When fascism came to America it came clutching a bible and waving the flag. On January 20, 2025. A ll worldly pursuits have but one unavoidable and inevitable end, which is sorrow; acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings in destruction; meetings in separation; births in death. Knowing this, one should, from the very first, renounce acquisitions and storing-up, and building, and meeting; and, faithful to the commands of an eminent Guru, set about realizing the Truth. That alone is the best of religious observances. Milarepa Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there. Rumi Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life's search for love and wisdom. Rumi Because of lack of moral principle, human life becomes worthless. Moral principle, truthfulness, is a key factor. If we lose that, then there is no future . ...
I like my atheists the same way that I like my religionists; humble, out of my face, and lacking in certitude.
ReplyDeleteWill: Athiests with a lot of certitude do cross the line into religious faith. The ones who avoid matters of religious faith most consistently are the agnostics.
DeleteI've always agreed with Ayn Rand completely when it comes to religion, from all the rationales.
ReplyDeleteJMJ
Is it really so easy to split Rand's views like that? To be with her when she opposes religion and theocratic tyranny, but oppose her when for the same reasons she also rails against the illogic and tyranny of those who believe in the divine supremacy of political rulers?
ReplyDeleteIt's called selective reasoning. Philosophically inconsistent, but Jersey isn't alone in this. I'm reasonably certain everyone at one time or another on one point or another could plead guilty.
DeleteSelective reasoning? I've always felt Rand's aesthetics is a good example.
ReplyDeleteIn painting she championed monumental, hard edge realism (I.E. Soviet realism) but she was a great champion of the Romantics in music and went to great lengths and gyrations to integrate them with her rationalism.
Her aesthetics were so limiting (photography merely records reality? Please). Her aesthetics were so poorly constructed that it has colored my whole ttitude toward her.
As you will. There is no explaining taste in the arts.
DeleteOther than that Ducky I've no idea what your point is.
It's hardly difficult.
DeleteShe had this construction of man as a rational being.
Art often emphasizes man's irrational component.
She saw that and tried to construct a rational aesthetics and completely failed.
I'd call that a selective failure in a cult full of failures.