“My problem with Ayn Rand is that she makes no allowances for the frailties of human nature”

Couldn’t agree more!

The thief is actually rather rational. He’s not going to shoot–just threaten to shoot, knowing fully well (or taking a small risk) that nice guys like you will only flash a gun and not use it, thereby getting him what he wants.

An animal’s senses provide it with an automatic code of values, an automatic knowledge of what is good or benefits him, and what is evil or what endangers its life. Unlike man it instinctively avoids that which is bad.

Thats true for human beings, too. Our senses like taste, which is naturally attracted to high-calorie foods (sugar, fat) or electrolytes (salt). These foods were of survival value in the environment human civilization grew up in.

It is quite ironic that objectivists are amongst the most fervent supporters of evolution today. Because if both evolution and objectivism are true, then there must have been a point where man transitioned from being an animal (led by instincts) to being a rational person.

What change happened then?
What is it that made for that change? What is the appropriate behaviour with animals that maybe at that threshold today? - These are all quite complex questions (which many great minds have wrestled with) to which objectivism gives simplistic answers.

I believe that we are constructed in layers. I believe that the animal always exists within us.

If one admantly wants to be an atheist, one could consider the more developed philosophies of jainism, buddhism, sankhya or vedanta. All of these philosophies are near-atheistic, some of them having evolutionary overtones.

Pesonally, I am an agnostic, because i believe that it is the only position that any scientifically inclined person, who is open to new experiences can honestly take.

Our rationality might be limited by who we are and the way we process information. It’s definitely limited by our assumptions. That’s where imagination comes in. Because our knowledge about the universe is limited by the speed of light, we can never really know what is going on in other places, yet we assume that everything is the same as what we can see. We still don’t understand what time is, what causes our perceptions of it, or how it affects reality. What happens inside a Black Hole, when mass approaches infinity and velocities reach lightspeed.

Like Newton’s physics, our rationality suffices most of the time, but we should always leave room for Einstein and new ways of understanding what we may never have questioned.

The Bharteeya Blog Mela, hiccups and all is back at Nerve Endings Firing Away. It is going to be a long night, but lets us get to it without much ado: Halfway through a visit to Bangalore, Tom Friedman, threw