Nature gives us nothing. It is merely a set of initial and boundary conditions around which we must navigate.

If nature gives us nothing, then nature cannot be in a position to guarantee inalienable rights. The argument I have made throughout this thread is that if one rejects the notion of a creator, then all rights are alienable (i.e. They can be taken away by other humans.). Moreover, if a right can be taken away, then it is not a right, but a privilege.

The US Supreme Court is wrong again.
And again-
An absence of something is not the same as the something, as absence of something is not a type of that something.

Nature has no consciousness and no will.
Implication- Will / Intention does not exist without consciousness.
I do not understand so do not follow or accept the proposition.

A storm does not have will, it blows and causes damage due to causes outside itself. A volcano does not choose to blow.
As you state- Nature has no consciousness and no will.
At the same time a living human is part of nature and has no choice but to obey nature's laws. The argument could proceed that humans do not have will. Dead end.
So, free will in humans must be assumed. So, human consciousness exists, so, many reasons and purposes for that will, so, special creators, let alone dieties, are not shown to necessary tho' are neither dis-proven.

Agreed, nature has no rights. Only conscious thinkers have rights, given to them by nature without will / intention.

A will does require consciousness. This is the error in basing "rights" on nature. Nature has no consciousness and no will.

Objectivism can be used as a personal moral code, but it is grossly inadequate as a code for a society that includes non-Objectivists. "Non-Objectivists consistently violate the non-aggression principle to pursue their self-interest at the expense of our self-interests." This does not necessarily make the non-Objectivist criminal.

Let us consider an alternate scenario to what happened in Atlas Shrugged. Would Francisco or Hank been "criminal" had they not given up so easily in their pursuit of Dagny? Such a competition would have been entirely realistic and would not violate Objectivist morality, let alone non-Objectivist morality. One definition of a contradiction is "a combination of statements, ideas, or features of a situation that are opposed to one another". My scenario would have been a case where everyone acts in their self-interest and yet are opposed to one another.

That cannot be concluded from what I wrote. I am not basing individual rights on a creator. What I am saying is that because nature has no mind, it cannot guarantee inalienable rights. Anything is based on human reason can be taken away (i.e. are alienable) because a sufficient number of human beings reject the premises on which such reason is based. To count on the good intentions of other human beings is a mistake. 1) There are human beings who are indeed evil. 2) Even if one does assume that all human beings have good intentions, a) they can be in error, and b) what they consider "good" for them may be bad for you.

I am NOT saying to erect individual rights on Faith. What I am say is that America, having done so, built its foundation on shifting sands.

"The only nations founded on "atheism" . . .

No nation was ever founded on the basis of atheism. They all had some set of principles, religious or non-religious. Atheism was sometimes a by-product.

"Atheism is a religion - as acknowledged by the US Supreme Court."

The Supreme Court is an arbiter of law, not of reality. A religion is a set of beliefs. Atheism, by definition, is a lack of belief. "A-theism". Just as amorality is a lack of morality, not a moral code itself.

Where's the contradiction? How does the fact that there are criminals invalidate the Objectivist moral code?

A will requires consciousness. Consciousness requires existence. A creator cannot create unless it is conscious. A creator cannot be conscious unless it first exists. Existence is the fundamental attribute of reality, not consciousness. Existence is a necessary precondition to, and logically prior to creation. A creator cannot create existence, including its own existence.

No one, using Aristotle's logic or Galileo's scientific method, has ever proven whether this universe was created or, if the matter, energy, and motion we perceive has always been in existence.

Hence, to assume, as you do, that individual rights "without a Creator whom all acknowledge and respect, that rights are alienable." is to erect a structure upon the shifting sands of Faith.

Individual Rights can only be derived from Nature employing Reason, Logic, and Science as John Locke did. That is, Human Nature as sentient beings.

This site has admins? 'News to me - I've been trying to contact them for at least a couple of years with zero reply. When did this warning happen?

And more to the point: Why is a comment having nothing to do with the actual person who posted the lead article, but which rather is a relevant and important point on the content of that post, being soft-censored? This is not the actions of people dedicated to the philosophy of objectivism, methinks.
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And by way of website remediation, I am going to repost what mshupe posted above - something with which I heartily agree - but which for some odd (and rationally unjustifiable) reason is "hidden." It goes like this:

"And Rothbard is wrong. This quote does not differentiate retaliatory force from the initiation of force. To fail to do so can only lead to disaster, such as the title of this post."

Q.: Why is a website dedicated to the philosophy of Ayn Rand, a philosophy explicitly dedicated to reason, allowing a mechanism for "hiding" posts?

Asking for a friend. 8^[]
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Good and essential observation. I'm wondering why this page is "hiding" your comment. Or why a site dedicated to reason "hides" comments for any reason.

Cont'd -

McGlinchey's unspoken implication that Israel is intentionally blowing up hospitals and schools defies all rational plausibility, to say nothing of fact. Even ignoring the ethical evil such action would presuppose, for what possible purpose would Israel saddle itself with that kind of worldwide blowback? It makes no sense - except in context of McGlinchey's shabby attempt to construct a moral equivalency between the only civilized society in the Mideast and one of the most barbaric terrorist tribes in the Mideast. I needn't reiterate the moral status of McGlinchey's conscious choice to do so.

The second is Alan Dershowitz's short, unflinching analysis of this atrocious tactic:
https://www.capitalismmagazine.com/20...

He doesn't go into the issue of Western commentators latching onto that atrocity and aiding and abetting its strategy - as does Mr. McGlinchey - but I've covered that here.

The most unequivocal statement McGlinchey makes in his piece is that he does not consider any country to be legitimate - ethics and its necessary contextual application be damned. That thrice-refuted pro-anarchist critique of government is an entirely tangential issue but as his title tells us, that's McGlinchey's purpose here. His seizing upon an attempted moral equivocation on the Hamas - Israel conflict as his means of regurgitating it, is jaw-dropping amorality on parade. On the secondary issue of anarchism I have neither the time, need or frankly the ability to attempt restating the excellent work that Robert Bidinotto did on the subject back in the mid-'90s. I'll refer interested parties to his recent re-posting of that work:
https://bidinotto.blogspot.com/p/cont...

Finally, McGlinchey's attempt to apply our own Declaration of Independence to the cause of the Hamas butchers is beneath contempt. The man's moral compass - and even a sense of public decency - are irretrievably destroyed in this man, apparently.
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Though it would be flatly impossible to perform the necessary point-by-point refutation of this McGlinchey's post - I will likely have to split this in two just to scratch the surface - the primary flaw in his argument, like that of a big chunk of Libertarian commentators on foreign policy issues, is that he sidesteps philosophy, specifically the entire branch that is ethics. He does this presumably because it gets in the way of his attempt to deconstruct the entire concept of government - any government - as a legitimate entity, and of course to fudge the distinction between good and evil, and even of the need to perform such judgment.

He leads off in naming a generic truism: that a demand for the obliteration of Israel is not, in itself, evidence of antisemitism.

Ok, nice observation. But on the basis of that contextless proclamation he begins regurgitating what's essentially the tired old pro-anarchist argument against the legitimacy of any and all government, via some truly jaw-dropping equivocations on terminology. Like trying to parse a distinction between open, unabashed demands for the destruction of Israel - or "obliterat[ion]," as the Charter of Hamas's wording goes - versus a mere "dissolution," a kid-gloves term McGlinchey chooses to substitute for the actual ones. Like blithely - and amorally - renaming the butchery of Hamas (and the countless similar atrocities comitted against Israel and Israelis in the past,) as merely to "propose" that a given state "be rearranged or replaced." His intellectual sleight-of-hand reminds me of that old Far Side cartoon panel where Larsen transforms the Mafia trope of "rearrange your face" into the comedy of "rearrange your furniture." Only McGlinchey's version is not funny.

Meanwhile, he utterly ignores what is absolutely crucial: The self-stated moral (immoral, in "Hamas'" case) precepts upon which nations - in this case Israel vs its attackers - are based, and more importantly the actions these respective groups of individuals have taken, in both directions, on the basis of those precepts. I refer you to Mr. Steven Schub's piece, which I've posted at GGO previously, for details:
https://themostendangeredspecies.subs...

Utterly ignoring the fact that the chronic Hamas / Hezbollah brutalities against Israel and its citizens over a period of decades is a de facto guerrilla war - one in which the animals of those two groups routinely use noncombantants and their neighborhoods and homes as "human shields" - McGlinchey, whether knowingly or not, plops right smack into the propagandist role that Hamas' / Hezbollah's tactics are calculated to create: A boneheaded Western commentator blithely accusing Israel of consequences of: retaliation which is 100% necessitated by the attacker - i.e., not by the defender.

In McGlinchey's warped view it is Demon Israel, in using purely retaliatory force against combatants intentionally hiding among civilian populations, that is the guilty party. McGlinchey's premises here are not just factually wrong, they're morally despicable.

My go-to references on this vital issue - the just assignment of moral culpability in war - are two, though there are doubtlessly many worthy others. The first is an article Patrick Stephens published in the immediate aftermath of the attacks that Hamas' blood-brothers (emphasis on: blood,) committed on September 11, 2001, titled "The Justice of War":
https://www.atlassociety.org/post/the...

Key points: "...the initial aggressor shoulders the full moral responsibility for the war. That is, he is morally responsible not only for his own actions, but also for the consequences of his victim's defense and retaliation..." and "...To the extent that an aggressor hides the guilty among the innocent, and to the extent that an aggressor exploits civilians in the pursuit of his aggression, innocent and harmless civilians become threats to the retaliating force. They may be innocent, but they have been placed at risk by the aggressor's actions—not by the nation attempting to retaliate."

Cont'd below -

I'd just start by identifying the creator of this world. Then ask :)

(This question doesn't address the need for a will, however. It's a red herring.)

No, non-Objectivists should be presumed to act in their own self-interest. Unfortunately for us, for way too many non-Objectivists, their self-interest comes at the expense of our self-interest. The flaw is in the assumption that all humans should share the premises of Objectivism. They do not.

Among the pillars of Objectivism are objective reality, absolute reason, self-interest, laissez-faire capitalism, the non-aggression principle, and that there can be no contradictions. There is a contradiction here, however. Non-Objectivists consistently violate the non-aggression principle to pursue their self-interest at the expense of our self-interests.

I have yet to find someone who can derive a creator without a more powerful being that brought that creator into existence. Welcome to the infinite regress.

That's a *flaw?" So the correct premise is that "that non-Objectivists should be allowed to use force to get their own way??

First of all, I don't "need" to do anything. Second, anyone who wants their political philosophy to be taken seriously should be willing to live by it. Many of the founding fathers didn't practice what they preached, and instead profited by the slave labor of others.

"America did not invent slavery" is not an excuse. Nazis did not invent antisemitism, but in no way does this excuse what they did.

"Assuming the existence of a creator does not prove the existence of that creator."

It doesn't disprove it either. It's up to each individual person to pursue for themselves a description of and existence of a creator. But the metaphysics of morality without enforcement by an intelligent and active will falls apart.

"Ayn Rand wrote that "Existence exists". By that expression, she meant Nature as defined by our Reason, senses, and logic, that existence preceded consciousness."

Sure, but see above: it doesn't disprove the necessity of a Creator, neither does it disprove the existence of such a being. Usually the first step - and the hardest - is defining "god." Every religion seems to do it differently. Weeding out the choices one by one is a difficult task...

"Most of the founding fathers were Diests."

Some were deists, sure. Most of the Founding Fathers were Christians, they just came from a variety of faiths. (https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-...) Some believed in God yet refused to join themselves to any of the faiths of the time. But they all believed in the Judeo-Christian version of God along with the morality of that belief system. What is remarkable is that rather than setting forth any particular "state" religion, they reserved the right to worship to the individual to select - in stark contrast to Europe at the time where every nation had it's own national religion.

We need to be careful about our answers regarding "No country has a 'right to exist'". If one says no, then how long is it before others deny an individual's right to exist? If one says yes, then the reasoning must be stated clearly. As Eyecu2 correctly quoted, "the consent of the governed" is critical.