In this AR (author review) series, of which this is a first post, I will be reviewing authors. My goal in this is two-fold: to convince myself that I have saved time not reading an author because of the inferior quality of their thoughts; and also, to engage in a debate of sorts with that author for the benefit of the good reader.

Today, the victim of my incisive criticism is Ayn Rand (or more accurtately, Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum). Now, a discerning thinker might object: but how can you criticize someone you haven’t read? Our answer is: do we need to befriend someone whose manners in the first few minutes of our acquaintance repulsed us? Time is gold, so a few paragraphs illustrating her thoughts would provide enough ammunition for a full-scale rubbishing.

Here is a golden one. In the preface to her Fountainhead, she wrote:

  The possibly misleading sentence     
  is in Roark's speech:    
  "From this simply necessity  
  to the highest religious   
  abstraction, from the wheel   
  to the skyscraper, everything   
  we are and everything we have    
  comes from a single attribute   
  of man - the function of his   
  reasoning mind."       

  This could be misinterpreted to  
  mean an endorsement of religion   
  or religious ideas. I remember   
  hesitating over that sentence,   
  when I wrote it, and deciding   
  that Roark's and my atheism, as   
  well as the overall spirit of   
  the book, were so clearly established   
  that no one would misunderstand    
  it, particularly since I said   
  that religious abstractions    
  are the product of man's mind,   
  not of supernatural revelation.

That did it for me. You see, if you are someone like me, you catch the logical fallacy or cognitive error even if it eludes the person who said or wrote it. What is the ‘it’ here? Note how she elevates the ‘reasoning mind’ as the ultimate quasi-origin. The first inconsistency is this: if the reasoning mind can create skycrapers and wheels, how can it be wrong when it originates religion abstractions? Either wheels and skyscrapers are useless (or fake) if we accept Rand’s idea that religion is a mere ‘invention’, or since they are not, then why would a ‘reasoning mind’ even begin to contemplate such an ‘invention’? This betrays muddled, amateurish philosophastery on her part. No wonder no serious philosophers took her seriously (much to her disappointment; but she did persuade a few young and gullible people…).

Another inconsistency in her formulation is in assigning more power and role to the ‘reasoning mind’ than our minds actually deserve. She takes the ‘reasoning mind’ to be the end in itself, whereas greater minds than hers have subjugated reason to a higher goal: that is general knowledge and valid inferences leading to specific and useful Knowldedge. Leibnitz’s ‘why is there something rather than nothing?’ clearly places the ‘reasoning mind’ in the category of a tool that is employed in the service of some end–and not an end unto itself. In fact, he elaborates on this elsewhere as well: ’the mechanical view of nature’ as ’extended matter’ is not ‘sufficient to explain anything; and that hence the conception of a metaphysical something else, which is not extended, and which we may call force, must be added to that view.’ (Leibnitz and Kroeger, 30)

The next one, and this is a golden one, she claims ‘religious abstractions’ are the product of a ‘reasoning mind’. In this, she contradicts herself but also betrays her ignorance of what religious ‘abstractions’ really are. She lumps all religious experience into one, so that it creates an easy us-vs-them field. But there are so many different kinds of religions and each one has its own particular and different ‘abstractions’. Furthermore, the question of basis has been ignored. On what basis does the ‘reasoning mind’ invent ‘religious abstractions’? In other words, she’s saying we invent fake stories (she tries to avoid appearing too aggressive by calling them ‘abstractions’) that we tend to believe. This Gödelian though: if the mind is so unreliable to believe something itself invented, then the mind is unreliable. But she relies on the very mind to make her assertions!

Similarly, if some religions are based on logic and rationality (as is Islam, in fact. An objective reading of the Noble Quran would reveal a supremely logical foundation), wouldn’t a ‘reasoning mind’ want to seek it? If so true ‘reasoning minds’ go to real religions, and not vice versa. To claim that religion is the product of a man’s mind is to claim ChatGPT (AI engine) is capable of originality and creativity.

Yet, AI simply takes what is already there, and processes all that for output. No human ‘reasoning mind’ is, likewise, capable of inventing religion because it is outside the human scope (so to speak). Indeed, by this definition, invented religions (you can think about a few) cannot qualify as true religions because the fundamental question of origin has not been properly answered. Given any human who claims to have discovered a religion (like Ron Hubbard who invented Scientology), it simply suffices to actually use our ‘reasoning minds’ and ask, but how did he know? What makes him the ‘knower’?

The pseudo-philosophaster Rand likes to brag that she too knows, like Hubbard, but on the other extreme: she claims she knows where ‘religious abstractions’ come from. But then the same question applies: and how does she know? Must we take her word for it because she wrote a book or two and read a few bad translations of Aristotle when she was a teenager? That’s it?

Doesn’t she realize that although she is averse to the idea of the ‘supernatural’, everything in this world is supernatural? Even nature itself! You throw a seed into the groun and up grows a large tree. Just like in the fairy stories–but now and here it is not a story but our reality. Since we are mysterious, marvelous and fantastic beings there is nothing ’natural’ about us. Indeed, this connotaton of ’nature’ is Marxist (and unfortunate) in that reality is defined as only what is there and seen or traced. Thus, according to materialists, nature is real, but what cannot be seen or traced is not real or does not exist.

Haven’t they forgotten that they cannot forever see or trace exactly how memories are created and stored in the brain? It is as ‘supernatural’ as you like, and yet, it is real, because it is being proved everyday in ourselves and others around us. Reality is that, which is true, which occurs. But just because we can’t see it, or does not occur for us, or we can’t trace it, it does not make it any less real. Our Saint of Balkh, Mawlawi wrote (see Abghari for a detailed discussion): ‘It is not the fault of the sun if the blind cannot see it’, meaning just because you close your eyes so that you don’t see the sun, it does not follow that the sun is not there.

Religion is something higher than the ‘reasoning mind’ so our minds are not capable to ‘produce’ it if it is a real religion (and not a cult). True religions can be understood, initially, through logic and reasoning (they should, too, or else they are cults or fake) but it does not stop there; the higher levels of a true religion are beyond ‘yes and no’ and qil-o-qaal (cognos et logos); while true religion is understandable to basic logical extents, it stretches farther than the reaches of the mortal but reason-loving mind of humans.

Just as emotions are higher form of reasoning, so is religion an even higher form of experience that is, interestingly, solidly based on both reason and emotions (for the fallacy of emotionless religiousity, see Charlotte Brönte’s Jane Eyre, the last few chapters where a religious missionary debates with Eyre.). In other words, although religion did not originate from our minds, our minds are capable, to a limited extent, of understanding it, and more generally feeling the need for it: this is why all over the world you see various races and tribes practicing some form of religion (even if not true or superstition-based). Even most atheists subscribe to supernaturalism more than they care to admit. In fact ‘71% of atheists hold at least one supernatural belief’(Lawton, 14). And where does that leave Rosenbaum?

Works Cited

Abghari, Nahid. Commentary on Mathnavi 1: A Fresh Approach to the Foundation of Theoretical Mysticism (Persian Edition). Bange Ney, 2016.

Brontë, Charlotte, and Lutz. Jane Eyre (Fourth Edition) (Norton Critical Editions). W. W. Norton, 2016.

Lawton, Graham. “Most Atheists Believe in the Supernatural.” New Scientist, vol. 242, no. 3233, Elsevier BV, June 2019, p. 14. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0262-4079(19)31013-9.

Leibnitz, G. W., and A. E. Kroeger. “LEIBNITZ’S THEODICY.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, vol. 7, no. 4, 1873, pp. 30–42. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25665845. Accessed 22 Jan. 2023.

Rand, Ayn. The Fountainhead (Centennial Edition HC). Zaltbommel, Netherlands, Van Haren Publishing, 2005.