1:04:00 Is morality logical?
Yes, true moral morality is logical. So you have to it depends on what you mean by morality. So if by morality you mean traditional morality, the idea that being moral consistent, self-sacrificially serving other people, that is not only illogical, it's absurd. There are no facts that support that idea at all. There's not a fact in the world that supports the idea that you should sacrifice for other people.
On the other hand, there's a world of facts that says if you want to live as a human being, then you must act in certain ways and not in other ways. We're looking at recognitions of facts. And this is how Ayn Rand builds her morality. She recognizes the fact that the very thing that gives rise to the possibility and need of values for human beings is human life.
In order to pursue values, you have to be alive. We can recognize that fact. If you're not alive, you can't pursue values. Bam. There's one fact that we can literally recognize and go, "Oh, yeah, that's a fact." Another fact is that if you want to remain alive, you must pursue values. If you don't pursue values, you will not remain alive. That's a fact, too. This is the rock bottom foundation of Rand's morality which acknowledges these two facts. In order to pursue values, you must be alive. And in order to remain alive, you must pursue values. These are facts and they're rock bottom facts because they're the facts that give rise to the possibility and need of values, which is the realm of morality.
So, so yes, this morality is logical because we can see the facts that give rise to the need of values and the need of a code of values to guide our thinking and actions so we can live and that's what morality is. And that's why Rand's conception of morality is absolutely logical.
But any conception of morality that is not based on observable facts or that defies or denies or violates observable facts like the the morality of altruism or the morality of the predator. I want to steal their stuff and if I get away with it, I'm going to be off at the islands and having a blast. That's not logical either because it's actually not true that that's good for your life. That's that's not what living a fully human life consists of. And the fact that some people are either too irrational or too stupid to understand that is on them.
You and I know that in order to live a wonderful life, you need the self-esteem that comes from being productive and you need wonderful relationships with good people. And that if you don't have such things and if you know you're a rotten person and if all of your friends are rotten also or you've lied to them to try to have relationships with good people. Your life is a mess. And we know that. Everyone who can think knows that this is true.
So it's just not true that being a predator is good for your life. And it's not true that being an altruist is good for your life. What is true is that using your mind to understand, pursue, and gain and keep the values that constitute a fully human life. That's true. And that's what Rational Egoism is all about. It's about using your mind to understand the nature of human beings and human life and the requirements of human flourishing and then acting accordingly. All of that is logical and all of it is grounded in reality.
So that makes this a rational moral code. Real morality, demonstrably true morality is precisely logical. That's what it is. And the other kinds of morality are the opposite, which is why no one should accept them and everyone should repudiate them 100% at every turn.
1:17:00 Is America one nation under God?
People can say America is one nation under God. But if I say America is one nation under God, does that make it so? We would have to identify that as a thing that actually exists or I would just be saying something that doesn't have any corresponding reality to it. The problem with saying America is one nation under God is that there's simply no evidence for the existence of God. People have an idea of God in their head. But even that is not in any way fully baked. Like if you try to say to yourself and and define what God is, you're going to have trouble because if you say, "Well, he's the guy who created the universe." Well, that that doesn't make any sense. The universe is everything that exists. And if God existed "before the universe", where did He exist? And what did He use to make the universe? And who created God?You can ask a zillion questions around just that one claim that He's the creator. That makes it pretty clear that there's that there's a problem there. And then there's a zillion other problems with the idea of of God. He's supposed to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omni benevolent. Well, these are all negative things. There's nothing that He doesn't know. There's nothing He can't do, and He's never done any bad. Well, those are negative statements. And they're not asserting anything positive about what God is. They're just saying that He can do anything He wants. That's not not asserting a positive thing about God. That's just saying nothing can stop this guy, but to define something, you need to name its defining essential characteristic and that defining essential characteristic has to be something that we can either perceive or have rational grounds to believe is in existence.Take the concept of rights that I was just talking about very high level abstraction so we can't see it. You can't see rights, you can't taste them or touch them but we know they exist because we can recognize the fact that for a human being to live he must be free to act on the the judgment of his mind and to take the actions necessary for his life right so we can connect that abstraction to perceptual reality. We can't do that with God. There's there's no connection there whatsoever. God is a floating abstraction. It's just an an idea that no one has ever connected to reality by means of evidence.So if you say America is one nation under God, you basically said nothing. Now I know that historically before before we had really good reason to throw this idea out and we do now. Human knowledge progresses and one of the beautiful things that has happened in the past hundred years is that Ayn Rand became an adult and learned how to write and produce novels and books and explained some things that hadn't been explained before. One of those things she explained is what rights are and where they come from. We no longer need to try to rely on the fantasy of God for the existence of rights.As I said, that idea, even though it wasn't true, served to found America because there was enough truth in that we have rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.And it's true that we need a government to protect those rights or to secure those rights. And it's true that we need to outlaw force in various areas in order to do that. The Founding Fathers and the ensuing government and legal system that was set up substantially did those things. But that doesn't mean that the concept of rights that launched all of that is itself grounded in reality. If we want to ground that in reality, we have to really ground it in reality and not keep talking about a god for whom there's no evidence.I come from a religious family. My father's a minister. He's still alive, still kicking and still doing Bible studies. And my friend Maddox on the call with us here is also from a very religious background. I know where people are coming from on this stuff. But I urge you to check your premises. If you accept the idea that God exists, why do you accept the idea that He exists? Is it because your parents, preachers, and teachers told you He exists? That is not a good reason to accept that He exists. Is it because the Bible says He exists? I can show you books that say He doesn't exist. So then you have one book says He does, another book says He doesn't. They're all written by human beings.So there simply is no reason to believe in God. And there's every reason in the world to stop believing in God. Because there's no evidence for Him and because the idea of God unleashes hell on earth as it has for millennia.So we could we could talk more about this and maybe we'll talk more about it someday, but whoever asked that question, I urge you not to try to conceive of America as one nation under God because there's nothing there.What we are is we're one nation under reason is what we are. And that's why I wrote this article titled America the Rational. If we want to support and uphold and better apply the actual principles on which America is founded, namely the principle of individual rights and the specific principles life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.If we want to to understand and uphold those things, we've got to stop pretending that they come from God and start recognizing that there's a factual foundation for those rights and we can understand them through reason. Because then we can explain rights to other people and then they can understand and go, "Aha, that makes sense." And then if a whole bunch of people start going, "Yeah, it really makes sense. Now we know what rights really are and we can understand them, we can we can advocate them, we can protect them, and we can apply them much better." Then we can make this make America the beautiful more beautiful, which is what I would love to do. And I'm sure you do, too. I'm sure you want that, too. So, but the way to do that is not to argue from from a religious basis for rights.
Does Objectivism have codified principles?
The answer is NO.
How many errors of logic can you spot in Ayn Rand's Objectivism as explained by Craig Biddle?
