Friday, May 02, 2008

If you like Randianism

... You'll love this thread. Or maybe you'll hate it. Read it and judge for yourself who's the spanker and who's the spankee.
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9 comments:

  1. James F. Elliott5/2/08, 4:42 PM

    I thought that you did a good job of demonstrating to Evanescence and Ergo that they need to do some more heavy-lifting to justify their beliefs.

    I actually agree in a general sense with "Therefore, the standard of morality is life."

    However:

    "That is not to say that human life is of intrinsic value in itself." (from Evanescent)

    This is a problem; it serves to justify all sorts of self-serving behavior. By devoting oneself to a rationality that is designed primarily to be selfish, the potential arises for a monstrous utilitarianism.

    Ultimately, where objectivism falls apart for me is its insistence on rationality; it abandons empathy and presupposes (or perhaps simply desperately envisions) conditions simply not natural or, indeed, even human.

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  2. James F. Elliott5/2/08, 4:52 PM

    "Defining yourself to be correct is not considered the strongest possible philosophical argument."

    That was fucking hilarious.

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  3. Larry Hamelin5/2/08, 5:39 PM

    they need to do some more heavy-lifting to justify their beliefs.

    More? How about some?

    That was fucking hilarious.

    Gave me a chuckle too.

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  4. Anonymous5/2/08, 6:02 PM

    That was some great spanking you dealt them over there, Bum. You can find even more over on Alonzo's site:

    http://atheistethicist.blogspot.com/2008/04/evanescent-on-meaning-of-life.html?showComment=1209750480000

    ReplyDelete
  5. Larry Hamelin5/2/08, 7:44 PM

    Mark C.:

    That was some great spanking you dealt them over there, Bum.

    Thanks. It's a gift.

    You can find even more...

    More?! My poor skull is already well past nominal pressure tolerance.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous5/3/08, 10:23 AM

    The thing that really gets me with the Randians it their absolute certainty in their dogma. It is this belief that makes them believe anyone who disagrees with them or Rand must be irrational, dumb or both (of course this is the kind of mentality that Rand herself cultivated).
    Unfortunately, there is not much helping Evanescent at this point as he truly seems to have gurgled the Objectivist kool-aid.

    Still, I enjoyed you commentary over there and I couldn't help but chuckl when they accused you of hostility.

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  7. Anonymous5/4/08, 11:16 AM

    Ha, I posted my thoughts on life as the ultimate value (where value is as defined by Objectivism) over on evanescent's blog. Ergo then came in and produced an absolute non-rebuttal that completely skipped over my argumentation. Can they never address what's given to them?

    Also, I really hate Objectivists' overuse of the word "metaphysical". Gets really annoying and is largely unnecessary.

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  8. Larry Hamelin5/4/08, 11:20 AM

    "Metaphysical" is a technical term in analytic philosophy which typically means, "OK, I'm going to bullshit you now."

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous5/4/08, 12:33 PM

    Indeed. It's almost all bullshit. I wish Penn and Teller would have a show about Objectivism... and Scientology, while they're at it. But Penn being a libertarian (I think), he would probably agree with too much of it. :(

    ReplyDelete

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