Posted on 05/11/2013 12:12:17 PM PDT by JerseyanExile
Ayn Rand was no fan of C.S. Lewis. She called the famous apologist an “abysmal bastard,” a “monstrosity,” a “cheap, awful, miserable, touchy, social-metaphysical mediocrity,” a “pickpocket of concepts,” and a “God-damn, beaten mystic.” (I suspect Lewis would have particularly relished the last of these.)
These insults and more can be found in her marginal notes on a copy of Lewis’ Abolition of Man, as printed in Ayn Rand’s Marginalia: Her critical comments on the writings of over 20 authors, edited by Robert Mayhew. Excerpts appear below, with Lewis’ writing (complete with Rand’s highlighting and underlining) on the left and Rand’s notes on the right.
(Excerpt) Read more at firstthings.com ...
If Rand has given any original argument for atheism, it can only crumble under the weight of God’s truth.
Ayn Rand, like Christopher Hitchens and Bertrand Russell, etc., are currently having their theology straightened out.
By the way, I did read JRRT’s authorized biography. Tolkein it seems had many conversations with C.S. Lewis within their mutual writer’s club (the Inklings). It seems JRRT convinced Lewis to become a Christian. I have known at least one Christian who disliked Lewis because of his earlier paganistic writings. I hope not to be judged based on my youthful ignorance.
Ayn Rand’s philosophy is one that leads souls to hell, and nations to destruction.
Tat was a very poorly constructed sentence on my part. Oh well. You know what I meant.
This point is not missed—that the atheist is led by ideology to hate the Christian, while the view of the Christian is to love the atheist.
Then I am done ever even thinking her name, because Lewis was an intellectual giant and creative genius aside as well as one of the most significant Christians of the 20th century.
The content weight of all the Bibles and Korans on Earth is nothing compared to the weight of scientific truth about evolution found in modern technical publications. The Earth, for instance, came into being about 4.6 billion years ago, long before Jesus appeared ... prompting a question. Why did God wait so long to send humans (and only humans) a savior?
I consider the works of Lewis to be among the most important re politics and theology of our time. You have missed out on a great treasure.
I wonder whether Ayn Rand would even have known what capitalism is without the insights of the Protestant Reformation that found Scriptural basis not only in the profit motive but the obligation to pursue that profit in the context of thoroughly incorporated ethics. Like don’t cheat your customers, you win in the short run, but you lose in the long run.
That’s the problem with the cult of Rand. Materialist atheism, whether Randian or Marxist, is going to produce a world no sane person would choose to live in. There is no humanity in either of their visions. She may have done good service as a counterweight against the intellectual bankruptcy of socialism, but at the end of the day she was still selling a brand of madness. Two sides of the crazy coin, IMO.
She really understood socialism but just from reading Atlas Shrugged, you can tell she’s a b*tch
It begs the question, would Rand have been willing to die in defense of her beliefs? Would she have expected others to do so? If a Randian utopia, a Galt's Gulch were established and came under attack, would its citizens band together to repel the threat and face mortal peril for the good of their fellow man (and in doing so violate their own canon), or would they merely stand fast and just defend their own property?
“The content weight of all the Bibles and Korans on Earth is nothing compared to the weight of scientific truth about evolution found in modern technical publications.”
When viewed from eternity, the “weight of scientific truth about evolution” won’t count for diddly. At heart, it is assuming the right to question God, to see if God is good enough to satisfy OUR morality. As CS Lewis points out in “God in the Dock”, that is ridiculous. If God is great enough to create the universe, then it is not for us to judge Him. What matters is not what we think about God, but what God thinks about us.
“We are inveterate poets. Our imaginations awake. Instead of mere quantity, we now have a quality–the sublime. Unless this were so, the merely arithmetical greatness of the galaxy would be no more impressive than the figures in the telephone directory. It is thus, in a sense, from ourselves that the material universe derives its power to over-awe us. To a mind which did not share our emotions, and lacked our imaginative energies, the argument from size would be sheerly meaningless. Men look on the starry heavens with reverence: monkeys do not.”
(CS Lewis, God in the Dock, p.41).
Ayn Rand despised everyone who did not share ALL of her views. That was her ultimate tragedy - frankly she was a very arrogant and unpleasant person (as many philosophers are) and the fact that life dealt her a particularly unpleasant hand may be a reason, but not an excuse for that.
Ayn Rand had a bolt loose.
One thing that's always disturbed me about Ayn Rand was her lack of faith and atheistic views.
Still, on economic systems and the need for a profit motive, I believe she was exactly correct.
On matters of faith, I trust CS Lewis.
Strange that the two books that completely altered my life view were first the Bible and second Atlas Shrugged.
4.6 billion years is a blink of the eye in eternity. And Jesus (being divine) is eternal.
The arguments for evolution constantly change as what was supposedly scientific proof a few years ago is shown to be incorrect. You can place your faith in scientiffic journals which look ridiculous in 15 to 25 years but I will put my faith in the never changing word of God which has stood the test of time and is every bit as relevent and true today as it was the day it was written.
It is also worth remembering that many christians have trouble distinguishing between personal charity and sacrifice called for in the bible and collective efforts that are really sloughing off those responsibilities to "someone else".
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