Blixa wrote:On the other hand, the recent two part film of Atlas Shrugged is a hilariously inept kitsch train wreck. It's hard to even call it film making. In a fine bit of historical irony, it has all the nuance and finesse of the Soviet Realism Rand her ilk would claim to abhor, and yet are seemingly condemned to repeat, proving out the famous insight of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, but the second time as farce.
How can you be so critical of films you've never even seen?
"Finally, for your rather strange idea that miracles are somehow linked to the amount of gay sexual gratification that is taking place would require that primitive Christianity was launched by gay sex, would it not?"
lulu wrote:And finally, here is a commune that I took one of my college classes to visit http://www.ganas.org/
Wow! I read the whole page on this one. Very interesting. What if the LDS Church used a similar method for the rule-breaker?
People breaking one of these rules will be asked to leave.
Oh for shame, how the mortals put the blame on us gods, for they say evils come from us, but it is they, rather, who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given... Zeus (1178 BC)
Blixa wrote:On the other hand, the recent two part film of Atlas Shrugged is a hilariously inept kitsch train wreck. It's hard to even call it film making. In a fine bit of historical irony, it has all the nuance and finesse of the Soviet Realism Rand her ilk would claim to abhor, and yet are seemingly condemned to repeat, proving out the famous insight of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, but the second time as farce.
How can you be so critical of films you've never even seen?
I went with Blixa to these movies. She took notes. Copious cross-referenced notes. The LED head lamp she used was slightly distracting. It seemed unnecessary since she was taking notes on a laptop.
Whatever appears to be against the Book of Mormon is going to be overturned at some time in the future. So we can be pretty open minded.-charity 3/7/07
MASH quotes I peeked in the back [of the Bible] Frank, the Devil did it. I avoid church religiously. This isn't one of my sermons, I expect you to listen.
Blixa wrote:On the other hand, the recent two part film of Atlas Shrugged is a hilariously inept kitsch train wreck. It's hard to even call it film making. In a fine bit of historical irony, it has all the nuance and finesse of the Soviet Realism Rand her ilk would claim to abhor, and yet are seemingly condemned to repeat, proving out the famous insight of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, but the second time as farce.
How can you be so critical of films you've never even seen?
Way early in this thread, there was given the paradox from a Christian viewpoint, where one's salvation in part has very individual, self centered requirements, and yet also the contrasting requirement of forgetting one's self and serving thy neighbor. This has struck me hard before and did again here.
Why? Isn't forgetting oneself a commandment and doesn't obeying the commandments lead to self improvement and salvation? And aren't those in one's self interest?
There are different conceptions of what is in self interest which are proposed by different people. Ayn Rand pictures self interest in a manner which does not fit into my understanding of self interest.It is likely that between she and I all the possibilities are far from being covered. It is perhaps possible to have public discussion about differences in understanding here. That possibility is not helped by Rands strategy of presenting her version as articles of faith or perhaps ten commandments. She claims the role of government is this that or the other. I see zero justification for her strictures. Perhaps there are no possibilities of discussion.
BC wrote:There doesn't seem to be a single example of how obeying a command from God wouldn't advance one's self interest; to gain a reward, to avoid punishment/consequences,
but the fact that it advances one's self interest does not define it as good.
bcspace wrote:the Ayn Rand Objectivist definition I posited was not challenged and it contained no mention of God or the non existence of God.
Objectivism is atheistic. If a "good Mormon" can be an atheist, denying belief in supernatural entities (gods, angels, and the like) then, and only then, would it be possible for a "good Mormon" to also be an "Ayn Rand Objectivist," which is the question at issue. From The Atlas Society web page:
Objectivism holds that it is simply nonsense to speak of anything "supernatural"—literally beyond or above nature. The term "nature," in the broadest sense, refers to the world we perceive, the world of objects that interact in accordance with causal law. If we discovered some dimension or universe that had radically different properties from the environment we live in, it would still be part of nature. If we could discover it or it could affect us, it would have some real, specific properties and would interact with our world in some way. However strange it might be, its characteristics could be compared in meaningful ways with things we already know, and it could be measured somehow. In fact, science has already explored some very weird and alien realms, as compared with the level of reality we see and hear. To pick just one example, light functions in ways so strange that we are not sure how to describe it: wave or particle? But even so, we know a tremendous amount about it, and use it to banish the night and communicate around the globe in the blink of an eye.
The supernatural is supposed to be beyond human comprehension, to exist in no particular way, to affect our reality miraculously, beyond any and all physical laws. And indeed, supernaturalists make great hay out of the areas where science is silent either because the question is not really scientific or because the scientific jury is still out. It is as if they resent science for not yet explaining every single issue to their satisfaction, and yet insist that their most precious beliefs be immune to rational scrutiny.
In effect, the supernaturalists want to have their cake and eat it too. They claim that gods, angels, and devils exist, but are not anything in particular. They hope to go to a heaven by some means, but not any specific means. And heaven must be a real place (some even say it is a lush garden stocked with virgins or a cheerful land in the clouds), but it isn't anywhere real. The Buddhists even go so far as to deny that the realm beyond—nirvana—is any place at all. In fact, supernaturalism amounts to a brazen advocacy of contradictions. But, as Ayn Rand pointed out over and over, contradictions can exist only in the human mind, not in reality as such. No fact is essentially contradictory.
So there is no world beyond nature, nor any life beyond this one. But in contrast to the supernaturalists' view of nature as a vale of tears, an oppressive prison for the soul, Objectivism holds that we live in a "benevolent universe." We are beings well-adapted to the real world in which we live, with the free will to carve our own path and the ability to achieve happiness and even exaltation. Reality does not watch out for us, and there is no reason to think any deity does so either. In fact, we must watch out for reality, as Ayn Rand recognized when she summed up her metaphysics with Francis Bacon's dictum "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed." But command nature we can, and this is what makes the universe essentially benevolent: It is propitious to beings like us.
As for being an "antichrist," she openly admitted such and was quite proud of it. Here is an interview with Mike Wallace from 1959. Between the 4:00 and 5:00 minute marks, Wallace quotes from Atlas Shrugged and asks her for her view on religion and she says she is out to destroy the very foundation of Judeo-Christian morality. Can someone be a "good Mormon" and adhere to such a philosophy? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1m1hBtGxtY
Well that's funny, because bcspace is adamant that a person can't be a good Mormon and a good Democrat because Democrats allegedly favor people doing things that are contrary to what bcspace thinks "the gospel" is.
So that must mean that the explicitly anti-Christ, anti-spiritual message of Objectivism and its founder precludes a good Mormon from being an Objectivist.
And maybe bcspace doesn't know what he's talking about, and is ignorantly asserting things that sound like what he believes his opinions are supposed to be. But based on the last two and a half years on this board, it's just difficult to imagine bcspace doing that.
The Mormon who claims to be a Randian Objectivist (is there another kind?) is like the person who gets up before a testimony meeting and bears witness to how "x" movie made them feel the Spirit and was "just like the Gospel" because....
In other words, anyone who truly understands the philosophical positions underlying Objectivism would never mistake it for being fundamentally compatible with Mormon theology.
What I see here are Mormons who are high on personal liberty, responsibility, and self-improvement, who see those characteristics in Objectivism as well. Beyond those surface similarities, however, there is a wide gulf between Rand's philosophy and Mormon theology. The gulf is, in fact, so wide, that it is essentially the flip side of the claim that Marxism is compatible with Mormonism, but arguably worse.
Randianism is much closer to Korihorism than it is to Mormonism.
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
Blixa wrote:On the other hand, the recent two part film of Atlas Shrugged is a hilariously inept kitsch train wreck. It's hard to even call it film making. In a fine bit of historical irony, it has all the nuance and finesse of the Soviet Realism Rand her ilk would claim to abhor, and yet are seemingly condemned to repeat, proving out the famous insight of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, but the second time as farce.
How can you be so critical of films you've never even seen?
I have to admit, Shades, this comment seems an awfully lot like the assumption that, if someone doesn't have a testimony, it must mean that they didn't actually read and pray about the Book of Mormon.