Do they know Ayn Rand was an atheist???

Ayn Rand

While all these "go Galt" nuts are frothing at the mouth, people like Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck and Billo-the-clown, have they even bothered to vet their new hero, Ayn Rand? Her views on religion are startlingly close to my own (i.e. it's a useless waste of time, energy and money). For Rand, blind faith is tyrany. I find most of the rest of her Objectivist philosophy pretty reprehensible, I do concur with her that only through reason (and by extension, science) can man finally break free from the shackles of superstition.

American's adherence to Christian doctrine to the exclusion of reason is foolish and enslaving. Here's a bit from an old interview with Playboy.

PLAYBOY: "Has no religion, in your estimation, ever offered anything of constructive value to human life?"

RAND: "Qua religion, no—in the sense of blind belief, belief unsupported by, or contrary to, the facts of reality and conclusions of reason. Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason."

Blind faith, the faith of many leaders in the GOP and the Dems, according to Rand, is "extremely detrimental to human life." Imagine that. While the GOPers are busy handing out copies of Rand's Atlas Shrugged, do you think they realize how reactionary the author's views of religion and faith actually are? I suspect not.

"[F]aith and force. . . . are corollaries: every period of history dominated by mysticism, was a period of statism, of dictatorship, of tyranny."

Indeed. Blind faith inevitably leads to enslavement. Her observation that philosophy should replace faith is right on

"Philosophy is the goal toward which religion was only a helplessly blind groping. The grandeur, the reverence, the exalted purity, the austere dedication to the pursuit of truth, which are commonly associated with religion, should properly belong to the field of philosophy."

And, by extension, to science.