I highly recommend this as a most enlightening and entertaining book. My only complaints are that the editing could have been better, and Dr. Ellis maybe should have put his definition of religion in Chapter 1 instead of 6. But his observations confirm what I have observed in reading Rands' works and listening to friends and others who are Objectivists.



Dr. Ellis brilliantly shows that Objectivism "is a clear-cut religious system, in the classical use of this term, involving the kind of beliefs, practices, and ethical values that at least imply (even if they overtly deny) a divine or superhuman power in the universe and that particularly comprise a faith unfounded on fact. I contend that any dogmatic, fanatical, absolutist, anti-empirical, people-condemning creed is religious because there is no factual evidence on which it is based, and its adherents, in zealously sticking to it, strongly state or imply that some higher power or order of the universe demands that their views are right--and that all serious dissenters to their views are for all time wrong...



"Most capitalists are also included here as religious in nature in that they are true believers in the 'invisible hand' of the market, a clearly religious concept, to solve all of the world's problems if the world will just set all the markets free!"



Criticisms that Dr. Ellis had in some way insulted Ayn Rand through this book or treated her views unfairly are completely off-base. In fact, he goes out of his way to give credit where credit is due. But for a self-proclaimed rational person, Ayn Rand created a philosophy that contains a great deal of irrationality and unsupported dogma that needs to be exposed. The great hypersensitivity of Rand and her followers to the least little bit of criticism reminds one of other fanatical religionists who get upset when their sacred cows are criticized. Says Ellis in Chapter 14:



"If Rand really felt insulted by my referring to her novel heroes as 'utterly impossible humans' then she is indeed easy to insult -- and could use several sessions of rational emotive behavior therapy!"



I myself am an atheist, but I take the realistic view that this does not automatically make me immune from irrationality. The utopian Objectivist ideal of complete rational thinking 100% of the time is irrational because it is impossible. Human beings are both rational and emotional and also fallible. To create or stick to a rational philosophy even more than half the time, takes a lot of self-discipline, self-reflection and humility. Paradoxically, in order to make rational decisions a good deal of the time, it requires that one be humble enough to accept the reality of one's very human tendency toward irrationality in order to be vigilant against it. Without that, you condemn people for the specks in their eyes but fail to take the log out of yours and might even end up like Ayn Rand: depressed, smoking cigarettes and wearing a gold, dollar-sign broach.

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