That is an interesting response worthy of a good chewing over. The first thing that your example would require is that the Objectivists acknowledges the deity of Christ, which, while I greatly admire Rand’s books, I don’t recall being one of her themes.
If I am accurate that most Randian Objectivists reject the deity of Christ, then by their measure, he was simply a man sacrificing himself for undesirable others benefiting neither them nor himself. If so, the honest Objectivist (again assuming they reject his deity) would proclaim Christ to be evil.
Personally, I agree with most of Rand’s concepts. They seem to be in line with Adam Smith’s idea of the Invisible Hand. Each man, acting in his own self interest, will find it in his best interest to make sure that he treats his neighbor fairly in order to continue doing business with each other.
Yes that’s right. I would not say most objectivists deny the deity of Christ. I would say they all do, Me included. I am not open to persuasion either so don’t try. I guess I was looking at the story from the Christians point of view, accepting the bible as the true word of God. Christians call what Jesus did a sacrifice but from the Objectivist ethics It would not be. There is so much misinformation about Objectivist ethics out there and the idea of what selfishness is that it struck me as funny that the Christian standard of selflessness would be the Objectivist standard of rational self interest. Again that is assuming the events of the Bible could be taken as objective facts. I was not however trying to evade the fact that Objectivism rejects the concept of the supernatural and considers faith to be irrational. That is of course true. I had just never thought about it before and it struck me as ironic.
After thinking about it some more, it still would not be a sacrifice if the people he died for were not undesirable to HIM. If his love for them was a payment in return for the values they represented then it would still be self interest. According to the altruist ethics in order for his act to be moral he would have to have have no interest whatever in them because the standard of value of altruism is sacrifice not life or values. I will have to think about this some more.