“If I remember right, it was not to avoid ‘religion’ that the young woman killed herself, it was when she realized that she was being used and lied to by a man she thought loved her.
Nothing to do with religion at all.”
Well, I didn’t say that religion was the cause, even proximately. Just that she couldn’t stand to listen to it even for a few seconds, and shouted an anti-religious message on her way to suicide. Let’s leave it up in the air as to whether it pushed her over the top. At best it was just one more thing not to like about life. Maybe she would have killed herself anyway. Nevertheless, you don’t get many more blatant messages in fiction.
Rand doesn’t like religion. Not only is it no way to live your life, nor any comfort: it is something to run away from, even into death.
It is clear that Ayn Rand was not sympathetic to religious devotion, nor a believer, but this small point of the story was not related to religion.
Just my point of view.