Wow. So Rand is wrong because..... Chambers and Buckley didn’t like her book?
I totally get that most of us were raised in the Christian tradition and cannot seem to get over the hump to agree with her.
But anyone care to refute here excerpt re Christianity contained right there? And I mean factually, rationally refute. Without the use of “feelings” or “faith”.
Why is “faith” put in quotes in your comment? Just wondering.
I don’t know if I’m refuting it, but perhaps I can explain where she goes wrong. Ayn Rand would never admit that she is an inferior in God’s eyes as well, as are we all. He should know, He made us. The fact that she is no longer with us helps to prove that point. After a period of Bible study involving translations and context, I no longer subscribe to the modern traditional Christian point of view. I believe Christ will eventually save all of mankind, as is clearly stated in many Bible verses. So Ms. Rand will eventually be redeemed for her inferiority as well. Since none of this is of her own doing and she was clearly inferior as well, her arrogance was not justified.
Chambers' review of Atlas Shrugged is withering. He lays out in detail what's wrong with the book.
But anyone care to refute here excerpt re Christianity contained right there? And I mean factually, rationally refute. Without the use of “feelings” or “faith”.
No problem. See my #39. Just to give you a taste, you demand "without the use of 'feelings,'" and yet a "feeling" (happiness) is what Rand calls a "highest moral good."
Her philosophy is fundamentally irrational.
Umm, straw man, Ann. First, no one is superior. All are children of God. All have sinned. There is no righteous man, not even one.
Second, God does not want sacrifice from us. He did that already, and it was for all of us, forever. Go and learn what this means, Ann : "I desire mercy, not sacrifice."
Third, it should make us indignant that Jesus had to die on the cross. The godly grief and sorrow that grows out of that indignation should humble us and lead us to the repentance that brings life and the kingdom now. How can we sin knowing what God had to endure for us? How can we be worrying or ungrateful when we know the outrageous price He paid for us? How can we be anything but joyful and thankful? How can we lord it over those still in chains once we know we are free?
It never ceases to amaze me how little supposedly literate people know about what the King of the Universe has been trying to tell us for thousands of years.
Christ was God and man. If you consider him a man, his sacrifice makes no sense. If you believe in God and that God is Just, then it makes much more sense. You can’t take faith out of it though. If you don’t believe in God, it will NEVER make sense to you.
For example: The "Work of Christ", climaxing in the suffering and death, is, among other things, to enable men to quit being vicious. It's not just throwing away virtue for vice (which is her most misleading formulation in the quoted passage). It is the shattering of what traps people in vice, in moral inferiority, and in the consequent misery.
Those Christians who deny that humans are ever more than "counted" as good,but instead are freed and enabled to become - if not good - better than they were, might have trouble distinguishing what they think from what she says. But Catholics and the Orthodox would not recognize their belief in her account of it.
And the contrast between sacrifice or service and happiness is, to us, bogus. The life of virtue, while it can lead to opposition, suffering, and even death, is considered a life "toward" happiness and strength, toward excellence. The cartoon image of the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other is wrong if the devil is supposed to be offering enjoyment and self-actualization and the angel suffering and self-abnegation.
For us, to redeem that cartoon, we'd insist that the devil is lying and that following his suggestion will tend to make one weak and unhappy. Following the angel's advice will, we think, make one happier and stronger.
I think possibly Rand mistook the anemic and moralistic version of Christianity promoted by some who are uncomfortable with any sort of pleasure or ease for the solid, vital, even uproariously delighted religion which proclaims (Psalm 16, verse 11) that at God's right hand are pleasures for evermore.
I can't even remember the name of the Rand book I read. But I was struck that the first romantic encounter was about domination, indeed almost rape. Another poster has suggested that it's hard to see where family duties (and desires) fall in her scheme. What could be one's duty to the elderly and infirm in her views?
Of course, a scheme which postulates atheism and denies heaven (and, I suppose, hell) will not envision the sort of human excellence which we talk about. In such a case, it's hard to imagine what difference her thought makes. If a stronger group advocating a different view wiped her teaching from the face of the earth, what would she think of that, I wonder.
This is not meant to be any kind of refutation, except of her depiction of Christianity. I'm not saying she's wrong to say the Christians are wrong (though I think so). I'm only saying the I don't think Christianity is what she says it is -- which I think was what you were asking for.