As I said, she is reacting to bad values.
She provides plenty of evidence of the harm religion does to people. She does not have to provide proof there is no God - that is the burden of the believer.

There is a difference between admiring one's works and agreeing 100% with their philosophies. It is very true that in order to 100% agree with Ayn Rand you would of necessity be an atheist as she was. But to say that no one can appreciate someone else's brilliance without being just like them is ridiculous. I don't have to be any more than an amateur physicist to appreciate the brilliance of Fermi, Einstein, or Hawking. I don't have to be a professional chemist to appreciate Madame Curie or a physician to appreciate Pasteur.

I'll give you a little advice: the people on this forum are unlike the other forums you're probably used to. They don't like name-calling or bloviation. They actually appreciate a solid philosophical discussion and the use of facts to support arguments. Bring those with you in your posts and you'll fit right in. Fail too many times and you will get voted right out of the Gulch.

I think if you examine things a little further, you'll reform your opinions. Before trying to prove people wrong, you might want to make sure that you both share the same starting point in the conversation, as two people will almost certainly disagree on how to get to A when one starts from B and the other C. ;)

Have you read any of Ayn Rand's statements regarding religion at all? Those are very emotional statements - many of which are based on overly-broad generalizations and false characterizations. Rand's antipathy toward organized religion was well known even in her lifetime.
Does she have any valid observations? Yes, but only when applied to specific sects and therein is the rub. I prefer to deal in principles rather than in religions, because principles are foundational and reasonable.

Every one misspeaks. The true test is whether or not one is willing to acknowledge such and reform their opinions when new information is presented. However, before one can really assert subject-matter knowledge, they must first also acknowledge ignorance. Einstein was a good example of this.

If they truly saw the genius in AR, they could not possibly believe in God. They may think they understand AR....

Faith and reason go hand in hand. Reason postulates the possible (or probable) and faith induces one to prove the hypothesis. Faith is looking toward a future possibility, but in no way precludes reason. Even in the realm of religion (and especially Christianity) there is no such thing as blind faith that has no foundation whatsoever.

All inventors act on faith. They don't know ahead of proving their hypothesis whether or not it will be true. Edison tried hundreds of formulations for the lightbulb before settling on the tungsten filament. His reason and study led him to believe that there was a substance he could excite using electricity to provide light, but he didn't know exactly what it was until he had tried many different formulations. Should he have given up when the first one didn't pan out? Of course not. He continued to believe even despite scores of failures that his idea was sound, and eventually he figured out a solution he was satisfied with and which has been the standby for 100 years.

I would also invite you to read more of the conversation regarding altruism, because (as I have seen) Christianity's version of altruism is no different than Rand's - it is the world's version of government "charity" that encourages the moocher.

Since you are also new to this thread, I will also introduce to you the concept of ignorance as a factor in subjective vs objective thinking. The only way to have 100% objective thinking is to completely understand a given object or topic, so it is literally impossible to be 100% objective in the analysis of anything - there are just too many unknowns. All we can do is attempt to acknowledge and limit or account for these items.

There is no "even" to it. Their argument is only emotion, AR's is based on reason and rationality.
Don't confuse emotions that reflect bad values with emotions that reflect a reaction to bad values.

"Closed minded" suggests not open to reason and facts. That is not what Objectivists are. Faith is the antithesis of reason; believing is closed minded.
Yes, there is some common ground. But it is not fundamental, and that will always lead to disagreement and conflict.

Do you adher to faith or reason? It can't be both.
Are you an altruist or uphold the concept of rational self-interest? It can't be both.
Is reality subjective or objective? It can't be both.

You simply do not understand Objectivism.
It's faith vs reason, pure and simple.

He is the one who does not understand the fundamental basis for Capitalism, not AR.
He does not see - nor do most people - that faith completely contradicts the morality supporting Capitalism. Objectivists can welcome his support on other issues, but they can not accept his contradiction and his altruism that continually undercuts Capitalism.

What about Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and several others a few thousand years before Christianity? I think one can call it a moral or ethical system based on super naturalism, but I still fail to see much of any of a philosophy to it.

The success of religious belief is to provide a reason to exist in a slavery condition in order to get immortality and an excuse for not understanding everything that happens in nature and society around you. And in Christianity particularly, to adopt other religious trappings such as a man-god hybrid, celebration of the winter and spring solstice, a fir tree with adornment, a god ordained king to rule you to gain acceptance. Now they want to hitch on to a true philosophy, but not all of it.

He had an opinin too, Robbie, just like you.
Be good, children.

'The Road to Serfdom' if far from complicated or
'deep'. If you read it when very young, try again.

Not correct rlewellen; she stood for 'individual rights', but did say that 'without property rights no
other rights were possible. As for the definition of
'rights' she said: 'Right is a moral concept which
defines and sanctions an individual's freedom to
act in a social context.' (Almost verbatim). How
can you bring plunder and removal of culture -
what culture ? - into this.

'Because it is offensive to some." Now, why do
muslims come to mind ?

Rand said that (Christian) religion was man's first attempt to have a philosophy. If they did not manage to expand on it or modernize it, they may need something to hitch on to.

I believe in free speech, and I personally wouldn't have censured Hiraghm or anyone for anything. If some one is being vulgar stop talking to them.

Acceptable is a difficult word to pinpoint. Like, I think it's acceptable, in the fact that I'm going to have to accept that some people are going to mock my beliefs and there is nothing I can really do to stop them. However I don't condone the mocking and will take steps within my personal boundaries to reduce my contact with it.

Agreed, all religions, etc, are man-made constructs, including government. And, in the beginning, voluntary. My issue is the looters, whose organizations initiate force (appeal to my sense of survival) and the moochers, who initiate fraud, (appeal to my sense of guilt or feel-good or uncertainty about the future, afterlife or otherwise.) The only difference is the level of choice involved and the ROI as perceived by the "buyer."