How I Lost My Religion

[DeistPaladin]

DeistPaladin, can you explain to me why so many young american liberterians refer to Ayn Rands works, as their philosophical guidline?
Have they never heard of Robert Nozick or Friedrich Hayek? Or do they simply not bother to further understand their views in depth?

I'm guessing it's all about marketing. Why did John Gray do so well with "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" when Deborah Tannen wrote much the same stuff under the less catchy "You Just Don't Understand"? It's just not enough to present information. You have to tell a story or invent a powerful metaphor.

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Well, I for one am happy to have you seated at our atheist campfire. The intent I was going for, which you acknowledged yourself, was that you are perhaps the most atheist deist of my lamentably limited experience; actually I think you are the only deist in there, but that's by the by. Basically, you are one of my 'go-to guys' on points of scripture, particularly scriptural inconsistency, which is where I find myself having to reprogram my brain to your deistic identity.

A rather longwinded and roundabout way of saying I'm glad you're on our 'side'.

Thank you and I took it as such.

On a somewhat related note to me being a deist who often sounds like an atheist, have you seen AronRa's rant about scripture at the Reason Rally? He's an atheist who sounded like a deist in the first few minutes.

"God could write a much better book. You want me to believe that the same author of DNA wrote the fables in that piece of trash?"





My point is you can approach scripture from either angle and demolish it all the same. I think that's the advantage of including deism in the greater metropolitan city of atheism. As the late, great Christopher Hitchens pointed out, the theist can prove God and still have all their work ahead of them.