These things which you cannot see can be figured
out by their connections with other things percept-
ible through the physical senses.

Ayn Rand said, (memory quote),"If you agree with
some tenets of Objectivism but disagree with others, do not call yourself an Objectivist; give
proper authorship credit for the parts you agree with, and engage in any flights of fancy you wish, on your own." I am not absolutely certain
how she would define a "tenet", or if it is more
fundamental than some other thing she said; I
cannot say that she would necessarily accept
me as an Objectivist. But basically, I accept
Objecitivism.

What is a "libtard"?

You should not call yourself an Objectivist (but
then, you are not doing so); Objectivists can some-
times, in certain matters, get along with religious
people. This is not Northern Ireland.

Religion involves belief in the supernatural; some
realm inaccessible to reason; some realm where
natural law does not apply. Of course not.

Existence is logically prior to “an Entity that exists,” not the other way around. Existence is also logically prior to consciousness – for a being to possess consciousness, it must first exist. (I assume that you theorize that your God is conscious.) “An entity that exists” is not a definition that distinguishes an alleged “God” from anything else, for example a table, a dog or a star.

Furthermore, one cannot rationally debate the existence of God without agreement as to this God’s defining characteristics. But any defining characteristic attributed to God (physical extent, power, mental state such as “an angry God”, for example) is also a limitation, a boundary between God and not-God. And any limitation ascribed to such a God undercuts the claim that an all-powerful God brought existence into being.

Atheism is a rational response to such claims, not an ideology of its own.

hear hear

I agree with you completely, 100%, not a comma different :). Now, when one word has two meanings, that leads to confusion, right? The word God is taken in your sentence as a created entity, otherwise it does not make any sense to ask who created God. But your reasoning is the same as Aristotle's and many after him. The stopping point is exactly that: an Entity that exists. That Entity is what we can call God, giving a definition to the word by those means. By the way, according to the Bible, that is the same definition that Moses received from the Voice in the burning blackberry plant (not sure if that's the correct translation). Moses asked who he should tell the hebrews was commanding all this. The Voice said "I am the One that is" (again, translated by me).

Wrapping up. The principle "Existence exists" is very close to admit that Existence is God. It doesn't make any sense to say that "your car exists". Your car was manufactured using energy, materials and knowledge. Regressing with "enough" whys we get to this point: Existence exists.

The question now is just for oneself. Can I admit that the very principle of all is an Entity or just stop asking that question under the assumption it is not possible to know. The last conclusion leads to agnosticism, and it is quite reasonable since I assume the impossibility to know when we are talking about the metasystem from within the system. It is a valid assumption, unless.... God revealed these things. And there we come to Faith. Notice the capital F to distinguish it from the definition you find in a dictionary. Faith (the Catholic definition) is a Christian virtue that allows the intelligence to know God. It is important to see that nothing in that definition says "against reason". On the contrary, your reasoning led me here. But, it is a virtue in another sense that "a good habit", maybe that's a source for more confusion.

Anyway, I claim we are not very afar. It is the choice we make that leads to agnosticism, (and then atheism as ideology), or to recognize that we are creatures and there is a God. If it was a selfevident truth, being atheist would be equivalent to be irrational (or not so smart). Do you agree?

I tried to be synthetic. Sorry for the length, but you deserved the courtesy of an, as complete as possible, answer. Thank you for making me think a little bit more.

Of course you can ask why, it's just that eventually you must reach a stopping point or face an infinite regress, as in "Who created God?" You can question why existence exists, but positing a Creator doesn't really answer this question.

Why Him rather than Her? Serious question. Most religious people, Christian or otherwise, speak of their God as having a masculine gender (as in Father/Son/Holy Ghost rather than Mother/Daughter/Holy Ghost). Unless one believes that God has masculine sex organs, why is this the case?

Thank you CBJ. I agree with you, it relates to two core principles of Objetivism, meaning that if I find a contradiction between one of the principles and my own experience, being honest (as was required by someone here as well), either I must abandon that principle and the theory over it, or I must try to understand what is the source for that experience. In other words, a honest mind should never compromise, because there are no real contradictions. "Check your premises", right?

In your reasoning above you make a bunch of assumptions that would go off topic and I would get "strike 1" (cute), so this is not the space to expand on that. I will only say that "existence exists" is a tautology under whatever system you put it. I don't buy it as is. I claim my right to think rationally further that belief and ask why.

Anyway, as I said before, I'm not objectivist but I share so many values with Objetivsm that I enjoy most of the exchange here. I will never push anyone to "convert". However one of the values I share with Objectivism is to demand from others to think rationally. If I can't ask why, I'm being limited.

This is not a free for all site. If you want to proselytize, please leave now.

As I point below you arguments are specious at best and totally inconsistent with Ayn Rand's ideas.

The number of errors of you statements is so large that it is impossible to know where to start.

1) Your epistemological argument that we can know the effects but not that gravity itself exists, is epistemology of a pure empiricist (such as a caveman). If we know it has effects, we know it exists - period.

2) A theory in science is something that explains a large number of facts, it is not a guess - that is called a hypothesis.

This is a website related to the ideas of Ayn Rand, if you are here to undercut her ideas with specious arguments please leave now.

hear hear

Agnostic, spiritual perhaps, but not religious.
No one can drive to conclusion via logic, everything.
Somethings in life must be assumed, at least for a time. There has to be a mechanism to allow assumption in to fill the gaps, just like one's eye fills in the where the optic nerve and blood vessels are to provide a continuous image. Another example is in interpersonal behaviors. I very much rely on my intuition rather than logic for basic interactions and initial opinion forming. Why? Because it works, and I do not have the intellectual discipline to logically reason through every interaction. As I get older, I find that most of these intuitions are logically right when examined, but some are flawed. I doubt I'll ever get good enough to reason through each one in real time. If I do, I'll write book (more likely, I'll talk about writing a book).

However, vehemently choosing a specific religion (e.g. shite, sunni, catholisism, popah vuh) is simply not logical. There is far too much contrary evidence to the truth of all the dogma.

Re: "Why is it so important to discuss it?"

As a devout atheist and ex-Catholic, I think it’s an important topic because it relates to two core principles of Objectivism, the primacy of existence over consciousness and the superiority of reason over faith. Religions typically require belief in a conscious deity that preceded existence as we know it and brought such existence into being. Objectivism uses existence itself as the starting point. If one believes in a conscious deity, it is only a short step towards believing that this deity’s “commandments” take precedence over one’s rationally derived moral choices. At best, these moral choices will agree with those adopted by Objectivists, but they will rest on a less secure philosophical foundation because these moral choices will be superseded by any “commandments” that conflict with them.

uh oh

The 'Big Bang' theory originated with the Catholic Church from a man named Monsignor Georges Lemaître, a Belgian Roman Catholic priest a few years before Hubble's Red Shift measurements which Hubble later disavowed.

10-4.

That's what I thought you meant but avoid assuming. Thanks for clarifying.

no - I should have been more specific - my reply is to Radio_Randy. ed - your reply is spot on.
RR selects "definition 3" of a word, when the discussion is about the use of "definition 1". A group with an "interest" in something is hugely different than a group that worships a non-existent/extra-existant/supernatural being.

I know that one. I thought I invented the concept of "What if what I see as 'blue' and call 'blue' is actually 'yellow' to someone else, but we don't know because we all grew up calling it blue?" until I was crushed to discover I was wrong.

I don't understand. My comment sounds like A is B??

The sun exists so it is proven. Distance is unimportant in proving that it exists.

I still don't see Objectivism as a religion. Objectivism is not worshipped or really that important in itself. It is simple a term that is used to say something exists. A=A and it is true. It can be proven. That is not a religion in my book.

This sounds like an A is B argument
-or just intentionally redefining a definition being used to another definition (that uses the same letters/word) to create a strawman argument.