Mr. Kelly, related to your suggestions of your post #163, I accept your invitation of calling you Michael. Related to my writing style, I will maintain it when I think it is useful for the readers, in order to follow the message track.
[Michael:] ”GOTCHA!!!
”I had a feeling you had not read Atlas Shrugged (-40% doesn't count) and had read some of the literature critical of Objectivism. I am especially amused that you found Atlas Shrugged to be repetitive, but have no similar objection to the Talmud (or Old Testament, as you mentioned).”
That's not a sound argumentation. See: I actually have not drawn final conclusions on the Jewish texts –as you apparently have already drawn about Objectivism. I only have read tiny portions of them, less than a 1%, and in languages different than the original –mainly, English and Catalan. My current position about the Jewish texts is a mixture of curiosity and admiration (you may see more details about that in footnote [1]). Besides, the Talmud and the Old Testament are not the same.
[Michael:] ”I thought we could have a real discussion instead of exchanging posts on you teaching all of us here about How Simple It All Is.”
On the contrary, Michael: I think that reality is extremely complex.
[Michael:] “It smacks of a very Jewish one (in the fanatic sense of the term), and you don't have to be Jewish yourself to hold an agenda like that.”
Well, a “fanatic” Jew is commanded to love mankind, and that should not be a threatening fact for you. As I said in post #2 of this thread, “I am not an Objectivist, but an ex-Atheist admirer of Judaism.” I speak here thanks to who runs the show, and I don’t understand there is a ban on non-Objectivists.
[Michael:] ”Now I see you say you have great fear of prejudice, but all I see you do is focus on Islam so much that I can't help but think - here is a classis scapegoater.”
Then, following your reasoning, you scapegoat on the word “faith”. I put the blame on evil ideas. Be aware that Islam was the favorite belief-system of Adolf Hitler precisely due to philosophical reasons [2].
[Michael:] “You come off as being prejudiced as all get out.”
You are wrong and prejudiced with me. Read books of experts on Islam as Robert Spencer or Dr. Bat Ye’Or, and then maybe you will loose your whitewashing view on Islam.
[Michael:] “Also, you have stated that you are very clear about what reason is, being that it is dependant on faith.”
Wrong again, Michael. I said that I have faith in reason in the strict sense that I place total trustworthiness in reason. As I shown two times, "total trustworthiness" is one of the definitions of “faith”. The only definition to which I give real validity.
[Michael:] “But you are still defining Theism and Altruism for yourself. Then you imply that they are vastly superior to or above reason.”
Visibly, deduction is not your strong side.
[Michael:] “Here is Ayn Rand's definition:
"Reason is the faculty which... identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses. Reason integrates man's perceptions by means of forming abstractions or conceptions, thus raising man's knowledge from the perceptual level, which he shares with animals, to the conceptual level, which he alone can reach. The method which reason employs in this process is logic - and logic is the art of non-contradictory identification."
- Ayn Rand "Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World," in Philosophy, Who Needs It? p. 62.
“I won't argue about this if you want to "teach" me that reason means something different.“
I agree only with the first sentence and the last one [3]. I know that that won't make you happy, but as Scott Ryan demonstrated in his book, Rand’s epistemology (theory of knowledge) is a circular construct constantly leapfrogging from nominalism to idealism. Rand did not solve successfully the Problem of Universals. I hope you are interested in it: that's one of the finest concepts in philosophy. In this respect, Ayn Rand had a very flawed idea of what an idea is. Perhaps you know better?
[Michael:] "An idea like that is what is needed to fight Islam, Judaism, Christianity and all other religions instead of people blowing each other up because they think their brand of the irrational is better."
Please think that Atheism has proved to be very apt in the "art" of murder: across the twentieth Century, Atheists also "blowed each other": remember Communism and Nazism.
And Pacifism, another Atheist construct, is simply suicidal.
And permit me a last comment, as friendly as possible: related to Islam, and to all aspects of life, fact-checking is always a good thing. Just do it.
Best wishes,
Joel Català
Footnotes:
[1] My main prejudices with the Old Testament came from two facts:
1.A.- I thought that it had to be interpreted literally, and the literal meaning of some verses is incompatible with science. Period.
2.A.- The texts that I had read were not in the original language, Hebrew.
Those prejudices were toppled when I knew that:
1.B.- Speaking about Jews, only the Ultra-Orthodox Jews take the Bible literally. Lately I knew that Moses said that the Torah must be read “as a poem”, i. e., with interpretation. Then, the number and quality of the interpretations depends on the ability of the interpreter.
2.B.- A huge amount of its meanings and interpretations were lost and distorded and multiple translations of the original Hebrew. The case of the word “emet” blown me away: its two basic meanings are “truth” and “the whole reality” –Here I thought: that’s pure Objectivism. Moreover, the Hebrew letters forming the word “emet” are three: the first letter of the “aleph-beit”, the central letter, and the last letter, encompassing all that alphabet. And that’s not all about this word…
[2] Hitler said about Islam, among other pearls:
"Had Charles Martel not been victorious at Poitiers -Already, you see, the world had already fallen into the hands of the Jews, so gutless a thing Christianity!- Then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies the heroism and which opens up the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world. Christianity alone prevented them from doing so." (August 28, 1942) [From the book Hitler's Table Talk; 1941-1944, translated by N. Cameron and R.H. Stevens, Enigma Books (1953); citation extracted from this webpage.]
[3] I also read For The New Intellectual –I missed it in the list. Indeed, among the writings of Ayn Rand which I remember having read, that is possibly the best.
