order and religion which is primarily an aesthetic practise of live. The former I oppose, the second I do not. And I respect all or nearly all religions in the second sense because of the broad kaleidoscope of artistic beauty they have made possible; in this case, my differences with Rand are primarily aesthetic: I believe it is far wiser to learn the value the various greatest heights of art than those that agree with one's own sense of life.
Ultimately, what I am saying is that religion defined as mysticism, faith, and altruism is false. Religion defined as spiritual art is strictly no more true or false than Hamlet is true or false. Like Jung as Joe describes him, (I don't know much about Jung... on the reading list) I would likely argue that the value of religious practice lies in its organization of abstract concepts in archetypical patterns; or to put it another way that there is value in the personification or imaging of ones ideals and addressing personified ideals as subjects in conversation.
I do say up front there is more to the story, which is why I describe myself as a Pagan instead on simply a Romantic. The problem is that is would be very hard to explain without either (1) a complicated exposition of an ontology of mental space derived in my case from Sartre, Husserl, Kant, and gnosticism, or (2) an exposition of personal experiences which are fully empirical but I cannot replicate as objects of others' experience. The philosophical differences with atheism that result from my religious perspective are minimal; the only difference between myself an Romantic atheist (of Cynical and phenomenological influences), one not ashamed to live life in experimental fictions (meaning not lies, but literature), is that I find myself faced with uncertainties on the relation between volition and causality. The rest of what sets me apart is just really a set of empirical, really natural scientific questions. I do not believe in any transcendant God or gods commanding or ruling nature; my view is much like Spinoza's and John Toland's, seeing the divine as an aspect of nature considered in a certain mode. If this is childish or vicious, say the same of Spinoza.
Generally, I think you could educate yourself as to the different forms religion takes. If you mean religion based upon principles of faith in propositions without reason, ethics without enjoyment, or established theocracy, I quite agree that these are vicious. In fact, I agree with the entirety of Rand's attacks upon mysticism and intrincism- but I do not think these attacks apply to religion as a practice but only religion as a claim to truth. I do believe that certain practices can without that realm be evaluated on their coherence, cohesion, practicability, and vital-aesthetic quality, and oppose religious concepts that inevitably involve claims of direct propositional truth; if the pursuit of such practices allows a person to become aware of additional natural facts and draw conscious theoretical conclusions, then this kind of discovery of truth in religion I do not object to. However, such perfectly valid conclusions are not publically demonstrable to another person and should therefore should be remain a person's own practice of life.
The concept of religion I support is an art of society, ritual, mental discipline, and practical spiritual tools which (I think for very good reason) take the form of personal-cosmological narratives, not religion as an attempt at prayer-mat philosophy or science. I think religion very much has its own proper sphere, one to which I encourage exploration of, and I think within that sphere theo/alogical attempts to understand a logos of practice is valid and possible, but the methods of thealogy are in my opinion very close to aesthetics or music theory. Anyway, my interest in a religious life is simply a joy in an enriching, fascinating, and useful aspect of life I didn't previously experience. Lumping that it with defending (say) the Taliban is absurd. I heavily support the Objectivists, libertarians, the ACLU, or Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Moreover, I heavily oppose the social and coercive pressure placed upon dissenters even in our society to conform to religious tenets. But then I would be just as much against the insulated and oppressive atheist childrearing you yourself support. People need to think and experience for themselves.
BTW, my concept on religion expressed above may seem to make my religion unserious; I assure you this is anything but the case, though I must reserve explanations of the seriousness of my own practise. But as an amateur historian, my views are little different from those of educated Pagans in the ancient world or educated followers of many non-Western religious traditions in the past and today, or for that better the views of Goethe and Shakespeare, who were neither Christians nor atheists. The fact that the Objectivist concept of religion really doesn't deal well with these cases is a problem for Objectivists.
Which brings me to a final point: you accuse others, without understanding them, or collaborating in repression because they refuse to treat social pattern of conformity with your blunt, tyranny-craving fist, which now I see has you quite logically doubting a NIOF principle *I* do support.
This is such a lame strategy, your following the pseudo-moral mandate that "might makes right". In other words, because the great, bloated tick of religion is too big and powerful -- albeit obviously evil -- for you to feel easily confident in winning against, and because I am just one person railing against religion, then religion is "right", and I am "wrong".
This is a Hitlerian "Big Lie". I believe you have a right to live, to teach, to establish social institutions according to your own principles, while you are literally declaring, if not 'might makes right', that 'right makes might', and openly demanding that
Any parent who attempts to sneak his or her child into any religion's house of kink, should be found guilty of child abuse and penalized to the fullest extent of the law.
You are the person, who apparently believes religion has some strange attraction your arguments are helpless to deal with, who demands bringing in the guns of the state to accomplish what your persuasion is not up to.
Let's play a game, Msr. Reasoner, how about we keep open a free market in religion. How about we respect people's "NIOF" rights, how about we trust children to think for themselves, how about we drop this fear that if people aren't hammered about the one right way, they can use all of their faculties, including very definitely their minds, to discover how to enjoy life on Earth. That is my standards, on matters religious and all others. Is it yours?
Try to keep in mind that I'm not objecting to your precious kink, but rather the clandestine entrenchment of psychological kink as an inescapable way of life. That might possibly cause you to call off your dogs of war from my heels.
If you really meant this, it might. But given your common method of treating everything you oppose as an ineffable threat, a strange attractor, which can't be reasoned with, but must be silenced, closeted, not shown to children, shunned, deported, or killed before its senseless and monstrous force takes over, I cannot believe a person of your basic premises will respect either contrary views arrived at rationally nor simple human rights.
And on religion, may I suggest you read, not some mystical text, but the scholarly agnostic Walter Kaufmann's Critique of Religion and Philosophy and Faith of Heretic, to get some human sense of the varieties of what religion can mean, before you mindlessly and blanketly denounce the fallen believers of every religion's house of ill repute?
I encourage you by word and deed to present the best case for your values; if you object to my speech, counter it with better speech. Wishing I would just shut up is the sign of an impotent inferior afraid to compete on the free market.
If your ideas are better than mine, what are you afraid of?
Jeanine Shiris Ring {))(*)((}
promiscuity of the mind leads to promiscuity of the body
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