I'm reading a sort of encyclopedia of Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy. Subjects are in alphabetical order, and quotes from her writings are inserted regarding each.
The one overriding theme that I disagree with Rand about is her rejection of God, the belief in whom she calls "mysticism".
I understand her mistake, but I find it ridiculous that a woman of her intellectual gifts made it.
When I was 18 year's old, I made the same one. Eventually I figured out my error. It appears Rand never did, and I think that so many other people make her mistake.
She rejects Religion, and mistakes it for God.
As a child of Catholic school, my image of God was limited to the Catholic/Christian one. When I rejected that particular vision, I called myself an "athiest". Silly, I know, but it seemed to make sense at the time, when I had no alternative view or definition or description of God to turn too. The only one I knew was the God as presented by the Catholics. And when He turned out to be a logical impossibility, I was left without any God at all. No God = Atheist. That's teenage logic.
But I got caught in that mistake for years.
What I didn't think through at the time, and Rand appears to have never done, is that the particular view of God that you learn in Sunday School is not the Being himself.
We both rejected an opinion about God....not God himself...and confused the two.
I'm always amused at secularists who claim that the Theory of Evolution proves that God does not exist. I'm equally amused at the gullibility of secularists, who believe God (whatever that means to you) is so limited in power that he could not have set evolution in motion to create homo sapien exactly as they claim it did.
Every act in their lives gives them the perfect example of how it's done. When humans make babies, they don't say magic words...and a baby appears. They couple...and in the fullness of time, a homo-sapien develops. Duh.
When a secularist wants a lawn, he plants seeds, and in the fullness of time, grass grows. How, exactly is that different from the idea that God could make the world...exactly as we have discovered it operates.
In all the years I was a practicing Catholic, I never met anyone who believed in the "literalness" of the Bible. And it is only this literal interpretation against which the newborn athiest rails. Every Christian I know is perfectly happy to accept evolution and the existence of God without the slightest hesitation. Indeed evolution makes the Intelligent Designer even more creative, marvelous and admirable than the simplistic fable of Adam and Eve.
Rand appears to have been unable to see the possibility of a God of Reason whom she could have adored as her "Perfected Man".
As I've said here before, it's Reason that makes us "(made in) the image of God". And Reason was Rand's total focus. It's a shame she couldn't make the leap. I suppose it was her obsessive attention to Man that prevented her from lifting her eyes sufficiently to see the eternal possibilities.
As for her condemnation of "mysticism", she is right when she is talking about "blind faith", of adhering to dogma without thought, of the requirement of believing the logically impossible, in the belief that what is natural and healthy and good and joyful, and necessary for the fulfillment of Man's nature is, by definition, evil, and that altruism to the point of self-sacrifice and existential self-denial are virtues most admired, and most highly valued by God.
She was right to reject them all. But wrong to imagine that in rightly banishing them, she annihilated God. If she had looked a little longer and deeper, she would have seen that what she did was shatter the distorting, funhouse mirror that generations of small, fearful, angry men had contructed before the image of God...and reflected only their dysmorphic souls.
Smashing that false image revealed a God she could have loved and trusted...but she turned away too soon...before the broken glass fell away, before she beheld the God of Reason.
And like so many atheists, thereafter she never questioned or examined her own "blind faith".
As much as it would horrify her, it would seem that Rand's philosophy is perfectly compatible with a faith in God. You just have to pick the right one!
The Gunslinger
Joebama American citizens 2024 print
11 months ago
I don't think Rand or any other atheist was / is able to move beyond "teenager" logic. I mean, they really can't. God keeps them from it. Atheists seem so stunted in their thinking, clouded, confused, retarded in the true meaning of the word.
ReplyDeleteI think it was Plato who said something like, God gives us just enough evidence of Himself so that those who are looking for Him will be able to find Him and those who don't want to find Him won't find Him accidentally.
"Stunted", "clouded", "confused", "retarded" are not words I would use to describe Ayn Rand's mind.
ReplyDeleteShe missed one small intellectual connection, which was the point of my post.
It was the irrationality of most believers, and their absurd religious dogmas that so offended her Reason...in my opinion, justifiably.
As for Plato...I think it says more about Plato than about God, don't you think?
I agree with you on Rand, but I’d empthasize that she didn’t ever take the next step, which the ‘new atheists’ do, that there is no such thing as Truth, or morality, or one culture that is better than another.
ReplyDeleteThere is a vast difference between, what I call, and once was, incidental atheists – those who are only incidentally atheists because they were never able to ‘Prove’ the existence of a God – and the current crop of prattling ‘new atheists’ on the scene. In a perverse way, Rand and those like her, reject religion because they see only the ‘talking snake’ stories, and take that as an affront to Truth and Reason, and reject that strawman for the golden light of Truth they never realized religion embodies. They don’t define themselves around ‘atheism’, it just seems to them to be akin to discovering that although it looks like the sun goes around the earth, it doesn’t, so they discard such geocentric beliefs.
But Rand believed that Truth was One, and an indivisible, massively integrated, non-contradictory Whole to whom morality was an important primary requirement of life, she believed in the existence of Free Will and the Soul (though one that came into and out of being with the body), and that makes her one who, although she couldn’t get past the ‘talking snake’ stories of the literalists, she still dined on the meat of religion, even if she never understood who served up the meal.
There’s a huge difference between ‘incidental atheists’ such as Rand and Theodore Dalrymple who are only incidentally atheists in the mistaken belief that it is more consonant with Truth than the alternative, and the despicably juvenile incoherent and morally relativistic sophistry of the Daniel Dennetts and Richard Dawkins of the world. No comparison whatsoever.
Like you, I too have discovered that with the proper perspective, there are no contradictions between her philosophy and that which religion points us towards – and personally, I’m betting that what she found, is far more important that what she missed..
BTW, the “Ayn Rand Lexicon” is available in full and freely online.
First of all you can't get a philosopher's full argument from a Lexicon of quotes. So that's the first mistake. Secondly, mysticism is not a term invented by Ayn Rand. It is an epistemological term that refers to the practice of gaining an "understanding" of reality through emotional means. As such, mysticism is an invalid form of reasoning...and since religion and a belief in God are both mysticism, the rejection of mysticism is a more mature philosophical position. Those who see truth as an expression of their own feelings are really pretty immature. In fact, I think that defines immaturity.
ReplyDeleteHmmm… I hope The Gunslinger doesn’t mind my butting in, but fools are always so much fun to play with.
ReplyDelete“First of all you can't get a philosopher's full argument from a Lexicon of…”
First of all, she didn’t say she was studying Rand’s philosophy exclusively through the Lexicon, she said she was reading it – whether or not she is, is immaterial, there is nothing in what was said to make that fognative leap… a rather foolish and immature one to take.
“Secondly, mysticism is not a term invented by Ayn Rand”
Secondly, you seem to take her saying “I disagree with Rand about is her rejection of God, the belief in whom she calls "mysticism"” as a statement that she thinks Rand invented the term mysticism… but I don’t see anywhere where she stated such a thing, so why would you take her to have mean that… because of surrounding it with quotes? Do you also take her to believe that "blind faith" and “atheist” were invented by Rand also? Perhaps an investigation into the many uses of quotes, scare quotes, etc would be beneficial for you. Might at the very least help you to keep the taste of shoe leather out of your mouth.
If you read just a bit more carefully, you might notice that the case wasn’t being made here for mysticism as a valid form of reasoning, but perhaps suggesting that equating religion, literalism and the many interpretations of mysticism, is flawed.
“Those who see truth as an expression of their own feelings are really pretty immature.”
Those who stand up in from of people, stuffing a threadbare suit of clothes full of straw while claiming it to be made of flesh and blood, are the truly immature (try wiki on logic, maybe you’ll make the tie in).
Van, I don't mind at all. Being defended...and well, is always appreciated by a lady.
ReplyDeleteAnon, "...she still dined on the meat of religion, even if she never understood who served up the meal."
Nicely said...and was precisely my point.
However, you make the same mistake as Rand when you equate "belief in God" with "mysticism". That's the key she missed...and why she didn't understand who served up that meal. She didn't see that Reason can lead one to God more surely than blind faith in irrational dogma.
Blind Faith? This is the Marxist Dogma worshipped by Obama and his Leftards.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. The irony is lost on them.
ReplyDelete"Van, I don't mind at all. Being defended...and well, is always appreciated by a lady."
ReplyDelete(tips hat) Ma'am.
;-)
Van,
ReplyDelete"(tips hat) Ma'am."
The mental picture this created is completely charming.