Mises and "New Atheism"

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One of my big gripes with the new brand of atheism championed by Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens is that they don't offer an alternative. They seem to simply say, "don't believe in God, it's dumb."

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The alternative is err... God.

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Objectivism?

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Objectivism?

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THERE IS NO SUCH THING AYN RAND WAS NOT A PHILOSOPHER

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Objectivism?

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THERE IS NO SUCH THING AYN RAND WAS NOT A PHILOSOPHER

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Subjectivist?

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Subjectivist?

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Ayn Rand is to philosophy as the Spice Girls are to music. Do you get it now?

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Subjectivist?

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Ayn Rand is to philosophy as the Spice Girls are to music. Do you get it now?

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So you're saying Ayn Rand, if alive today, would starve herself, get bad implants, and marry a football star?

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Subjectivist?

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Ayn Rand is to philosophy as the Spice Girls are to music. Do you get it now?

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So you're saying Ayn Rand, if alive today, would starve herself, get bad implants, and p-whip a football star and then cheat on him repeatedly ?

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[Misfire]

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Objectivism?

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THERE IS NO SUCH THING AYN RAND WAS NOT A PHILOSOPHER

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good argument.

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Misfire,

obviously, I am not making an argument. I am asserting that Ayn Rand was not a philosopher.

1. She is not smart.
2. NOTHING she wrote was original
3. She fundamentally misunderstood Kant, Nietzsche, and others.
4. She had a poor knowledge of philosophy, history, economics, and politics, but proclaimed herself an authority on all those subjects.
5. Her literary style is god awful. There are NO serious literatry critics who would give a positive review of any of her works.

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Misfire,

obviously, I am not making an argument. I am asserting that Ayn Rand was not a philosopher.

1. She is not smart.
2. NOTHING she wrote was original
3. She fundamentally misunderstood Kant, Nietzsche, and others.
4. She had a poor knowledge of philosophy, history, economics, and politics, but proclaimed herself an authority on all those subjects.
5. Her literary style is god awful. There are NO serious literatry critics who would give a positive review of any of her works.

etc etc etc

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Surely the above just qualifies her as being, in your opinion, a bad philosopher as opposed to not being a philosopher at all.

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Misfire,
obviously, I am not making an argument. I am asserting that Ayn Rand was not a philosopher.

1. She is not smart.
This would have been subjective; she's dead.
2. NOTHING she wrote was original
This is subjective. and simply wrong. Perhaps portions of her attempted philosophy were Aristotle, Nietzsche, Smith rip offs, but her works were all original.
3. She fundamentally misunderstood Kant, Nietzsche, and others.
This is subjective. Prove me wrong. For instance, Kant's philosophy holds faith above reason. That's all she'd need to understand in order to refute his entire philosophy.
4. She had a poor knowledge of philosophy, history, economics, and politics, but proclaimed herself an authority on all those subjects.
This is subjective. "Poor" is inaccurate.
5. Her literary style is god awful. There are NO serious literatry critics who would give a positive review of any of her works.
I agree, but this is still subjective.


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For not making an argument, you certainly try very hard to prove your point. But, what do many of these five points have to do with being (or not) a philosopher?

Also, you claimed this: "THERE IS NO SUCH THING (as Objectivism) AYN RAND WAS NOT A PHILOSOPHER":
Objectivism does exist and is an alternative to theism. I also mentioned nothing of Ayn Rand in connection with Objectivism, however, I do agree with you on Rand in that she lacks academic credentials (though, so did Smith) and is relatively unsophisticated as a philosopher and novelist. The idea of Objectivism originated before Rand, though. It is not her unique philosophy, she used it as a tool to develop her own. It is not complicated, and it does exist, objectively, and as an alternative philosophy to theism.