Recently, I joined a cult.
Well, not really, but I’ve talked to a couple people since going and I’m not the only one who’s described the people and the way of thinking as “cult-like.”
I should also clarify now, though I’m sure it will become evident throughout this post, I do not agree with this way of thinking.
Anyway, I became exposed to the writings and philosophy of Ayn Rand at a conference I attended recently. I will not give you the name of the convention, because honestly I still greatly enjoyed myself and learned a lot even though I gradually found the foundation of the philosophy more and more appalling.
The first statement I heard I disagreed with was in the opening talk, setting the stage for the rest of the conference. To summarize, the speaker declared that morals cannot be taken as absolutes “just because you learned them in Sunday school or your parents or teachers told you so” and you need to analyze and understand why these values are considered moralistic, and then decide whether or not they make sense.
That raised a huge red flag for me.
Morals cannot be opinions. I value logical thinking, but I’m also aware that humans are fallible and so is logical thinking, which I will get to later. If you don’t think there is a God setting universal moral values, then you must accept that morals are purely subjective, and therefore you have no right to tell others what is right or wrong. Many atheists admit this. When you ask where morals come from, they say they are set by cultural norms in different areas of the world, or, in the case of Ayn Rand, they’re set by how we’ve evolved as creatures. Some people will say it’s a matter of consensus, but does that mean that if everyone in a particular group agreed that stealing or murder is okay, it’s suddenly okay?
Even if they are set by evolution, there’s nothing stopping sentient beings like humans from being immoral. In fact, I would look back at history and look at human nature and argue that humans have actually evolved to be immoral, and morals like selflessness and self-control go against our nature. Why would humans evolve to have a certain nature, then evolve to have the idea to go against that nature? Why wouldn’t we evolve to be morally perfect beings if they truly benefit us? I would also come back to the point that you have no right or reason to tell someone they’re wrong if they choose to go against their biological make-up. That’s their right.
But whatever, right? One raised
However, as I sat through many of the talks, I found myself taking more notes about what I disagreed with than what I found valuable. I’ll dive into them here. Keep in mind that I’m fairly new to Ayn Rand’s theories, so if I misrepresent something, do forgive me, and know that my statements pertaining to the ideas I present still hold regardless.
I hold onto two premises for my counterarguments, premises that I have found through logic, reason, research, and observation.
- There is a God, a personal God.
- Human’s are fallible in their actions and thinking.
With those in mind, let’s get into it.
Firstly, Ayn Rand’s philosophy and worldview is strictly atheistic.
A man during the Q&A portion of the concluding talk had a question about this. He explained that he believed in God, and wanted to know how objectivism and theism could coincide. The speaker responded that atheism is core to objectivism, but if one looked at the evidence and used his logic and reason and came to the conclusion that there is a god, then though the conclusion would not be objectivist, the method would be.
Though the objectivists scorn and mock religion (there was a lot of
I’ll get to the logic and reason part for believing there is a god in a moment, but I observed something I found quite interesting and hypocritical.
Religion
noun
1 a: the state of a religious
b (1): the service and worship of God or the supernatural
b (2): commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance2: a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
3: archaic: scrupulous conformity: CONSCIENTIOUSNESS
4: a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith
(From Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
Objectivism doesn’t match the first two particularly well, but it does the last two. The way the speakers referenced Ayn
I expected to hear quotes from a diversity of names and worldviews, but there’s no doubt that Ayn Rand’s ideas were the ones on which everything was not just founded on, but hardly criticized. I expected to hear criticism as the movement progressed (the woman died in 1982, and Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957, plenty of time for people to improve on her ideas). It was as if she was their Jesus, and Atlas Shrugged was their Bible.
I started to read a blog post by an organization based on Ayn Rand’s ideas where they claim to discuss what is wrong with Ayn Rand’s philosophy. After skimming the first page or two, it struck me as oddly sarcastic,
But the man I mentioned at the beginning of this section raised a good point and got a fair enough answer.
I won’t pretend I’m not biased, so let me explain the logic, reason, and evidence there is for a theistic worldview.
*Note: I tried to find unbiased sources, but much of the information I’m looking for is also being sought by other Christians, so most of the citations are from Christian establishments. They often do an excellent job of citing their sources, so if you care to look into it further, you are welcome to.
- The Big Bang Theory was put forth by a Catholic, and it only makes sense in a theistic world-view. If you have a purely scientific worldview, then in order for something to be considered a valid theory or a law of nature, it must be repeatable. Something cannot come from nothing. The world just snapping into existence from nothing is impossible as it has never been repeated, especially nothing as complex as our universe.
- Here’s the link to the post from which I got my information, which goes into more depth, but the chances of this Earth happening on
it’s own are:
“His calculations lead him to the remarkable conclusion that the ‘Creator’s aim’ must have been accurate to 1 part in 10 to the power of 10 to the power or 123, that is 1 followed by 10 to the 123rd power zeros.”
OK…I want numbers. What is the probability the universe is the result of chance?
As Penrose puts it, that is a “number which it would be impossible to write out in the usual decimal way, because even if you were able to put a zero on every particle in the universe, there would not even be enough particles to do the job.”
- There is scientific reasoning that indicates that the Big Bang is indeed how we got here, so any other theories are usually not considered as there is even less evidence. For example, the multiple universes theory.
When I presented these arguments and much more to a friendly objectivist and atheist I’d befriended and asked him to give me an alternative argument for how the universe came to be, the best he could come up with was something along the lines of “Well, I just think that first there was no existence, and then there was existence.”
I explained to him I could not accept that as a valid argument and asked for something better, which he either could not or simply did not offer.
That doesn’t strike me as particularly logical or
Logic and reason are often presented as infallible.
I touched on this briefly before.
A while ago I wrote a blog post titled “Logic is not always Logical.” As I verbally worked out my counterpoints and arguments against Ayn Rand’s objectivism, I realized that was a poor title. A better one would be “Logic Does Not Always Lead to Truth.”
I won’t explain it in detail, but the basic concept is that using logic and reason won’t lead you to the actual truth. You can be presented with the same facts as someone else, and
A little side-note I found interesting: atheists claim to trust in things they can see and touch, yet champion logic and reason, things you can’t see or touch, but still have evidence of. Just like God. Hmmm…
To expand on the notion that logic is fallible, I present to you: the personal experience and bias.
Below is a quote from someone’s blog on a
What is sufficient evidence for one person is often not sufficient evidence for another. A court of law provides innumerable examples of how two parties can possess the same collection of data, the same power of logic and reasoning, yet argue for completely different interpretations of the data. The old saying is true: the facts do not determine the argument, the argument determines the facts.
warstaples
I might argue that nothing is truly objective, at least not what humans can perceive. There might be an objective reality outside of what we can understand or see, but I’m not ready to dive into that idea too much, and don’t want to get sidetracked. However, CBS News had something to say about Ayn Rand and reality.
Reality is NOT an objective absolute. There’s no way to tell whether reality is objective or not because it can only be perceived subjectively. While it could be argued that the consensus of multiple subjective realities equals objective reality, the exact same logic would also assign objective reality to Jung’s archetypes, which appear inside every human being’s dreams. In any case, measuring something changes the thing measured, so simply perceiving “reality” changes the nature of reality. Therefore, so it can’t be absolute.
…
Facts do NOT trump feelings, wishes, hopes, and fears. As any sales professional knows, when dealing with human beings, facts ALWAYS run a distant fifth. That’s particularly true when dealing with people who are operating under the fantasy that their decisions are based upon “fact.” Emotion trumps reason every time, and nobody is easier to influence emotionally than those who are so unaware of that their emotions that they think they’re making “reasonable” decisions.
GEOFFREY JAMES, CBS News
She leaves no room for those to disagree with her and is heavily biased, making her somewhat hypocritical.
This is evident in the way I never saw speakers at the conference dispute anything she claimed (to be totally honest and fair, I did not go to all the talks, and it’s possible I missed something).
Many people have written on how her followers regarded her every word as truth, and how little tolerance she had for disagreement. Most prominent among these criticisms are those of anarcho-capitalist philosopher Murray Rothbard, who discussed the cult-like behavior of both Rand and her followers back in 1972.
Scotty Hendricks, BigThink
The same article cited above states that Ayn Rand failed to present critical analyses and provide well-thought out arguments for her own work, which not only disqualify her from being a respected philosopher, but makes her work “incoherent.”
If Ayn Rand champions critical thinking, then shouldn’t she set an example by thinking critically about her own ideas, and encouraging others to be critical with them as well?
She’s simply wrong about so many things.
(Human nature, selfishness)
Excuse the heading of this section, but I want to touch on a few things that don’t quite deserve their own section.
It’s trying too hard, that is, to convince us, and itself, perhaps, that its superstitions, self-defenses, and desires are natural law. Rand’s belief system has so little intellectual currency among thinkers on the left that few people spend any time bothering to refute it.
Open Culture Article
Ayn Rand’s writing about human nature reminds
Supposing men were born social (and even that is a question) — does it mean that they have to remain so?
Ayn Rand
This article talks about how Sears restructured how the company operated based on Ayn Rand’s theories. The company was broken into individual units, and they were responsible for their own success and would be paid and recognized separately from others.
Christopher Hitchens, for example, seemed to have a distaste for Rand and her theories, saying “I don’t think there’s any need to have essays advocating selfishness among human beings; I don’t know what your impression has been, but some things require no further reinforcement.“
Rational egoism is another theme common in Ayn Rand’s ideas. For those who don’t know, rational egoism is the principle that an action or decision is only rational if it maximizes one’s own self-interest.
As Rand further detailed in her book The Virtue of Selfishness, moral values are “genetically dependent” on the way “living entities exist and function.” Because each individual organism is primarily concerned with its own life, she therefore concludes that selfishness is the correct moral value of life.
Evonomics
Rand was an adulterous hypocrite. She was strongly opposed to government-funded programs, then benefitted from them in her later years. She also had an affair with a younger man, who turned around and had an affair with another, younger woman.
She railed against government benefits but cheerfully collected social security and Medicare.
Victoria Bekiempis
Objectivism is a bit cult-like
Earlier I gave the definition of religion and compared objectivism to it, but I’ve more frequently alluded to it as a cult.
Cult
noun
- system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object: the cult of St. Olaf.
- a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister: a network of Satan-worshiping cults.
- a misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing: a cult of personality surrounding the leaders.
- [usually as modifier] a person or thing that is popular or fashionable, especially among a particular section of society: a cult film.
I think the most accurate representation of Objectivism is the third one, though one could fairly easily make arguments for the others as well.
Though there’s probably more I could say, I’m going to bring this to a close here. While Ayn Rand has a few valid points (it’s hard for someone to be completely wrong all the time), I disagree with her on a fundamental level, and I encourage everyone to think critically about critical thinking.