Joseph Campbell
Ajahn Brahm
David Attenborough
Richard Dawkins
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Timothy Leary has been a great influence on me.
I have to say, I am pretty surprised / absolutely disgusted to see richard dawkins mentioned as much as he is here. is this a joke that I’m not in on or are you kids being serious? the same goes for how many times I’ve seen sagan’s name mentioned.
sagan, dawkins, and the other popularizors of science are some of the more epistemologically weak people floating around in popular opinion. have you ever glanced at the science behind sagan’s ttaps report? have you ever heard dawkins say something like ‘oh I think science can prove that for a fact no god exists.’
ausrians who will pounce upon any other econ ideology for basing theories on assumptions or statistical analysis admire those who do an identical thing in another field…and this is saying nothing of the means they would propose to manifest their beliefs through politics.
and someone mentioned michio kaku. lol: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QI6vANpHhOA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxU-Hm8dWjE&feature=related
the moderators have a lot of self-control. I would’ve gone all Hoppe over these science fetishists and banned the lot of them.
anyhow, Thomas Szasz, Richard Feynman.
^Relax buddy, Jesus and Prophet Muhhamad were mentioned too. It doesn’t matter anyway, freedom is for everyone.
Dr Cornelius Van Til. Systematically destroyed every non-Christian position at its epistemological foundations. From him, you get Rushdoony, from whom you get the Libertarian economists here on this site like Dr’s Gary North, Tim Terrell, Shawn Ritenour, et al, even tho’ he always maintained that he didn’t hold to the Recon or Libertarian position…he was a Dutch amillenialist, after all.
Others like Nietzsche, and the Marquis de Sade were important in terms of what the atheist position becomes at its root, but their contribution to Western culture in historical terms is extremely limited. Camus’s essay ‘The Rebel’ is an immensely important, altho’ unfortunately little known & appreciated, study - would that more ‘atheists’ would read it. Stirner’s critique of Marx’s ‘atheism’ is devastating, which is why Marx hated him so much, but, aside from that, he’s irrelevant too.
Hitchens is just a dick. Question: Did Doug Wilson do a job on him? Answer: Depends on your presuppositions, doesn’t it.
Interesting as well that some people claim Immanuel Kant is a great impact on them. They appear to know nothing about him. What did Kant actually do? In answer to David Hume’s devastating critique on causation, he tried to separate the world of IDEAS from the MATERIAL world…the ol’ noumenal/phenomenal switch. Now, you would expect him to be appreciated among the morons that inhabit philosophy departments in Universities worldwide, but on a website dedicated to ideas that actually work like this one, Kant, along with Hegel, should almost be enemy number One! After all, what is Marxism or Keynesian? The attempt to impose the IDEA on this world of MATTER. Totally Kantian.
Further, Hegel’s great contribution, in line with Kantian thought, was to state that the rational is the real, that the material universe has a non-reality to it, and so it must have the idea imposed on it. And who by? What was Hegel’s other great contribution? That the State is God walking on earth. And who developed this to, again, its logical conclusion? Our little mate Vladimir Lenin. What did Lenin say? He said that we know there is no material universe outside our own mind, and that everything we get by empirical observation is second-hand at best, but we will work under the idea of ‘Naive Realism’. What is ‘Naive Realism’? The child’s game of ‘Let’s Pretend’. All this is entirely in line with Immanuel Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason.’
One thing, tho’: from the atheist perspective, Kant was ruthlessly logical…so was Hegel…and Marx (except for what Max Stirner did to him.) I wonder if anyone here would agree that Sartre was ruthlessly logical as well? He was an individualist, so should fit in quite well here. But what did he end up couselling in the end, tho’? Suicide, and many of his students did commit suicide. That is the ruthless logic of atheism, which seems to get quite a good rap on this site, even on a supposedly innocent forum like this one. Tragic…
Do I expect people here to agree with me? Depends on your presuppositions, doesn’t it.
Byron Dale - The lone ranger, and the only person with a workable solution.
someone mentioned michio kaku
What, you can’t buy into type 1, 2, 3 civs? I am actually writing a paper right now touching on current man’s path to destruction, and anarchy as the only sustainable type 1 civ. Some astro-biologist’s propose the reason we don’t see any civs is because they burn themselves out consuming resource and through global warfare. I plan to add to the discussion on how we can avoid that.
the same goes for how many times I’ve seen sagan’s name mentioned
We are all space dust. We are the means for the universe to communicate with itself. What is so bad about that?
'oh I think science can prove that for a fact no god exists
No, and I don’t Dawkin’s can even try. WHat he would say is two things;
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Theists cannot prove God scientifially anymore than atheists can prove no God. It’s a moot issue
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Science is cool, and if you don’t like that, you can F off.
the moderators have a lot of self-control. I would’ve gone all Hoppe over these science fetishists and banned the lot of them
And then burn the witches at the stake! (lol jk, but this line of thinking may only be 2 steps away from such notions.)
“^Relax buddy, Jesus and Prophet Muhhamad were mentioned too. It doesn’t matter anyway, freedom is for everyone.”
I’m an atheist.
freedom is for everyone, yes, I agree with your platitude. however, your horrible taste is not for everyone. let’s just say if someone were at a party of mine and started into some kind of richard dawkins protest the pope discussion, they would no longer be welcome in my home. the same would be said if this were my forum (fortunately for you college atheists, it’s not).
“What, you can’t buy into type 1, 2, 3 civs?”
even though I was enticed by the star wars/star trek example, no, i was not convinced. it’s a just-so theory that, because it was spoken by someone with some sort of authority, becomes science (which is everything that science should not be).
“We are all space dust. We are the means for the universe to communicate with itself. What is so bad about that?”
no, I don’t care about all the hippy dippie pale blue dot stuff, it’s kind of neat. but sagan’s popularization of science resulted in dumbing down science to sensationalism and selling it to politicians. again, look at the ttaps report. the science done is about as respectable as the drake equation. he and his colleagues were doing press releases before the report was released and reviewed. again, this is everything that science should not be.
"No, and I don’t Dawkin’s can even try. WHat he would say is two things;
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Theists cannot prove God scientifially anymore than atheists can prove no God. It’s a moot issue
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Science is cool, and if you don’t like that, you can F off."
I’m pretty sure that he’s said he believes the existance of god can be disproven with science, which was embarrassing.
“And then burn the witches at the stake! (lol jk, but this line of thinking may only be 2 steps away from such notions.)”
people whose ideas are pernicious and poisonous to certain goals should be purged. I wouldn’t endorse burning anyone at a stake, my anarcho-syndicalist days are behind me, but I’d have absolutely no problem exiling people (or disallowing those types of people entrance) who are counter-productive to the type civilization you are trying to create.
Dawkins is not great for being an atheist. He’s just a great write in genetics and lets one understand many things on life by pure “armchair logic“ (akin to the praxeological method actually). His is the only solid explanation of life, its ‘purpose’ ad creation that I know off. His atheism is an amusing and very understandable offshot of his ideas, not his strong point (although of course he is right).
Non Austrian..hmmm..
Aristotle,Ayn Rand(once upon a time),Martha Nussbaum,The Stoics,Thomas Szasz,Scott Horton(austrian?),Brian Dunning,John Locke(of course), Logan Fey(from an old website),Confucius,Mencius,Chris Hedges,*Richard Dawkins(back when I was Atheist)…I’ve probably missing lots.
- Dawkins is an embarrassment once you learn some history,philosophy and learn of Agnosticism.He makes some valid points but he makes many more mistakes driven by a rabid desire to prove no theism is valid whatsoever and he fails in it repeatedly especially when he absurdly claims science disproves the existence of God(I mean literally that’s all one of his arguments are in the God Delusion).I think it’s dangerous to take atheists like Dawkins to heart because you end up a bitter twisted person who compulsively spasms in rage anytime religion is even suggsted.Really it makes you unable to see the best in them.It’s so unsophisticated.It lumps moderates in with extremists.The Anti-science crowd in with those who mix both etc. All of this I know from personal experience and see over and over again.Our culture is so strongly like this.It’s tiring.
Plus when Dawkinseque views get mixed with statism it’s a recipe for disaster.
@ Bert
Could you please elaborate on why you hold Julius Evola’s thought to be compatible with libertarianism?
EDIT
Or shall I say, what kind of worldview is one that combines libertarianism with Julia Evola’s thought?
- **Thomas Aquinas**: Oculus Dei! A thousand years has ended! The Dark Angel is loosed from his prison!
- **Jericho Cane**: Get down on the ground and put your hands behind your head.
- **Thomas Aquinas**: You don't know what you've done!
- **Jericho Cane**: Get down or I'll put you down!
- **Thomas Aquinas**: A thousand years has ended! You don't know what you've done!
- *[Jericho shoots Aquinas in the legs]*
I have influenced myself more than anyone I know.
Oh, so that’s what kids are calling it these days.
Clayton -
Very incomplete list:
Eric Hoffer, Ralph Ellison, Richard Mitchell, Thomas Szasz, Malcolm X, Neville, Wilhelm Reich, H.L. Mencken, Edward de Bono, Octavio Paz, Soren Kirkegaard, Alan Watts, Herman Hesse, Robert A. Johnson, Camille Paglia, Kahlil Gibran, C.S. Lewis, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Henry David Thoreau, Jerome K. Jerome, J. Krishnamurti, Robert Ringer, David Stove
Tonny Robbins
Harry Browne - got me started in libertarianism ten years ago
G Edward Griffin - got me started in conspiracy theories
Robert Prechter (aka Mr Doom & Gloom) - got me into contrarian thinking; says behavior of government, society, and stock markets are patterned and can be plotted on charts via Elliott Wave analysis