I think that her answers in the two comments you cite are fatuous. Having read most of what she wrote in my teenage years in the sixties, it is pretty clear to me that she would like to address all arguements from a rationalist perspective to avoid the larger questions of faith and virtue.
The purpose of man in the Christian world and the purpose of man in the Randian world are so far apart as to lack any relation to each other. Chambers long ago pointed out that she had little variance with Marx in wanting to set religion aside in all analysis of the fate and purpose of mankind.
By all means, youngsters should read her, but most will realize she is creating a world of class struggle in her world view, much like Marx, and a world view based soley upon the Producers against the Looters is the stuff of comic books best left when growing into adulthood.
You have reiterated some of the exact reasons why I started studying Rand (far after I was a teenager). I noticed that it was extremely difficult to find thorough debates and criticisms of her ideas. Her name brings up the same hostility (or worse, because it is from all "sides") and ad hominem attacks as uttering the names, Rush Limbaugh, or Sarah Palin... (and now Ted Cruz). That always piques my interest, so I delve deeper.
>>it is pretty clear to me that she would like to address all arguements from a rationalist perspective to avoid the larger questions of faith and virtue.
In my reading of her fiction and non-fiction, the questions of faith, values and virtue are all over the place. She also rejected the philosophical camps of rationalism and empiricism. If she were to be pigeonholed by academics though, they'd likely call her an empiricist. But she is mostly ignored by our "wise college professors," best I can tell.