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Revision as of 21:16, 9 December 2005

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- Mailer Diablo 01:16, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

To do: Social contract Secular humanism Antihumanism Self-evidence

Follow up on reverts to: Eliminative materialism various Dennett-related pages.

Ayn Rand's atheism

a number of philosophers who completely agree with Rand on the topic of atheism nonetheless find her basis for it laughable and frankly embarrassing.

What do you have in mind here? Her basis was that theism is arbitrary, and occasionally she also said there are contradictions in the concept of god. Could you be specific? Michael Hardy 02:09, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Life is short, so I'll speak bluntly. Dismissing theism as arbitrary might apply to fideism, but it fails to address the numerous, ostensibly rational arguments in favor of other forms of theism. Granted, these arguments aren't necessarily any good, but that's all the more reason to refute them instead of just acting as if atheism were obviously true. Given the number of theists out there, atheism must not be so obvious. Furthermore, some of these arguments come with rather comprehensive, although not necessarily correct, worldviews with their own apparently consistent ontology, which quite soundly refutes the ideas that they're just arbitrary. Claiming contradictions in specific definitions of God is a fairly useless tactic because, even when successful, it just spawns new and more nebulous definitions. It also doesn't help that she was lukewarm to evolution, leaving her with a dangerously incomplete worldview. In short, she was lazy and overconfident. This attitude really pisses off philosophers, especially those who are atheists on a sounder basis. Understandably, they view Rand as an easy target, a natural straw man for apologists to trivially defeat, then claim a defeat of all atheism. In short, they see Rand as the sort of ally that they'd rather have as an enemy. Interestingly enough, this happens to be exactly how I see Michael Shermer. Does that answer your question? Alienus 06:54, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Hello. I haven't been back to this page for a while, but I just read your comments. I think if you're going to put something about these matters in an article, you should be specific. Your comments were terse enough to make it clear that it wouldn't take very many words: state which philosophers take those views (a few of the most prominent ones) and what their objections are. Michael Hardy 19:48, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. Let me see what verifiable sources I can dig up on this. Alienus 20:07, 9 December 2005 (UTC)