You wrote, "Your morality has justified the killing, in atrocious ways, of millions of human beings and the total obliteration of dozens of other cultures." That was in response to Ayn Rand's rejection of traditional religious ethics of sacrifice and duty, which she explained in great detail.

You falsely asserted that Ayn Rand did not mean to reject a metaphysical god. The quote I gave you is one of many that refutes your claim. It is in fact her position, not irrelevant "rote quoting and memorizing". Your claim has been refuted by fact. You don't have to footnote everything you write, but you had better get it right if you don't want to be challenged.

To point out to you that Ayn Rand rejected mysticism in all forms does not mean that atheism is the "basis of her philosophy" and is not a "constant attempt to emphasize that one aspect". You brought it up yourself, and you have the response. That her rejection of god is a consequence rather than the starting point of her positive philosophy of objectivity does not mean that it is somehow dispensable. To reject a consequence while ignoring its meaning is to logically deny the basis from which it is a consequence. You can't have it both ways.

Reasoning on one's own does not mean that in discussing Ayn Rand one can ignore what she in fact said in the formulation and explanation of her own philosophy. You don't decide that. Rejecting your misrepresentations, based on the facts of what she wrote, is not "pedantic", "obnoxious", and "rote". It is a straightforward rejection, based on evidence, of your false claims misrepresenting her. Religion is not compatible with her philosophy. Ayn Rand did not waste her time constantly emphasizing going after religious dogma and neither do I, but when they try to insert it into her philosophy as supposedly "compatible" in a forum dedicated to discussing her philosophy by admirers of it, and do so in a dogmatic and insulting manner in addition, you had better expect it to be refuted. The emphasis and the obnoxious insults are all yours.

The facts that give rise to morality and rights do not occur for embryos. This is not anyone's aribitrary "say so". The irrational and ignorant do in fact deny and ignore rights and morality. They do it all the time. That does not make reason and understanding "bias" and "whim". The "authority" is not political decree, it is the authority of the reasoning mind to understand and judge for its own benefit. No one else can do your thinking for you. That is not a "slippery slope". Having "no such ability" to decide is no justification for decreeing that embryo's have "rights"; it is nonsensical in both method and content.

You don't have to understand genetic science to know the difference between man and the lower life forms, nor does it help to formulate a morality. The fundamental characteristic that explains the difference in what we are and how we live is the use of our rational mind in order to make choices to live. It is the basis of morality. This has nothing to do with your imagined "space aliens" and "collectivist organism". If our choices didn't matter there would no possibility of morality. Having particular kinds of genes tells you nothing about morality, or, for that matter, your irrelevant tangent into "space aliens".

The religionists who advocate mystic faith as the basis for a literally meaningless concept of morality cut off from reality drop the entire context of what makes morality possible and necessary, while pretending to appeal to science with irrelevant verbiage about "genes" cut off from the discussion.

You just described someone who was breeding objectively physically damaged babies through her own irresponsibility. Your irrelevant railing over god and arbitrarily and falsely attributing motives is irrational. It is not "sanity".

"The woman has been irresponsibly been creating sub-standard individuals."

Wow. So now you are a god - able to declare which people are really people: which people are eligible to even procreate. The arrogance and presumption in that statement is so staggering as to leave me shaking my head. You deny God exists because you would supplant Him with yourself.

If you can't (or refuse to) see the danger and pitfalls in your own reasoning after all this, I can only shrug and move on, hoping that at some point you will re-examine your arguments in the light of sanity.

But if you declare that embryos have no rights, you are claiming that their value IS derived by someone else's evaluation of them. That is precisely why I bring up this parallel as a rebuttal. If a human is not a human until granted this by someone else's say-so, what would then exclude that same judge from using the very same reasoning to revoke personhood status - and its accompanying rights - once the criteria is no longer met? If one is rational and consistent, would not he/she be forced to make these very conclusions in order to avoid bias or whim?

The reason a slippery slope exists is because if you deny that an embryo is human, you must then declare at what point and upon what rationale humanity begins because rights begin at the same time. I claim zero authority or ability to be able to make such a judgment? Do you claim such ability or authority?

Nonsense: You'll find nothing in anything I think or have written to equate AR's morality to 'the Inquisition' or 'justified killing'. What you will find is the equation of a 2500 year old morality to the Inquisition and murder.

As to AR's writing of Galt's speech, I would assert that she wrote AS in whole to entertain and to popularize her philosophy. Galt's speech was an incorporated portion of the whole. I respect her fictional writings but more so her scholarly writings, essays, and published interviews. I base my understanding of her philosophy on my personal experiences of life combined with personal analysis of her body of work. I don't waste much time in memorizing and quoting her work to footnote everything I say. This comment string began as a reply to bringing atheism into a conversation about AR's speech on the importance of philosophy. AR's atheism is one result of her philosophy, not the basis of her philosophy and I tire of the constant attempt to emphasize that one aspect over the import of all the other aspects.

If you don't believe that AR's rejection of God was based on her reasoned and rational rejection of superstition and mysticism as a sound or logically rational basis of decision making or morality in reality, then you've missed the point.

You're reply to me is arrogantly pedantic and obnoxious just to blow air up your own skirt/kilt. You're obviously well read and studied in AR's work, but your presentation strikes me more as rote than reasoned on your own.

You said it is only an "approach".

Galt's speech was written to present her philosophy in a fictional context. If you "don't pay attention to what some fictional character says" you are ignoring what Ayn Rand said, as you are when you claim that she didn't deny a "metaphysical god" as supposedly something other than "superstition and mysticism".

From her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, appendix on the workshops:

"Q: And what common features of particulars are retained in order to get the concept 'God'—

"AR: I would have to refer you to a brief passage about invalid concepts [page 49]. This is precisely one, if not the essential one, of the epistemological objections to the concept 'God'. It is not a concept. At best, one could say it is a concept in the sense in which a dramatist uses concepts to create a character. It is an isolation of actual characteristics of man combined with the projection of impossible, irrational characteristics which do not arise from reality—such as omnipotence and omniscience.

"Besides, God isn't even supposed to be a concept: he is sui generis, so that nothing relevant to man or the rest of nature is supposed, by the proponents of that viewpoint, to apply to God. A concept has to involve two or more similar concretes, and there is nothing like God. He is supposed to be unique. Therefore, by their own terms of setting up the problem, they have taken God out of the conceptual realm. And quite properly, because he is out of reality."

Your false assertion equating Ayn Rand's morality to "the Inquisition" and claim that it "has justified the killing, in atrocious ways, of millions of human beings and the total obliteration of dozens of other cultures" is a disgusting smear with no basis in reality.

Pay attention to what Ayn Rand and her characters say rather than making things up in irresponsible misrepresentations.

The standards are not arbitrary, and you don't get to decide that other people are non-people.

You don't have rights until you are born.

When did I claim Objectivism is one thing or the other?

Jan

Whose intent -- yours or the intent of the people who choose to have sex without having children?

There are many possible outcomes of sex, which depend on many causal factors. One of the causal factors determining the outcome is the possibility of abortion. There is no duty to suffer the responsibility of having or raising children one does not choose. The choice is _not_ made when choosing to have sex.

You can embrace any irrationality you choose. You can claim 2+2 =13 or you can claim Objectivism isn't what it is because you feel like it, but it doesn't change what is. It is also most certainly not the "Objectivist method".

There is no rational basis for ascribing morality and rights to entities that are only potential human beings. Cells, fetuses and embryos can no more make rational choices in accordance with standards to further their lives than a rock. Rights cannot be "bestowed" as arbitrary entitlements.

If a woman chooses to have a child, she is responsible for what she has created. There are many ways to avoid having children, including as a last resort abortion. She has no duty to have children as the price of enjoying sex. There is no duty to actualize "potential outcomes". An alleged duty to have children with no other purpose for sex is a mystical, nihilistic Catholic dogma that does not deserve survival past the Dark Ages, and it didn't deserve it then either.

He has applied your own non-logic of "causality", as allegedly implying a duty to suffer results that can be changed, to an equally ridiculous example. There is no duty to suffer a "potential consequence". Choices can be made to alter consequences with new causes. A supposed duty to suffer pain and suffering as "god's will" is a reprehensible dogma of the Church, right out of the Dark Ages, and has ranged from opposing anesthesia to opposing contraception.

No one here but you is appealing to "magic".

Your false religious accusations are disgusting.

This has nothing to do with what someone, once born, may or may not achieve later, after being born. The notion that rights depends on how much someone is valued by others, couched in your metaphors of "slopes", is all your own fantasy. The potential to be a human is just that, only a potential, and has no rights.

The definition of man, which distinguishes him from other creatures, is the "rational animal". It means that he relies on his rational faculty as his primary and fundamental means of survival. The necessity of making choices that make a difference gives rise to the need for moral standards. If it made no difference what you choose there would be no need for a moral code. That does not apply to cells or aggregates of cells that have human genes but which have not yet developed into a human being. They don't think and choose on behalf of their continued existence.

To claim that cells, embryos and fetuses have "rights" because they are "human life" equivocates on the meaning of human, dropping the context of the basis of morality and rights. You are a moral being and have rights because of the necessity to choose, not because you have gentetically human cells or appendages that are shaped like fingers and arms.

There is no rational justification of moral standards not based on the nature of human beings living and choosing by means of their rational minds. Concepts and definitions are not arbitrary.

You have some family, don't you? Your relative irresponsibly brought two children into the world she was incapable of taking care of and destroyed the possibility of them having normal lives in the process. Of course it was immoral. By the time they were born and became moral beings with rights it was too late. It has nothing to do with religious injunctions against sex and abortion, or claims of "rights" of the unborn. The woman has been irresponsibly been creating sub-standard individuals.

A description of an abortion is not a moral argument.

The 'health of the woman" means in the context of the rest of her life, not a temporary difficulty of the abortion.

The risk of an unwanted pregnancy means that the woman has the responsibility to herself to minimize the risk, not a duty to have a child versus the sacrifice of abstinence. An abortion is the last resort, whether or not more prudent methods have been selected first.

"Cause and effect" has nothing to do with banning abortions or insisting on abstinence. There is "cause and effect" in stepping out into the street in front of an oncoming car, too. It does not mean that whether or not you looked first you have a duty to be run down rather than trying to jump out of the way.

You are continuing to equivocate on the meaning of the "begginning of life". What kind of "life"? Human genes in a living cell or aggregate of cells is not what is meant by "human life" in the context of morality. Morality does not apply to cells. The unborn should not
be considered as born and with rights while it is still only a potential. The mental gymnastics and rationalization for violating rights by miscategorization is all yours.

Your irrational demands to apply entitlements in the name of rights to the unborn lead to an unambiguous violation of rights.