Superstition, Luck and Vodoo

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When you believe in things you don't understand and you suffer, superstition is the word.
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--Stevie Wonder

Can you define 'rational?'

(p.s. I empathize with your frustration. I've read Ayn Rand.)
 
Speaking of Ayn Rand, when I was training at ETG, they made us read the one with John Gault. The name slips my mind, but I think it helped my trading. Motivational at the least.
 
Many words in our generation have become bastardized.

Love debased to sex.

Commitment to convenience.

Reality to perception.

Truth to ideas.

God to religion.

To me, God is not a religion, but a relationship. Can I query my God? Yes, I can. Anyone can, but you might not hear what you want to hear. God's purpose's do not march in step with man's purpose. Diametrically opposed.

Take the 10 commandments, to what purpose do they serve. To hinder us, or to protect us?

And we're ripping them off the walls of our courthouses?

Go figure.

Newatthis - Atlas Shrugged. Just read it again several months ago. Great passage in Galts speach I call "The Trader".
 
The hero of Atlas Shrugged was a character named John Galt. That book was the first treatise on free enterprise I ever encountered. It helped deprogram years of disinformation.
 
The symbol of all relationships among such men, the moral symbol of respect for human beings, is the trader. We, who live by values, not by loot, are traders, both in manner and spirit. A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved. A trader does not ask to be paid for his failure, he does not ask to be loved for his flaws. A trader does not squander his body as fodder, or his soul as alms. Just as he does not give his work except in trade for material values, so he does not give the values of his spirit --his love, his friendship, his esteem -- except in payment and in trade for human virtue, in payment for his own selfish pleasure, which he receives from men he can respect. The mystic parasites who have, throughout the ages, reviled the trader and held him in contempt, while honoring the beggars and looters, have known the secret motive of their sneers: a trader is an entity they dread -- a man of justice.

Ayn Rand, from Atlas Shrugged
 
im taking aim. when you get the part that says, 'greed is good,' im gonna fire.


If I weren't loved for my flaws, I wouldn't be loved at all. :D
 
Originally posted by stu

I completely disagree with you, all you have is blind faith.
Yours is the the type irrationl superstion that this thread theme was based on.
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Stu:

Your arrogance is amazing. I don't expect you to agree with me, I'm not a thought Nazi. But for you to suggest I am not rational or logical is silly.

Compare the posts- yours vs mine. I have made logical arguments for everything I've said. If you and I sat down for a coffee shop chat, I could give you thought out and logical reasons for everything I believe.

You, on the other hand, persist in calling me "illogical" and "irrational" without making any argument for why I am so.

Your argument is 100% tautological. You assume that because I believe in God that makes me irrational, and so you never bother to even debate the point.

You assume that you have sight because you can see. How foolish you are man. Do you think that just because you have eyeballs you can see what is really going on in the world? Do you think that intangible concepts and hard to grasp ideas have no merit just because you can't dissect them in a lab? Do you think that science can tell you who you are, why you are here, what is right and wrong?

Do you believe in subatomic particles? How about the atmosphere? How about love? Capitalism? Black Holes? Calculus? Behavior Patterns? Have you ever SEEN any of those things? Do you have anything beyond logical evidence that they exist? No.

Believe what you want, but do not insult my intelligence by suggesting I have no grounds for my position. Especially when I have taken action to clearly defend my view with logical observation, whereas you have not done much except call me names and rehash points that have already been refuted.

We can agree to disagree, but let's not pretend that all the rationality is on one side. If we were to have an organized and judged debate in a public forum, I would crush you like a grape.

Unless, of course, you have some major big guns in hiding that you haven't yet displayed. Which I doubt.

This isn't about ego, not about you or me. What it's really about- what I am working for here- is showing anyone on the fence reading this that positions like yours are not unassailable. You do not have a free rationality pass, Stu. You must fight in the arena as well.

p.s. Atlas Shrugged was a great book. So good I couldn't put it down, read it in a weekend. Ayn Rand did a great job of embodying the protestant work ethic. Ayn's problem, of course, is that in the end all that progress leaves you with nothing but a bunch of useless railroad tracks and Reardon Metal. The ultimate conclusion to an objectivist's world would be something like Huxley's Brave New World.

p.p.s an excellent companion book to Atlas Shrugged would be 'The Abolition of Man' by C.S. Lewis. It's a short but compelling look at what makes us human.
 
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