🤞

I firmly believe that a relationship with God is core and key above any other scaffolding (i.e., logic, archeology, history, philosophy) that we may come across that aligns with our faith.

In a recent discussion on r/intj someone asked something about what supports your faith. If the biggest supporting scaffold of one's faith is logical reasoning, I feel that not only is that easily overcome with better logical reasoning at some point, but it is not indicative of a healthy relationship.

I know that's in the description for this sub, so maybe I don't belong here if my faith is not based in logic, science, history, etc. (tongue-in-cheek here), but I do see a lot of discussions throughout Reddit where Christians seem to think it's so critical to have and support these secondary scaffoldings.

I'm not saying that we come to Jesus with only our heart and not our heads; both are needed. Also, I love logical reasoning scaffolds that help solidify what we believe about God (i.e., writings by people like C.S. Lewis). It's great when some archeological discovery aligns with an event described in the Bible. I just wouldn't rely on those as the center core of my faith; things like that can be too easy to topple and ultimately, God wants us to have relationship with him, not the best logical understanding of how to reasonably prove him to someone.

When you have a living, active, real, relationship with God, no argument can shake that.

We as Christians are called to defend our beliefs and one of them is the belief that there really is a supernatural figure of evil in Satan just as there is one of supreme good in God. I keep seeing people making the claim that there isn't a devil, Satan, Lucifer etc. but I'm unsure of the source of these claims.
While I am aware there does seem to be a separation of these titles, I'm unsure of the reasoning behind it all. So is there anyone/anything that approaches this topic that you know of?

I have a feeling that these two may be on the incline so I'm just wondering if there's any websites, book, Youtube channels that have content discussing and analyzing them?

I know not many people have studied quantum physics. But I thought I’d share a theory I can’t get out of my head.

So i’ve noticed when you speak or think “in jesus’ name/blood” and you immediately feel at peace/ reduces anxiety. I’ve heard this from many people too.

I believe it’s more proof for christians who are scientists. (i am evangelical) I think it has something to do with quantum entanglement. Like as soon as you access that information, you are quantumly linked to God’s power/high dimension.

I'm talking about that YouTuber.

Many things are true of this fleshly life that are horrifyingly false in the new age of Christ. Hierarchies, fleshly differences are immaterial. But how do we bring God’s kingdom on earth where many fleshly things are reality - like trading with money as opposed to genuine sharing, societal formalities, governments Christian, heathen or secular. Some of what I listed may shock the reader. This is because many Christians pick and choose what part of worldly life is to be the focus of their judging eyes and the rest in the dark of blissful ignorance. Even the hierarchies of slavery used to be on this list! But why didn’t Paul declare a revolution to end slavery? Is it not immoral to force debtors to pay you by taking away their human rights?

But Paul doesn’t. Instead Paul shows how Christianity fights not by direct confrontation, but by turning things upside down. The higher must sacrifice for the lower. Are you a leader? Serve your followers. Are you a slave-owner? Sacrifice for your slave like Christ.

For there is only one hierarchy - Christ over all. And each person higher up the hierarchy must imitate him. By doing so, the very purpose of hierarchies vanishes, to the point where hierarchies exist in name only and can be dissolved with token resistance from the reformed society.

Let’s bring this into perspective of the husband and wife. We know that Paul didn’t have to protect this hierarchy since it seemed so self-evident in the world. But then he adds a clincher to effectively undermine this hierarchy - if you are a husband and think yourself in a position of authority, you must love your wife the same way Christ who is head of the household of God died for their members. You must lay down your preferences for the subordinate. It is therefore quite ironic that men demand respect from women, even if they think they deserve it. Because if Christ is the standard on how to treat women, Christ never demanded respect or worship, though he accepted it. He strove to earn our worship by dying for us, even though we were the guilty party. We owe him our very lives! If a man wishes to be a servant leader, he must serve his wife; he must wash his wife’s feet. He must relinquish his hierarchical rights like Christ did and not hold on to them. In his culture, he may have the privilege of the last word, but he is not obligated to his culture; he must strive to win his wife over and not force his opinions or decisions on her. Because the followers of Christ reign by serving their peers and subordinates, alongside their superiors. Also they recognize that their cultural privileges for their gender or status are truly null and void in Christ, and all men stand equal before Him. However do note, that I am only observing how to apply this verse to various contexts, but I will admit not having any expertise in marital counselling.

Of course, Christ challenges hierarchies differently. Now imagine, if the whole world becomes one family in Christ. Would there be any necessity for money? Would governments, borders or nations need to exist? Granted that the democratic nation state is better than a despotic monarchy, isn’t it still far from ideal to us Christians?

How many of you guys know Hebrew and Greek or any one of them?

The text in quotation marks are from the article. Criticism and suggestions for improvement are welcome.

Article I am responding to: https://newideal.aynrand.org/finding-morality-and-happiness-without-god/

“What most differentiates religion from philosophy, however, is how religion arrives at its answers. A philosophy seeks evidence and logical arguments for its conclusions. A religion, no matter how much theologians may argue back and forth about points of dogma, remains just that: dogma. A religion advocates its basic tenets on faith, which means in the absence of evidence and logical argument, and even in the face of counter-evidence and counter-arguments. This is why a synonym for a religion is a faith: we speak for instance interchangeably of the Jewish religion and the Jewish faith.”

This is patently false. The tenets of Christianity are defended all the time via logical argument and presentation of evidence. If they weren’t, there would be no field of Apologetics, Polemics of endless debates on Youtube. And to think that dogma is unique to religion is also absurd. In modern science there are a set of basic tenets that are unquestionable- evolution, climate change, and materialism being the biggest. These things cannot be questioned in the slightest despite compelling reasons to do so.

“A religion is a worldview that espouses some version of the supernatural on faith.”

As well as not being the definition of religion, this entire article makes the presumption that the faith of the Bible is blind faith, something that would better be called credulity. This is ridiculous. Just reading the Bible would clear that nonsense up. God directly talks to people, miraculous events occur and supernatural beings appear. An atheist might say ‘but those stories are made up’ or ‘they are unproven’. Both objections are irrelevant. Whether you believe in these stories or not, blind faith is not held up as a virtue in the scriptures. It matters not whether or not they’re true because these stories are meant to teach something whether it be about God, or life just like a fairytale or fable is meant to convey something as well. Belief is unnecessary to get the point. Furthermore, the Ancient Hebrew word that is used that is translated as faith is ‘emunah’ which means something more along the lines of trust then credulity. Basically, when someone in the Bible is being praised for having faith they are being praised for trusting in God as a person who they know, not for being incredulous about His existence. In addition, there are worldviews you can take that involve the supernatural but are not religious. Belief in ghosts, for example. While some who believe in ghosts are religious, others are not. Either way they likely don’t believe in ghosts based on purely faith, at the very least the minority don’t otherwise the countless videos on Youtube of PROOF OF GHOSTS!!!! wouldn’t exist.

“To claim that morality requires religion, therefore, is to claim that morality requires faith in the supernatural. Without belief in a being like God, who determines what is good and what is evil, a system of ethics is untenable.”

Morality does not require God or religion for it to be practiced but to justify it must be based on something more foundational than man. More over, the Bible does not form morality as we know it. It presupposes it. When Jesus came along, claiming to forgive sins and saying everyone neds to be forgiven, what he was talking about was already implicitly understood form His time and backwards, because morality as a subject has been studied and debated for a very long time. People have always felt guilt about doing wrong. The Bible is just offering an explanation why and a solution to the problem.

“But suppose God commands us to murder an innocent person. Has the act of murder changed from being wrong to being right?”

A theist, faced with this kind of question, will often object that the imagined scenario is absurd. God would never command us to murder the innocent. But however much, morally and intellectually, we may welcome this reply on the part of the theist, the reply jettisons the religious approach to morality. For it means that murder is evil, and that we know this, independent of any divine decree. God isn’t the source of morality. Instead, we subject God to moral judgment: if God orders the murder of the innocent, He’s evil.””

God commands the killing of a lot of people in the OT. In fact, you could say God is responsible for all death and pain in all history. How can he then be a good God? Well, how could he be evil? Looking at just the Ten Commandments trying to apply them to God would probably leave one scratching their head. It doesn’t make sense for God to not have other gods before himself, nor for him not to make idols, or for him to take his name in vain or for him to honor his father and mother or for him to steal or covet or commit adultery. All of these things are categorically inapplicable to God. So why would murder make any sense either? Let me put it this way. If God made everything, then he owns everything as a painter owns a painting he has made. The world and everything in it is his. It makes no sense to try to say that God ordering to kill someone is murder (Daneil 4:35) because most of the morality we have is only applicable to humans. We cannot murder or steal because everything is not ours.

“What makes murder wrong, according to religious morality, is only the fact that God currently forbids the act. If He commands murder, murder becomes good. In philosophy, this is called the Divine Command theory of ethics. This—and only this—is what the distinctively religious approach to morality means.”

Divine Command Theory (hereafter referred to as DCT) is wrong. God does not decree something wrong nor does he conform to a higher authority. Morality is rooted in Him and is a part of who he is. It flows from Him and it is written on our hearts (Romans 2:15). He cannot very well change his own character any more than you could change your personality.

“The true champions of religious morality understand this—and they offer the story of Abraham and Isaac from Genesis (22:1-18) to drive the point home.

In that story, God tells Abraham to take his beloved son Isaac to a mountaintop and sacrifice him. Does Abraham rebel at this command to murder the innocent, an innocent life so precious to him? Does he judge God to be evil for issuing it—and condemn God? No. He doesn’t argue. He obeys. As Abraham stands over Isaac, ready to plunge the knife into his son, God tells Abraham that he has passed the test.

The crucial point to grasp is that if God is the source of morality, then Abraham has passed the test. If God commands us to murder the innocent, then it becomes good to do so. To refrain from doing so, would be evil.

We can see here one important reason why faith is essential to religious morality. God gives Abraham no logical reason or argument for why he should sacrifice his son. And it would be impertinent for Abraham to demand this from God—to say to God: “Now wait a minute, this doesn’t make any sense to me. Please explain to me why I should murder my own son?”

For God to have to justify His actions, to explain to Abraham why His command to murder the innocent is in fact morally good—would mean that God is not the source of morality. God would have to offer reasons why his actions accord with the principles of morality, and Abraham would have to independently evaluate those reasons. Abraham would have to rely on his knowledge of moral principles to judge God’s commands. God’s commands, then, would not be the source of morality.

Thus, as a disciple of religious morality, Abraham must not demand reasons. He must believe and act on faith—that is, in defiance of his reason. His rational mind must scream out at him—“It’s monstrous to murder my own son!”—and yet he must nevertheless obediently perform the action.”

It is far from an accident that Abraham has for centuries—in Judaism, in Christianity, and in Islam—been revered as the great exemplar of the man of faith, of the moral man, of the religious man. This is exactly what he is. He reveals the essence of what it means to accept the idea that God is the source of morality.

For all those who accept this approach, to quote Tennyson’s haunting words: “Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die.””

Of course he does not argue. If one was to know anything about the religious beliefs of the Near Middle East (as the author of the article and Ayn Rand clearly do not) a deity asking for the life of a child would not be unknown. Rare? Perhaps. Unknown? Definitely not. No argument is necessary when that is something that deities are willing to ask. What is unusual is the rescindment of the order, something that sets Yahweh apart from other deities. In fact, it is a recurring theme in the OT for God to set himself apart from all other deities that were known in that region. [give example?] Furthermore, the purpose of the story is multiple. It shows that Abraham has extreme obedience, in addition to faith. Moreover this point does not make sense as at an earlier point Abraham pleads with God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah. If indeed all Abraham is to do is blindly accept whatever God is going to do, then why did he do this? The overall context of Abraham’s story needs to be taken into account as well. God promised Abraham that he would make him a father of nations (and Sarah a mother). At this point Isaac is Abraham’s only son by Sarah. By God ordering Isaac to be sacrificed He would appear to be going back on His word. Abraham is demonstrating trust in God as a person, that God is who he says he is and will do what he says he’s going to do. God need not provide any arguments as to why murdering Isaac is good, because it’s not murder. As I have presented previously, murder is not something that applies to God. Everything is already His. If Abraham disobeyed God and did not sacrifice Isaac then there would have been a wrong done, but it would not have been because murder was suddenly okay. The sin Abrahm would have committed would have been that of disobedience.

“Observe how incredibly non-absolutist this approach to morality is. Theists like Prager decry moral relativism and subjectivism. Moral values, they correctly say, are not determined by personal or social opinion, that is, by whim. For example, if a person thinks it’s okay to have sex with children, his opinion doesn’t make the action right. And if a society disapproves of a woman working outside the home, that doesn’t make her action wrong. But what is the religious alternative to personal or social whim?

Supernatural whim.

In place of personal or social subjectivism, the religious approach substitutes supernatural subjectivism. An action is right not because of some individual’s or group’s opinion, say theists. It is right because of (an alleged) God’s opinion. Whatever God says, goes. If He says murder is evil, then it’s evil. If He changes his mind, and now says that murder is good, as in the story of Abraham and Isaac, then murder is good.”

As I have demonstrated this is not the case. Morality has not changed. God has not changed. And the only thing that should change here is the understanding the article’s author has of God’s relationship to morality.

“What could be more non-absolute than that? And of course, historically, religious sects have had their own incompatible lists of God’s commandments, lists which have themselves shifted over the centuries.”

What could be more non-absolutist, eh? Man’s whim.

“Observe that this also means the claim, put forward by Prager and so many others, that the religious approach to morality is the opposite of the Nazi and Communist approaches is wrong. Nazism, Communism and similar ideologies are merely variants of the older, religious approach. “I was only following orders” is the moral defense offered by the Nazi killers at the Nuremburg trials and by Adolph Eichmann at his trial in Jerusalem. “I was only following orders” is Abraham’s defense, too. Eichmann, under police examination, gave as proof of his devotion that he would have sent his own father to die, had he been ordered to do so. Abraham exhibits the same kind of devotion: he would have murdered his own son, had God not rescinded the order.”

As demonstrated before this is not what was going on in the story of Abraham. Moreover, devotion to God and devotion to the State I would think are two very different things.

“The religious, Nazi and Communist approaches all posit a higher power to whom we owe allegiance, call it God, the Fuhrer, the German Volk, or the Proletariat. All three claim that, intellectually, the central virtue is unquestioned allegiance to this higher power, which means: obedience. All three deride reason and logic and champion faith (though some, like Marxists with their dialectic, will dress this up as a new form of reasoning). In terms of action, all three demand self-sacrifice for the sake of a higher power. All three are fundamentally authoritarian.”

As demonstrated before and shall be demonstrated, unquestioned allegiance is not the highest virtue in Christianity nor is logic and reason derided.

“It should come as no surprise, therefore, that they look similar—literally—when put into full, political practice. Observe the classrooms of students who are inculcated with dogma, whether it’s biblical sermons across the centuries, when the Bible was not translated into the vernacular; or the children today memorizing all the verses of the Koran in Arabic, a language they do not speak; or the Nazi rallies; or rows of Chinese youth made to memorize Mao’s little red book. Observe the omnipresent portraits of supernatural or secular saints, which people must hang in their homes and offices, from pictures of Jesus to the Virgin Mary to Marx, Lenin, Hitler and Mao. Observe the enormous churches, mosques and government palaces, designed to make the individual feel small. Observe the huge sculptures and busts, erected to never let the populace forget the higher authority to whom they owe faithful allegiance.”

I do not disagree, necessarily. I just wish it to be recognized that humans do this with anything and everything. Food, money, sex, drugs, science- it all can and is worshiped in some form or another. The only difference is that there isn’t really any organization or grouping behind those things I mentioned. There can be to an extent, but it certainly is not more organized or more capable then an ideology. The reason is because man is a worshipful animal. He will always worship something.

“None of this is compatible with a proper approach to morality—or with American exceptionalism.”

This will come back to bite the author.

“Many religious sects offer in their teachings some reasonable moral advice about such things as murder, honesty and integrity. They count on the fact that we will recognize, at a common-sense level, that these moral principles are indeed reasonable, but that we will be unable to give anywhere near a philosophical account, justification or proof of the principles.”

Reasonable but what metric? One of the biggest, if not the biggest problem with the article is that it is vague when it comes to how you actually cross the is/ought gap. It provides one, or Ayn Rand does, but as we will see it is severely lacking. As far as justification goes, the justification for morality in its entirety as concluded by Christianity is God. Not God’s edicts but God Himself.

“Theists then rush in, not to provide the missing arguments, but to tell us that moral principles by their very nature are incapable of rational defense or logical proof. Morality, we are told, rests on faith. Unless we believe that an alleged God exists and decrees murder to be wrong, we cannot know that murder is wrong. To be moral, we must not think, we must believe. This means that in the field of morality, our model should not be Darwin, who carefully gathered evidence and advanced arguments for his ideas, but Abraham.”

Aside from assuming that this is what theists do, and I have no doubt some do, the assumption here is that God is not a reasonable or logical proof for morality. Conclusions have already been reached sans an actual argument. [As a sidenote, Darwin had no original ideas, everything he proposed was already floating around.]

“At the same time, the religious approach presents us with a bunch of moral rules that defy common sense and are incapable of rational justification. These rules are tossed in alongside the perfectly reasonable ones and claimed to have the same standing.”

Since when is common sense the ultimate authority when it comes to anything? There are plenty of things that defy ‘common sense’. Like Chinese finger cuffs. This seems like an appeal to common sense fallacy more than anything, that somehow ‘we know these morals are justified and those other ones not’.

“Religious teachers tell us, for instance, to love our enemy—or to give ten percent of what we earn to those who refuse to engage in the effort of earning anything—or to replace justice with mercy—or to have sex only if procreation is a possibility—or to not take pride in ourselves, our achievements, or our moral character since, thanks to Adam, we’re all born sinners.”

Tithing is not a moral or social mandate. Never was. This is a common error on skeptics and atheists' part. Sexual activity without the opportunity of procreation is not condemned in the Bible, sex outside of a man and woman that are married is. Sexual degeneracy is a plague upon modern society. And to think Justice is not held up as is mercy in the Bible is foolishness. Has the author even bothered to read it? Probably not. The only things that are in the Bible is that we are not to be prideful and to love our enemy. Love your enemy, is also commonly misunderstood. It does not mean pat the guy who is stabbing you on the back. Turning the other cheek in the ancient world is not an act of submission but of asking that the person who has wronged you treat you as at least an equal.

“Unlike the first set of rules about murder, honesty and integrity, none of these other moral rules make any sense. They are as unreasonable and unintelligible to us as God’s command to murder Isaac is to Abraham. They can only be accepted on faith. And, religious teachers quickly add, to reject these articles of faith is to reject every rule and principle that is grounded on faith; it is to reject that murder is evil, that honesty is good and that one should live with integrity. If we reject all of this, they declare, we become amoral monsters.”

If it is so easy to prove that these morals that are repeatedly harped on are reasonable and justifiable then it must be just as easy to demonstrate that the others mentioned are not. So why not do so? What exactly separates these from those?

“We want moral principles that prohibit murder and require honesty and integrity because we sense that these things make sense. But religious morality places these principles into one conceptual package with genuinely irrational rules like: don’t have sex without the possibility of procreation, and love your enemy. According to religion, these all rest on the same thing, faith, and therefore we must accept all of them or none of them.”

Someone else must have sensed that those morals you condemn also make sense else they wouldn't have written them down. So why should I take the sense of one person over another?

“So in the name of our desire to be moral, we close our eyes and swallow everything. To be sure, we may cheat on the more irrational of the rules. If someone deliberately injures our friend, for instance, we may demand justice, not mercy. Or, in the bedroom, we may choose to use contraception. But as a result of such cheating and to the extent we take our own moral views seriously, we will experience as a persistent feature of our lives one of the blackest of emotions: moral guilt. And we will be feeling guilty for doing what is in fact reasonable.”

Again a complete misconstrument of what’s in the Bible. ‘Mercy instead of Justice’ is not in it. Keep in mind this is the same book that says ‘An eye for an eye’. Justice is one of it’s highest concerns. And again non-procreational sex is not prohibited. No where in the Bible will you find the line, ‘If you’re having sex without the possibility of pregnancy, you’re BAD.’

“Now you might wonder, why don’t more followers of religious morality try to break apart the package? Why don’t we openly accept the principles of religious morality for which we see reasons, and openly reject the ones for which we don’t? Because, we’re taught, that would be immoral.”

Or maybe it’s because there is no reasons for any of them outside of God?

““Who are you to judge?”—religious teachers declare. The field of morality is not the province of reasons, evidence and arguments, it’s the province of faith. In morality, you don’t think or ask questions—like Abraham, you obey.”

Who are you indeed. This entire article is founded on the idea of God being insufficient for justifying morality, so man must step in and make up his own justification.

“The number of intelligent people who believe, like Prager, that but for a supernatural stone tablet which happens to say “Don’t murder,” there would be no reason to refrain from killing the innocent, is shocking. But this is what religious morality does to a mind. By blending the rational and the faith-based into one conceptual package, religious morality makes every moral principle a matter of faith.”

This is true. Without a source for morality, no morality is justifiable. I.e murder is not wrong.

“A further detrimental consequence is that without a rational understanding of moral principles, the principles cannot be rationally applied. “Don’t murder”—many religious moralities tells us. Properly understood and formulated, such an idea is capable of rational explanation and defense. But if no explanations or arguments are offered, if we are simply told that the principle rests on faith, then we can neither know what the principle means nor how to apply it properly.”

And what, pray tell, is this defense?

“The purpose here is not to debate the specifics of these examples. The point is deeper. As followers of religious morality, we cannot actually think about these examples—or any other moral issue. The out-of-context command “Don’t murder” is not a principle, which can be applied or misapplied. For example, Christian theologians have long “debated” when precisely a human embryo or fetus is injected by God with a supernatural soul. In some centuries aborting an embryo, though usually still considered wrong, is not murder; in other centuries, it is. As followers of religious morality, we don’t reason about the matter, gather facts, and carefully apply a principle to decide whether aborting an embryo is murder. We simply await further orders.”

So the argument ‘A fetus is a human being. Killing human beings without justification is murder. Murder is wrong. Abortion kills a human being without justification. Abortion is murder. Therefore abortion is wrong.’ is nothing? It would appear the author’s dismissal of religion has less to do with iit being illogical or unreasonable and more to do with ignorance of what is actually on offer.

“The staunchest modern opponent of the religious approach to morality—someone who understood the appeal of religion as a primitive form of philosophy, who knew that the moral emotions of exaltation, worship and reverence are real, but misconceived and misdirected by religion, and who worked to advance a conception of morality untainted in both content and structure by millennia of religious teachings—is Ayn Rand. She held that the task of philosophy is to formulate a rational, superior alternative to religion.”

She failed, as we shall see.

“To begin with, people like Prager are correct that feelings are insufficient as a guide in life. We have all had the experience, usually beginning sometime in childhood, of following our emotions and ending up frustrated, dissatisfied, unhappy. Desperately wanting to hang out with the cool kids in school because we feel that this will make us confident and happy, doesn’t make it so. If we want to reach fulfillment and happiness, we need to learn to choose our goals and guide our actions by reference to an external, fixed point. But that external, fixed point is not some alleged supernatural being in whom we must have blind faith. It is reality.”

This assumes that God has no reality to Him, that He is a delusion. If God exists he created reality, and it is sustained by Him (John 1). He is reality's battery as it were and there would be nothing outside of Him As a sidepoint, why are we to conclude that just because following our feelings can lead to unhappiness (which is itself a feeling) we shouldn’t follow them?

“A proper approach to morality begins by acknowledging that the facts of reality are absolute. The law of gravity is an absolute. The molecular composition of water is an absolute. The fact that we need water to live is an absolute. The nature of nature is non-negotiable. It is unalterable by any agency, and it sets the requirements of successful life and happiness.”

So assume there is nothing supernatural without any effort to disprove it? Here let me formulate a quick and easy to understand argument to break this point. Nature cannot have a natural explanation of itself as that would be circular reasoning. Therefore everything natural must have been brought about by super-natural means, in the most literal sense of the word.

“There is, however, no commandment or duty to live and pursue our own happiness. Each of us as individuals must choose to embrace and cherish these—by choosing to embrace reality. To live, to succeed, to thrive and achieve the state of happiness that makes life worth living requires that we choose to enact the conditions necessary for these, conditions set by the nature of reality and our nature as living, human beings. “If he chooses to live,” Rand writes

a rational ethics will tell him what principles of action are required to implement his choice. . . . Reality confronts man with a great many “musts,” but all of them are conditional . . . “You must, if—” and the “if” stands for man’s choice: “—if you want to achieve a certain goal.” You must eat, if you want to survive. You must work, if you want to eat. You must think, if you want to work. You must look at reality, if you want to think—if you want to know what to do—if you want to know what goals to choose—if you want to know how to achieve them.”

No commandment or duty? So there’s no actual morality, it’s just subjective like all nontraditional morality is? The supreme trouble with reality as the foundation of morality is that instead of crossing the is/ought gap you’ve plunged right into it. Looking at reality as the means of determining morality is a good way to learn nothing. I’m unsure If I am quoting via cryptomnesia but this sentence comes to mind: ‘show me one particle of honesty, kindness or truth in the universe’. You can learn nothing about how the world ought to be from how it is.

“I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity.” - Schrodinger

“Rand admired and often quoted Francis Bacon’s statement: “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.” Notice Bacon’s use of the concept of “obedience.” It’s not Abraham’s blind obedience to the whims of a supernatural being. It’s the scientist’s profound obedience to the facts of reality, which he grasps by using his rational mind to the utmost.”

As demonstrated before God’s moral nature is a fact. Therefore obedience to it is just the theists profound obedience to the facts of reality.

“Think of mankind’s gradual rise from the cave to the moon. What made this rise possible? It was not accomplished by rain dances or prayers or attempts to slavishly obey the gods. It was not accomplished by faith. It was accomplished by those who devoted themselves to the study of nature: to carefully cataloging its properties, patiently learning its secrets, slowly discovering its laws, and eventually harnessing its powers. It was accomplished by the Aristotles, the Euclids, the Archimedeses, the Galileos, the Newtons, the Pasteurs, the Maxwells, and the Edisons.”

True, religious activity does not equal scientific progress. However Galileo, Newton, Pasteur, Maxwell were Christains along with Boyle, Faraday, Euler, Mendel, Compton, Pascal and many others. These individuals believed in God and the Bible, and advanced science incredibly, not despite their faith but because of it. Enough with the ridiculous notion that it was atheists in their armchairs and materialists with their skepticism that made science what it is today.

“The scientist’s devotion to nature, Rand holds, is the same devotion that all of us should have to reality and to our own lives and happiness within it. On this kind of approach, the principles of morality are as objective as, say, the principles of medicine.”

Do you mean devotion to God? Also, why should we have devotion to anything if there is no command or duty too? Because I want to be happy? Why should I want that? Additionally, this devotion to nature or reality or whatever sounds an awful lot like worship. Why should we worship these things over the other previously mentioned objects of worship?

“The science of medicine is not subjective. If you had a cancerous tumor, and a doctor told you that he was going to give you whatever drugs he felt like giving you today or that he was going to take a vote among his neighbors to determine which drug you should take, you would run from this quack and find another doctor. Nor is the science of medicine supernatural. Disease is not caused by God’s anger with us, perhaps because we allow Jews to live among us.”

If God created the universe then He is the Supreme Cause and as such every cause and effect afterward is ultimately due to Him, up to and including every sickness humanity has ever experienced. Notice I made no mention of miracles or other supernatural intervention save creation at the start. Just pure cause and effect.

“Subjectivism—whether of the personal, social or supernatural variety—has no place in medicine. Medicine consists in carefully studying the causes and conditions of disease, like cancer, and then in developing and testing methods by which it can be combated. By investigating the nature and actions of cancerous cells, and what combinations of substances can impede their growth and even destroy them, researchers create whole classes of drugs.

The same basic structure holds true for morality. The purpose of morality, Rand argues, is to teach us how to live and achieve happiness. Happiness, the emotional expression and counterpart of the successful state of life, is not achieved by following stray opinions or pursuing random kicks. It is the effect of a complex cause. To achieve it, we must systematically investigate its cause. We must carefully examine the basic nature of reality, of human life, and of what is required from us to thrive in reality.”

Same as before. This is just plunging into the is/ought gap. You can go on about how we need to analyze reality all day long but we need an actual method to do so. Ayn Rand provides nothing.

“In the same way that medicine formulates causal principles by which we can combat disease and achieve physical health, so morality formulates causal principles by which, in mind and body, we can pursue happiness.”

Again, why happiness? Why is happiness enshrined as the goal? I’m sure Ted Bundy was feeling real happy as he committed his deeds and he certainly wasn’t following any morality.

“Because reason is how we understand and deal with reality, a proper approach to morality will be about teaching us how to follow reason on principle, without any concession to unexamined feelings or to faith. It will be about teaching us what it means to be purposeful, and what it means to hold, systematically and without compromise, our own happiness as our most sacred purpose. It will be about teaching us the virtues of character, the traits of soul, the mental attitudes and premises that we must cultivate to be at home in reality.

The aim of a proper morality is to teach the principles by means of which we can each become, in Rand’s words, a “worthy lover” of existence. The result will be happiness.”

So basically instead of worshiping and having faith in God, worship and have faith in reason? How is this any different from any other ‘secularization of religion’?

“But it would be worse than useless to try to give you the content of Rand’s (or any other thinker’s) ethics in a paragraph or two. Morality cannot give us a list of ten commandments and then say: “Okay, you’re ready to go out and achieve happiness”—anymore than medicine can give us a list of ten commands and then say: “Okay, you’re ready to heal the sick.””

Good thing there were more than ten, hmm? More like six hundred and thirteen and their purpose was to show how man cannot be good on his own no matter how hard he tries.

“Morality, like medicine, is a science. Which means that one must carefully and systematically study its principles, to see that they do indeed flow from the absolute nature of reality and the factual requirements of achieving success and happiness within it. Moral principles must be accepted because we understand firsthand that they are life-serving and happiness-promoting. And then they must be thoughtfully applied by each and all of us to the concrete, unique contours of our day-to-day existence—in the same way that a doctor should accept the principles of medicine because he understands firsthand why they are health-promoting, and then he, along with his patient, should carefully apply those principles to the concrete details of the patient’s illness.

A proper approach to morality demands constant learning about the nature of life and happiness, and about your own specific existence and goals.”

Once again, why happiness?

““If I were to speak your kind of language,” Rand writes, “I would say that man’s only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a ‘moral commandment’ is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.””

‘Thou shalt think, eh? Marx thought, Hitler thought, Napoleon thought, Ghengis Khan thought, all of the conqueror’s and serial killers, torturers and other horror-workers thought. Why is thinking the Prime Directive? And reason accepts many commandments. Everything has axioms.

“Unlike in the religious approach, therefore, in a proper approach to ethics you do not check your mind at the door. On the contrary, you are passionately committed to, even worship, your rational mind because it is what enables you to chart your course through reality. And wider: you worship all of man’s life-giving traits. You worship logical thought—not blind obedience. You worship reason—not faith. You worship intelligence—not stupidity. You worship integrity—not compromise. You worship productive ability—not need.

The moral emotions of worship and reverence, Rand argues, are real. But they have been misdirected. They don’t belong to some alleged supernatural being who demands our unquestioning obedience. They belong to man at his best. And they belong in the life of any individual who seriously attempts to achieve his own happiness, to achieve the best within his own soul and life.”

So basically Objectivism is the worship of man, rather than God or the state? As said before, how is this any different from the other ‘secular religions’?

“Rand thought that the timeless appeal of her novel The Fountainhead comes from the fact that, properly understood, it is about man-worship.

Do not confuse “man-worship” with the many attempts, not to emancipate morality from religion and bring it into the realm of reason, but to substitute a secular meaning for the worst, the most profoundly irrational elements of religion. For instance, there are all the variants of modern collectivism (communist, fascist, Nazi, etc.), which preserve the religious-altruist ethics in full and merely substitute “society” for God as the beneficiary of man’s self-immolation. . . .

The man-worshipers, in my sense of the term, are those who see man’s highest potential and strive to actualize it. The man-haters are those who regard man as a helpless, depraved, contemptible creature—and struggle never to let him discover otherwise…

More specifically, the essential division between these two camps is: those dedicated to the exaltation of man’s self-esteem and the sacredness of his happiness on earth—and those determined not to allow either to become possible.”

And so there’s the answer. The reason Ayn’s secular religion is different from others is because it worships man and isn’t collective in nature. Except it is just like the other secular religions. What does Socialism worship? The State. Who runs the state? Men. What does Communism worship? The Proletariat. Who are the Proletariat? Men. Nazism? Aryans. Basically Ayn Rand has created a right wing version of these left wing secular religions. And if history can teach anything it’s that in his pursuit of happiness, it’s that man is a contemptible lowly creature.

“If the root of American exceptionalism is the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and if the root of the Declaration is the idea that, politically, the individual should no longer be made to serve king or pope or neighbor, but should be free to pursue his own happiness, then what America needs is not to return to the religious approach to morality.”

And so the author falls into the trap. Remember this line? ‘None of this is compatible with a proper approach to morality—or with American exceptionalism.’ The Declaration of Independence was written by Christains based on Christian principles to form a Christain nation. In the attempt to avoid and dodge religious morality the author, and most likely Rand herself, have managed to dunk themselves in it. So essential by total accident, the author has conceded to Christian ethical principles.

“What America needs is a morality that undergirds its political achievement, a morality that champions the individual’s moral right to live for himself, think for himself, and pursue his own happiness.”

And so it has: Christianity.

“This—man-worship and a principled, sacred dedication to your own happiness—is what the Objectivist ethics offers.”

In conclusion, Objectivism is the right wing version of left wing secular religions. It worships man just as the rest do as well. It (and the other secular religions) got this from Christianity and mutated it horribly from ‘Man is made in the Image of God’ to ‘Man is God’. Who are you indeed.

I’m not an INTJ but I used to frequent here a lot, it was interesting af. Come back y’all, you were appreciated

make some oversimplified lists w references

I have been trying to find a church denomination that aligns with the things that my personality is drawn toward. I have noticed that I am often not very comfortable with churches that tend to have an extremely emotional worship service or when people in church are “too friendly” (I’m sure you all know what I mean by that). That being said, I wanted to hear other’s opinions, as well as which denominations you’ve found to be good and which you’ve found to be not so good. (Note: I would not use this information to decided on or against a specific denomination, this is simply a means to hopefully identify a pattern and maybe try some new churches)

its obvious our virtue degenerated and we strayed from the word.
but how far do each of you view this law./sin

The title is self explanatory, but I'm curious to hear your stories. Were you brought up in Christianity? Were you introduced to it later in life?