Randbots appearing in 5,4,3,2,1...

Seriously though, a Christian Randian is like a Christian Muslim or a Christian Hinduism; a contradiction in terms.

As P G Wodehouse puts in 'The Code of the Woosters', when Bertie Wooster meets Roderick Spode (a thinly-disguised version of British fascist leader Oswald Mosley):

"You can't be a successful Dictator and design women's underclothing. One or the other. Not both."

No one can remove God from a society and have a functioning society.

Joe, I appreciate you're naming the problem with Rand's teachings that I was having trouble putting my finger on: it's areligious. But every arelious society is also irreligious, because the Creator does not disappear from the lives of men, except when they turn away from him and reject him time and time again.

Thank you.

I think of Rand in relationship to Marx. Instead of dialectical materialism with its (as you noted) collectivism, she promotes the alternative of objectivist materialism. It is hedonistic at best, without the restraints available through Adam Smith. The result is that there is danger, not just for conservatives, but for Christians and a sound theology.
Watch for our opponents to promote this hedonism as representing "capitalism" just as they promoted Bernie Madoff as "capitalism".

As I have stated in earlier post on Rand, she was a vile and evil woman. As Collin Brendemuehl accurately observes, she and Marx are really the opposite side of the same coin, God-less materialism. And each goes to extremes in their organization of society. Marx wanted to replace the family, Church and community with the overarching state and Rand wanted to replace the family, Church and community with the unfettered individual. Radical statism is, in the end, authoritarianism and radical individualism is, in the end, either anarchy or, far more likely, authoritarianism privatized in the hands of a few people who control massive, multinational corporations.

I wish I could comment here on a more knowledgable and intellectual level, but I can't. I have never read Rand, but being conservative, I am always within hearing distance of people who have read her books and refer to them often. All I ever knew of Rand was within my reading of Rose Wilder Lane, daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and likely author of the Little House Series of books.

Lane was an early libertarian and some consider her the founder of the Libertarian Party. Rose did not know Rand, but did communicate with her in letters, the subject of which was the encroaching influence of Socialism in America. They agreed on much, however, Lane objected to Rand's view of Christianity and although Rose was not much of a church goer, she recognized how important Christianity was to the preservation of liberty in America. It was on that issue that their paths diverged.

What attracts people to Ann Rand is her idea that rich people actually help society. So many college students and Christians are taught from the "we are rich because others are poor" school of economics that the idea of the free market actually working is a revelation. This truth is such a mind blower for some that they don't need to buy her 'selfishness is a virtue' shtick to get something our of her work. They move on to Smith and Hayek and pass Econ 101. Rands deeper philosophy touted by libertarians is much too silly to be taken seriously.

As I have said many, many times elsewhere, only Virginia Woolf's fans are worse. Both fan sets possess the same blindness as to their heroines' weaknesses.

Joe, I didn't know you had it in ya! Please forgive my presumption that conservatives love everything "to the right." I'm a very liberal liberal. I read first things because of the intellectual and spiritual content. Please keep surprising me.

Very few Americans are taught philosophy.
The result is that they are unable to see Rand's errors or to explain them rationally.

I agree with this article completely. My only complaint is that it leaves out another crucial point that goes along with it.

Not only is Ayn Rand's philosophy satanic. But so are the philosophies that guide the establishment of both of our major parties. There are very few politicians in our government who could not easily be proven guilty of advancing the cause of satanism, regardless of any profession of Christianity they may make.

Once again, Joe Carter takes a pet peeve and turns it into the apocalypse.

We all know Rand is a one-dimensional philosophaster. She got in over her head when she tried to converse with the ancients. She was a preposterous, self-parodying egomaniac, and anyone who has advanced into adulthood could see her coming from a mile away. She is more famous but just as goofy as LaVey. She does not rate being mentioned in the same breath, much less the same lecture, as the very real and very influential prince of lies.

Why would a citizen be outraged if he found out his political representative read The Satanic Bible? It wouldn't be outrageous because we found out he was a minion of the anti-Christ; it would be outrageous because we discovered our ostensibly mature and competent representative has the mentality of a 17-year-old emo goth-boy. LaVey is a cartoon version of evil, which is to say, so on-the-nose and bombastic that he defeats himself. Likewise, Rand is a cartoon philosopher. These charlatans seek and thrive from the kind of outrage Joe Carter can be counted on to provide. We are best not giving them fuel for sorry little altar fires.

Carter's critique of Rand's understanding of capitalism, over on First Thoughts, is more balanced and perceptive than the above, which reads as a ploy for attention. The Randians will comply with a response -- it is their way of thanking Joe for keeping them in the headlines.

"Devotees of Rand may object to my outlining the association between the two. They will say I am proposing 'guilt by association,' a form of the ad hominem fallacy."

Isn't it more "poisoning the well" or the "genetic fallacy" than ad hom.?

Like Brian Leiter hates Ayn Rand. That's something he and Joe Carter has in common. To many ROFT Carter's well is poisoned by his association with Brian Leiter.

But isn't saying "not believing in Christianity equals worshiping Satan" kind of just like saying "not believing in Zeus must equal worshiping Hades"?

Rand was wrong about a great many things but she was certainly right about government behavior viz. collectivism and punishing the successful in order to control them.

Good post Joe. We need to repeat this over and over: We can be co-belligerents (“allies” is too strong) with Rand followers on occasion. But THEY ARE NOT US. And by “us” I mean either “Christians” or “political conservatives.”

This is why both Rand Paul and his father Ron Paul are intellectual lightweights. They think they can combine the oil of Rand with the water of Christianity.

I posted my previous comment and then went back to the blog to see, to my horror, Mr. Staley-Joyce using the phrase “conservative libertarian,” which I would have thought is an obvious oxymoron. Arrrrgh! The infection has spread to FT!

Craig Roberts' comment gets it exactly right. What the article is missing is the fact that there are two very distinct and opposed types of Rand admirers: those who love the Fountainhead but think Rand just went off the rails in Objectivism and Atlas Shrugged, and the "true believers" who consider the Fountainhead a rough draft for the true greatness achieved in her later works. For the former school Ayn Rand's subsequent thought and life stand as a warning about where not to go with her early psychological insights. I'm sure LaVey would count himself with the later.

But if you have the least curiosity why Rand's first book continues to excite college students, look at it through the lens of Rene Girard's "Desire, Deceit, and the Novel." In fact, Rand even says she built the book from the insight that we are easily driven by desires we catch from others. She calls it "secondhand" desire, but it's exactly what Girard means by "mimetic desire." It works out one way with Cervantes' Don Quixote getting lost in copying a knight errant, another way altogether with Rand's Peter Keating copying other architects. Both characters become mirrors for us to see our folly. The difference, aside from literary talent, is that Cervantes,and Girard, see the need for a better model, Christ and the saints, while Rand can only fall back on the will of the individual to escape mimetic desire. And the result is a personal and literary train wreck.

It is more accurate to say that she hated Christianity because Christians are so regularly duped by collectivist hucksters. Socialism promises that we can build a pagan idol called government. So long as we appease this idol with ever-increasing sacrifices, it will provide for us and keep us safe.

While I agree that Rand was amoral, I am reminded of Chesterton's discussion of different forms on paganism in The Everlasting Man. While both Roman and Carthaginian societies were pagan, the Carthaginians engaged in human sacrifice. The Romans vanquished the Carthaginians, and the world was better for it.

Unfortunately, the evil and superstitious need for human sacrifice has not gone away. We saw this in the 20th century with Fascists and Communists slaughtering untold millions for some greater good that never materialized. Rand opposed both. Many Christians, though, locked arms with authoritarians because they somehow believed that Christ wanted them to.

Right now, progressivism is pushing us into a world of socialized medicine where euthanasia and abortion will not just be permitted but will be celebrated as advancing the common good. Despite the obvious evil of such schemes, many Christians leaders see the "good intentions" of the Baal-worshipers, and endorse the project of "universal healthcare" whole-heartedly. Maybe these leaders think that if we build a big enough tower, we can reach Heaven.

Finally, you can say, "other people said it better," but the truth is that they didn't. I can't think of a single pro-market, pro-freedom writer that reached as many people as Rand did. Whatever you think the shortcomings of her writing are, the fact is that many people find her writing accessible, entertaining and thought-provoking.

The few pages of Rand I've ever read wile browsing one of her books at random are probably the vilest stuff I have ever come across. It made Nietzche sound warm and cuddly. "Satanic" was the first word that came to mind after reading it. If someone as a Christian can't see that, to call that blindness is way beyond an understatement.

Excellent Article!!!! I'm a Wiccan and when people ask me if Wicca is Satanism, I say: "No, Satanism is a bunch of Ayn Rand crap. They are essentially social darwinists who only view nature in terms of "competition", whereas we Wiccans see nature in terms of "inter-dependence".

So it's interesting to find out that LaVey actually took quotes from Rand. Wow, I guess I was right.

Readers of all religious persuasions (or none at all) who have gotten through even just some of Atlas Shrugged will find laffs aplenty in its parody. Find out what happens to John Glatt, Dragnie Tagbord, and the rest of the demi-god gang, ten years later:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/54707

Well said, @pmains.

Reagan once said that the person who agreed with us 80% of the time is not an enemy, they are an ally. If social conservatives want to kick all the non-religious people out of the GOP, they will never win or make progress.

Oh, wait a minute Joe Carter....I take my last comment back.

I just read the part where you equated "the future Wiccans of America" not only with Satanists, but even worse....with "the Young Libertarians". Thanks for nothing, Joe.

Your article on Rand is interesting although I think that it is not wholly correct to put her philosophy of Objectivism, or its successor of Libertarianism, in opposition to Christianity. To understand her, one needs to understand that she came from an atheistic culture of Soviet Russia and her views of the world were colored by that experience. She rebelled intellectually against Marxism as anti-logical and anti-life because she saw its destructiveness of that society and because she compared it to the positiveness of American capitalism--and so her writings on capitalism and individual liberty should be seen in this light--as a contrast between socialist totalitarianism and liberty rather than between capitalism and Christianity. Her education was classical in nature and her philosophical influence was Aristotle rather than Christianity--it is unlikely that as a Russian Jew she had any Christian influence in her early education--and so the logic is based on a sophisticated pre-Christian view of the world, rather than on Christianity. That being said, I think as Christians we can look and even agree at her views and arguments for individual rights and capitalism as opposed to a socialist state as separated from her neo-Pagan views on religion. After all, Jesus exhorted us "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's"--and this holds in development of political vs religious theory as well. And so, as Christians, we can learn from her views, and those of other libertarian thinkers, on our relationship to government. In my own view, I think that Rand's dystopian picture in Atlas Shrugged is a very compelling warning of the nature of a government that would put the rights of collective ahead of the rights of the individual--and the twisting of values that can result. Now that being said, I have always disagreed with some of her other views--but I note that most Christians are influenced by Aristotle, in fact the Greek philosophers have significant influence on the development of Christian thought, even though their views on religion are rejected. She, like Aristotle, are both human and fallible, and don't get it totally right. So, if Rand is viewed in the perspective of battle between individual liberty and socialist, authoritarian government, there is not a contradiction with Christianity. And to bring this into the current political environment, there is not a conflict between Christianity and opposition to big, socialist government. Those of us that are both libertarian and Christian believe that government does not succeed in caring for the needy in ways that are healthy or that foster their self respect; and that government, in trying to do these things, is so destructive of individual liberty and the successes of capitalism that it actually causes a reduction in the overall welfare of society; and many of us believe that such actions by a powerful government against a powerless citizenry is a form of theft, not charity.

One of Nietzsche's biggest complaints about the athieists and nihilists of his time was thier cowardice. He believed that if a society was to stop believing in God, that it must also dispense with the Christian Worldview in toto. But that wasn't the case. Somehow, he complained, these thinkers all retained some portion of the Christian Worldview in some form. Ayn Rand may have dispensed with God; but her demand that somehow the Self retains all of its cosmic signifigance. Rand made a fetish of the Self; but this fetishness has its roots in Greek philosophy by way of Christianity. And it was only by virture of Christian theology that the "Self" (or as it was known many centuries ago as the Soul) derives its dignity and mysticism. Rand takes one aspect (a significant one) and cuts it loose. Ancient thinkers from Aristotle to writers like Shakespeare knew better. And Nietzsche knew perfectly what they were up to. His call for them to create new Gods and new systems of Good and Evil was to highlight what he knew they wouldn't do.

Rand's appeal historically was strongest amongst those few niave college undergrads who still were finding thier way. The old metal rock Group Rush, was inspired to write an entire side of thier 2112 LP (and dedicated it to Rand's "genius"). Rand's philosophy is fairly lightweight. The fact that she is going through a revival is more a relfection on the state of our education than anything else. Heck, I would reccomend Rousseau's Emily before I would reccomend anything by Rand.

Rand -- a fool. To say that she lacked an education in Christian philosophy because she was a Russian Jew is absurd. She lacked an education in Jewish philosophy, too, then. She was steeped in Aristotle -- and never bothers to understand what Aristotle meant when he said, "Man is a political animal."

What I'm missing in this discussion here, except from Joe and Greg, is any sense that Randian individualism and collectivism are the same error. Narcissus and the Leviathan get hitched. They get along quite well. What they BOTH despise are all the duties that people owe to one another that cannot be subsumed under state control or the utility of the individual will. They hate the locale, the guild, the church, the family, tradition, the locally-governed school, etc.

I don't have much objection to your conflation of Rand with LaVey, since you at least make clear that there are differences (ritual, ceremony, aesthetics - which, to religious folks, is most of what counts). But saying that Satanism (LaVey's or anyone else's) "attracts the Future Wiccans of America" suggests you aren't very well informed about Wicca. Why undercut your argument with a swipe at an unrelated third party?

'Russia will spread her errors ' ..such was the warning of The Woman clotherd with the sun , at Fatima ..

and in her army, was three small uneducated children who helped to swallow up the torrent of the Dragon ..

Add in the diary of an 'uneducated ' nun ( unless one calls the Holy Spirit as the best educator ! ) , St.Maria Faustina ..add in the miraculous events of how God used the silent hidden sacrifuce of a priest - St.Maximilian Kolbe , to bring out truths of His ways ..and we get a glimpse of the heavenly wars , reflected in our world ..

Just that handling of financial blessings through tithing and charitable contributions is one of the best means , to recieve the blessing of faith , which is what these deceptive theories seem to also want to destroy !

'Love of money ( pleasure ) is the root of all evil' we have been warned ..
When hearts can be victorius by allowing the means of making money , to serve The Giver of all blessings , God our Father , to taste the increasing trust in a Good God that it allows , as the priceless source of peace and true freedom , which is what these poor idol worshippers loose out on !

O Mary, concieved without sin, pray for us !

Rand's influence on LaVey is quite well-known.

However, I think it's unfair and inaccurate to view libertarianism and Objectivism as the same thing. Rand disdained libertarianism herself libertarians generally have no problem with voluntary private charity.

Who are the two senators you refer to in the first paragraph?

For all the mocking of Rand that Carter (in his especially sophomoric piece) and those on this thread engage in, one fact remains: The insitutionalized church -- particularly the Catholic model that the publishers of this magazine are so infatuated with -- has failed or refused to defend individual liberty. I'm not talking about license or hedonism. I'm talking about the idea that all of us are free because God created us in His "free" image...and God is the ultimate free Being in the universe. Yes, sin has marred that image but that doesn't mean God has stopped creating us in that image.

By inbuing its leaders with grandiose, grotesque attitudes or by aligning itself with the interest of the state, the insitutionalized church has done more to harm the cause of individual liberty than most Christians would care to admit. That cause isn't the figment of some self-proclaimed Objectivist philosopher but a fundamental element of the Judeo-Christian heritage. Read Genesis 11 if you want an example of what I mean,

"*and* libertarians", sorry.

I can't resist this one, I really can't.

The obvious comeback to the article would be, "This does not prove that Ayn Rand was wrong. It merely proves that Anton LaVey was right."

I'm surprised I haven't seen it yet.

Anton LaVey = Howard Stanton Levey
Ayn Rand = Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum

any questions?

***Who are the two senators you refer to in the first paragraph? ***

The people referred to, in order of appearance, are:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI)
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wi)
Rush Limbaugh

And the theologian was David Bentley Hart, who's article I link to in the resource section.

I've been an Objectivist for some 18 years. I know very little of La Vay and I care even less - which shakes out to about the same as your demonstrated attitude toward Objectivism. But for those who want to understand it for themselves, here is a beautifully elegant and very brief explanation by Ayn Rand herself, from back in 1962:
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_intro

Now let me apply the most relevant parts of it to La Vay: if he so much as BELIEVES IN in Satan or in any other mysticism, he is epistemologically incompatible and irreconcilable with Objectivism, which rejects all faith of all kinds, and states without qualifier that REASON is man's ONLY source of knowledge. This demands full complete atheism, and rejects all things supernatural.

And since I may safely presume that he does indeed believe in Satan and thereafter grants him loyalty and/or power over man's life, then La Vay is also ETHICALLY incompatible and irreconcileable with Objectivism, which states without qualifier that every person is an end in himself and must exist for his own sake. This demands complete and RATIONAL (see above) self-interest, and rejects all forms of 'higher' loyalty.

So much for the two being "the same philosophy."

In fact, any similarities between them are surface-level and coincidental - and they are also nonsequiturs on LaVey's part. Reason and faith are incompatible and lead in different directions. Self-interest and 'higher' loyalty are equally incompatible and equally lead in different directions. Objectivists and mystics simply cannot subscribe to each other's conclusions without complete contradiction - and Objectivists know better than to try.

Yes, the Founders were men who tried to hold both reason and faith in their minds, but the Constitution, capitalism and the Industrial Revolution that they birthed were products of their reason, not of their faith. It's blasphemy laws and witch-burnings which are products of faith.

So, are Objectivists and religionists enemies? That depends. Objectivism fully agrees with America's Founders that individual rights are unalienable. FORCE - either directly or via fraud - is the only thing that can truly violate rights, thus Objectivism states without qualifier that NOBODY may initiate the use of force against another, and that force can only be used in defense or in retaliation, and only against the initiators. So we will never force Objectivism on you. And if you try to force your religion on us, either directly or via theocratic laws, then yes: we are enemies, and you must be resisted as ruthlessly and righteously as the Left ought to be (and maybe soon will be). If you do not try to force us, then we can disagree with each other and still live peacefully side by side without being enemies.

You already know that you cannot do that with the Left, because through their laws or their thugs, they WILL come for you, and they already have. We will not.

Now you know where we stand. Where you stand is up to you.

BTW: I have NEVER known Rand or any other Objectivist to be a "self-professed anti-Christ". The term "anti-Christ" is incompatible with Rand's philosophy, with her aesthetics, with her normal choice of words, and with her demonstrated personal sense of life.

Randian libertarianism is as far from conservatism as modern liberalism is. In fact, her views are very closely akin to fascism, except for her belief in the individual rather than the group will-to-power. That makes the political scene seem very different, but the will-to-power philosophy and social Darwinism remain the same.

Both modern liberals and libertarians leave the individual naked before the State. Conservatism on the other hand, believes in a civil society with the family as the fountainhead, and many social spheres for voluntary activity, not merely the coercive civil government, each sphere having boundaries, and with the result that all needs are cared for, as the liberal wants, but only sees Caesar as the lord and savior capable of doing the job.

Okay, Rand-bashers, time to peg me as a 'Randbot' because I'm about to write something you won't like.

The chief complaint against Ayn Rand when she was alive, was that she was too moralistic. Yes, moralistic, and her own words give credence to that complaint. One of the linchpins of her moral philosophy was that "Judge not, lest ye be judged" let too many bad guys off the hook. She argued for its transpose: "Judge, and prepare to be judged."

Of course, this linchpin - much reinforced by her own moral judgements - means that she rejected Christianity. But, it also shows that she rejected Christianity for being too tolerant of evil. The principle that one must hate the sin and love the sinner, she had no truck with. She didn't say so explicitly, but her rejection of Christ's forgiveness is easy to deduce from the fundaments of her philosophy: hating the abstract sin, while loving the manifestations of sin through the actions of sinners, is a Platonistic cleaving of values from the real world. To her, doing so was a betrayal of the good.

I could go on about how why moral judgmentalism (if only in one's thoughts) is a structural pillar of Objectivism, but the above two paragraphs are enough to get the point across.

Look at the impasse I've reached: if Rand is a Satanist, then a linchpin of Satanism is moralism. A quick look at Satanism shows it's the opposite: Satan's sly words promise an end to all moral judgments as a means to the ending of all morals. Formally, the proposition that Rand is Satanist leads to a reductio ad absurdum.

It's one thing to say that she's not Christian; she not only rejected God, but also rejected Christ's forgiveness of sins. But it's another thing to say that the judgmental Rand is an acolyte of judgment-hating Satan. In order to paper over the contradiction, one would have to jump though overly clever loop-de-loops that are tantamount to claiming that Miss Rand was an unconscious agent of the KGB.

Chuck, I want to thank you for clearing the air concerning Objectivism and spiritual concerns. Your analysis in defense of Rand was far more logical and far, far less ad hominem than Carter's criticism. Your critique of conservatism in your last paragraph, however, leaves me shaking my head. You claim that conservatives see the civil government as "the lord and savior capable of doing the job." I can understand how you can view monarchies and hierarchies but how would that describe conservatism in the United States?

Seriously though, a Christian Randian is like a Christian Muslim or a Christian Hinduism; a contradiction in terms.

But a Christian Leftist, isn't a contradiction at all.

Yes, Christians, that's who sits far closer to you than Ayn Rand ever could.

The Bible says God created man in his own image.

The reality is just the opposite: man has created God in his own image.

And he has been trying to refine the image of God, finding explanations for all kinds of absurdities.

It is mere theology, it is all mind-projection.

There is no God, has never been, all definitions are inventions.

Only people who have a childish mind, can believe in the fiction of God, can believe in heaven and hell, can pray to the empty sky.

The ordinary masses whose average intelligence quotient is not more than seven years. (their bodies go on growing to seventy, eighty, but the mind stays somewhere between seven and fourteen; very rarely a man passes beyond fourteen)

God is an insult to existence, to intelligence, to man, to consciousness, to everything!

God-oriented religions are a disease of the soul, a sickness of the mind, because God is only your fear, your dread, your anxiety, your insecurity.

To think of God as a person is just your imagination.

There is no person as God; all personality is human projection.

And God being a fiction, your prayer is false, and your religiousness is imposed.

Anything imposed from outside destroys you, your freedom, your individuality.

Your inner space is completely closed.

Belief in God is keeping billions of people locked outside their own consciousness.

All that is needed is to drop all sick fantasies.

Christianity has nothing worthwhile that can be supported by intelligence.

It is all psychological sickness.

What is faith? It is always blind.

A man who knows does not need faith.

Faith is always in the other – in Jesus, in God, in heaven, in hell.

It is always outside you, and truth is within you.

Faith is needed for exploitation.

It is faith which has kept humanity ignorant.

Religions teach faith because they cannot help you to find the truth.

They themselves don’t know where truth is.

True religiousness is your own interiority, your own inner space.

It is your innermost core.

It is an inward journey. It opens up only in deep meditation.

It is Intuitive (No Mind)

Intuition will give you a tremendous clarity, understanding, a new kind of intelligence of which you are absolutely unaware.

Intuition cannot be translated into intellect.

Intuition is given by your own nature, from inside.

You have your guide within you.

Does the Christian church know the truth?

It has, in fact, no way to reach to the truth. Prayer is not the way, because prayer is based on belief in a fictitious God.

So it is not a question of faith or belief, it is a question of deepest inquiry into your own being, into your own consciousness.

The reality is that the truth should be revealed, that the people should come to understand what is false and what is not false.

The only true religion there is, is the art of changing the unconscious mind into consciousness.

Osho – The God Conspiracy

Seerak, how can a "Christian Leftist" not be a contradiction in terms, since much of Leftist thought takes its intellectual cues from Marx, who neither believed in God nor encouraged others to do so? Read the lyrics of the "Internationale," the first truly Leftist anthem. The second stanza (translated from the French) begins,

There are no supreme saviours
Neither God, nor Caesar, nor tribune.

That sounds a lot more like Objectivism than Christianity.

In 642 the Muslim Army of Amr Ibn al Aas captured Alexandria. Amr supposedly ordered the famed classical Library of Alexandria burned, offering the comment: "If those books are in agreement with the Quran, we have no need of them; and if these are opposed to the Quran, destroy them."

Joe Carter offers the same rationale: "If Rand's books are centered on Christ, then they are are a poor philosophical representation, and we have no need of them. If they are not centered on Christ, then they promote satanism and should not be read."

Rand said that humans as individuals can know ultimate reality through reason and experience. Certainly, while she was opposed to any doctrine which was to be believed solely on "faith," as far as I know, nowhere did she say that individual reason and experience could not also include a knowledge of the Divine. Rand was opposed to the tide of forced, violent collectivism that was sweeping Europe in her day. Her belief in the individual and capitalism was above all political. She certainly was NOT promoting an allegiance to satan. She had little to say about Christ, but why does that necessarily make her writings satanic?

Joseph, the bit about "the lord and savior capable of doing the job" was in the last paragraph of a comment by Steve Schaper, not by me.

And FWIW, much of Schaper's comment is demonstrably incorrect.

Look, most libertarian-leaning conservatives admire Rand's writings, in a wistful sort of way. Few would call themselves Objectivists. I think most people are aware that Objectivism is too extreme for real life. Being called one is as much an insult in some conservative circles as anywhere else.

I think the age of hardcore adherents to Rand ended a long time ago. People who admire her books seem to admire them more for their entertainment value, and as political polemics.

There's a reason people cite the more moderate, pro-poor Frederik Hayek more than Ayn Rand.

How anyone can see Ayan Rand’s philosophy as compatible with Conservatism, as traditionally understood, never mind Christianity, defeats me.

Every Christian Conservative writer, since the Revolution, has identified, as the root and source of all its errors and excesses, the belief in « la souveraineté de la raison humaine » To the traditional Conservative, authority is the only sufficient basis of order, and order is the condition necessary to the common good. Now, authority must be made divine, if the “Rights of Man and of the Citizen” or the « Contrat Social » are to be denied and mere human reason subdued and governed: authority as the only sure basis of religion, and, consequently, the only solid ground and guarantee of order.

That is what Chateaubriand meant, when he described Christian Rome as being for the modern what Pagan Rome had been for the ancient world—the universal bond of nations, instructing in duty, defending from oppression, alone able to end the conflict of rival rights, and restore order by enforcing the one universal duty—obedience. Hence the common soubriquet, “Throne & Altar” Conservative.

But « la souveraineté de la raison humaine » is the sum and substance of Ayan Rand’s philosophy. Satanic? Yes, order was Heaven's first law; contempt of authority Man's first disobedience.

Joseph D'Hippolito
Self sacrifice is common to both collectivism and religion. That is what they have that Objectivism does not.

Appart from you LaVey-nonsense, I think you're spot on. It's either Jesus Christ or Ayn Rand. You can't have them both. Not as a person and not as a society. It's capitalism or theocracy, selfishness or altruism, reason or faith, reality or make-believe.

I'm glad you raise the issue in such clear terms. I hope a lot more of your kin do. The more clearly people see what the alternatives truly are, the better choices they'll make.

Morten Olaisen
Objectivist

t alot John Galt,

Explain why there are over 2,000 original texts from the withing 50 years of his death documenting the life of Christ. Modern historians accept two documents from that time period as sufficient evidence to corroborate any fact. Your modernist arrogance suggests that you somehow know more that all of the ancients who believed in God. John you probably couldn't have lasted a month under the conditions the ancient Christians thrived under. They managed to record the life of Christ in great detail without word processors, or laptops or the email etc. despite being persecuted by practically everyone else on the planet. Get a grip and study some History. Did you know that since Jesus Christ entered the scene human life got a whole lot better. Or is that just a projection?

David Mamet, the famous Leftist playwright who has recently turned to the Right, said something very wise last night on Fax Business. Quoting a great Rabbi, he said that each side of any debate must first prove that he or she can state the opposition's case such that the opponent would agree, "Yes, that's what I meant," or no valid debate, no constructive engagement at all, has (or can) take place. This entire article fails in that basic respect. Instead, a sweepingly vast ignorance of Rand's actual ideas is -- tediously, once more -- on display. But so long as you guys keep misidentifying and distorting your target, she will only grow in power and influence -- the cause of all of this continued attention on a writer who has been dead now for about 30 years.

There's seems to be a lot of assiduous misreading of the original Carter post going on here. To say that "every person is an end in himself and must exist for his own sake" is to affirm a Satanic -- evil -- principle. It is directly contradictory -- not merely inapposite, but contradictory -- to the one "commandment" of Christ, "that you love one another as I have loved you." Yes, LaVey by his own admission dressed that Randian principle up with a nylon cape and candles and chants to Satan, in order to sell books and 8-tracks and tickets to his shows. But that doesn't change the fact that LaVey's pop Satanism was built on a genuinely Satanic principle -- indeed, the central such principle -- that he learned from, and shared with, Rand. One cannot adhere to the idea that everyone exists entirely for their own sake -- that is, be a Randian or an "Objectivist" -- and also follow Christ. It would actually be much, much easier to be a Muslim Christian or a Hindu Christian than to be an "Objectivist" Christian. (And I note in passing that al Qaeda's latest video missive is also entitled "Responsible Only for Yourself.")

"Many conservatives admire Rand because she was anti-collectivist. But that is like admiring Stalin because he opposed Nazism."

In other words: "Many conservatives admire Rand because she was anti-collectivist. But that is like admiring one murderous collectivist because he opposed a different form of murderous collectivism."

Seems to me the author doesn't understand what he's talking about.

James, the problem with that proposed test is that it assumes good faith upon the part of the interlocutor. If they know that they and their case are about to be caught in a contradiction, then all they have to do to scotch the results of that test is keep insisting that the accurate recitation of their case isn't really accurate (while declining to provide any explanation). Which is what you just did right there. If you are genuinely willing to subject yourself to that test, then please explain how the proposition that "every person is an end in himself and must exist for his own sake" is not Randian, or how that principle is compatible with the central Christian command to love others as you love yourself.

Of course, it is Randian, and it's not Christian, but anti-Christian.

Oh, one more thing: unlike the author, I've 'misread' both Rand's work and the Satanic Bible.

Rand: treats morals as necessary to live life as a human being, and claims that her system of morals fulfills that requirement becasue she's deduced them from the nature of man. Yes, her system of morals differs from all Christianity, but so do those of pagans - some of great rectitude.

Le Vey: claims that morals are an impediment. Makes his bond with Satan with the false claim that all moral people are pharisaical.

Le Vey has nothing to do with Rand; his system is a vulgarization of Nietzsche's master-morality. He just dropped the name of a famous writer that was selling well, that's all. I find it amusing that the author of the above piece would treat the Satanist Le Vey as a rectitudinous scholar. Isn't there something about Satan being a liar?

I can't shake the impression that the author of the article hadn't read either Rand or Le Vey.

That is just your projection, Leonard.

Christianity is a fiction.

It is a disease, a sickness, a pathology, a poison.

It has not been helpful to humanity in finding the truth in any sense.

It has been trying to propagate lies so continuously that they have almost become truth.

Jesus had never even heard the name Christianity. It has been imposed on him, he was not the founder of Christianity.

His life was written eighty years after his death, by people who had not directly known him.

Now even Christian scholars have come to the conclusion that the Christian gospels were not written by the apostles but were written by somebody else, because the mountains described are not in the same place where they are described in the gospels. The rivers described are not in the same place where they are described in the gospels.

Everything was written by people who had not known Jesus Christ, and neither had they lived with Jesus Christ.

Who exactly was the founder of Christianity?

One thing is certain, Jesus was not. He never thought about founding a religion, he was simply telling the Jews, “I am your last prophet.” He died on the cross as a Jew.

You can find Buddhism in the teachings of Gautam Buddha; he was the founder. You can find in the teachings of Mahavira that he was the founder of Jainism. You can find in the teachings of Lao Tzu that he was the founder of Taoism. But it is a very strange thing about Christianity: Jesus had no idea at all, was not interested in creating a new religion.

Then who founded Christianity?

The man who founded it – you will not believe it – was the Emperor Constantine. The church knows it, but does not allow the public to know it.

Emperor Constantine of Rome, who headed the Council of Nicea, died as a Christian, but he was baptized only on his deathbed. His whole life he was the high priest of the Sun God religion, which was why he changed the sabbath from Saturday, which was Jesus’ sabbath day, to Sunday. Jews still have their sabbath on Saturday, and Jesus also had lived his whole life believing in the sabbath on Saturday. How did it become Sunday?

It was Constantine, who was a worshipper of the Sun God. Sunday represents the sun; the followers of the sun have always believed that Sunday is a holy day.

It was Constantine who was actually the founder of Christianity. He was the decisive factor in the Council of Nicea. It was under his pressure – because he was the emperor of Rome – that the priests voted for the divine personality of Jesus. He made Jesus a divine person. It was his creation, his invention.

Constantine saw Jesus as a failed messiah, with himself as the real messiah – and his view was ratified by the famous Christian bishop, Eusebius of Caesarea, who said, “It is as if the religion of Abraham is at last fulfilled, not in Jesus, but in Constantine.”

He also changed Jesus’ birthday from January sixth to December twenty-fifth, the day of the solar rebirth. The twenty-fifth of December, which is celebrated all over the world, is not Jesus’ birthday. The whole idea of their Christmas is bogus – and the church knows it perfectly well but won’t allow people to know about it.

Jesus was born on January sixth, but under Constantine’s influence and power, it was changed to December twenty-fifth, the day of the solar rebirth. It is thought by the sun worshippers that the sun was born on the twenty-fifth of December.

The whole of Christianity is living in utter darkness.

Constantine, killed ten thousand people in a single day. He just called an assembly of all those who were not Catholics in a great auditorium in Rome, and ordered the army to kill everybody: “We don’t want anybody other than Christians in Rome.” He forced the whole of Italy to become Christian… just at the point of a sword.

The whole history of Christianity is of wars and nothing else – killing and violence.

To belong to a religion is not an experience, it is just a belief system in which you have been brought up.

It is all borrowed.

Your whole life is being guided by others.

Because you don't know what authentic religiousness is.

All that your mind knows has come either from the parents, or from the priest, or from the teachers, or from the society.

Just watch, and you will not be able to find a single thought that is original to you.

All is borrowed; mind lives on borrowed knowledge.

You are living with borrowed ideas.

And remember that truth cannot be borrowed.

Either it is yours, or it is not there.

So when there is no God, there is no holy scripture and there is no son of God like Jesus Christ to save you, who is the son of God who does not exist!

Can you be a son of someone who does not exist?

Your God is false, your devil is false.

You have heard other people saying that there is a God, but have you met anyone who has seen God?

The end result of believing, of having faith in a truth that you have not realized yourself.

It is hearsay.

So what truth are you defending Leonard?

First you have to have the truth, then you can defend it.

Truth is self-evident.

It needs no defense, it is our ultimate being.

There is no question of defending the truth.

The question is knowing the truth.

Osho – Christianity: the deadliest poison...

James S. - Thank you for the Mamet reference. I'll look that up, because it's one of the wisest rules of argument I've ever heard.

Ayn Rand rejected Christ, rejected God.

Well, this means that she's in eternal misery.

The political figures who cite Rand as an influence are most often conservative or libertarian members of the United States Republican Party. Martin Anderson, chief domestic policy adviser for President Ronald Reagan, identifies himself as a disciple of Rand, and Reagan described himself as an "admirer" of Rand in private correspondence in the 1960s. "In 1987, The New York Times called Rand the 'novelist laureate' of the Reagan administration. Reagan's nominee for commerce secretary, C. William Verity Jr., kept a passage from Atlas Shrugged on his desk, including the line "How well you do your work . . . [is] the only measure of human value."
Conservative and libertarian talk show hosts such as Glenn Beck, John Stossel, Neal Boortz and Rush Limbaugh have recommended Atlas Shrugged to their audiences. U.S. Congressmen Bob Barr, Ron Paul, and Paul Ryan have acknowledged her influence on their lives, as has Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Clarence Thomas.
The financial crisis of 2007–2010 spurred renewed interest in her works, especially Atlas Shrugged, which some saw as foreshadowing the crisis, and opinion articles compared real-world events with the plot of the novel. Republican South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford wrote a 2009 review for Newsweek where he spoke of how he was "blown away" after first reading The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, while tying her significance to understanding the 2008 financial crisis. Signs mentioning Rand and her fictional hero John Galt appeared at Tea Party protests, while the Cato Institute's Will Wilkinson quipped that "going Galt" had become the "libertarian-conservative's version of progressives threatening to move to Canada."
During this period there was also increased criticism of her ideas, especially from the political left, with critics blaming the economic crisis on her support of selfishness and free markets, particularly through her influence on Alan Greenspan. For example, the left-leaning Mother Jones remarked that "Rand's particular genius has always been her ability to turn upside down traditional hierarchies and recast the wealthy, the talented, and the powerful as the oppressed", while The Nation alleged similarities between the "moral syntax
As an atheist who rejected faith as antithetical to reason, Rand embraced philosophical realism and opposed all forms of what she regarded as mysticism and supernaturalism including every organized religion. Rand wrote in her journals that Christianity was the best kindergarten of communism possible.” Rand argued for rational egoism (rational self-interest) as the only proper guiding moral principle. “The individual should exist for his own sake”, she wrote in 1962, “neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself.” Rand held that laissez-faire, free market capitalism is the only moral social system. Philosopher Chandran Kukathas said her “unremitting hostility towards the state and taxation sits inconsistently with a rejection of anarchism and her attempt to resolve the difference are ill-thought and unsystematic.” The first edition of We the Living contained language which has been interpreted as advocating ruthless elitism: "What are your masses but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?”

Self sacrifice is common to both collectivism and religion. That is what they have that Objectivism does not.

So are coercion and the misuse of authority (just look at European Christianity for examples of the latter). Surely you don't mean to rest your argument on some silly, superficial parallels, do you?

The division between left/liberal/progressives and right/conservative/traditionalists in politics and economics does not originate there, but rather it derives from the false mind/body dichotomy in the context of epistemology—the science of how we humans know stuff.

THE LEFT:
Left-liberals are those who are, to one degree or another, epistemological subjectivists. They typically hold that man's mind is more or less impotent to know what the actual nature of man and the rest of reality really is. For them there can be no absolute truths ever. All knowledge is empirical and transient. The "progress" of progressives entails perpetual movement from one set of truths to the next and the next... Obama's "Change!" is the ultimate liberal mantra. With no means to validate their 'knowledge,' right and wrong in politics can only be the product of consensus.

To the left leaning, values are not the product of reason applied to action, because reason is impotent. They are the product of action; hence the assembly line worker' contribution equals that of the CEO. Since only the physical/material apect of man is important, that is what they need to control to make the world right. The intellectual and psychological functions are unimportant, so they are left free to roam aimlessly and to be accepted uncritically. "What's art/right/true//good/beautiful for you is ok for you, what's art/right/true etc for me ...etc., etc.

THE RIGHT:
Right/conservatives embrace a diametrically opposite version of epistemological denial. They are intrinsicists. To them, absolute truths and values do exist, but independently from man the identifier and valuer—on a "higher" rationalistic or mystical plane not directly accessible without assistance from or reference to some time-honored institution or special ability—the bible, a priest, the family, the founding fathers, the traditions, and such.

Truth is super- or supra- natural. It is eternal and never changes. It must be conserved, even in the face of failure, a dilemma that has to be resolved by rationalization. Without reason to objectively verify their truths, they are vulnerable to erosion (Bush). Since they hold man's spirit to be eternal, it is that they will want to control and dictate to while leaving man free to pursue a material life that is only transient and insignificant anyway.

------
Both sides in this dichotomy claim a right to use force to regulate the aspect of man's nature that each regards as important.
------

AYN RAND:
It is Ayn Rand who grasped this subjectivist/intrinsicist dichotomy as the explanation of left-right tendencies of men. This false alternative, if pursued to the potential of its logical conclusion, inevitably leads both sides to tyranny, each over his own preferred aspect of man at first, but to totalitarianism at the end of the line.

Rand's epistemology, ethics and politics reject the dichotomy. By demonstrating how man can contextually derive absolute truths from sensory perceptions with the conceptual capacity of reason, she replaces the false dichotomy with an integration of an efficacious mind with the material body into a unit that must be autonomous in the application of reason to action in order to function in the service of life. And it is only that Objectivist ethical mandate for individual autonomy in a world of fallible men that can sustain, against all opposition, the validity of individual rights.

Furthermore, recognizing that physical force is the only counter to autonomous action, her radical capitalism rejects all other prior versions of so-called capitalism that actually incorporate the liberal and conservative penchant for using force against each other. Her capitalism has but one requirement: no coercion. Force may be used by government solely to stop the initiation of force by one person against another. In an Objectivist society, it would be mandatory that all human interactions be by voluntary choice.

------
Consequently, it is the fundamental political alternative of freedom vs. force that is the standard by which all relationships among political positions can be defined and understood.
------

It is her radical departure from the left-right positions in the freedom vs. force alternative that places Rand at the top of the liberty-tyranny spectrum. Not any founding father nor any Enlightenment philosopher can claim that position. Diametrically opposed to Rand is the anti-epistemology that no knowledge is possible, no values, are required. Life equals death. The universe has no rules and no laws—the random, the arbitrary, and whim rule. The non plus ultra exemplar is Pol Pot.

The less willing the left and right are to use force, the more left-libertarian or right libertarian they become and the closer to Rand's radical capitalism. The more they rely on force, the farther they go away from Rand and the closer they come to Pol Pot—the left via socialism and communism, and the right via populism and fascism.

The proof that this epistemological fallacy is the root as I have explained it can be seen in the fact that the extreme communism of Stalin was virtually indistinguishable from the extreme fascism of Hitler. That is to say, it is the fact Rand pointed out that an integral interaction of mind and body—to access the identity of reality and apply it to life-sustaining actions is the hallmark of man's unique nature. As such one cannot function if one aspect were favored to the exclusion of the other.

Whenever the left gains complete control over the material values of man, there ceases to be a purpose to pursue intellectual values, because they may not be applied to the task of living. Likewise, when the right no longer allows the application of ones thinking or emotional values to physical reality, material values of life become worthless.

-----

Any honest mind ought to be able to see that this explanation sets fire to the pants of those who have called Rand "one-dimensional" as well as those who claim that her view of the universe is a whit less benevolent than that of Christians, whether left or right.

Whenever I read something like "Ayn Rand's philosophy is equivalent to Satanism" it usually means that the author is a left winger trying to discredit Rand for general purposes, because she has so much to say in opposition to leftist ideas and because so many conservatives draw inspiration from her writings.

Alas, I don't see much that deflects me from that impression here. I gather the author is not a leftist, but what purpose is there in discrediting Rand if he's not? If the author does not want to validate socialism, collectivism, and statism as the proper politics of the Christian then why diss an author who has so much to say against them, and not on the basis of her half baked philosophy, but on the basis, as she illustrates in her writing, that they don't work and waste capital and human potential.

I don't know many conservatives who take Rand's philosophical side seriously or bother much with it at all.

As you can imagine from things I've written in the past, I disagree with this analysis and view it as unfair to Rand. Her thought is pernicious in many ways, but it also has some virtues to recommend it.

Why is author Carter bringing wicca into this discussion? Satanism and Wicca aren't the same. Sir, please go do some homework before writing about wicca. If you'd like some interesting references, I'd suggest researching the works of Professor Ronald Hutton of the University of Bristol (UK) for theory, and Janet Farrar/Gavin Bone for a example of wiccan practice.

"Many conservatives admire Rand because she was anti-collectivist. But that is like admiring Stalin because he opposed Nazism."

Your statement makes no sense!

"A moderate anti-collectivist admiring an extreme anti-collectivist. Like admiring an extreme collectivist because he opposed a moderate collectivist."

Was this a preemptive use of Godwin's law, because I do not see the relevance of this statement to the discussion. As a conservative I have never read Rand's writings, however there is nothing more insidiously Satanic in this world then the writings of Karl Marx. When Rand's writings produce the likes of Marx's followers, Stalinists and Nazis, then I think you'll have something to write about.

Did Joe Carter create this YouTube video?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TxCWbTqz9s

"If the author does not want to validate socialism, collectivism, and statism as the proper politics of the Christian then why diss an author who has so much to say against them, and not on the basis of her half baked philosophy, but on the basis, as she illustrates in her writing, that they don't work and waste capital and human potential."

Because those who perpetuate the philosophy and theology that "First Things" represents aren't interested in human capital or human potential. They are interested in a monarchistic kind of statism that the Catholic Church represents: immediate, unquestioning deference to authority and "tradition," represented by such things as the Index of Forbidden Books (which only disappeared in 1966!) That kind of monarchistic, pseudo-theological statism has nothing to do with Christ, who rejected the kind of monarchistic pretentions, and senses of class privledge and entitlement that the prelates embody...and that people like Weigel and Shea act as apologists for under the heading, "apostolic succession." Of course, for the Christian, human potential can be fulfilled only in Christ, and only partially in this life (given the nature of sin and spiritual warfare). But that fulfillment depends far more on the individual relationship w/the Holy Spirit -- Who is given as a "down payment" on salvation, as it were -- than on subservience to an ecclesiastical bureaucracy that, more often than not, has proven itself to be thoroughly corrupt.

The biggest example of what I'm talking about is Fr. Neuhaus' refusal to analyze the evidence concerning Fr. Maciel under anything but a Catholic-approved paradigm.

BTW, MichaelM, bravo for your analysis!

Before this thread wanes to a still stand, the record should contain this view of Rand's relation to Jesus from a letter she wrote to a fan in 1946:

RAND ON JESUS:
“Jesus was one of the first great teachers to proclaim the basic principle of individualism — the inviolate sanctity of man’s soul, and the salvation of one’s soul as one’s first concern and highest goal; this means — one’s ego and the integrity of one’s ego. But when it came to the next question, a code of ethics to observe for the salvation of one’s soul — (this means: what must one do in actual practice in order to save one’s soul?) — Jesus (or perhaps His interpreters) gave men a code of altruism, that is, a code which told them that in order to save one’s soul, one must love or help or live for others. This means, the subordination of one’s soul (or ego) to the wishes, desires or needs of others, which means the subordination of one’s soul to the souls of others.” http://www.hereticalideas.com/2009/04/jesus-christ-a-heretical-appreciation/

JOE CARTER ON RAND:
The problem with Joe Carter's view of Rand, as is the case with virtually all Christians, is 1) that he is not fully informed about the content and application of her philosophy, and 2) that he judges her and it through the lens of contemporary colloquial assumptions that cannot be substantiated by reference to the actual texts Rand wrote.

The difficulty of comprehending the philosophy as a whole system is complicated by the fact that Rand defined her views of the universe with a razor sharp efficiency such that on the surface it appeared to be simple or even simplistic where it was indeed profound. The complex web of premises and broad-reaching implications are scattered across her many essays and novels. Leonard Peikoff gathered the basics of the philosophy into a hierarchical presentation in the proper sequence in "Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand." Anyone attempting to hurl major substantive criticism at her ideas without having grasped the content of that book is flying on low fuel without a parachute.

RATIONAL ATHEISM/EGOISM
In the present context, Christians are oblivious to the fact that Rand did not choose to be an atheist, and then write her philosophy around that. The motive power of her thinking began with and is dominated throughout with the primary conviction that reason is man's unique and only means to survive and thrive in accordance with his nature. Atheism then is simply an unavoidable conclusion in the absence of rational evidence that can support some rational definition of what and where a God could exist.

A prerequisite understanding here is her explanation that knowledge is inherently contextual. That means that nothing can be considered knowledge without evidence traceable to sensory perceptions of reality. Restraining knowledge thusly precludes its overturning by the arrival in the future of evidence as yet unknown, such as whether there is life like ours on some distant galaxy, or whether there is some super-being beyond even that. The difference between these two examples is that we do already have evidence of the conditions necessary for the former to exist and evidence that it could, so it is ok to regard it as "possible." There is, however no such evidence or non-contradictory definition of a God like the countless versions of that notion that have populated the history of thought. And that history also shows that absent such evidence men can get away with concocting a God-given ethic to suit their own tyrannical agenda, like altruism for instance.

In a world of volitional men who are by corollary fallible, a man who lives or dies by the implementation of his rational capacity must necessarily be autonomous to sustain his own proper existence, i.e. he must be a rational egoist. Again it is the unavoidable conclusion that the Christian pursuit to perfect one's own soul is virtuous, but altruism as a method, wherever it came from, is directly contradictory to the stated intent and to the fundamental nature of man.

----------
Since Rand's conclusions vis-à-vis Christianity are not primary ideas, but rather logical consequences of more fundamental premises, it is only by refuting the latter and the logical connection that a Christian could hope to defend his religion in the eyes of an honest mind. On that road, Joe Carter has yet to tread.
----------

There are other kinds of Satanism besides LaVeyan Satanism. LaVey's Church of Satan likes to claim the word "Satanism" as its intellectual property, but most new-religion scholars to not agree.

There are many kinds of Satanists, with views ranging all over the political spectrum. I, for one, do not agree with Ayn Rand's economic views at all.

I'm the founder of two Satanist groups that hold in-person meetings here in New York City. I also maintain a well-known website devoted to theistic Satanism, founded in late 2002.

MichaelM, while I agree with much of your analysis, I must tell you that Rand did not understand what Jesus meant regarding salvation. Jesus never said that salvation involved submitting to a "code of altruism." For Jesus, salvation meant embracing His atoning sacrifice on the cross as one's own to be redeemed from sin and divine condemnation. Jesus was meant to be the last of the sacrifices that the Old Testament demanded for sin. Nowhere does either the OT or the NT state that humans can "fully perfect" their own souls *totally* by their own efforts. St. Paul wrote to Roman Christians that no individual can completely live up to the ethical standards he claims to support, whether those are found in the Mosaic Law, Greek philosophy or anything else. For Jesus, St. Paul and other Christians, only God can perfect the individual soul through His Spirit. But that would involve submission to a God that both Judaism and Christianity define as fundamentally just, righteous, merciful and loving. Since Rand did not believe that *any* god existed, her understanding of Christianity is incomplete.

I must say this was an interesting article. I must make a comment though.

As pointed out earlier, Wicca has nothing to do with Satanism. Although Satanism and apparently Wicca seem to bring to the mind of the author "human sacrifice," Wiccans do not practice human sacrifice, and I doubt real Satanists do either. Wiccans do not believe in Satan, only Christians and Satanists believe in Satan.

Joe Carter should read this essay by Fr. Robert Sirico, finally a fair Christian treatment of the good and the ugly with regard to Rand:

http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Who-Really-Was-John-Galt-Anyway-Robert-Sirico-06-09-2011


For these and many more reasons, people who reverence Western Civilization must reject Rand. And yet, there is something in Rand that remains intriguing, and following years of pondering the question and speaking with others, I think I detect what people might see in her.

"Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God." This is how G.K. Chesterton expressed the idea that there is in each heart an innate human thirst for beauty and Truth.

... One can only pray that in the infinite mercy of the God in whom she did not believe, that Rand in the end may actually have found out who John Galt really is.

There is an answer to this article in part, and also to Andrew Sullivan's take on Ayn Rand at Classical Values. Here is the link to the article:
http://classicalvalues.com/2011/06/andrew-sullivan/
It is well reasoned, compassionate, and a defense of Rand's ethics in the context of Thomist theology. Well worth the read.

I really appreciated this article and I have incorporated it into a broader response to Fr. Sirico's post at Patheos.

http://defendingobama.blogspot.com/2011/06/ayn-rand-father-sirico-and-first-things.html

An earlier commenter in this thread said she felt that she could not comment because she had not read any of Ayn Rand's work. She is clearly in good company; the author of the article has clearly not read her works either. As a matter of fact, I think very few people on this thread have actually ever read her works.

I am not a huge fan of Ayn Rand, but the premise of this article is silly. It is the same kind of logic that indicts all of Christianity forever because of the excesses of the Crusades.

Wow! This article is borderline insane. It reeks of a certain kind of panic and malevolence.

Joe Carter is just making stuff up. It's all just malicious fantasyland kind of stuff.

It does raise an interesting question, though. This blog has, generally speaking, become virulently Ayn Rand. Why?

Just look at all the anti-Ayn Rand posts in the last year. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that First Things is a dying magazine and the only way to drive up traffic to the website is to attack a woman whose books are still still hundreds of thousands of copies and whose ideas are a driving force in the Tea Party Movement.

I suppose we'll next hear Kevin Staley-Joyce or Joeseph Knippenberg screaming "Ayn Rand, To a Gas Chamber Go!"

Father Sirico has responded to my blogs and his response and my rejoinder are here.
http://defendingobama.blogspot.com/2011/06/sirico-and-i-correspond.html

@alittlesense Perhaps it's a fair analogy.

Any objective person who has read anything by Anton LaVey will quickly conclude that even the Prince of Darkness is embarrassed by him.

Mrs. Socrates, this is the same magazine that:

1. Allowed an archbishop of the Catholic Church, Denver's Charles Chaput, to equate Supreme Court Justice Scalia (who questions the Church's recent revisionism on capital punishment) with Frances Kissling of Catholics For A Free Choice (which supports abortion). To my knowledge, Chaput has never offered a public apology for such calumny.

2. Refused to examine the legitimate claims of victims of sexual abuse by Mariscal Maciel. In fact, Fr. John Neuhaus dismissed such claims publicly because Maciel was approved by JPII (who was also badly duped).

What else would you expect?

Last week I was scanning material from some vintage Time magazines in order to dispose of the magazines and reduce the clutter in my life and one of the issues had a cover story on the Occult Revival (Time, June 19, 1972). Digging it out of the recycling pile, I perused the cover story. Here's a quote regarding Anton La Vey from that article:

"...Founded in 1966 by La Vey, a former circus animal trainer, the Church of Satan offers a mirror image of most of the beliefs and ethics of traditional Christianity.

"La Vey's church and its branches might well be considered the "unitarian" wing of the occult. The members invest themselves with some of the most flamboyant trappings of occultism, but magic for them is mostly psychodrama - or plain old carnival hokum. They invoke Satan not as a supernatural being, but as a symbol of man's self-gratifying ego, which is what they really worship. They look down on those who actually believe in the supernatural, evil, or otherwise....

"...Their most insidious contribution to evil is their resolute commitment to man's animal nature, stripped of any spiritual dimension or thought of self-sacrifice. There is no reach, in Browning's famous terms - only grasp. Under the guise of eschewing hypocrisy, they actively pursue the materialistic values of the affluent society - without any twinge of conscience to suggest there might be something more...

"...They jockey for upward mobility in the five degrees of church membership... ...The ruling Council of Nine, which La Vey heads, makes appointments to various ranks on the basis not only in the candidates's proficiency in Satanist doctrine but also his "dining preferences", the "style of decor" in his home, and the "make, year, and condition" of his automobile. "

Apropos pop music reference:
"Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste." Rolling Stones "Sympathy For The Devil" (An article on the Stone's "Exile On Main Street" tour of the US is found two pages after the cover story.)

The denigration of self-sacrifice and the corresponding (inevitable?) worship of individualism are themes common to both Rand and La Vey - but also to a hedonistic and narcissistic society such as our own.

Was it Malcolm Muggeridge who said that in the absence of worship of the True God, mankind will worship either the raised fist (power) or the raised phallus (passion)?

Has anyone else noticed that the Randbots have a need to ponderously write line after line in enormously long posts? Do they really think that writing more proves they are wiser or know more? Know they not that brevity is the soul of wit?

Meaning is derived from complex derived interactions of matter. Contrary to popular, utterly unexamined belief, dualism does not provide an in for a concept of "inherent" meaning to life or existence or what have you. Spirit is undefined and meaningless, a vague generalization for "I don't know what it is, and I can't see it, but it's mentioned in my holy book and is generally described with words that derive from ancient words for breath and air and you cant see air so it doesn't concern me that i can't see this thing that i believe so strongly in... whatever it might be..." Without a detailed conception of the so-called "non-material" elements of dualism, how can anyone claim or suggest that they logically account for purpose or meaning?

This is why both Rand Paul and his father Ron Paul are intellectual lightweights. They think they can combine the oil of Rand with the water of Christianity. I wish I could comment here on a more knowledgable and intellectual level, but I can't. I have never read Rand, but being conservative, I am always within hearing distance of people who have read her books and refer to them often. All I ever knew of Rand was within my reading of Rose Wilder Lane, daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and likely author of the Little House Series of books.

@Cephas
"No one can remove God from a society and have a functioning society."

I'm not exactly sure about that. I'm sure there are some small areas in the world that it works.

The big difference between an Objectivist and a Satanist could be described in the manner in which they compete for resources. Say if two people were in a footrace to run fifty yards to a table with a sandwich resting upon it. If you ran against an Objectivist, that person would lie, cheat, steal, etc to get to their goal. When they won they would not share their winnings. Wouldn't even consider it. Don't be surprised if the Objectivist tries to trip you or cause physical harm when racing.
A Satanist would strongarm you and tell you to go down to the table and get the sandwich for him. He would use threats of violence, or even employ lies, deceit or actual violent coercion to get you to service him while he sits back and laughs at your toil. He would not bother to truly compete in the race. Oh yeah, he won't share the sandwich either.
A Satanist should make every one of his goals antithetical to Christian teaching and philosophies - at least a Theistic Satanist, which LaVey may or may not have really been. An Objectivist wouldn't mind doing the same, but only if it is truly self-serving and that the Objectivist could deal with the consequences. A true Satanist would go out of their way to cause harm for self gain (antithetical to the actions of Christ).

"the dollar sign of the Objectivists" - Mammon himself! Some prefer to write u.s.d. instead of $ because the symbol has occult origins.

Here's an idea, why not spread the word that Satanism is Rush Limbaugh, not Metallica- It will never be "cool" to worship the devil ever again!

As for greatest philosopher (except Jesus), I would endorse George MacDonald long before Rand. And really, Objectivist is a misleading term. It's not objective at all!

I came across this page while reading up on Ayn Rand, since I had seen a post on her work at a Christian Forum. One of my first thoughts on Rand was, "Boy, I sure wish I could have seen her sit down for a chat with Rene Girard or Jean Michel Oughourlian." The discovery of "mirror neurons" and subsequent research documenting how dependent we humans are on them for all aspects of our development should put a damper on the extreme individualism that Ayn Rand promotes as virtuous. I wonder how much of her objective reasoning would have been devoted to considering the implications behind these discoveries. Many researchers who work in the area of consciousness studies are beginning to wonder if the self-conscious "me" that most people think of as an independent, self-generated, self-existing entity is actually the composite result of becoming aware of the sensations that we experience while imitating others. It is a self that is derived from relation to an-other(s) and the character of that "other" will have an effect on any "self" that forms in relation to it. We are not so much in-dividuals as inter-dividuals. Acknowledging this dependence on others seems like it would be one first step towards any "reasonable" view of existence.
The issue of acknowledging one's dependence on another primary being for one's own existence, and the implications resulting from that, is a lens that can used to compare Jesus and His opposite, Satan. Throughout His life, Jesus depended on His Father for everything. When He took on our sin and the Father forsook Him, He was left with nothing. Satan wants to have everything so he can deny having any dependence on another. He wants to be "like the Most High". This is doomed to failure from the start, since even if he could convince himself that he was like God, there will always be one area where he falls short. Primacy. In trying to become like God, he is showing that he at one point was not god, but the One he is trying to usurp always has. No matter what he does, he will never be first. And he knows it. Futile attempts to escape from that knowledge might explain a lot of what we read of him in the bible.

Well said. My only objection is your insinuation that Wiccans would be interested in satanism. It is wholly untrue, and I wish you hadn't perpetuated such an old chestnut of a stereotype.