Membership Criteria to the United Nations

Any state that acts against its own people must be denied membership in the United Nations. This is because the government of such a state cannot be trusted to represent its people, and therefore the nation it represents is not really united with the others. Such governments can be counted on to abuse their membership in the United Nations just as they abuse their own people.

Gay Marriage

If marriage licenses are intended to guard against underage, familial and bigamous unions; to serve as proof of the couple's legal obligations to each other; to control who receives government benefits such as social security, insurance, and medical care; and to determine survivor benefits; then marriage licenses are unnecessary.

All those functions can be handled without the use of marriage licenses. Most of them can be handled using private contracts. The rest can be handled by laws that govern behavior, not status.

I think if anyone writes their congressman about this, it shouldn't be to defend the merit of a gay marriage. The merits that should be questioned are the state's.


The "Defense of Marriage Act", signed into law by Bill Clinton while he was cheating on his wife with Monica Lewinsky (but before he got caught) claimed to give states the right to not recognize gay marriage licenses issued by other states, but was really a federal stand against homosexuality - which is why it was named "Defense of Marriage Act (Against Homosexuals)" and not "Defense of State Right to Recognize Gay Marriage (Against the Federal Government)"

Newt Gingrich, a sponsor of the Defense of Marriage Act and very critical of Bill Clinton's affair, had cheated on his first wife, and was cheating on his second wife during Clinton's impeachment. Just throwing that out there - our lawmakers are out of their depth when they talk about things like marriage and morals. Better to repeal all the related laws and affirm everyone's right to pursue happiness by letting them handle this important aspect of their lives without government interference.


Presumably any law that restricts a citizen's private actions must intend to bring about some greater social good. So how does society benefit from the inability of gays or lesbians to get a marriage license? They don't receive any undeserved benefit nor do they impose any burden on others. Any benefit or tax or crime related to sexuality or marriage can be easily rewritten more objectively as being related to procreation, child-raising, household economic efficiency, consent, age, health, etc. and applied to citizens based on their actions instead of their sexuality or marital status. Because laws and court decisions banning gay marriage don't have any proven social value, we need to ask why they persist.

Land Charters

Here is one way that people can solve disputes regarding how society should work:

Draw a line in the sand. Everyone who thinks abortion should be allowed (in some or all cases), move to this side. Everyone who thinks abortion should never be allowed, move to that side. Nobody has to move, but they do have to respect the law of the land and if they don't like it they can move to another land.

Repeat this for every social issue about which there is strong disagreement and no resolution in sight.

The end result would be a land divided into so many pieces that everyone would be immobilized... you can't just put all the pro-life people in one spot because they will disagree about other issues and will be further divided. You can't prioritize the divisions because people will disagree about the priorities as well.

It would be wholly impractical.

Here's a twist on the line in the sand: land charters. The idea is that moral choices are organized into sets that people can identify and choose as a group - yes, religion and philosophy. Within our country, grant each group a swath of land in which they can act in accordance with their religious or philosophical values. Grant a charter to the group for the use of that land - it must be in accordance with the stated religious or philosophical values.  The charter does not need to specify all the values or all the rules of the group, only the invariant ones, the ones the group itself deems most important. Since it would still be within our country, anyone is free to move in and out of such swaths of land. However, citizens must obey the law of the land on which they stand and be held responsible for their actions.

The rule of the line in the sand prevails: if you don't like it where you are, move somewhere else. And at the same time, if enough people don't like it where they are, they can change it through democratic government processes - as long as its not one of the invariants of the charter.

To amend a charter should require a strong majority vote by its denizens - maybe 80% or 90% in favor - and a federal judicial review to ensure that the amendment is being proposed by legitimate denizens of the charter (and not by a flood of impostors), that the amendment is consistent with the rest of the beliefs of its denizens, and that it is not an invariant.

For example, a charter for a Christian swath would probably include an invariant like "Jesus is the Lord Savior" and could never be amended to remove that line. Similarly, a Jewish swath would probably include an invariant like "Our God is One" (statement of monotheism) and could never be changed to anything atheist or polytheist or Christian (since in most sects of Christianity God is Three - the Trinity).

A charter cannot be revoked by its denizens. This is to ensure that changes in population don't affect the opportunity of anyone to live under the laws of the charter. So for example, a swath of land chartered to Wiccans could not be flooded by a horde of marauding foreigners who move in, vote to revoke the charter, and then leave or try to instate a different charter.

It is not necessary to divide the entire country into swaths, although I think that under a system of land charters this would be inevitable.

Before granting any charters to groups of citizens who assemble and petition for them, prior planning should identify groups who are likely to request charters and reserve land for them.

The act of granting charters can be destructive to people who live in swaths but do not agree with the charter. However, it's comparable to the passing of local act with which some citizens disagree, because they can simply move to another state, and it's better than the passing of any national act with which citizens disagree because under a land charter system the citizens can simply move to another part of the same country, whereas with the passing of a national law they essentially have no choice at all unless they give up their citizenship and move to another country.

Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Jews should petition for separate charters because their values are actually widely different due to a different interpretation of their religion.

Similarly, certain sects of Christianity may need to petition for separate charters, although I think most sects could coexist peacefully within the same charter. I'm sure that pro-life and pro-choice types would need to be in separate charters, and the root beliefs that cause this difference in values should be identified and made an invariant of each of those charters in a form appropriate to that sect.

Federal laws would have to be pared down to a set that can apply to all land charters equally without inhibiting the exercise of their declared values. For example, the question of the death penalty would have be delegated to land charters. Also, separation of church and state would still apply to land charters but the contents of any one charter may be wholly inspired by a specific religion or sect without sponsoring a specific church of that religion or sect.

Members of political parties like Libertarians, Republicans, and Democrats, as well as many smaller parties, could petition for swaths of land where people can live according to that party's values. The essence of the party platform would become the invariants for their land charter.

For example, in a Democratic Party land charter, it might say that everyone is guaranteed a retirement, that rich people should get taxed more than poor people, that every worker must belong to a union.

In a Republican Party land charter, it might say that people are allowed to own guns, that abortion is illegal, that marriage is between one man and one woman, that slavery is illegal, that all people should be taxed the same, and that unions are allowed but works should be allowed to decide not to join.

In a Libertarian Party land charter, the invariants would be the right to life, liberty, and property as well as a mention about non-initiation of force; it may even include some of the platform positions such as workers would be free to form unions and employers would be free not to bargain with them, the income tax would be wholly replaced by sales taxes, and retirement planning is the responsibility of individuals.

Even communists may apply for a swath of land in which to practice their ideals.  Their charter might include as invariants all that communists hold dear, and this might include unity of the working class, freedom from all kinds of racism and discrimination, minimum wage for all workers, health care for all its denizens, retirement for all its denizens, and freedom from unemployment.

The area of land granted to a land charter should be proportional to the number of people who signed the petition or who are expected to move there, with some room to grow (when word spreads) based on the total number of people expected to be interested in living in such a place. For example, if a group of post-Modernists petitioned for a land charter, they should be able to obtain a swath of land, even if it's a small one.

Land charters, of course, don't solve the problem of managing the federal government. They would only provide a limited freedom to live life a certain way within some bounds set by the federal government. I think the bounds should be as minimal as possible.

The federal government might require land charters to participate in environmental protection by keeping the waters within their swath clean and limiting pollution. It might also place a ban on weapons development, requiring that all advanced weapons programs be approved by federal government. These mandates would be included in the land charters.

The charters may also include federally mandated provisions that their denizens must accomplish certain goals, such as increase the number of trees in their swath by 25%, or create a protected habitat for some endangered animal, or provide an amount of adults proportional to the denizen population size for the federal military reserve system to be called up for national defense in the event of a war (but never for the invasion of foreign countries).

The charters may also include a provision to guarantee the political education of their denizens. Even though all other facets of their education are in their hands, denizens of land charters and their children must never lose the knowledge that they are American citizens, that they owe their autonomy to a benevolent system of land charters organized by a federal government,  that any denizen is free to leave the chartered land and live anywhere else in the country according to the laws of that place, and all the other rules of the land charter system. To ensure that these basic political facts of their life are not lost, the charter may state that all denizens ages 12 to 32 will complete a survey (quiz) every 5 years. The surveys would be administered by the federal agents

I think the most significant contribution of a land charter system is the ability of people holding different perspectives to experiment with the mostly uninhibited practice of their religion or philosophy. If it's working well they may have additional denizens clamoring to immigrate and live in the chartered swath of land. If it's not working well they may experience an exodus of denizens. The rest of the world can observe this and, over time, make conclusions about the value of certain ideas based on their real effects.

In order to make uniform surveys of the conditions of denizens possible, a land charter must include a provision to allow federal agents access to observe and record any aspect of life such as employment rates, spread of disease, etc.

I think that a big problem with land charters could be that the more autonomy they receive from the federal government, the more likely they are to act as separate little countries. If their denizens then decide in a fit of irrationality that they want to secede from the very country that made their land charter possible, they might begin acting in ways which violate the supervisory provisions of the federal government in their charter. They might deny entry to federal agents or they might even send militants on raids of surrounding territories. Such acts should rightly be seen as an initiation of civil war and the federal government should rightly respond very violently in order to protect the rights of all Americans to continued use of that swath of land.

I think such a sad conclusion is more likely for some charters than others due to the nature of the ideas in their chartered religion or philosophy, but it would be so interesting if communists were able to achieve their dream without murder and coercion, or if anarchists could demonstrate that no government is good government while maintaining a quality of life appealing to "mainstream" Americans, or if capitalists could show that less controls over their business lead to more prosperity and how they can still take good care of their little swath of the planet.

Despite the possibility of such a conclusion for any particular land charter, I think the key to a successful experiment is to give it the most autonomy possible. This is because religions and philosophies must be studied as complete systems (whether or not they are or pretend to be complete). If a system calls for a weak central government and strong local courts that mete corporal punishments even for minor crimes, it should be allowed. Don't worry about the corporal punishment - all the denizens subject themselves to it voluntarily!

That brings up the question of children. When children are born in a land charter, they are raised in accordance with its laws. While they are children, any consequences of living in the land charter have to be accepted as consequences of their parent's choices. Each woman who gives birth to children must be assumed to have their best interests at heart. Each man or woman who works to provide for his or her  children must also be assumed to have their best interests at heart. So if something bad happens to the children in the land charter, it has to be accepted because the point of the land charters is to allow people to live their lives a certain way that they prefer (within the minimal limits provided by the federal government) and for other people who disagree to leave them alone. This means accepting the consequences of life in that land. There cannot be any form of federal child protection service that interferes with life in chartered land. The denizens, of course, are free to form their own child protection services.

The federal government might choose to designate only land-locked swaths of land for land charters in order to ensure that the federal government retains complete control over all of the country's borders. Land charters would be a more formal and voluntary version of the Indian Reservation system.  I don't know if the Native Americans would be happier with a land charter than in their reservations, but they could also petition for a land charter if they think that would be better. I think they might like their reservations better because anyone can enter a land charter.

Land charters should be represented in the federal government, but not the same way as the States because they don't have equal status to the States. They might be treated as territories, sending a non-voting delegate to the House of Representatives, or they might form a separate Land Charter Assembly to discuss and vote on issues, with the entire Assembly being granted a single vote in the Senate equal to one Senator. The Assembly could designate one of its members to be its Representative Senator in the Senate with the requirement to vote according to the resolutions of the Assembly.

It's interesting that land charters imply that different people's beliefs and opinions should be tolerated as long as they do not harm others, but in a macro sense - a group's beliefs and opinions may harm itself and that's ok as long as they don't harm other groups. I wonder if people who are militant in the enforcement of their views on others would be satisfied by moving to a swath of chartered land with like-minded neighbors or if they would still assault the rest of the world with their opinions, refusing to rest until all of humanity conforms to what they think is right.

Trust is the Antidote to Worry

I think that a long time ago, we had a lot of implicit expectations when we trusted someone. Trust meant not just that person wouldn't harm us, but also that if we were in any sort of danger we would be warned. That something, anything, would be done to help if it were possible. 

Maybe it's still that way for children.  But for adults now, trust has to be a lot more specific and explicit. For example, when you connect to a website securely and you enter your username and password, you are trusting your computer to faithfully transmit what you type and not work against you, you are trusting the network between your computer and the server to carry your encoded messages to the correct destination, you are trusting the secure browsing protocol that nobody can eavesdrop on your username and password, you are trusting the website not to publish your password or other personal information or use it against you, and after all of that you are trusting the website to serve its intended purpose. Or similarly when you drive a car on the highway, you are trusting that your machine works, you are trusting that your skills of navigating and driving it are adequate to get you to your destination, you are trusting that the roads leading to your destination are passable, and you are trusting that the other drivers on the road will not bump into you. 

That's why we get so mad when a website sells or allows to be stolen its list of members and their personal information. It's a violation of trust. Or when a drunk driver hits another car. It's a violation of trust - and worse, it was a willful violation, because a person has to act to become drunk. 

When a person does not trust, a person worries. 

So if you find that you are worried a lot, it means you have lost a lot of trust. Maybe the loss was "earned" because of past mistakes or problems, or maybe its groundless. Either way, the only way to get it back is to experiment.  

Not sure if the road to where you're going is worthy? Start with a drive around the block. Then go a little farther. Ask people who have been there and maybe travel with friends to double check. 

A person who doesn't worry is said to be a person with a lot of confidence. But confidence just means firmly trusting. A person with confidence is a person with a lot of trust in himself or herself and in the world. That trust can be based on a person's beliefs or experience. I think the best confidence comes from experience, especially if it's experience using one's own skills because it combines a trust in the world and a trust in oneself. 

So if you are worried sick, you better find something to trust. You don't have to start by trusting the thing that makes you worried, because you can get to that later. Start with something easy, maybe something you already trust and just remind yourself... "I trust my chair to be sturdy, this table to be flat..." and work your way up to trusting enough to make your worry go away. 

Trust doesn't mean that everything will be okay. It means that the world will work the way it's supposed to. So the more you learn about the world, the easier it is to trust it.

The Occupation that Time Forgot

I read a stupid article today about the West Bank by Sandy Tolan that was endorsed by Tom Engelhardt,  who runs a blog that normally has better articles. Here's what I think about it:


Maybe you forgot that the Jews were tormented and slaughtered not just in Germany but in surrounding countries too as crazy Nazis and Soviets unfairly blamed them for their own problems, gained more territory, and continued their campaigns of hate in all their new territories. Has anyone done that to the Arabs? No.

Maybe you forgot that Arabs initiated wars against Israel in which Israel defeated them and captured a lot of land - and then gave it back in hopes of achieving peace. Have Arabs given any land to Israel in hopes of achieving peace? No.

Maybe you forgot that Israel allows Arabs (and other Muslims) to live within its borders. Do Arabs allow Israelis or any Jews to even visit their countries? No.

Maybe you forgot that before Israel declared independence, the "Palestinians" were the same people as the Syrians and Jordanians, all under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and then the British. In fact, King Faisal of Syria later was also king of Iraq, and the Ba'ath Party controlled both Syria and Iraq for some time. And when Israel declared independence, it was its Arab neighbors who refused to let their Arab brothers immigrate to their countries, forcing them to stay in Israel.  They purposefully closed their borders to force a continued Arab presence in Israel - to be a thorn in its side.

Maybe you forgot that for a long time Arabs have been conducting suicide bombings, shootings, and kidnappings in Israel against Jews, and also launching rockets into Israel towns in order to kill civilians. Do Israelis do that against the Arabs? No.

The Arabs are waging war against Israel in any way that they can. They tried to do it militarily and they failed. So they had to resort to planting bombs and launching rockets to do any damage they can. The peace "process" is just what Arabs have to pretend to be doing since they can't win by force. It's a farce because they aren't interested in peaceful co-existence, they are interested in a victory for them and for there to be no Jews in Israel.

Why? Why the hatred? Why do Arabs in Arab countries blame Israel for their problems, when clearly their problems have been the same for hundreds of years before Israel was created?  When clearly their problems are a direct consequence of their culture and not anyone else's?

Anyone who understands Arabs and looks at a map can see why Israel can't give up the West Bank. To have a fully Arab-controlled West Bank means a serious military disadvantage to Israel when the Arabs initiate the next war, because it gives them an easy way to divide the country in half.  Only people who don't understand the Arab intentions fail to see the significance of that territory. "Oh, just give them their country" you say.

This is very much a one-sided conflict. The Arab side is the one that always initiates force.  Israel has nothing to gain by fighting the Arabs. It can never have peace as long as there are Arabs who are convinced that they need to destroy it.   If you were to miraculously stop the Arab attacks for a month or even a year you would observe that Israel would not conduct even one offensive military operation against them. It would have no reason for that.  As Ghandi said, there is no way to peace - peace is the way.

You want to talk about an occupation that time forgot?  How about Europeans (now called Americans) occupying nearly all of North America? We fooled everyone into thinking this is our land. It isn't, we robbed the natives.  How lucky are we that Native Americans don't teach their kids to hate us in their reservations and conduct suicide bombings in our neighborhoods?  We could have a similar conversation about Australia and their natives too.

Americans are such hypocrites. We INVADED TWO COUNTRIES in hopes of deterring attacks on our "homeland", and yet we sympathize with people who routinely conduct terrorist attacks on Israel and we think it's a good idea for Israel to give them land??? In proportion to the rest of Israel, that would be like giving 13 states of the United States to Al Qaeda!!   It's unthinkable!  

We DROPPED TWO ATOMIC BOMBS on Japan to end a war yet we criticize Israel when it uses conventional military weapons against military targets. We hold Israel accountable to GENEVA CONVENTION standards yet look the other way when the Arabs bomb Israeli civilians and  hide their military operations behind women, children, and mosques to guarantee collateral damage they can cry about when Israel retaliates.   We METHODICALLY DISPLACED NATIVE AMERICANS TO GAIN NEW LAND yet we criticize Israel for developing settlements in its own territory.

How about this?  Give Jews 9,000 square miles in Alaska to create a Jewish state and move all the Jews from Israel there. They won't have any "natural enemies" in the region and the Arabs can have all the land that is now Israel to themselves.  You STILL won't have peace in the Middle East, because the Arabs will still be there, but at least the Jews would have peace in a place they can call home, even if it isn't the home they were promised.

What If Everyone Does It?

I think that one of the ways to judge whether an activity is good or bad is to consider what would happen if everyone did it.  It's easy to imagine the trouble that we would have if everyone routinely lies, steals, and murders. What about more private things, like engage in unprotected sex?

Well, "unprotected sex" is not enough information to evaluate this activity. The reason it's not enough is that it can be consensual or not, between monogamous partners or not, between two people who are known to each other not to have any diseases and not to have other partners since being checked - or not. We know from social experience that a lot of people having unprotected sex can spread disease - but there are implied behaviors in that statement. It's implied that there is a lot of switching partners, that not everyone is checked for disease, and that even if a person is checked for disease they don't insist their partner is checked and that they don't have sex with anyone else since being checked.

Two consensual monogamous people with no diseases and no other partners could have unprotected sex with each other every day for the rest of their life and not spread any diseases.  So where's the evil? The evil is in the nonconsensual. The evil is in the laziness of people who don't want to get checked. The evil is in the carelessness of people who don't insist that their partners get checked. The evil is in the cheating where one partner gets checked and advertises he or she is clean but has unprotected sex before a secure sexual relationship starts - thereby compromising the screening results.

I think it's wrong to condemn an activity just because some people don't do it properly. Another example? A lot of people lose their money when they invest but does that mean that investing should be illegal? Of course not. Not everyone does it right, and even if they do the activity involves risk and some failure is to be expected.

So I think any debate about whether an activity is moral and should be outlawed needs to be mature enough to consider the details, so that when we imagine "everyone doing it" we imagine doing it different ways. Only this way can we arrive at nuanced distinctions that we take for granted such as murder versus self-defense, or investing versus gambling.

When I think about murder versus self-defense, the distinctions are the initiation of force, or "who started it", and for what reason, or "taking versus protecting".

When I think about investing versus gambling, the distinctions are, do you know what you are doing or are you relying on luck, and are you willing to accept the risk, and are you using your money or someone else's, and are you investing or gambling with all your money or just money that you are willing to lose, and do you have an obligation to protect that money to take care of someone else or is it acceptable to lose it.

When I think about unprotected sex, the distinctions are consensual or not, careless or safe, by cheating or with integrity.

I think that if an activity done a certain way is not harmful to other people (or it's harmful in a morally acceptable way like self-defense) then if we imagine everyone doing it that way and under the right conditions the imaginary world would be fine. For some activities the negative consequences alone should be enough to dissuade people from doing it. That might require some education since not everyone knows what the negative consequences of their actions are. And for some activities the only people who could be hurt are the ones engaged in the activity. In these cases I think it's wrong to make it illegal.

For example, riding a motorcycle without a helmet is dangerous to the rider. See how I added "without a helmet" and "to the rider"? Yet I'm still assuming that the helmet to be worn is an appropriate one for the task. A rider could easily be killed in an accident if the rider is thrown off the motorcycle and is not wearing a helmet. Because of that, some people got together and decided that they would protect other people from themselves and passed laws that make it illegal to ride a motorcycle without a helmet. Recently there was a rally to repeal this law, and one rider in the rally who was riding without his helmet had an accident and died. His death would have been prevented had he been wearing a helmet. It's ironic but it doesn't make the law alright. You see? Even with the law in place someone rode a motorcycle without a helmet and died. He broke the law! Now how is he going to be punished? Where will we get justice? The point is that the damage he did to himself is punishment enough and there is no justice to be served here because that law against riding motorcycle without a helmet is an unnecessary law. The difference in chances of survival between wearing a helmet and not wearing a helmet should be enough to convince riders to wear a helmet. But since the choice affects them only and not anyone else, they should be free to make it.

If the rider has a family that depends on him or her, does that mean there are now other victims besides the rider and that riding a motorcycle without a helmet should be illegal because the rider could have a family? No and no. The rider's family may be sad about the death of the rider but they are not hurt. If they don't want to lose the rider to an accident then they should pressure the rider to wear a helmet. If they don't try, or the rider doesn't care, the consequences will be their own.

So while I think that it's wrong to have laws that restrict personal freedoms for all just because some people act irresponsibly (imagine if swimming pools were outlawed because some people drown, or driving were outlawed because some people drive too fast) - I know that this is a minority opinion and that the majority of people in America jump at any chance to lose their personal freedoms in order to be  safe and secure.

Maybe a compromise could be that people who are caught riding without a helmet (and other unsafe only-to-themselves activities) could be "punished" by being forced to attend a safety class for that activity. At the end of the class they would get a small certificate that would fit in their wallet. Then next time they are caught doing the unsafe activity they can just show their safety certificate to the enforcer and be left alone. That way the majority would get a warm fuzzy feeling like someone is watching over them, yet still allow people to make their own educated choices.

If that works for riding motorcycles without a helmet, or investing, or having unprotected sex, then it could work for a wide range of personal choices that are currently legislated. If personal activities with risk only to oneself or group activities with risk only to the group cease to be illegal it would free up government justice departments to work only with real crimes.

Defense of Objectivism

I read "Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand" by Leonard Peikoff and I really liked it because Rand's philosophy is clear and stands on it's own - a magnificent independent way to arrive at values, purpose, rights, and wrongs. As I became more interested in government and politics and what is the best way to run a country so that I can decide how to vote in election, my own thoughts over the years have been moving in this direction. Reading this book was like coming home to something familiar because Rand's insightful definitions gave me a strong base of validated concepts to which I can reduce all my thoughts and check their course.

Also, I think overall Peikoff did a great job of writing all of it clearly and in a well-organized book, but there are some mistakes that I hope can be corrected in a future edition. By pointing out the mistakes - whether Peikoff's or Rand's - I am defending Objectivism from criticism that it does not deserve:

1. In the chapter "Reality", in the section "The Metaphysically Given as Absolute", Peikoff writes: "The Objectivist view of existence culminates in the principle that no alternative to a fact of reality is possible or imaginable."  I agree that no alternative to a fact of reality is possible. I disagree that no alternative is imaginable. To the point: In the book Peikoff addresses several commonly held beliefs that are not grounded in reality. If no alternative to reality is imaginable, and people are able to imagine God, gremlins, dragons, Santa Claus, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars, then all those things must be possible in reality somewhere and somehow. This means anything man imagines is possible. This amounts to a primacy of consciousness view. The Objectivist view should be read as: "No alternative to a fact of reality is possible."

2. In the chapter "Reality", in the section "Idealism and Materialism as the Rejection of Basic Axioms", Peikoff illustrates that the idea of the supernatural is a rejection of the basic axioms of existence, identity, and consciousness by relating beliefs about God to the Objectivist viewpoint.

Peikoff writes: "Is God the creator of the universe? Not if existence has primacy over consciousness." I disagree here. The Objectivist philosophy does state that existence has primacy over consciousness - however, this can only be validated within our own existence. Our existence has primacy over our consciousness. If God created our existence (in the conventional sense as in created it out of nothing), it means God is outside of our existence. He therefore may have the power to manipulate it supernaturally. But this changes nothing - by definition, anything God makes happen within our existence is possible within our existence. And our existence, though manipulated by God, still has primacy over our consciousness. Could God's existence have primacy over God's consciousness? Since this question is regarding a subject matter outside our existence, Objectivism has nothing to say about it. Does God need a creator? Again, it's a question outside our existence. These questions presuppose ideas about something about which we don't have evidence and can never get evidence since it's outside of our existence. In Objectivism these ideas are called arbitrary because they are not rooted in our existence and therefore have no evidence that can be used to prove them true or false. Objectivism doesn't require a creator. Objectivism accepts our existence as primary and builds on that. The Objectivist view should be: "Is God the creator of the universe? This presupposes that God is outside existence and therefore it cannot be shown to be true or false. A question about the nature of God is outside the realm of Objectivism, because no amount of discussion of this idea can add to human knowledge unless it has its roots in firm evidence. Objectivism, being a philosophy rooted in existence, therefore regards this question as arbitrary."

Peikoff writes: "Is God the designer of the universe? Not if A is A. The alternative to design is not chance. It is causality." This requires the same adjustment as the previous question. To design anything, one must exist before the thing is created. Even in the Objectivist sense of creation as the re-arranging of existents, this is an illogical leap because it attempts to answer the question about design before first establishing the facts: The question presupposes the existence of God. Since we have no evidence about the existence of God, this question is also arbitrary and cannot be shown to be true or false. While some people may claim to have evidence, these claims have been around for thousands of years of known history and still the evidence has not been sufficient for man to accept the existence of God as a fact the same way man accepts the existence of rocks as a fact.

Peikoff writes: "Is God omnipotent? Nothing and no one can alter the metaphysically given." This requires the same adjustment as the previous question. Even after acknowledging that this is an arbitrary question because it presupposes the existence of God for which we have no evidence, and suspending disbelief: if God does exist, if he designed and created the universe in the Objectivist sense of re-arranging existents, I think that would qualify as omnipotence... and yet those who believe in God believe that he is in some way responsible for the content of the Bible and that the content of the Bible is true, and there is plenty of "evidence" in the Bible in the form of things God says and does pointing to the notion that God is not omnipotent. All very interesting, but since Objectivism seeks to guide man's thoughts with a firm grounding in reality, this is all outside the realm of Objectivism. That's not to say it's outside the realm of discussion. It just doesn't add anything to man's knowledge about the world.

Peikoff writes: "Is God infinite? Infinite does not mean large; it means larger than any specific quantity, i.e., of no specific quantity. An infinite quantity would be a quantity without identity. But A is A... The actual is always finite." Again, questions about the nature of God are outside the realm of Objectivism and add nothing to human knowledge. I love the example though, and I think it should be rewritten as "Can anything be infinite? ..." because that is something people do wonder about. Infinity is a useful concept that allows us to compress our notations and refine our thinking, but it's not real.

Peikoff writes: "Can God perform miracles? A miracle does not mean merely the unusual. A miracle is an action not possible to the entities involved by their nature; it would be a violation of identity." Again, a question outside the realm of Objectivism. But I disagree with the definition of miracle here. I consulted various dictionaries and in all definitions a miracle is either something outside of the laws of nature that we know or can explain - this leaves open the possibility of re-arranging existents to create that effect. This is essentially a spiritual view of magic in the sense that any sufficiently advanced technology is magic to a person unfamiliar with its foundations - consider the magical talking mirror in the tale of Snow White, written before even the telephone was invented, and how our modern every-day ability of video chat would appear to a person of that time as a magical talking mirror. A person who believes in God and who believes that God either created or designed the universe must then also believe that God can perform miracles - and that many of his activities as told in the Bible are themselves miracles even if they are not explicitly described as such. A person who does not believe in God must not believe that God can perform miracles. But Objectivism? Objectivism doesn't care. Any person who wishes to use the wisdom of Objectivism must similarly suspend his questions about God while engaged in reasoning and learning about our world. Anything that we see and cannot explain should be noted and  the evidence preserved or recorded to the best of our capability so that other people may have a chance to discover something new about our world. If we cannot preserve any evidence, it's unreasonable to expect anyone to believe it. There's nothing wrong with saying that something is a miracle - it just means we don't have an explanation for it yet. We still have the choice to investigate it and learn something or leave it alone if we're not interested in learning anything new. Is it a coincidence that in a time when we know a lot more about nature than our ancestors, the number of miracles seems to be dwindling? But they will never completely disappear: As long as we don't know everything about the universe, there will remain a possibility for miracles.

Peikoff writes: "Is God purely spiritual? Spiritual means pertaining to consciousness, and consciousness is a faculty of certain living organisms, the faculty of perceiving that which exists. A consciousness transcending nature would be a consciousness transcending organism and object. So far from being all-knowing, such a thing would have neither means nor content of perception; it would be non-conscious." Again, the Objectivist answer must be: "A question about the nature of God is outside the realm of Objectivism, because no amount of discussion of this idea can add to human knowledge unless it has its roots in firm evidence."

So although I think Peikoff's example with God does a disservice to Objectivism by trying to reason about something that is arbitrary, he does clear up the matter soon after by writing: "There is no logic that will lead from the facts of this world to a realm contradicting them" and "If one is to postulate a supernatural realm, one must... rely instead on faith." This amounts to a clear separation of religion or any other mysticism from Objectivism. It's brilliant.

3. In the chapter "Reason", in the section "The Arbitrary as Neither True Nor False", Peikoff writes: "The reason that Objectivism rejects agnosticism should now be clear... Agnosticism is not simply the pleading of ignorance. It is the enshrinement of ignorance... The agnostic treats arbitrary claims as matters properly open to consideration, discussion, evaluation... He demands proof of a negative... in struggling to elevate the arbitrary to a position of cognitive respect, he is attempting to equate the arbitrary with the logically supported... In considering any issue, never permit ourself one minute in the quicksands of a baseless "I don't know". Instead, establish first that the issue is related to the realm of evidence and thus deserves consideration. Then study the evidence, weighing the possibilities in accordance with the principles of logic. Then make up your mind and take a stand... One can reach [truth] only by a process of reason."

I disagree with Peikoff's assertion that agnosticism is the enshrinement of ignorance. I think just as Peikoff's so-called objective treatment of God misapplies reason to an arbitrary claim, certain famous agnostics have misapplied their uncertainty about God to all other knowledge. I think Objectivism and agnosticism go hand in hand, they are two sides of the same coin. Objectivism is explicitly concerned only with things that are grounded in reality. Agnosticism is concerned only with things that are not grounded in reality: without evidence, we can never know with certainty if a claim is true or false. This is just a restatement of Objectivism's definition of arbitrary. Thomas Huxley, who invented the term "agnostic", certainly did not try to equate the arbitrary with the logically supported. To the contrary, he stated that before one can reason about any such questions one needs evidence. He wrote that the human intellect is out of its depth in these matters, that you can discuss them at length without arriving at any new knowledge. This agnostic viewpoint is the same as the Objectivist viewpoint: discussion of arbitrary claims cannot add to human knowledge precisely because they are not grounded with evidence. This applies to any claim from conspiracy theories to religion.

I do agree that agnostics who say that nothing is certain are practicing what Rand calls evasion: willfully disengaging their mind from examining the evidence available to them and reasoning about it, willfully avoiding the hard work of acquiring new knowledge. Applying agnosticism to alarm clocks and probabilities is a mistake: agnosticism is not uncertainty about the future, it's uncertainty about propositions that cannot be proven true or false because there is no evidence for either case. Regarding knowledge about our world, agnosticism amounts to scientific skepticism which is endorsed by Objectivism: "study the evidence, weighing the possibilities in accordance with the principles of logic [(such as the scientific method)]. Then make up your mind and take a stand... One can reach [truth] only by a process of reason."

Quite the opposite of "enshrinement of ignorance", Thomas Huxley who invented the term agnostic was active in the scientific community of his day. He was an early vocal and public supporter of Darwin's theory of evolution, but only after he reviewed the massive amount of evidence that Darwin had amassed.

The Objectivist viewpoint should be: "Objectivism and agnosticism are two sides of the same coin. Just as reason can be misused to give credibility to arbitrary claims, agnosticism can be misused to claim ignorance when evidence is available. While discussion of arbitrary matters can be very entertaining, it should be understood that without evidence, such discussion can never lead to new knowledge."