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E2.5 Bonus: Objectivism and Christianity · The Junto Podcast

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  Music.
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  Welcome to the Junto Podcast, where we promote the practical applications of
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  critical thought and bold creativity.
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  I'm your host, Edgar Mills. We'll see you next time.
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  Music.
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  Hey America, welcome to the bonus episode. Today I want to do an episode before
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  Christmas I want to get this out here I'm going to post a blog later on,
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  today or tomorrow But I want to talk about the two epic philosophies One,
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  of Christianity, because I consider myself a Christian man,
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  And two, objectivism The philosophy created and pushed by Ayn Rand,
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  a noted atheist So let's get into it and give you something to think about over the holidays.
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  So are they compatible? Can you believe in both?
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  Or are they complementary? I think they are. I think they are complementary.
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  Objectivism, we all know that Ayn Rand is a champion of the individual,
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  of the achievement of man, the individual man.
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  And the individual life of that man is his standard of value,
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  to live for himself to be as good as he can be,
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  to create things not for some altruistic reason or for other people,
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  but to create as well as he can possibly create.
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  And that in itself is the value of life. Now, obviously, we think that,
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  well, some people, Christians think that there's more to it than that,
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  and there is more to it than that.
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  But Rand pushes personal achievement, self-reliance, and your individual right
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  to your own achievements in your own existence.
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  Now, many, many critics of Ayn Rand argue that she simply polishes up and formalizes
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  selfishness, but I'm, I'm here to share with you folks that selfishness is good.
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  If it's for the purpose of making yourself whole and complete and better,
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  because I firmly believe that if you are as good as you can be,
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  then you will be good for everyone else.
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  So Ayn Rand was not a collectivist in any way.
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  She escaped Soviet Russia and was a staunch critic and opponent of communism.
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  And some people accuse Christianity of,
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  not communism, but some kind of socialistic form of operating,
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  whereas it's a collective that helps people and things like that.
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  But I don't think that's right either, because Christianity,
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  if anything, is nothing more than a form of voluntarism.
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  Yes, unregulated organization that volunteers to help other people,
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  not by government coercion.
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  So, yeah, Christianity takes in account the collective good.
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  And the collective good, I don't think it takes precedence over the individual
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  good because I've done it before, folks.
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  I've gone to my preacher as a broken individual and asked for help to work on
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  myself as an individual.
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  So at any rate, the differences are, I don't want to say stark,
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  somewhat stark, but let's get into some of the similarities.
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  Well, you know what? Not even similarities, It's just some of the things that
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  kind of complement each other.
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  Now, objectivists, hardcore objectivists, especially the hyper-intellectual
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  types, regard reason as absolute, right?
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  All knowledge is based in evidence, tangible evidence, conclusions that are
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  reached, biological methods, scientific methods,
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  and tested biological and scientific methods, and verified if only by peer review.
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  Mathematics, for instance, is objective.
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  The numbers add up or they do not. There is no faith in math.
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  I mean, at some point there is because the numbers get so long that humans can't
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  really keep up with that level of calculation.
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  At any rate, scientific approach, right? Everything is scientific, logical approach.
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  There is no thoughts to faith.
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  That's how hardcore intellectual objectivists view everything.
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  Well, maybe they say they do. I hold that most atheists aren't atheists,
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  but we can get into that in another podcast.
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  And then there's the faithful, right? The folks who follow by blind faith,
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  who may do everything based on faith.
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  And that's not necessarily correct either.
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  However, the foundation there is not evidence-based at all.
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  Well, not tangible evidence.
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  If someone tells you that they had a intervening of the spirit, right?
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  If they felt the presence of God, well, cynical people might think they're lying
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  or embellishing or something like that.
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  But who are you to say they didn't? And the way they felt is the way they felt.
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  Whether you give any validity to it or not, the fact is they felt something.
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  And you may try to explain it away as something else.
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  So a lot of critics try to explain a lot of things away in the Bible,
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  according to our own understanding today.
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  And most notably, what I'm thinking about right now is the burning bush, right?
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  And they say, well, he was probably on some kind of drugs and then the bush
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  appeared to be burning and it was hot and these things.
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  So applying that kind of evidence-based fact hunting to the Bible may or may
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  not hold water, but at any rate,
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  who are you to tell a person they did or didn't feel the Spirit of the Lord?
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  They felt something, right? As a cynic, you may say it was not the Lord.
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  It was just something else, but I believe that that is real.
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  So, evidence comes in different forms for the faithful, not necessarily hard, tangible forms.
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  Cynics will write off faith as just an arbitrary mental episode, right?
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  An arbitrary exercise of the mind where it's based on subjective emotions rather
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  than physical objective evidence.
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  So without any cognitive effort required to achieve any rational certainty,
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  then rational objectivists feel like, how can faith, how can it mean anything?
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  But it can. It can.
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  Reason and faith are two different things that I think one needs the other.
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  I think one needs the other.
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  Both need the other.
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  For some people, religion is not just a belief about the world or God.
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  Now, there's a lot of different religions, folks, and there's a lot of different
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  people that place faith in different things.
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  For the sake of today, we're talking about Christianity specifically.
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  But that we Christians believe in a spiritual sort of realm as well.
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  And you can't, you can't apply reason to that really.
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  There's no tangible evidence of that other than, like I said, if you have.
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  If you have an interaction with the spirit, the spirit, the Holy spirit,
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  You have to be sensitive to what that is.
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  But as Christians, also, you believe that there's more to life than just what
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  you do on earth and material possessions especially,
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  but what you leave behind, how you've helped the people around you.
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  And then that this life is just
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  a stop off to a long-term eternal
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  life whereas objectivists absolutely absolutely don't believe that and they
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  objectivists will define you know spiritual or values and more secular ways and that,
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  You can find that spiritual awakening on earth here in various things that make
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  you happy, right? Art, wine, et cetera.
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  Spiritual values are things that, from an objective perspective,
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  objectivist perspective,
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  spiritual values are things that pertain to the needs of the human consciousness,
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  the capacity for for creativity and free will and self-awareness and those kinds
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  of things so and that's where things like love and and comes into play and self-esteem,
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  how can you place a tangible love can't be reasoned folks by the way that is purely faith,
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  But philosophies and things like that, these are where the spiritual,
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  for an objectivist's art, love, philosophy, things like this,
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  there has to be some kind of recognition of some spiritual point of view there.
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  So, objectivism and practical daily use, I think, is very important.
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  I think we need to reason out things and understand the why of why things are
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  the way they are or why people are acting or doing or making decisions,
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  what they're basing that on,
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  what tangible evidence are they acting on.
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  We need that in today's society especially.
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  And for the, so I'm all about the individual, the spirit of man,
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  the triumph of man. I'm all about it. I love it.
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  I loved it in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.
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  I thought that Howard Rourke, he was the, the protagonist in that book.
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  And, and I thought he encapsulated it.
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  I thought it was awesome. I liked the whole storyline. His, he's trying to create
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  a monument to man. Now, Christians will argue that you put no false idols,
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  worship no false idols and things like that.
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  But to create a monument to man is not necessarily a worship,
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  right? It's just an appreciation. I think there's a difference there.
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  But objectivism celebrates and kind of does maybe worship a little bit the grandeur
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  of the human spirit achievement of mankind.
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  And that is secular for sure, because in the Christian religion,
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  all worship goes to God, right?
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  All reverence goes to God and no one else.
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  But again, that doesn't mean you can't appreciate these things.
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  And as an objectivist, that doesn't mean you can't acknowledge that potentially
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  there is a God and he is worthy of our worship. I happen to believe in creationism
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  and the, what do you call it?
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  The catchphrase is escaping me right now, but I'll get back to intelligent design. There we go.
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  Intelligent design. You know, I listen to Hugh Ross, Reasons to Believe.
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  And there are as many holes in the theory of evolution as there are in the theory of creationism.
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  There are as many holes. And Hugh Ross is a astronomer, a physicist.
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  He's got PhDs in various things. He adds the scientific,
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  the astrological answers to these questions about the creation of man,
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  the existence of the earth.
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  And again, there's as many gaps in one theory as there is the other.
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  So even when these objectivists or these hardcore atheists want to argue that
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  you can't prove the existence of God,
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  well, as much evidence as there is for certain evolution, you certainly can't
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  prove evolution either.
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  It's still a theory, by the way, folks, unless unless I miss some news along
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  the way, there's still big gaping holes in that as well.
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  And that doesn't mean they're mutually exclusive. I don't I don't believe.
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  So creationism, you know, the how versus the why, right?
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  How we grew as a species. I mean, yes, evolution makes sense for a lot of things.
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  That doesn't mean there was just an explosion.
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  And even if there was just an explosion, who are you to say,
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  well, you're an objectivist, right?
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  To say that God didn't create that, that big bang.
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  So at any rate, I equate not objectivism, but atheism specifically heavily to cynicism heavily.
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  Now I've been a cynic the vast majority of my life and I'm trying to get over
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  that these days, but it comes from a negative place, I believe.
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  And I don't believe, if you get down to it, that a professed atheist is living their best life.
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  I don't believe they are truly as happy as they could be if they would open up to the idea.
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  And spirituality, specifically Christianity, but more spirituality.
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  Because you see, a lot of these atheists will readily acknowledge all these
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  other religions as well. But then you take an intellectual American atheist,
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  and they only seem to want to poo-poo on Christianity.
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  I wonder why that is. I wonder why that is.
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  Objectivism, it's an idealistic philosophy for sure that affirms that human
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  mankind is the capacity for achievement is unrivaled.
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  And it is true. Christians just happen to believe that that capacity for man
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  to achieve is founded through the blessings of God.
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  So I believe in both, right?
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  I believe in objectivism and Christianity, and I believe they are compatible.
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  I believe that one of the most famous holy men and philosophers was Thomas Aquinas. and he...
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  Much of his philosophy revolved around that knowledge, there's natural and revealed
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  knowledge, natural knowledge being more like objectivism where there's hard
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  facts and things like that.
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  And then the revealed knowledge is what you get from reading scripture,
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  from divine revelation, from spiritual awakenings and those types of things,
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  meditation and time with God, time with the word and that kind of thing.
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  So, again, they're not mutually exclusive, I don't think. And I think,
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  and especially in Aquinas' writings, I think you can find that they very much
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  are supporting each other.
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  Now, he leans obviously heavily on just the blanket fact that God exists and
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  God is our salvation and Jesus is our salvation.
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  But the way he goes about it, I think, is more—the way Aquinas goes about it,
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  I think, is more in line with something you could talk to an objectivist about,
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  especially an atheist objectivist about.
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  So, and Aquinas uses a certain analogy about a journey, right,
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  to explain a relationship of faith versus reason.
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  And he says that reason is a guide that helps us navigate the physical world, physically, right?
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  Navigate the physical world, while faith is like a guide that takes us to higher spiritual truth.
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  And I want to liken that to mountain climbing, folks.
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  It's a physical journey to get up a mountain, to climb the mountain.
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  But when you get to the peak of that mountain, it's a little bit spiritual.
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  There's a spiritual awakening there, or at least an appreciation for the creation, God's creation.
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  When you're at the peak of a mountain in the Rockies or the Alps,
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  you can't help but to feel very small and very insignificant among God's creation.
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  Now, whether you acknowledge it's God's creation or just some happenstance through
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  cells that evolved into the greatness before you,
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  you do have to acknowledge that there is a greatness before you. It's magnificent.
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  It's hard to explain. When you're there, the feeling is magnificent.
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  All-encompassing, and you have to take a moment, you know, appreciate the silence
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  and look out and see what's going on out there.
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  It's truly majestic. It is truly majestic.
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  So faith and reason, walk hand in hand, I believe.
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  Again, the why versus the how, I don't think you're not dumb for believing in God.
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  A fictional character some some cynics would would carry on about you're not
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  dumb for believing that jesus was the son of god and is how we get to heaven
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  you're not dumb for believing in heaven,
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  you are a cynical asshole for not acknowledging that there is some other possibility
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  beyond what your textbook told you.
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  So think about those things for
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  Christmas time. I know that wasn't very joyous, but it was, it was on me.
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  And I'm going to put a paper on the website here in a little bit.
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  Objectivism and Christianity, are they compatible? I think they are.
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  And I think both are worth taking much deeper dives into.
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  You can find a lot of good stuff about objectivism on the Atlas Society.
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  And obviously Christianity is everywhere. You can find good stuff on it.
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  Most people just blanket reject to go do any research on Christianity.
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  But if you care about philosophy and if you want to be a well-rounded human
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  being, whether you agree or disagree, you will read at least Thomas Aquinas,
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  for instance. It will broaden your mind.
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  You can still choose to be an atheist if you like, but there's nothing wrong
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  with broadening your mind.
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  So anyway, again, think about these things, folks. Here at Christmastime.
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  Yes, you can carry on about whether or not this is a pagan holiday and this and that.
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  But generally speaking, we attribute it to Jesus' birth, even though the calendars
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  don't add up and all those things.
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  But again, if you're a Christian, this is a special time of year.
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  Even for other cultures, they still celebrate Christmas or at least celebrate
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  something at Christmastime.
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  So don't be a cynic over the next couple weeks. You know, just lighten up a little bit.
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  Be friendly with other folks. Have some good spirit.
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  Attempt a selfless act. Though that might seem contrary to Ayn Rand beliefs,
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  there's nothing wrong with being selfless of your own accord.
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  As long as you're not being coerced, right? If you choose to do it,
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  you chose to do it. if you want to go help someone, do it.
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  I encourage it. And selfishly, it feels good. Yeah.
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  It feels good to help other people. So maybe that's the selfish reason to do a selfless act.
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  Anyway, objectivism and Christianity, are they compatible? Go check it out.
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  Read a little more for yourself and see what you think.
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  And hey, give me some feedback. I appreciate you guys. Thanks for listening.
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  Merry Christmas. The next podcast will be out in mid-January,
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  and I'm always posting essays on the website.
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  Please follow. Please share. Please spread the word.
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  And again, take care and Merry Christmas.
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  Music.