Posted on 06/07/2015 5:38:13 AM PDT by Ethan Clive Osgoode
Over the past few years, Anton LaVey and his book The Satanic Bible has grown increasingly popular, selling thousands of new copies. His impact has been especially pronounced in our nation’s capital. One U.S. senator has publicly confessed to being a fan of the The Satanic Bible while another calls it his “foundation book.” On the other side of Congress, a representative speaks highly of LaVey and recommends that his staffers read the book.
A leading radio host called LaVey “brilliant” and quotations from the The Satanic Bible can be glimpsed on placards at political rallies. More recently, a respected theologian dared to criticize the founder of the Church of Satan in the pages of a religious and cultural journal and was roundly criticized by dozens of fellow Christians.
Surprisingly little concern, much less outrage, has erupted over this phenomenon. Shouldn’t we be appalled by the ascendancy of this evangelist of anti-Christian philosophy? Shouldn’t we all”especially we Christians”be mobilizing to counter the malevolent force of this man on our culture and politics?
As you’ve probably guessed by this point, I’m not really talking about LaVey but about his mentor, Ayn Rand. The ascendency of LaVey and his embrace by “conservative” leaders would indeed cause paroxysms of indignation. Yet, while the two figures’ philosophies are nearly identical, Rand appears to have received a pass. Why is that?
Perhaps most are unaware of the connection, though LaVey wasn’t shy about admitting his debt to his inspiration. “I give people Ayn Rand with trappings,” he once told the Washington Post . On another occasion he acknowledged that his brand of Satanism was “just Ayn Rand’s philosophy with ceremony and ritual added.” Indeed, the influence is so apparent that LaVey has been accused of plagiarizing part of his “Nine Satanic Statements” from the John Galt speech in Rand’s Atlas Shrugged .
Devotees of Rand may object to my outlining the association between the two. They will say I am proposing “guilt by association,” a form of the ad hominem fallacy . But I am not attacking Rand for the overlap of her views with LaVey’s; I am saying that, at their core, they are the same philosophy . LaVey was able to recognize what many conservatives fail to see: Rand’s doctrines are satanic.
I realize that even to invoke that infernal word conjures images of black masses, human sacrifices, and record needles broken trying to play “Stairway to Heaven” backwards. But satanism is more banal and more attractive than the parody created by LeVay. Real satanism has been around since the beginning of history, selling an appealing message: Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God.
You can replace the pentagrams of LeVayian Satanism with the dollar sign of the Objectivists without changing much of the substance separating the two. The ideas are largely the same, though the movements’ aesthetics are different. One appeals to, we might say, the Young Libertarians, and the other attracts the Future Wiccans of America.
What is harder to understand is why both ideologies appeal to Christians and conservatives. My guess is that these groups are committing what I’d call the fallacy of personal compatibility. This fallacy occurs when a person thinks that because one subscribes to both “Belief X” and “Belief Y,” the two beliefs must therefore be compatible. For example, a person may claim that “life has meaning” and that “everything that exists is made of matter” even though the two claims are not compatible (unless “meaning” is made of matter). This take on the fallacy has long been committed by atheists. Now it appears to be growing in popularity among conservatives and Christians as well.
But to be a follower of both Rand and Christ is not possible. The original Objectivist was a type of self-professed anti-Christ who hated Christianity and the self-sacrificial love of its founder. She recognized that those Christians who claimed to share her views didn’t seem to understand what she was saying.
Many conservatives admire Rand because she was anti-collectivist. But that is like admiring Stalin because he opposed Nazism. Stalin was against the Nazis because he wanted to make the world safe for Communism. Likewise, Rand stands against collectivism because she wants the freedom to abolish Judeo-Christian morality. Conservative Christians who embrace her as the “enemy-of-my-enemy” seem to forget that she considered us the enemy.
Even if this were not the case, though, what would warrant the current influence of her thought within the conservative movement? Rand was a third-rate writer who was too arrogant to recognize her own ignorance (she believed she was the third greatest philosopher in history, behind only Aristotle and Aquinas). She misunderstood almost every concept she engaged with”from capitalism to freedom”and wrote nothing that had not been treated before by better thinkers. We don’t need her any more than we need LeVay.
Few conservatives will fall completely under Rand’s diabolic sway. But we are sustaining a climate in which not a few gullible souls believe she is worth taking seriously. Are we willing to be held responsible for pushing them to adopt an anti-Christian worldview? If so, perhaps instead of recommending Atlas Shrugged , we should simply hand out copies of The Satanic Bible . If they’re going to align with a satanic cult, they might as well join the one that has the better holidays.
Satan is the slander.. yet if you make a charge but provide no evidence to back it up.. who is the slander?...
If you make a charge.. you need to make your case
God is a god of truth and reason..so provide it ...
I could make a better case against Rand then this.. it all accusations without evidence.
Teacher, I agree with your post #8. I think Joe Carter is trying to foment a War About Nothing with the primary goal of self-promotion. Obviously he knows nothing about philosophy. I am not an Ayn Rand “follower” but I agree with much she wrote while recognizing her flaws.
And therein, ultimately, is the source of discomfort for many practicing Christians.
IN essence Christianity teaches collectivism, but one that is completely independent of government. Even transcending government.
What they fail to realize is that Rand's book addresses only the relationship between man and government. It does not address Judeo-Christian morality nor the name of the one true God...nor his sovereignty over earth and man.
To my memory, no such things were expressed.
Can you cite an example where Rand advocated for or alluded to that in any of her books?
You make a couple leaps here that I believe the author and others on this have made. Rand advocated for rational behavior in economic activity, and governence
I have found no dichotomy at all between conducting myself as a Christian in my own life and working for then cause of radical freedom, including the choice to be radically selfish, in he political realm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2isCEoEmN8
Walter Cronkite: “glad to sit at the right hand of Satan”
An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn).The premise is radical self-centrism, the absolute opposite of Christianity, in which we define love as the supreme good, and we define love in terms of making the other person more important than ourselves. In the above quote Rand is deploying her core premise of radical selfishness as a very effective weapon against unborn persons. Indeed, we could say that the radical left is using that very Randian logic to defend "abortion rights."
Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?
From “Of Living Death”, The Voice of Reason, 58–59
Quoted from here: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/abortion.html
The author presents a false “Either - Or” argument. It is not “Either you are a Rand follower OR you are a Christian.”
A reasonable Christian can see the benefits of many of Rand’s positions and adhere to them without losing their Christianity. It’s called the middle ground.
The liberal media LOVES presenting the “Either-Or” type questions to conservatives. Ted Cruz is a master to flipping this around and throwing them right back into the face of the liberal puke reporter.
Christianity does not teach collectivism. The sorry state of the Church at Jerusalem, when they tried it, is an example. Also the Pilgrims tried it when they first arrived, and it was a disaster. Only after they assigned land to each family were they able to have Thanksgiving. The Book of Revelation says that the government in the Millennial Kingdom will be a theocracy under Yahshua who will rule with an iron rod.
If Hitler had a line in Mein Kampf that read 'beer is yummy', I'd whole-heartedly agree with that. The article's author would probably then call me a Hitler follower.
its big problem because many so called Libertarian has cross over because they do not know this fundamental
Rand and atheist have this same flaw..
An anarchist doesn't pretend to be a conservative.
See my post #27:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3297766/posts?page=27#27
As I said, there can be thoughts in any author that are worthwhile. The true “leap” is going from the noble idea of rational economic activity to “radical selfism.” Her premise is not the holy grail that will lead to rational economy and political freedom. Radical selfism is idolatry of man, and cannot be reconciled with any reasonable view of Scripture.
Peace,
SR
William F. Buckley had Rand’s number. Joyless atheist. Nothing there for me.
Ayn Rand believed that sovereignty rests in the individual (as did our Founding Fathers) and that the ultimate expression of freedom can be found in the concept of “No”. In these areas, she is spot-on.
Ayn also understood the enemies of person freedom perfectly. I don’t know of anyone who painted the Progressive movement better or who could see the logical outcomes of that philosophy better than her.
I was initially enamored with Ayn’s “me for myself” individualism but I came to understand that at its core is excessive pride and hollow selfishness. Her philosophy is Satanic in that it places Man as God, answerable to no higher power. We’ve been down that road and it didn’t end well for humanity.
I would also point out that Rand’s characters never try to embrace the organs of power in their pursuit of excellence and achievement. She constructs a fantasy world where the superior, unfettered by any moral restraints other than being true to oneself, reject power in their pursuit of individual goals. Unfortunately, oligarchy is the inevitable outcome, proven by history, when Human nature develops its selfish motives, develops means, and creates its opportunity.
Even Ayn’s philosophy of the individual sovereignty has no objective basis in the absence of a creator-God.
Rand has a voice at the table of Philosophical discussion, but in the end, I rejected her selfish vision for the loving vision of Christianity.
Rand, La Vey, Nietsche, etc., are caught up in the great fishing net of self vs. other. The issue is simple to reconcile. If your society provides lots of lounge time, you can muse on aspects of the self and independent action. If your society enters a period of emergency, you start choosing a team to play with in collective action. The subject hinges on the levels of emergency or, even more dictatorial, the PRESUMED levels of emergency.
More interesting is Rand’s sense of esthetics which revolves around living in an ethically principled manner. You just better damned well choose your ethics carefully and make certain that they don’t keep you from learning from new and better data.
This essay from a religious magazine from 2011 equates Ayn Rand and Objectivism with Satanism.
Yes, the idiotic circular firing squad. Shoot freedom-loving people who don’t subscribe to all your religious beliefs.
I don’t agree with everything Ayn Rand said or wrote but she was on the right side.
It is leftist belief that is equivalent to satanism. Carl Marx was an athiest when he wrote the communist manifesto, but later he became a devil worshiper. Look at the dedication of Saul Alinsky’s book Rules for Radicals. He dedicates it to the first radical...Lucifer.
Two crocks!
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