Objectivisim: To The Ramparts

The problem with this is that reason, the Enlightenment, didn't give us capitalism and freedom, it gave us Marxism, socialism, communism, and the deaths of 100 million people. I'm atheist myself, but I'm troubled and convinced by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's observation that the Enlightenment is not enough by itself to ensure a moral society. He himself embraced (Eastern Orthodox) Christianity late in life, being a man of high intellectual congruity. (Not the word that I want, but I'm drawing a blank at the moment.) It was Protestantism that gave us capitalism and freedom.

 

It gave us both. Men like Mises were as much children of the Enlightenment has men like Marx.

Protestantism and the Enlightenment were children of the same European cultural development, extremist epistemological individualism. There's no doubt that the liberal tradition tended towards the Enlightenment end of the spectrum.

 

Disagree. The Renaissance gave birth to the Age of Enlightenment. The Renaissance itself was fathered by St. Thomas Aquinas, who reintroduced Aristotle to Western Civilization--and it was this reintroduction of the Aristotelian view of reason, logic, and a knowable universe that created the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. While it was mostly a reactionary movement against the Catholic church's view of man as simpleton weakling who must bow and grovel before God; it was also a reactionary movement against religion, with its Platonic overtones, in general, including the Protestant movement.

Though the Protestants did embrace the Enlightenment at first, and were on the path of reason, the First Great Awakening was a Protestant and Evangelical counter reactionary movement to Man's journey toward reason and this world, and away from faith, God, and the hereafter. It was this First Great Wakening that delivered the first serious injury to the Enlightenment. Then came the death blow, Immanuel Kant and his Protestant reaction to the Age of Reason, i.e., the Enlightenment, his book, Critique of Pure Reason. It is a complete murder of reason, and a total acceptance of faith as man's ruling epistemology, i.e., his means of gaining knowledge. He himself acknowledged that his book was written to save religion from the power of reason. In essence, he writes because we have eyes, we can't see; because we have ears, we can't hear and because we can think, we will never know true reality.

So yes, at first the Protestants embraced the Age of Reason; but eventually murdered he--and with her, Man's liberty--and returned to faith and God as their supreme ruling values. If you doubt this, I offer today's Evangelicals as proof of the truth of my conclusions.

Dr. Leonard Peikoff, Objectivist Philosopher: "The development from Aquinas through Locke and Newton represents more than four hundred years of stumbling, tortuous, prodigious effort to secularize the Western mind, i.e., to liberate man from the medieval shackles. It was the buildup toward a climax: the eighteenth century, the Age of Enlightenment. For the first time in modern history, an authentic respect for reason became the mark of an entire culture; the trend that had been implicit in the centuries-long crusade of a handful of innovators now swept the West explicitly, reaching and inspiring educated men in every field. Reason, for so long the wave of the future, had become the animating force of the present.--http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/enlightenment,_age_of.html


Ayn Rand on reason:


And the result of Man's reliance on Reason? Well, I would offer Sylvia Bokor's "The Ascent of Man" as proof of it's power to create a tomorrow of joyous wonder and romantic adventure.

The Ascent of Man by Sylvia Bokor@http://cordair.com/artists/bokor/works/ascent-of-man/index.html

And Yaron Brook, Objectivist intellectual leader: Reason, the Source of a Good Life

 

The Renaissance was an Italian artistic movement. I could agree that the Renaissance and the Enlightenment were related, in that they were born of the same European cultural trait.

Not at all. Aquinas and Dante would've seen eye to eye on few things.

...and later. One mustn't forget that the most liberal societies during the 18th, 19th, and most of the 20th century were the English-speaking majority Protestant nations.

I know it'll be difficult for you to accept this as an Objectivist, but we're right smack dab in the Age of Reason. If you spend your time worrying about leftist professors you'd be looking into the heart of unreason, and a dying subculture.

 

The Cowardly Agnostic:

Webster--Merriam Dictionary:
1 : Agnostic : a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (such as God) is unknown and probably unknowable; broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god
2 : a person who is unwilling to commit to an opinion about something

Atheist : a person who does not believe in the existence of a god or any gods : one who subscribes to or advocates atheism

So the two definitions according to Webster-Merriam, and my interpretation of them is: An agonistic is a coward who stands in the middle of road going maybe maybe not, and probably about everything, including contradictions such as the possibility of snow in the desert during 100 degree temps, while at the same being rain. (in logic, contradictions are logically impossible and point to an error in one of your premises). While an atheist calls it as it is and states I am without belief in God, or for that matter any supernatural nonsense, e.g., ghost, women who give birth to elephants, or deities that can make a kangaroo be a Mack truck that is actually a giraffe that speaks 3 languages and eats humans for dinner.

In essence, the coward's stand of agnosticism: Maybe, Maybe not. Unknowable:
Now the heroic stand of staying true to reality: No, I have no belief in a supernatural deity called god. Why. No evidence to support such a supposition. Therefore it is illogical to have a belief in that which hasn't been proved. Therefore, I have no belief.

Point bland: Cowardly agnostic: Just might be, because it is unprovable
Heroic atheist:, N0! No belief! Because it hasn't been proven.

In my estimation, the agnostic is one who hasn't the courage to say no to the existence of God, while an atheist does. As for the term agnostic-atheist, it is a contradiction, and is dead wrong, and an unnecessary concept. Your either are or aren't, to claim to be both is the worst kind of cowardice, the fear of offending by defending the truth. There is no God as there is no evidence to support his existence. God is all about faith, not reason, logic, or science.

God isn't dead, he never existed.

Ayn Rand: "[There is] a widespread approach to ideas which Objectivism repudiates altogether: agnosticism. I mean this term in a sense which applies to the question of God, but to many other issues also, such as extra-sensory perception or the claim that the stars influence man’s destiny. In regard to all such claims, the agnostic is the type who says, “I can’t prove these claims are true, but you can’t prove they are false, so the only proper conclusion is: I don’t know; no one knows; no one can know one way or the other.

The agnostic miscalculates. He thinks he is avoiding any position that will antagonize anybody. In fact, he is taking a position which is much more irrational than that of a man who takes a definite but mistaken stand on a given issue, because the agnostic treats arbitrary claims as meriting cognitive consideration and epistemological respect. He treats the arbitrary as on a par with the rational and evidentially supported. So he is the ultimate epistemological egalitarian: he equates the groundless and the proved. As such, he is an epistemological destroyer. The agnostic thinks that he is not taking any stand at all and therefore that he is safe, secure, invulnerable to attack. The fact is that his view is one of the falsest—and most cowardly—stands there can be."--http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/agnosticism.html

Yaron Brook and Dave Rubin: Objectivism, Religion, and the Role of Government:



Man's only truth: Reason; Sense of Wonder by Byran Larsen @ http://cordair.com/artists/larsen/works/sense-of-wonder/index.html

 

Anyway, since I'd rather read other books. I'm guessing the crux of "Objectivism" holding some meaning lies within what this dude said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_(Ayn_Rand) Wouldn't reality itself have to be a closed system in order to say an individual is?

 

Ah, The Evil Ayn Rand:

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

 

What Ayn Rand offers to any who seek enlightenment: A Sense of Wonder




By Bryan Larsen http://cordair.com/artists/larsen/works/sense-of-wonder/index.html