When you run after your thoughts, you are like a dog chasing a stick: every time a stick is thrown, you run after it. Instead, be like a lion who, rather than chasing after the stick, turns to face the thrower. One only throws a stick at a lion once. Milarepa “Just as it is known t hat an image of one's face is seen d epending on a mirror b ut does not really exist as a face, s o the conception of "I" exist d ependent on mind and body, b ut like the image of a face t he "I" does not at all exist as its own reality." Nagarjuna "Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible. Nagarjuna
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.