Even among the non-religious, deep religious faith is often portrayed as a strength and a source of comfort. But there’s at least one atheist who had a diametrically opposite view of the value of religious faith. Ayn Rand was a staunch advocate of reason and an opponent of faith. Consider this passage of hers from the climactic speech near the end of Atlas Shrugged:
[R]eason is an absolute that permits no compromise. . . . [A] concession to the irrational invalidates one’s consciousness and turns it from the task of perceiving to the task of faking reality. . . . [T]he alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind. . . .
To make sense of why Rand would have been so uncompromising in her opposition to faith, it is helpful to explore her distinctive view of what faith demands. As I discussed in a recent webinar, “Should I Go by Reason or by Faith?,” there’s much confusion about what “faith” actually means. For instance, I argue that faith is not the same thing as trusting other people: we can sometimes have good reason to trust other people. At minimum, faith means accepting something as true without reason or evidence.
One believes on faith not out of some positive internal joy, but out of fear of a negative.
Even so, faith is not simply the absence of reason. Why do people accept claims without evidence? For Rand, faith is the product of an emotion. And there’s a particular kind of emotion at the root of what people call faith. It is not some warm fuzzy feeling that imbues one’s mind when one contemplates various religious ideas. On the contrary, one believes on faith not out of some positive internal joy, but out of fear of a negative:
Somewhere in the distant reaches of his childhood, when his own understanding of reality clashed with the assertions of others, with their arbitrary orders and contradictory demands, [a mystic is a man who] . . . gave in to so craven a fear of independence that he renounced his rational faculty. At the crossroads of the choice between “I know” and “They say,” he chose the authority of others, he chose to submit rather than to understand, to believe rather than to think. Faith in the supernatural begins as faith in the superiority of others.1
One thing that I think makes this view of faith plausible is that it helps to explain why many people have the religious beliefs they do. Why, for instance, are there so many Muslims in the Middle East? Have all or even most of them carefully compared different religious texts and faith traditions and coincidentally decided that the Koran is the most reliable? Or did they simply uncritically accept what they were raised to believe? The latter is far more likely. Obviously the same explanation applies to Hindus in India, Jews in Israel, and Christians in contemporary America. Rand’s view that faith is fundamentally a fear of independence helps further distinguish her view from the idea that faith is simply trust we invest in others. Belief from fear is far from being belief that derives from an awareness of others’ expertise or reliability. By the same token, it is also very far from some kind of divine light whereby God directly illuminates truths we contemplate in the privacy of our minds. All of this should help clarify why faith cannot be a source of strength or comfort in Rand’s view. There is nothing empowering or comforting about living a life shackled to one’s tribe, a life of surrendering the “I know” to the “they say.” Neither is deceiving oneself into thinking one is actually peering at eternal truths with the help of an inner light. This is why Rand thought it was crucial that we go by reason — all the time — and never by faith. Have a question? Send it to us.
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (New York: Plume, 1999), 956.
I have a question about this article, "Understanding Ayn Rand's Rejection of Faith." I have been an atheist for a long time, but I appreciate that many people struggle for years with the idea of faith vs. reason. Is it possible that someone still making up their mind about the issue is struggling because they were indoctrinated in faith from their first age of language, they have memories of being happy and valued in their house of worship, and it takes a long time to untangle all the threads of old baggage mixed with actual, lived, meaningful experience?
I believed I had to keep my own counsel on this study because doubts about the validity of immediately taking sides still seem repugnant to Objectivists. I've thought about this issue since 1968, when I heard a young woman, not much younger than me, ask Ayn Rand a question in a lecture, and the poor girl was excoriated for the question and probably left in tears, never to return. I am glad I didn't ask that question, because Ayn Rand saved my life (literally). Still, I think with Ayn Rand gone, and Objectivism making headway very slowly, it's time to create a path to atheism alongside the path to Objectivism. Maybe you've done that, but I've never seen any evidence of a change in thinking, and I would welcome it.
Why did Rand abhor people who were in the process of working through this problem, and while that deep work was going on, why did she abhor them if they dared to say they were agnostic? Shouldn't everyone have their own timetable to work through their own thinking at their own pace?
I can understand Rand being frustrated with the question; she must have been asked many, many times. Truly, many people died in religious purges who could not make up their minds or profess to believe, or weren't ready to speak their mind. I cannot understand the fact that if a person professes indecision about religion, they are not "orthodox" Objectivists! That is, everyone must be an atheist before talking to anyone in an Objectivist context unless they hide their doubt or lie about it.
What is the Ayn Rand Institute's position on the transition to Objectivism, and are people still struggling with the faith problem still unwelcome? I have faith in myself; sometimes I call it the God within, but I'm mature enough to know that if a lifetime of experiences are stored in my subconscious mind, I would be a fool to believe I know everything that's in there down to the last penny found on a sidewalk, let alone open questions that have never been explained.
Here's the real issue: people believe in God because it helps them deal with uncertainty, since the future is open to change. We can have reasonable certainty if we check our perceptions and connect them to our concepts, but it is never 100% certain, as Socrates and Aristotle showed many years ago. Man invented God, and man can abolish God, but although God is a false symbol of certainty, for some he is the voice of their subconscious, their lived experience that pops into their head with a clue about what to do next. I respect the insights from those depths and, of course, investigate and validate as best I can before acting. That is why I think my mind is of two parts: the ego as the commander and controller, and the subconscious, the repository of my deepest self.