Exactly

Ayn Rand's life and philosophy are not meaningless. This is a forum for Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason and individualism, not a place for anti-intellectual militant religionists to emotionally denounce it with religious slogans. If there is something serious about Ayn Rand you would like to discuss then please do so, otherwise your posts do not belong here.

You can believe whatever you want to. This is not a forum for militant religionists or juvenile anti-intellectual smears, strawmen, and emotional explosions. There are many places on the internet where you can find that kind of environment which you seem to like, but you are in violation of the guidelines for posting on this forum.

If an agnostic is someone who says he doesn't know then he doesn't believe it and is an atheist.

No evidence for incoherent arbitrary mysticism not to be taken seriously means not betting on equally absurd alternatives either.

Obviously they are talking about and pushing Christianity and Ayn Rand was not rejecting "serious or worthy concern" when she rejected mysticism and the supernatural.

Objectivism is the name Ayn Rand gave to her philosophy. Her own philosophy is what she said it is, regardless of whatever anyone else chooses to believe. She gave explanations and reasons for her principles. If you don't want to understand and discuss Ayn Rand's philosophy with your unserious, ignorant and insulting posts then go somewhere else.

That is not what Objectivism is or is defined as. No principles exist independent of human knowledge. Objectivism is not Platonism and is incompatible with religious faith.

This is a forum for those interested in Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason and individualism, not for proselytizing religious faith and ignorance of science. If you can't or don't want to post in accordance with the guidelines and purpose of this forum then your posts don't belong here. That is simple respect and civility. It has nothing to do with collectivism or socialism.

Take your mysticism and denunciations of reasonable people who reject your mysticism somewhere else. Proselytizing mystic revelations has no place here.

There is no place here for deliberately "stirring the pot" with "curve ball" inflammatory posts. You quoted a word usage that has nothing to do with religion as a philosophical concept and confused faith with whatever everyday uncritical acceptance of what people tell you you are accustomed to.

Your statement about Objectivism that "Much of it is based upon faith, because we can't truly know everything" is patently false. You evidently have no idea of what Ayn Rand's positions and explanations are, nor does a lack of omniscience imply that Objectivism or anything else is only "faith". Not having infinite knowledge of "everything" does not mean that you can't know what you do know.

But what you do know takes effort in accordance with required method. If you don't know what fire is and don't understand atomic physics and the validation of it, then you don't know and should simply admit that to yourself without accusing everyone else of believing by faith. It is a nihilistic blurring of essential distinctions between reason and faith, between Objectivism and religion just to "stir the pot". Take it somewhere else.

lovemeemer: "...Atlas Shrugged is one of my favorite books, but I haven't studied Objectivism. So can someone please define for me what Objectivism is so that I can understand why some would feel that it can't coexist with religion?

Ayn Rand's philosophy is a philosophy of reason, which consequently rejects all belief by faith, mysticism or any kind of supernatural.

Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged summarized her philosophy but in a semi-fictional form to fit with the novel. You will understand that speech and its significance much better after reading her non-fiction explanations.

She once gave an "Introducing Objectivism" explanation in which she summarized the basic ideas "while standing on one foot" and then elaborated: https://campus.aynrand.org/works/1962...

She was an excellent and very clear writer and you should not rely on second-hand accounts to understand her philosophy. Non-fiction original sources for reliably reading her philosophy are described on this forum at
https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

Those who believe in the supernatural don't care that rationalizations purporting to explain existence by a god are a meaningless fallacy that cannot even begin to address the infinite regress required by their own argument. The illogic of it doesn't matter to belief on faith that precedes the rationalizations.

His claim that the axiom of existence is a "tautology" and is "very close to admit[ting] that Existence is God" are false, showing that he has no idea what the axiomatic concepts mean and is replacing them with his own mysticism.

Ayn Rand did not "mandate" what anyone must believe. She rejected faith as a means to knowledge. Everyone must understand or not understand individually. There is no collective mind.

Belief in the supernatural is not science. Atheism means the rejection of belief in the supernatural. It is not a hypothesis and has not been "found false" by any objective standard. There is no "contradiction" in rejecting belief in the supernatural. No one "experiences" the supernatural, only imagination attributing something else to such a belief.

She didn't say it was a "minor point", she said the principles of ethics and therefore a politics of freedom depends on the nature of man regardless of how man became what he is. The question of how we evolved is a scientific question of biology and does not change what we in fact are now.

Reason is not just "superior over faith". It isn't a matter of degree, with one "better" than the other. It is either or. Reason is our means of attaining knowledge and faith destroys it. Fantasy is a not a means of cognition at all, not just an inferior version.

Objectivism doesn't just "use existence as a starting point". Religionists often themselves claim to 'use' existence to start with, arbitrarily claiming that their god is existence and plunging in from the beginning with arbitrary claims of existence as 'evidence' of their faith.

Objectivism begins, in its systematic organization, by explicitly recognizing the relation between existence and consciousness as awareness of existence, and the necessity of obtaining knowledge by reason through non-contradiction in logical thought, which does not permit the arbitrary. For the meaning of the axiomatic concepts of existence, identity and consciousness in Objectivism see the chapter on it in Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. It isn't just "using existence" and the axiomatic concepts are not arbitrary.

This has consequences for all knowledge, not just ethics. The basis of a philosophy is its metaphysics and epistemology, from which one then formulates an ethics and then a politics.

Accepting "commandments" from religious authorities claimed to be intrinsic from a god in place of rational knowledge of moral standards is only one destructive consequence of religious faith. The whole notion of religious duty is anathema to rational understanding of the very source -- in the nature of man as a being who must make choices in order to live -- of the need for ethics in human life, and consequently the role of causality in ethics, which any duty ethics replaces. See Ayn Rand's essay "Causality versus Duty" in her anthology Philosophy: Who Needs It?.

They aren't just telling us to accept commandments as a standard of ethical choice that may or may not happen to sometimes agree depending on whose arbitrary commandment attributed to a god. That is destructive enough, but they corrupt the whole concept of ethics and its purpose. It isn't just a "less secure foundation".

The religious ethics of faith and duty is from there hopelessly destructive in formulating a political philosophy, not only in political principles that may or may not be adopted for the wrong reasons in agreement with rational principles, but which fundamentally undermines the very possibility of a rational system of political principles, conceding rationality in politics to the statists and pragmatists who constantly tell us they have the rational approach.

Someone once said, "History: lies agreed upon." One CAN look at look at religion in the same perspective -- most don't choose to. Religion at it's most basic is a set of rules. These rules do two things. They dictate how we are to interact with a deity and how we are to interact with each other. Most religions also have a creation myth, most of which include a pre-existing conscious omnipotent being. Most include belief in a post "life" experience.
The only REQUIREMENT of a viable religion is the set of rules for how to interact with each other. If in reality there is not deity, rules for interacting with him/her/it are moot. These rules are seen as specific cultures. The problem is CULTURES CLASH. If your culture/religion says "live and let live" you will not do well when you clash with a culture/religion that mandates "convert or die."
At this most basic level no one can avoid "religion;" it dictates how you are treated by others and how you are expected to treat others. Objectivists (which I am not really well enough versed in to comment on the content) are as subject to the "rules of engagement" as our Catholics, Seventh Day Adventists, Muslims, Hindus, Daoists, Taoists, Buddhists or atheists.
The most important thing is there is not separation of "Church and State." State is the natural and logical consequence of Church/Religion. State has to be subservient to the "rules" (for interacting with each other) that are religion.