On the Other Hand

[arisbe]

"Many Americans make Thanksgiving into a religious festival. They agree with Lincoln, who, upon declaring Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863, said that "we have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven." They ascribe our material abundance to God's efforts, not man's.
" That view is a slap in the face of any person who has worked an honest day in his life."

Comments

[scottopic.livejournal.com]

Consider the source. Rationalism's biggest wet blankets, the Objectivists - of course they will deny anything to do with a deity - it's a central tenet to their belief. I didn't even notice the header til I was done reading.
Giving thanks to a creator if one believes in Him/Her/It/Whatever isn't denying the work that happensby human hands, but is acknowledgement in the belief that everything, including those very hands, were created in a way that could produce these things. One who denies a creator outright necessarily doesn't think this is so. That's their right, and fine, but it really looks like going out of one's way to find something to whine about. One of my favorite personal sayings: "You don't have to be religious to be a fundamentalist."

Amen

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

I turn to the Objectivists for a bracing corrective to my -- our -- habitual ways of thinking.

Their fundamentalism bothers me less than the Christian kind because it is not such a personal embarassment.