Ayn Rand Quote

Newbie Joined: Jan 16, 2008 Posts: 16

Heard this at the end of this past week's Criminal Mind's episode.

Quote:

Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.
Ayn Rand

To me, it's enlightening but discouraging. How valid do others think this statement is concerning religious folk?

Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 11:10 am

I just don't like how she used the word "conquer".

Confident Learner Joined: Jul 07, 2008 Posts: 71

"Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone."
Ayn Rand

There is a good pont in there somewhere but I don't think she did a good job making it.

In order to learn how to be reasonable you have to start with a good education not indoctrination. Religious people don't know the difference they are taught to believe what they are told without question. That is indoctrination, once you start beliveing everything your told any chance of rational thought comes to a screeching halt. It routinely leads to what Mr. Blair calls doublethink.

Education allows people to understand how conclusions were reached and to correct mistakes when they find them. When religious people find contridictions in their faith they search for new thought processes to confuse the issue and avoid acknowledging the mistake and correcting it.

Some moderate religious people can think rationaly to a point until they come across sacred concepts that they "know" are true they just know it. Then all rational thought comes to a screeching halt.

Until religious people go through a decultification process their thoughts will continue to be contrloled by cult leaders. Cult leaders are all corupt or insane or in most cases both.

Who is John Gault??

Newbie Joined: Jan 16, 2008 Posts: 16

What do you think the 'decultification process' entails?

An introduction to reasoning and logic?

Graduate Thinker Joined: Mar 26, 2008 Posts: 549

Quote:

Some moderate religious people can think rationaly to a point until they come across sacred concepts that they "know" are true they just know it. Then all rational thought comes to a screeching halt.

This reminds me of a friend I had. One day, we were discussing another person who was a young earth creationist and his arguments, and my friend admitted that he thought that young earth creationist arguments were weak and illogical. He said that he was a baptist and had always accepted the flood story, but just tries not to think about it.

Confident Learner Joined: Jul 07, 2008 Posts: 71

offero wrote:

What do you think the 'decultification process' entails?

An introduction to reasoning and logic?

yes

Confident Learner Joined: Jul 07, 2008 Posts: 71

Cygnus wrote:

Quote:

Some moderate religious people can think rationaly to a point until they come across sacred concepts that they "know" are true they just know it. Then all rational thought comes to a screeching halt.

This reminds me of a friend I had. One day, we were discussing another person who was a young earth creationist and his arguments, and my friend admitted that he thought that young earth creationist arguments were weak and illogical. He said that he was a baptist and had always accepted the flood story, but just tries not to think about it.

I don't know what a young earth creationist argument is and I don't believe in the flood unless your refering to the rising tides at the end of the ice age or overflowing rivers during storms but I just happen to know that there is a polka dotted elephant in orbit watching us and he's going to pass judgement on us in the year 2012.

Graduate Thinker Joined: Mar 26, 2008 Posts: 549

Well anyways, I don't think it's impossible to get an indoctrinated person capable of higher thinking skills to throw off the shackles of religion, but the poorly educated and the less intelligent may be harder to deconvert. However, one must keep in mind that there are many more forces at work in the human mind other than reason. People may hold on to certain things such as religion because they are familiar, and they have become part of who they are. Fortunately, this never happened to me, but churches can create a certain sense of community in a person. This can override reason, but is not impossible to overcome.

Confident Learner Joined: Oct 16, 2005 Posts: 83

offero wrote:

Heard this at the end of this past week's Criminal Mind's episode.

Quote:

Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.
Ayn Rand

To me, it's enlightening but discouraging. How valid do others think this statement is concerning religious folk?

I don't think it's discouraging at all. It might be to the religious because reason is their enemy. They reject reason and replace it with blind faith. I think her style is somewhat sarcastic in a good sense in that it strikes at the heart of the truth of the matter as to how irrational and idiotic Christianity really is. What I like about her style is that she was not polite about speaking out against superstition. I think that's the big problem we have today. To many of us think we should be polite and show respect for stupid, idiotic and irrational beliefs. I like this quote by her also:

If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man's only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think .

Such bold statements as these implies that Christians do not think. Well, they don't, really. That's why they rely on their irrational faith and beliefs. If they would apply the slightest amount of thought to such ridiculous beliefs and superstitions, there would be less Christians. They are not thinkers, they are believers. Big difference between the two.


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