on discussing god and religion

Note the truth [justified beliefs] will always prevails.
What is critical is whatever truths and possible truths in the future which I had proposed, it must be justified beliefs based an extensive and deep knowledge database.

Note there are many philosophers, scientists and others who had make certain truth claims and prediction for the future and they turn out to be true long after the predictors were dead.
Note the counter against the masses long ago on the flat Earth Theory, the heliocentric theory.

Note,
9 Incredible Historical Predictions That Actually Came True
rd.com/culture/historical-p … came-true/

Did those who predict the above worried it will not materialize in their lifetime?
What you implied above is these people should have shut up because what they predicted will not be determined/confirmed by them in their life time.
It is the same with the above where you imply my proposals are useless because you and I will not be around in the future to confirm whether they turn out to be true or not.

All you do is to condemn my proposals which are realizable in the future is ‘intellectual contraptions of the future’
To be credible, you should prove why my proposals cannot be true in the future.
So far you have not provided any credible arguments to support your stance.

It is very unfortunate you are caught in such paralyzed stated of mind.
I believe your current state of mind in going against justified beliefs in the future is very inhuman, i.e. unnatural. What is natural to humanity is the drive to expand their horizon and this is so empirically evident since humans first emerged from Africa to colonize the whole Earth and the corresponding expansion of knowledge in all fields.

What I can reduce the whole mess you are in is this;

1. If you are caught and entangled with the issue.
Say, if you are unfortunately caught with some terrible fatal allergy.
If you want to ask me [say, an expert on allergy] for my opinion or solution, I can only offer the best solution based on the whatever knowledge base I have.
If you disagree with me, then you still have to resolve your allergy as soon as possible, by seeking solution else where.
The point here is you MUST take action to save yourself or suffer the consequences.
If you are a normal rational person you will take action.

But with our current discussion on the various issues, whatever solution that is offered by me or anyone else, you complain the solutions are merely “intellectual contraption” and that is not based on any reasonable views nor arguments but merely based on your psychological blindness.
To be normal, if you cannot accept the solution of others, then you will have at least come up with your own views and solution.
But your response is you cannot offer yourself any solutions because you are stuck in a hole [dilemma] and you are also psychologically paralyzed to accept an external ideas and proposed solution.

From the above, there is something terrible wrong with your mind with that sort of paralysis.
If you ever have suicidal tendencies, then no one will be able to talk you out of it and the consequences will be very mortally fatal.

2. If you are not caught personally and directly with the issue.
In this case, you are not personally suffering from that fatal allergy but you have introduced the subject as a serious problem to humanity and thus seek to discuss the issue.

In such a discussion, what will arise is a study of the past to find the root causes and proposals to prevent the problem from recurring in the future. In such a situation, those discussing should not too emotional on one’s views or the counter views of others.

Since this is discussion of a subject, you have not offerred your alternative views.
Your response to my views is the same of ‘intellectual contraption’ similarly to those of the objectivists.

Since I have uncovered your intellectual paralysis, I believe I have participated enough in this discussion and leave you to your destined fate [hopefully it turn out good].

Again, all I can do here is to note that, yet again, your entire argument is embedded in a general description of human interactions embedded further in your own particular political prejudices regarding the relationship between the present and the future.

Note that the manner in which you note that “the truth [justified beliefs] will always prevail” is entirely predicated on others embracing the assumptions that you provide them with in yet another intellectual contraption. After all, how is a “fatal allergy” not embodied in the either/or world?

No, only when you are willing to take this numbingly didactic/scholastic contraption of yours down out of the clouds [in a No God world] and flesh it out/defend it pertaining to a context [here and now] that we might all be familiar with is this discussion likely to become, say, substantive?

Consider: It’s not for nothing that the nine historical predictions you link us too revolve entirely around components of the either/or world. Sure, there, something predicted either can be realized or it can’t.

But let these folks at Reader’s Digest predict the outcome of the great moral and political debates that have plagued the species now going all the way back to the caves.

Just not in the manner in which you “predict” the future: my way or the highway.

Besides, five will get you ten their predictions in the is/ought world will revolve around their generally conservative political prejudices.

I believe quitting is a matter of wisdom, i.e. taking the wiser choice.

It is like seeing a drowning person in the middle of a deep lake.
If one assess the drowning person is struggling like mad, it would be very stupid to try to save him/her due to the likelihood s/he will grip so hard and pull the life-saver down as well.

Okay, quitting.

Note the context. Note that which you are able to demonstrate to others as the embodiment of the “wiser choice”. Why yours and not theirs?

Again, we may be able to establish that someone has in fact quit in their attempts to demonstrate to others that we live in either a God or a No god world.

But how do we then demonstrate that in fact we do live in a God or a No God world?

How we establish that in fact others are obligated to embrace our own narrative here if they wish to be thought of as a rational human being?

Here we can try to assertain what the facts are. But only to the best of our ability. After all, even with regard to actual facts in the either/or world, only God is privy to all of them.

Mere mortals, on the other hand, can only speculate as to what is actually unfolding in the middle of the lake.

So, when someone broaches the question, “are we morally obligated to make an attempt at rescue?” there will almost certainly be any number of conflicting narratives.

Yet in a God world, we must take into account the judgment of God here.

While in a No God world who is really to say what our moral obligation is?

You with your assessment of the “wiser choice”?

This part will always be fascinating: Deciding essentially on exactly what the existential parameters of God actually are.

Once, for the sake of argument, we agree that a God, the God does exist then we have to pin God down.

What exactly does it mean to be God? How is the existence of God to be embedded in or become the foundation for the existence of existence itself? Is or is not God omniscient and omnipotent? Is or is not God constrained by the immutable laws of matter?

Does everything exist as it does because that is simply the only way in which it ever could have existed…including God? Or did God choose for it to be that way? And why that way and not some other way? Why quasars and black holes and dark matter and dark energy…and the staggering distances between celestial bodies?

And is it really all just for us here on Earth?

Sure, that’s a rather comforting way to think about it. God as this ecumenical Dude combining bits and pieces of all the different denominations into one or another rendition of “can’t we all just get along”.

But that still leaves the part about deciding which bits and pieces are going to be enacted into legislation [rules of behavior] that does in fact proscribe actual behaviors. Behaviors that are either embraced or excoriated by folks all along the moral and political spectrum.

Sure, up in the clouds of “general description”, it’s nice to imagine the way the world could be if God and religion were reduced down to the “good of society”.

But all we need do is to go here – viewforum.php?f=3 – and peruse the arguments of, among others, the liberals and the conservatives. You know, in order to imagine just how far that would go “in reality”.

And that’s before you get to folks like me who argue that we appear to live in an essentially absurd and meaningless world on this side of the grave, ending for all of eternity in oblivion on the other side of it.

So, maybe the “best of all possible worlds” for most folks here is that at least they’re not me! [-o<

Yet.

Actually, I am not at all familiar with Abraham as either a “historical figure” or as the “father” of Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

And I certainly have no opinion as to whether or not he was a “cuck”.

No, instead, I’d like to probe the extent to which Abraham and those who follow him can be described as “spiritual nihilists”.

How on earth can anyone who believes in such things as a “spirit” or a “soul” or a “God” be ascribed qualities that come anywhere near nihilism?

On the contrary, it seems here that nilhilism is being twisted into an intellectual contraption. One such that it is only to be understood to further the particular political prejudices of yet another objectivist.

Nihilism defined into existence such that you either share his own meaning or you are said to be stupidly ignorant of the one truly “natural” way in which to grasp it.

Me, I start with the assumption that nihilism revolves around living in a world that, in terms of value judgments [religious or otherwise], human interactions are essentially meaningless and absurd. There does not appear to be a font – religious, philosophical, scientific, political – enabling mere mortals to make that crucial distinction between “the right thing to do” and “the wrong thing to do”.

Instead, my own moral narrative [in a No God world] revolves more around the manner in which Richard Rorty construed “ironism”:

* She has radical and continuing doubts about the final vocabulary she currently uses, because she has been impressed by other vocabularies, vocabularies taken as final by people or books she has encountered;
*She realizes that argument phrased in her present vocabulary can neither underwrite nor dissolve these doubts;
*Insofar as she philosophizes about her situation, she does not think that her vocabulary is closer to reality than others, that it is in touch with a power not herself.

From this perspective then how might one grapple with “Abrahamic spiritual nihilism”.

Anyone care to comment? object?

The first two items might simply indicate they are a dualist. That there are non-physical components to reality, in this case dealing with the individual. Reality could still be pointless, allowing no way to determine morals, etc. I could easily see someone who believed in the mechanics and ontology of hinduism being a nihilist. Brahma for some reason breaks himself up into individual souls, who suffer, reincarnate, finally over time realize they are pieces of Brahma and rejoin Brahma. And this will go on forever. No morals, point, lots of suffering in the endless process. Of course most believers see this process as divine and good and that Brahma (and by proxy we) gain something from this leaving and returning that is good. But it is not a necessary condition of the ontology.

Certainly Calvinists with predestination could also be nihilists. Of course most are not, or will not admit it. But where the outcome is determined in advance - people are predestined to go to hell or heaven - morals have no point and life is absurd.

A person believing in Buddhist ontology, or really in one of the many Buddhist ontologies, might easily also be a nihilist for similar reasons to the possible Hindu I mentioned above.

You have doubts about the vocabulary you use? Why is it always the same, then?

So when you say that you think that human interactions are ‘absurd and meaningless’, when you use that particular vocabulary, you do not think those terms are closer to reality than the terms other people use to describe life, even those that contradict those words and your vocabulary? If you do not think they are closer to reality, why keep using them? Why say you think X, if you think X is not closer to reality than Y that, say, a religious person uses or a non-nihilist?

I went more general. I could probably come up with a way to describe what that specific kind of nihilism might be, but the meta-level objections and questions seemed more clear.

Maybe, but from my point of view, a No God world would seem to revolve around the assumption that existence lacks a teleological component. Any meaning that “I” impart to “my life” can only be based on my own unique set of experiences, relationships and access to knowledge/imformation. All of which is necessarily far removed from an omniscient point of view.

The Hindus have a narrative that you note above. But how is this really not a meaning? It provides something in the way of a guideline for living on this side of the grave. After all, how do those who practice the Hindu faith make that crucial distinction between “the right thing to do” and “the wrong thing to do”? Why one set of behaviors and not another?

And it seems to clearly suggest a life after death.

On the other hand, why their narrative and not one of the others? And how do they go about actually demonstrating the part about reincarnation and Brahma?

This sort of thing does not reflect the manner in which I understand the meaning of nihilism. As long as they can point to an entity – God – said to be “behind” their “fate”, meaning is necessarily subsumed in that. “I” becomes part of a transcending truth. And death is not oblivion.

My vocabulary relating to value judgments on this side of the grave – as they are connected to my fate on the other side of the grave – is no less an existential contraption. Just as in the past the vocabulary I used as a devout Christian was.

Here and now, it seems reasonable to think as I do. Just as in the past it seemed reasonable to think in very, very different ways. But sans God where is the “final vocabulary” that anchors mere mortals to an objective moral and political agenda?

I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, only that “I” am not now privy to it.

Here I go back to what appears [to me] to be common sense:

That there is certainly an enormous gap between what “I” think/believe about these relationships here and now and all that would need to be known about the very nature of existence itself in order to know this.

After all, isn’t that the whole point of inventing the Gods? Gods provide mere mortals with a teleological foundation – a Creator – that can turned to and relied upon to close that gap.

As long as we choose to interact with others socially, politically and economically, we have little choice but to “use” them to either attain or to sustain particular goals. But why do we choose one set of values here over another? Can these value be understood objectively? In other words, making them obligatory for all those who wish to be thought of as rational human beings? Or, instead, are they embedded/embodied more in the components of my own existential contraption: dasein, conflicting goods, political economy.

Nothing here is less clear to me than those who speak of folks said to be spiritual nihilists and then refuse to note how they embody this relating to actual interactions with others out in a particular world.

To me “meta-level” philosophy is just another tool employed by the modern equivalents of Will Durant’s “epistemologists”.

Yes, but no one is arguing that your beliefs preclude nihilism, and does not contradict what I said above.

Many, perhaps most do practice some hinduism version that has morals, but this is not necessary. One could hold that the ontology is true, but leaves no room for meaning or morals. In fact, I think that is a pretty human reaction to the hindu ontology. What meaning is there for a self that is considered not real in Hinduism? Now Hindus might say I am missing something, but you can’t tell me that. You cannot tell me that really if Hindu ontology is correct I should think there is meaning and objective morality. Because you are not a Hindu. Further there really is no objective morals in much Hindu metaphysics.

Your belief system suggests a life, most likely, after today. That doesn’t give meaning or rules for human interaction.

That is not relevant to the issue. The issue was whether belief in souls or God precluded nihilism, and they do not.

All belief systems insist that an I is part of transcending truths. To a materialist, your eye is part of natural selection processes leading to organisms that suit their environments until they do not. That truth transcends you, explains you, puts you in a narrative. It does not, however, give you objective morals or meaning. Nor does Calvinism. You’ve also, here, added more meanings to nihilism and I was responding to the ones you listed in the other post. Does this mean that you concede that those facets of what you consider nihilism can apply to people who believe in souls spirits and/or God and that is why you now present new facets or wordings?

  1. so Rorty is only talking about vocabulary in relation to morals? It seemed like a more general set of ideas about language in general.

You clearly did not answer my question. You restated things you have said many times. I specifically asked about that quote from Rorty as applied to your statements which I cited in the context of those quotes. It’s a rude habit to shift to restating your opinions instead of interacting with the response.

And this is precisely the same rudeness.

What the fuck are you talking about. You made statements, I criticized them and asked questions. You did not answer the questions or, in the main, respond to the criticism. You shifted the ground of the debate by introducing new facets of nihilism, without acknowledging the reason you needed to do this. You restated opinions, instead of interacting with what seem to me contradictions between what Rorty wrote and what you have written. I have no idea what you mean by meta level philosophy. When I referred to meta-level, it meant that I was challenging your ideas in general, the assumptions in your post. On the other hand I did go into specific cases to raise the met-level issues, the kind of thing Durant thought was important. I did not do it in relation to Abraham. So apart from the fact that you are appealing to authority as justification for an ad hom aimed at me, it doesn’t even fit. Ironically, you don’t seem to understand that you are constantly raising the same epistemological issue, so of course, in a philosophy forum, or on the fucking street, you are going to encounter discussions of how one knows, at a general level. You repeatedly present your meta-epistemological positions or do you not notice that. You did it here in response to me, in fact instead of responding to points I raised. I found Hinduism precisely nihilistic, though I became convinced that much of the ontology and the use of those words you mentioned were useful and valid. I am quite sure at that point you will want me to demonstrate that it was rational for me to think that. BUT THAT IS NOT THE FUCKING ISSUE. The issue was: can one be nihilistic and use those words: yup. You have no curiosity about that and that is why you shift, as you did in this post, to epistemological issues - how do you demonstrate Brahma, etc.

I still find you lacking in integrity and will return to ignoring you, since you clearly think you have nothing to learn and the only possible actions of anyone reading you are to agree with you or prove objective morals, even though your posts deal with all sorts of issues and a discussion is one where both sides get to evaluate, criticize, question beliefs and arguments.

And seriously, an appeal to authority ad hom? Keep talking to yourself, it’s what you seem to be what you want.

My interest in nihilism is embedded at an intersection – an intersection between what someone thinks it means and how someone embodies that meaning in their interractions with others. Interactions that, in particular, come into conflict over value judgments. Either in a God or a No God world. With God [said to be omniscient/omnipotent] what can it really mean to speak of nihilism at all? With No God what can it really mean to speak of a meaning said to be applicable to all?

Or, rather, in the is/ought world existentially.

Here is my own bottom line though [on this thread]: human interactions require rules of behavior. Why one set of rules and not another? Based on what assessment? Based on what assumptions? How is any particular individual “ontology” – or a Hindu ontology – demonstrated to be the optimal or the only rational manner in which these “rules of behaviors” are to be predicated.

Sooner or latter “general descriptions” such as yours must be situated out in a particular context out in a particular world in which behaviors have come into conflict. Then what? Who is to decide how the conflicts are best resolved? And how is this related to one’s perceived fate on the other side of the grave?

That’s the whole point of this thread.

That’s my point though. With God, meaning and rules are subsumed in an essential, trascending font. With No God meaning and rules are subsumed in existential contraptions rooted in particular historical, cultural and experiential contexts that evolve over time in the world teeming with contingency, chance and change.

What is relevant [to me] is the manner in which one understands the meaning of nihilism. And then the meaning of God. And then the extent that one insists that their meaning reflects the optimal or the only rational understanding of them. An omniscient/omnipotent God [as most understand Him] precludes nihilism as I understand it.

But I would never argue that my own understanding of it is any less an existential contraption than yours.

Again, my “take” on this here revolves around this:

This is all numbingly abstract though.

What I focus the beam on is why particular individuals choose particular behaviors in particular contexts. How do they rationalize these behaviors in terms of what they construe [here and now] to be the meaning of such things as “freedom” “will” “justice” “moral obligation” “religion and God”.

To what extent are the values of others here not entangled in my own dilemma. A dilemma predicated on the manner in which I construe the components of moral nihilism: dasein, conflicting goods, political economy.

Let’s note a context, a set of behaviors in conflict and situate the meaning that we give to the words above in it.

There are clearly vocabularies that we use in discussing such things as mathematics, the laws of nature, empirical facts, the logical rules of language. How much conflict is there here? When doctors perform abortions as medical procedures there are any number of things they can all agree on objectively. There are quite simply biological truths here that are applicable to all doctors.

But what of ethicists discussing the morality of abortion? What objective truths – philosophical truths – are applicable to all of them?

My understanding of Rorty is no less an existential contraption than his understanding of ironism. Only when these “general descriptions” are implicated in actual conflicted human behaviors can we ever hope to illustrate our “texts” here. So, I repeat myself:

You choose the context, you choose the conflicting value judgments precipitating conflicting behaviors and let’s explore all of this more substantively.

Me from a “No God” perspective.

And what would your perspective revolve around?

You speak of things being “closer to reality”. What reality? If the discussion were to revolve around, say, the plight of the “Dreamers” here in America, how then might Rorty’s points be understood?

Again, from my point of view, you seem more intent on yanking this discussion up into what I construe to be basically the clouds of abstraction.

To wit:

Me: What “on earth” does that mean though?!

To wit:

Looks like we’re stuck then. You can find others here to discuss/debate all of the technical issues. How a “serious philosopher” would go about discussing/debating the relationship between Abraham, nihilism and conflicted human value judgments/behaviors.

Good luck with that. I’m far more intent on exposing the technical assessments/assumptions derived from that to actual flesh and blood human interactions predicated on conflicting moral/political narratives that precipitate actual consequences out in the world that we live and interact in socially, politically and economically.

This is bordering on “huffing and puffing”. Making me the issue. You level these charges against me but my chief concern is still the same: bringing your own “epistemology” down to earth and testing it “out in the world” of actual conflicting behaviors.

Instead, you are slipping more and more into a subjunctive reaction that exposes much more about you than about me. Why the sudden outburst of chagrin? Why do you feel it necessary to reconfigure the discussion into an attack on me?

Note to others:

What do you suppose this indicates to us? Why, when push comes to shove, does this seem to expose just how threatened he may well be becoming by the points I raise.

From my perspective, he’s just another Prismatic. He has spent any number of years concocting this elaborate Intellectual Contraption that allows him to present himself as a bona fide Serious Philosopher.

In my view though he falls somewhere between the autodidact and the pedant.

Ever and always intent on keeping philosophy up in the clouds.

Me the “meta-epistemologist”?

Yeah, right.

It’s impossible to separate the argument from the way that you present the argument. “The medium is the message”.

I would say it indicates that he is frustrated because of the way that you conduct yourself in these discussions.

He’s not the only one.

I have never seen you take anything “down to earth” and discuss it. I have never seen you respond to someone who has tried to take some issue “down to earth” with anything but abstract dasein babble and the supposed failure of “the tools of philosophy”.

Up in the clouds or down to earth, you don’t think there is any way to analyze an issue philosophically. Right?

Therefore, your conclusion … everyone is right from his own point of view. #-o Or is that your starting assumption? :evilfun:

How am I expected to respond to this?

The point of this thread is to connect the dots between the behaviors that we choose on this side of the grave and our imagined fate on the other side. As this relates to our beliefs regarding God and religion.

Now, when I do that [in what I presume to be a No God world], I am entangled in my dilemma on this side of the grave and presume that oblivion is to be my fate on the other side. That’s the intellectual/existential contraption that “in my head” of late seems most reasonable to me. But I acknowledge right from the start that I have no way in which to demonstrate that all other reasonable men and women should concur.

All I can ask of the faithful here is to focus the beam on their own behaviors from this side of the grave as this pertains to their current moral narrative as that pertains to their a God, the God, my God narrative.

And then to note the role of philosophy when these narratives clash regarding particular behaviors in particular contexts.

Here and now [philosophically] I construe myself to be one of Richard Rorty’s “ironists”.

How about you?

You choose the context, you choose the behaviors, you choose the conflicting goods.

I can assure you that I will take my own frame of mind “down to earth”.

You asked some questions. I provided some answers.

You could discuss those answers.

Instead you go back to “The point of this thread is …”

IOW, ignoring my feedback.

I don’t know what that means “down to earth” or “on the ground” out of the clouds.

How does an “ironist” solve or even begin to approach philosophical problems/questions? Or more generally, how does he approach life’s problems?

Give me an example of what that discussion would look like.

You don’t distinguish between good and bad, better and worse, progress and regress. You don’t accept the usefulness of any philosophical methods or approaches.

That leaves little scope for discussion.

Note just one particular answer that you provided. And then note how the manner in which I reacted to it was not a proper discussion. How in your view did I ignore the particular feedback that you provided.

The only thing that pops into my head now is Communism. And here it appears that your frame of mind revolves around the assumption that to the extent others do not share your own existential reaction to it, they are discussing it improperly.

An ironist suggests that with regard to value judgments there appear to be conflicting goods embedded in conflicting moral narratives able to make reasonable arguments based on a conflicting set of assumptions/premises.

Thus in my “abortion trajectory” above, I note that Mary posed arguments she believed justified her aborting her fetus. While John posed arguments he believed justified bringing it to term.

Then what? How would one go about discussing this “properly”?

And how might God and religion factor into any possible [realistic] resolution?

Here at ILP [over and again] we have any number of moral, political and religious “positions” articulated by liberals and conservatives, theists and atheists, that an ironist might deem resonable. Can philosophers then concoct an argument/assessment that is demonstrated [epistemologically] to be the optimal frame of mind, precipitating the optimal set of behaviors?

Maybe. But I am not now privy to it. Are you?

To wit:

Are you kidding? We come upon them all the time here. For example, something happens in the news. Like, say, Trump’s narrative regarding immigrants from Mexico. The wall. The Dreamers.

My frame of mind here is that both the liberals and the conservatives are able to pose a political agenda that they are able to articulate rationally. They both make points the other side can’t just make go away.

Here for example: immigration.procon.org/

Now, there was once a time in my life when my reaction to issues such as this was as an objectivist. Either in a God or a No God world. My frame of mind then reflected the optimal point of view. Whether as a Christian or a Marxist-Leninist or a Trotskyist or a democratic socialist or a social democrat. There was a right and a wrong way to look at it. And you were either one of us or one of them.

Now, however, I have come to recognize the extent to which my shifting and evolving political prejudices over the years are rooted [existentially: historically, culturally, experientially] in daseins who have come to embody conflicting goods in a “real world” where, ultimately, what counts is either possessing or not possessing the political power to make your own moral agenda, among other things, the “law of the land”.

This is simply preposterous. I merely suggest that in the is/ought world, such distinctions revolve around “existential contraptions” rooted in the components of moral nihilism. Or, rather, in the manner in which “here and now” I have to construe the meaning of that.

All I insist is that for those who object [either in a God or a No God world] we bring the discussion out into the world of clearly recognizable conflicting human interactions we are all likely to be familiar with.

Though, sure, there is always the possibility that we cannot come to agree on what exactly that entails.

FFS
This :

and this :

There is no way to discuss it … it’s general and abstract.

You provide nothing concrete.

Yeah, your abstract “optimal” something. You always go there.

I want you to describe how the discussion might go… “down to earth” and “out of the clouds”. You pick the issue and you write out a dialog.

Person A says : _ (fill in the blank)
Person B says : _
Person A responds : _
.
.
.

I can’t see you doing it. Not without going "general, “abstract”, “up in the clouds”.

Teach us deluded fools how it’s done.

Right. You have your contraptions and others have their contraptions. Never the twain shall meet. What is there to discuss??

What is there to talk about? What is there to talk about for years on end?

What is the content of the discussion? I mean, I just summed it up in one sentence.

Here, take your pick: viewforum.php?f=3

And I would never label those who do not think of moral nihilism in a No God world as I do “deluded fools”.

They have their existential contraption, I have mine.

Only mine doesn’t provide the comfort and and the consolation embedded in the objectivist assumption that those who do refuse to think like them [and mimic their own behaviors] really are deluded fools.