Mr. Taft wrote:
2. If a Christian is a Christian because they seek some sort of post-earth reward, they are not a Christian. I repeat, they are NOT a Christian.
Well now, that’s just it, isn’t it? You’re promised an eternity with your lord and savior [resurrection] if only you leave whatever ambition you may have at the door, if only you will give up your right to judge the world around you and love your enemies, let them drink your blood. You’re promised a reward for sacrificing your life, but told you’re not doing it right if you hope to achieve the promised reward... Christians believe in resurrection, but “if they seek this post-Earth reward, they are not a Christian.” So people go around secretly seeking eternity in paradise, performing selfless acts with their selfish [your definition] goal in mind, and they are made to feel immoral by people like you and Emmanuel Kant who argue that “for any action to be moral, the actor cannot receive any kind of benefit whatsoever.”
Do you see the impossible contradiction here? I repeat, do you see the impossible contradiction here?
By your moral code: If your action benefits some stranger who is homeless because he prefers smoking crack to working to pay his rent, your action is moral. If your action benefits you in any way, then it is evil, un-Christian. Then you say, “I feel so good when I sacrifice my weekend and go down to the local shelter to serve up grub.” But, Mr. Taft, that “good feeling” you get feeding hungry people is a benefit you have received doing your lord’s work. By your definition, your good deeds are selfish.
Once I offered to give a boy a pair of shoes. When I made this offering, I was—as I am today—NOT a religious man. My thought process going into the offering was simple: This boy looks poor. Those shoes he is wearing are the poorest shoes I have ever seen. I’ll go home and check my closet and my sons’ closets... There I discovered a half-dozen pair of never-worn shoes. Next day, I offered the poor boy a pair of shoes. The offering cost me nothing. In fact, had he accepted my offer, he would have saved me a trip to Goodwill, helped me clean out my closet, and saved me the anguish of having to watch him walk passed my classroom each day wearing those terrible shoes...pure selfishness [my definition].
Actually, Mr. Taft, I was just being nice. I’m not at all religious, but I am nice. I like being nice. I like smiling at people when I pass them in the hallway; I especially like it when they smile back. I like helping people out, especially when they haven’t asked for anything. I hate to see good people suffer, especially when they suffer through no fault of their own. I like having friends, people who like me back, not because I have done something for them, but because they enjoy my company. I think sometimes you think being nice requires strict adherence to the teachings of the ancient nice guy. It doesn’t.
So, you travel through life looking for opportunities to be nice like Jesus was, defining “niceness” as a sacrificial service you provide for others, denying yourself even the satisfaction of knowing you helped somebody. Satisfaction is a reward...that would be selfish!
I suppose the people who actually make a living pushing the paradise promise use it like a fisherman uses bait or a lure. The prize, the result of your selfless acts with no thought of reward for yourself [lest they not be selfless acts] is a great big hook in your mouth! Ever wonder why he called his disciples to be "fishers of men?"
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Mr.Taft [Part 6]
Mr Taft Wrote:
1. I've never sacrificed my happiness. Never.
That is because you’ve been taught that sacrificing your time and energy in the service of others is the source of all human happiness on Earth. You believe you’re doing God’s work when you give up your weekend to serve up grub at the local shelter. You think you know what God wants. Of course you’re happy. God approves.
There’s nothing wrong with serving up grub at the local shelter. Relieving human suffering is a nice thing to do; but it is only a moral thing to do if you are doing it because you choose to, not because you’re told you have some moral duty to do it. And it is absolutely immoral to be serving up grub to strangers at the shelter while neglecting your responsibilities to your own children.
That having been said, I hope you are happy Mr. Taft, always. Could your happiness be the result of you rightly turning your back on the essence of the message you call gospel truth? For Christians and Muslims alike, life on Earth is characterized in most miserable terms: it’s all about sacrifice and suffering, it’s about denying the evil, corrupting flesh that is the human body, it is about serving something not of this earth. Scan your four gospels, Mr. Taft. Quote Jesus once telling people to be happy living their lives on this wonderful planet of ours. I doubt you will be successful in your search. For Christians and Muslims, the reward for doing what you’re told comes after you’re dead in some eternal paradise; if you don’t do what you’re told, then you burn for all eternity in hell and hell fire. And this Earth, the greatest place in existence, the birthplace of humanity, is invariably described as a cesspool made evil by evil humans.
Ayn Rand describes the altruist code precisely: It is a morality of death. It’s not about achieving happiness on Earth. It’s not about celebrating the human condition. It’s not about celebrating the human body, the best product of three billion years of evolution on Earth. Even the Christian symbol, the crucifix, is about death...a bloody, brutal death to be sure. It represents the wholesale denial of the importance of the flesh, the earth, the material...in favor of your non-material, unidentifiable soul or spirit. The mind/body dichotomy accepted by Christians and Muslims is baseless. There is no evidence to suggest that a separate, non-material soul exists. None of our 21st Century tricoders can pick up energy of any kind leaving the body of a newly deceased individual. If your soul hypothesis is a correct one, a whole new physics would have to be discovered [a proposition not outside the realm of possibilities] to prove it. Good luck discovering these entirely new laws of nature.
Your soul is your conscious and subconscious mind. It is every thought, every memory, every experience you have while you live. It is the sum total of everything that you are. Your soul is most important; and it is all located in a very real way between your ears. Here’s something the ancient holy book writers didn’t know: When your heart muscle stops pumping and oxygenated blood ceases to be delivered to your brain, your neural net begins to unravel and everything that you are ceases to exist. You die. They also didn’t know: The function of the human brain...Why people get sick? What a planet is? What the sun is? DNA? Atoms?
How do you imagine these ancient people who knew so little about the true nature of existence came up with a moral code suitable to living, breathing men on Earth? They didn’t. The powerful, literate minority came up with a code that enabled them to control the masses, doling out baseless promises of eternal rewards and punishments.
Ever experience a ping of guilt because you haven’t done enough good deeds today? Or, god forbid, you did something for yourself for a change? Or because you really don’t like somebody [much less love them]? Ping! There went a bit of your happiness.
1. I've never sacrificed my happiness. Never.
That is because you’ve been taught that sacrificing your time and energy in the service of others is the source of all human happiness on Earth. You believe you’re doing God’s work when you give up your weekend to serve up grub at the local shelter. You think you know what God wants. Of course you’re happy. God approves.
There’s nothing wrong with serving up grub at the local shelter. Relieving human suffering is a nice thing to do; but it is only a moral thing to do if you are doing it because you choose to, not because you’re told you have some moral duty to do it. And it is absolutely immoral to be serving up grub to strangers at the shelter while neglecting your responsibilities to your own children.
That having been said, I hope you are happy Mr. Taft, always. Could your happiness be the result of you rightly turning your back on the essence of the message you call gospel truth? For Christians and Muslims alike, life on Earth is characterized in most miserable terms: it’s all about sacrifice and suffering, it’s about denying the evil, corrupting flesh that is the human body, it is about serving something not of this earth. Scan your four gospels, Mr. Taft. Quote Jesus once telling people to be happy living their lives on this wonderful planet of ours. I doubt you will be successful in your search. For Christians and Muslims, the reward for doing what you’re told comes after you’re dead in some eternal paradise; if you don’t do what you’re told, then you burn for all eternity in hell and hell fire. And this Earth, the greatest place in existence, the birthplace of humanity, is invariably described as a cesspool made evil by evil humans.
Ayn Rand describes the altruist code precisely: It is a morality of death. It’s not about achieving happiness on Earth. It’s not about celebrating the human condition. It’s not about celebrating the human body, the best product of three billion years of evolution on Earth. Even the Christian symbol, the crucifix, is about death...a bloody, brutal death to be sure. It represents the wholesale denial of the importance of the flesh, the earth, the material...in favor of your non-material, unidentifiable soul or spirit. The mind/body dichotomy accepted by Christians and Muslims is baseless. There is no evidence to suggest that a separate, non-material soul exists. None of our 21st Century tricoders can pick up energy of any kind leaving the body of a newly deceased individual. If your soul hypothesis is a correct one, a whole new physics would have to be discovered [a proposition not outside the realm of possibilities] to prove it. Good luck discovering these entirely new laws of nature.
Your soul is your conscious and subconscious mind. It is every thought, every memory, every experience you have while you live. It is the sum total of everything that you are. Your soul is most important; and it is all located in a very real way between your ears. Here’s something the ancient holy book writers didn’t know: When your heart muscle stops pumping and oxygenated blood ceases to be delivered to your brain, your neural net begins to unravel and everything that you are ceases to exist. You die. They also didn’t know: The function of the human brain...Why people get sick? What a planet is? What the sun is? DNA? Atoms?
How do you imagine these ancient people who knew so little about the true nature of existence came up with a moral code suitable to living, breathing men on Earth? They didn’t. The powerful, literate minority came up with a code that enabled them to control the masses, doling out baseless promises of eternal rewards and punishments.
Ever experience a ping of guilt because you haven’t done enough good deeds today? Or, god forbid, you did something for yourself for a change? Or because you really don’t like somebody [much less love them]? Ping! There went a bit of your happiness.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Mr. Taft [Part 5]
Mr. Taft wrote:
Donn ... I've been reading and thinking a lot about your writing. I have a few questions. With the statements about Hitler and slave owners and things such as that, I understand that they promoted the 'altruistic' ideal, but I don't see any evidence of them living it themselves. It seems to me that their internal motives were selfish, even though they preached self-sacrifice. I guess what I'm trying to say is that they didn't practice what they preached. So instead of altruists, I feel like a better name for these people (and any that follow in their example) should be 'egoists breaking the natural law'. What are your thoughts on this?
In Jesus' paradigm, he stayed true to self-sacrifice, long before He asked anything of others. He and many of His followers followed this teaching to death. Paul speaks in his writing 'if we are wrong, let us be the most pitied people on earth'.
I love this quote from Paul. I think what he’s trying to say is...if you are wrong, and there is no Heaven, no eternal life, no reward, then you should be the most pitied person on Earth...pitied because you sacrificed your happiness on Earth for some promised reward after you’re dead. If the reward doesn’t exist, and this is your only life, then you have sacrificed your life for nothing.
Altruists like to say “the world would be perfect if everybody were only strong enough to live true to the code, like Jesus did.” They argue, like you, that people just don’t “live it.” To which I have at least two responses:
1. People can’t “live it” because it is irrational, i.e. contrary to what comes natural to humans...REASON and the desire to live. The only way to achieve perfection by the altruist code of self-sacrifice is to do what Jesus did and let them kill you. For a human being to aspire to be dead is most irrational. Dead people, of course, have no need of moral codes.
2. Any code that demands human self-sacrifice will be [and has been] used by its practitioners to sanction the sacrifice of humans [particularly those outside the collective]. And the really sad thing is that they generally execute these genocides in the name of their god...Yes, Mr. Taft, even Christians. If you live by the code that views sacrifice as a normal [even moral] component of human relationships, then you will do one of two things: A. make sacrifices for others, or B. demand sacrifices of others. Most people who live by your code do both. Ever hear a parent say, “How could you after all I’ve done for you?” What they’re actually saying is “How can you do this thing that I don’t want you to do after all I have sacrificed for you. Now you must sacrifice and give it up.” Guilt and force are the tools of the altruist.
It’s a good thing most Americans don’t live it! The sad thing is they believe the code of self-sacrifice is moral and are made to feel guilty for not living it. By whom? By others who thrive on collecting human sacrifices. An egoist, all I want you to do is live a good life and achieve your happiness in any way you see fit that does not violate the rights of any other individual. Now that’s a message of love.
Donn ... I've been reading and thinking a lot about your writing. I have a few questions. With the statements about Hitler and slave owners and things such as that, I understand that they promoted the 'altruistic' ideal, but I don't see any evidence of them living it themselves. It seems to me that their internal motives were selfish, even though they preached self-sacrifice. I guess what I'm trying to say is that they didn't practice what they preached. So instead of altruists, I feel like a better name for these people (and any that follow in their example) should be 'egoists breaking the natural law'. What are your thoughts on this?
In Jesus' paradigm, he stayed true to self-sacrifice, long before He asked anything of others. He and many of His followers followed this teaching to death. Paul speaks in his writing 'if we are wrong, let us be the most pitied people on earth'.
I love this quote from Paul. I think what he’s trying to say is...if you are wrong, and there is no Heaven, no eternal life, no reward, then you should be the most pitied person on Earth...pitied because you sacrificed your happiness on Earth for some promised reward after you’re dead. If the reward doesn’t exist, and this is your only life, then you have sacrificed your life for nothing.
Altruists like to say “the world would be perfect if everybody were only strong enough to live true to the code, like Jesus did.” They argue, like you, that people just don’t “live it.” To which I have at least two responses:
1. People can’t “live it” because it is irrational, i.e. contrary to what comes natural to humans...REASON and the desire to live. The only way to achieve perfection by the altruist code of self-sacrifice is to do what Jesus did and let them kill you. For a human being to aspire to be dead is most irrational. Dead people, of course, have no need of moral codes.
2. Any code that demands human self-sacrifice will be [and has been] used by its practitioners to sanction the sacrifice of humans [particularly those outside the collective]. And the really sad thing is that they generally execute these genocides in the name of their god...Yes, Mr. Taft, even Christians. If you live by the code that views sacrifice as a normal [even moral] component of human relationships, then you will do one of two things: A. make sacrifices for others, or B. demand sacrifices of others. Most people who live by your code do both. Ever hear a parent say, “How could you after all I’ve done for you?” What they’re actually saying is “How can you do this thing that I don’t want you to do after all I have sacrificed for you. Now you must sacrifice and give it up.” Guilt and force are the tools of the altruist.
It’s a good thing most Americans don’t live it! The sad thing is they believe the code of self-sacrifice is moral and are made to feel guilty for not living it. By whom? By others who thrive on collecting human sacrifices. An egoist, all I want you to do is live a good life and achieve your happiness in any way you see fit that does not violate the rights of any other individual. Now that’s a message of love.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Mr. Taft [Part 4]
Mr. Taft Wrote:
Donn wants to "educate" or change people's minds to objectivism...I never said I want to force Christianity down people's throats. If they won't listen to me, fine.
I chose the teaching profession, and I did so against the wishes of my father. I have been teaching successfully for 21 years and have never regretted my decision. I have always taught for the public school system, where no one is turned away. I have had every possible “kind of student” in my class: gifted and intellectually challenged; black and white, red, yellow, and brown; rich and poor and homeless; Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists...you name it! You talk about making education available to everyone. I actually live it!
You, Mr. Taft, sat in my AP Government class for five months. You know what I do; yet when you refer to me in your correspondence with Emptying Guilt, you cynically place the word educate in quotes. I suppose if I had stood before the class spouting the bromides of the faithful, my teaching would have met your approval and you would dignify me by calling me an “educator.”
Of course I want everyone I encounter to know about Objectivism. It saved my life after 32 years of devout Christianity, unquestioned faith, irrationality, guilt, and self-destructive behavior. But, I require no followers, no disciples, and people who disagree with me in my class are never punished. I do not require your approval or acceptance. As you have every right to tell people about Jesus, I have a right to tell people about Ayn Rand. Of course, I think Rand’s thinking is better than Jesus.’ It is my right [and yours] to make judgments about what is good and what is evil.
Through my blog and in my classroom I explain what it means to be a free man. A free man owns his life, owns his thinking, owns his success or failure. I teach people to take care of themselves and to do no harm to others. I teach people that they have no duty to make sacrifices for others and no right to demand others make sacrifices to them.
I teach only what IS. Nothing I teach requires anyone to make a leap of faith. It is not a religion or static doctrine of any kind. I teach individualism, science, human thinking, reason, rationality... secular ideas, and I do it in a most appropriate setting: a public school. Mr. Taft... Why is it that you and your congregation, those who claim to love humanity so much, hate man’s mind, human thinking?
Donn wants to "educate" or change people's minds to objectivism...I never said I want to force Christianity down people's throats. If they won't listen to me, fine.
I chose the teaching profession, and I did so against the wishes of my father. I have been teaching successfully for 21 years and have never regretted my decision. I have always taught for the public school system, where no one is turned away. I have had every possible “kind of student” in my class: gifted and intellectually challenged; black and white, red, yellow, and brown; rich and poor and homeless; Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists...you name it! You talk about making education available to everyone. I actually live it!
You, Mr. Taft, sat in my AP Government class for five months. You know what I do; yet when you refer to me in your correspondence with Emptying Guilt, you cynically place the word educate in quotes. I suppose if I had stood before the class spouting the bromides of the faithful, my teaching would have met your approval and you would dignify me by calling me an “educator.”
Of course I want everyone I encounter to know about Objectivism. It saved my life after 32 years of devout Christianity, unquestioned faith, irrationality, guilt, and self-destructive behavior. But, I require no followers, no disciples, and people who disagree with me in my class are never punished. I do not require your approval or acceptance. As you have every right to tell people about Jesus, I have a right to tell people about Ayn Rand. Of course, I think Rand’s thinking is better than Jesus.’ It is my right [and yours] to make judgments about what is good and what is evil.
Through my blog and in my classroom I explain what it means to be a free man. A free man owns his life, owns his thinking, owns his success or failure. I teach people to take care of themselves and to do no harm to others. I teach people that they have no duty to make sacrifices for others and no right to demand others make sacrifices to them.
I teach only what IS. Nothing I teach requires anyone to make a leap of faith. It is not a religion or static doctrine of any kind. I teach individualism, science, human thinking, reason, rationality... secular ideas, and I do it in a most appropriate setting: a public school. Mr. Taft... Why is it that you and your congregation, those who claim to love humanity so much, hate man’s mind, human thinking?
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