shadowdragon

Really!?

Neapolitan

Objectively speaking who's better Ayn Rand or Alan Watts?

__________________

cardboard adolescent

this is pretty crucial

http://www.intuitieveintelligentie.n...Alan_watts.doc

Inuzuka Skysword

I haven't read any Alan Watts. I have read a lot of Ayn Rand. I don't think of Ayn Rand as the greatest philosopher of all time. I consider the greatest organizer is philosophy. She took Nietzsche's egoism and made it rational. She gave it a political stance. She gave it a stance on art. I think Ayn Rand's philosophy misses ideas, or rather, she just doesn't explain some important things. Her philosophy is like a skeleton and you have to go and find the meat and the muscle if you want to live it yourself and enjoy it.

If anything Nietzsche and Aristotle are, I think, the most important philosophers.

Alan Watts is, from a quick search, a mystic of some sort so I don't know if I can say he is better than Ayn Rand. I really liked the youtube/podcast thing that was posted earlier in the thread.

Neapolitan

I do not care for Friedrich Nietzsche, nor do I consider him great. I never care to read his writings. He might be popular or important to many, but those I've met that follow him are misotheistic. I never meant someone, who quoted Nietzche as if he was a god, had anything positive to say for those who do believe in God. I shouldn't judge a philosphers by the people who read their books but like they say a bird of a feather flock togehter and that guy keeps mean misotheistic company.

I see it this way if Nietzche rejected Platonism, then Plato must be right. I prefer G.K. Chesterton & C.S. Lewis among others. I can imagine all the scoffs directed at me, for me bringing them up.

__________________

Inuzuka Skysword

Nietzsche is a very important philosopher though. While post-modernism is my greatest enemy, Nietzsche's questions were crucial to the strengthening of a rational worldview. He attacked the accepted notions of the time. Now we are just better because we have fixed or reasoning.

I would definitely say I am a misotheist, though then I would also say I cannot hate a god that doesn't exist. I wouldn't say I got that from Nietzsche, but he probably strengthened it in some way. Ayn Rand probably influenced me much more in the area of Atheism since she was the philosopher that convinced me it was worthwhile.

I have never read any Chesterton. However, I have read C.S. Lewis. I have read The Screwtape Letters. When I was a Christian I loved the book because it was a bit different. I was planning to read Mere Christianity. Now I have no desire to do that.

bungalow

Yeah, you shouldn't.

Terrible Lizard

I'm surprised that I've never heard of this guy.
Oh well, better here than some random pick on Amazon.

__________________
“YOU ARE SCUM SLUT.”
-John Martyn

Neapolitan

But what happens if God does exist?

The more important thing to realize is that there is nothing about God to hate. And God does not demand a person to recognize Him; a person must come to believe in God through Faith.

__________________

Inuzuka Skysword

If god exists I will not regret the fact that I don't believe in him. Believing in god, the totalitarian being, is not going to make your existence any better. There is no better existence than living in a world in which you can form your own purpose.

The fact that he is god is why I hate the idea. If god exists then I must follow his purpose for me. I am a creation and not a creator. Being faced with a seemingly meaningless reality and finding meaning in it is one of the greatest joys of existence.

Faith is the abandonment of your own mind. As I am for the mind, I am against faith.