Yep -- a premise. Another premise is that the universe has always existed and will always exist. Which is correct? I do not know. But the latter seems simpler to me.

I'm a Christian and have been following Ayn Rand since I was 16 (many, many decades ago.)

Don't see where a belief, or not holding a belief in God, has much bearing on common sense.

I'm unclear of the relationship of your reply to my comment. I'm quite well aware of the derivation of A=A. I'm not sure what AR would like and I don't know that she ever asked anyone to blindly believe anything. And I'm pretty sure that the word time defined as a measurement made by a clock was made well before Einstein.

I'm not certain what else can be responded to i your reply.

I answered this question on another post and was soundly abused by a number of people - and supported by others.

Since I'm well known for not learning my lesson and since I don't care if others disagree with me, I'll have another go at it.

Regardless if you choose follower, fan, supporter, admirer or comprehender of Ayn Rand, I'll agree that you can be any of these things and still believe in the god of your choice.

I still maintain, however, that you cannot be an Objectivist without being an atheist. You may be a not-Objectivist, you may accept many tenets of Objectivism, you may even be a capitalist, but Objectivism requires the denial of mysticism, superstition and the supernatural. Belief in a god requires acceptance of the supernatural and mysticism.

dansail wrote, "atheists and non-atheists follow her philosophy according to their own reasoning." I'll support this statement only if it is changed to "atheists and non-atheists follow her philosophy according to their own UNDERSTANDING" or even "according to their own reasons," but because Objectivism has its own reasoning, so to speak, you are not free to follow your own reasoning and still be an Objectivist.

What a GREAT Site. Thank you, Thank you.

How did the creator come to exist?

I am. But not perfect on any side. It's MY reason and MY soul - nothing could be more selfish. :-)

No atheist do not confuse god and religion. If god is a mind that controls reality then you are making the mistake of the primacy of consciousness. Existence exists independently of consciousness. According to your belief, existence only exists because of consciousness. That is your error. This is why you can't believe in god and Objectivism at the same time.

Ultimately it doesn't work, that is the problem.

It's easy to accept and subscribe to her economic philosophy without engaging in her personal atheism. Atlas Shrugged is a very realistic account of the failure of socialism, and ones belief or not in God doesn't change how people behave in a given economic system or circumstance.

I am sure you know far more about AR than I do. However, you can not know precisely how existence should be dealt with if you do not understand it. You can not understand it if you do not know how it came about or where it is going. Which means we can not know for sure and we just have to do the best we can with what we can determine. So, I tend to think there likely is no God as we typically think of him, but I can not deny that I do not understand the majority of existence so I can not definitively rule God out either.

I would love to hear his input. Thanks

I don't know about this...there are a great number of scientists out there who hold religious beliefs. Don't ask me how it works, but it does.

We can all see what you just wrote... even if we don't want to...it's still there.

Any Rand writes about being influences by Aristotle and she explains the answer to your question.

'A is A' is the first of three principles of logic given by Aristotle. And it was Aristotle who first deduced logically that God exists. Why AR accepted and took Aristotle's logic and rejected some of his arguments is beyond my understanding.

If being a follower of AR means believing only what she believed, I am not a follower. AR would like followers that believe blindly what she said? I strongly doubt that. However, I'm a follower of her enthusiasm for reason and logic. And I'm catholic. Yes, it is possible. I have seen in this forum way too many misconceptions about christianity. I won't teach or convert anyone, I just say some people here talk about what they don't know with such emotional tone that I doubt they are thinking at all when it comes to this subject.

Time was defined by Einstein as the thing that is measured by a clock. And then he demonstrated how time and space are conected... just to make a precision.

I am a very odd combination- objectivist, non-Christian, pro-life, creationist

.Re 5) Yes, but the topic of this page is religion.

Re 1) My definition is that which is more than JUST the physical which bring us to 2) Which has debatable memories and incidents but per 5) we should not get into it on this site.

Re 3) True as to no proof, wanted to stress that there are many belief systems that address spiritual existence and as to citing, at 80, I have read a lot of stuff, if it was important I would search for it.

Re 4) Not what I wanted to imply, by simplicity I was thinking of how inadequate it is to address the broad spectrum of theological questions.

In the late 40’s A social studies teacher, in describing his visit to a mental institution said he was instructed that the two topics absolutely not to be discussed with inmates were relatives and religion.

Probably good advice for here too. (:-)

The author of Soul of Atlas, Mark Henderson, stops by the Gulch once in a while. I'll send him a quick note and ask him to drop in.