Is Satan evil?

[genkaus]

She never said otherwise. Randian Objectivism has become a religion just as she said.

You misread the argument. I was arguing against the idea that books are written as a way for the author to work out their ideas about morality and it is when people take it too seriously that it turns into a religion. Irrespective of whether or not Randian objectivism has become a religion or how much its principles deviate from the actual objectivism, the book itself had its morality laid out from the start and the question of taking the book too seriously doesn't come up because even without it, the principles laid out there are meant to be taken seriously - according to the author and followers.

As for the rest of the post, we could argue about the finer points of Randism vs Objectivism, but that would derail the subject of the thread

[thesummerqueen]

Erm...laying the morality out from the start doesn't make it any less an exploration except in the talent of the writer to introduce rebutting views or not. Ayn did this in a very shitty manner.

[CapnAwesome]

Well Atlas Shrugged is similar to the bible. It's really long and really boring.

[genkaus]

Erm...laying the morality out from the start doesn't make it any less an exploration except in the talent of the writer to introduce rebutting views or not. Ayn did this in a very shitty manner.

It makes it less of an exploration and more of a lecture.

---

Well Atlas Shrugged is similar to the bible. It's really long and really boring.

That is a matter of perspective.

[EGross]

It also does Atheists no favors as Christians already somehow associate us with Satanism. It's also fairly silly biblically. Satan tortures Lot (with Gods permission) in the old testament and kills his relatives. In the new Testament Satan tries to prevent the salvation of mankind. If you accept a biblical worldview Satan is obviously the bad guy. What should be said is that the biblical worldview is totally against modern morality.

There used to be a group called the Cathars, who believed that since their god is good, and since the god of the old testament had done bad things, and since the earth is evil, then those of the old testament were not only evil, but their god was really Satan! After all, if you are not pro-christ, you are anti-christ.

While that world view didn't last, some of the baggage that came with it remained, which is that if you are not pro-christ, then you love his evil twin brother (according to Christian mythology, Lucifer was the twin brother of Jesus, and they had a falling out, and there was a Christian sect for awhile that used to pray to Jesus and Lucifer to try to get them to work things out).

Important note: if your god is really so screwed up that you need to intervene on his behalf, it's time to get a new god, or, better yet, give that psychological dependance up altogether.

[Jackalope]

There used to be a group called the Cathars [...] While that world view didn't last [...]

Unsurprising that they didn't last, given that they were massacred at the behest of the Catholic church at Montségur in 1243-1244, and the few that remained were annihilated over the next several decades.

[thesummerqueen]

When Rand got up to give a lecture on Objectivism, that was a lecture. If she worked a lot of those same theories into the book, then she did what many other authors have done...albeit in a stunningly boring fashion...and it was still a novel exploring (in a rather biased and cumbersome way) her ideas on morality.

I'm not sure what you were reading, but I've given lectures (only to classmates, but still) and I've read a plethora of books. Atlas Shrugged remains a book.

---

I'm still not sure where the argument about this is. She took her principles and placed them in a (shitty but still defined) plot. This wasn't a point by point analysis of what she thought, but a poor attempt at using fiction to describe her thoughts, ideas and values. Because she was less subtle than the rather unsubtle Tolkien, or C.S. Lewis...or Stephanie Meyer...is no reason to say that she isn't exploring her values in a fictional setting, nor is the fact that she concludes right back where she started. The good thing is that just like discussing the motives of Sauron and how we feel about them, we can discuss the motives of Dagny, Hank, and all the other characters and why we don't agree with them. Even better, we can discuss how the author treated both characters and the themes in the story, because even bad authors conjure up distinctive character personalities whom we might feel deserved a better "mother" or "father" - which is how I often feel about Rand's novels.

If you have a problem with how it's done, please defer your complaints to the "Rand is a shitty writer" hotline. Meanwhile, please make note that she had a plotline, she had protagonists whose values and ideas were challenged by other characters, and she had a fictional setting. Seems like a novel exploring her whacked out ideas to me.