Atlas Shrugged
In the book, True Truths: The Shameful Deceit, Arrogance, and Corruption of Religion, many references are made to Ayn Rand’s classic Atlas Shrugged. Following are some of the references made, including page numbers in the books where the quotes can be found.
Pages 31 – 33, True Truths
Page 324, Atlas Shrugged
"So, for example,” said Zach. “You're Catholic. If you believe all that goes with the Catholic religion, and that your faith is true and real, then the basic principles of other religions and beliefs - like, say, Islam or Judaism - cannot be true. Do you agree with that?" asked Zach.
"Yeah, I guess," replied Bryan. “Yes, if the main principles and concepts are true in the Catholic Church, then most other non-Christian religions could not be true."
“I’ll always remember,” Zach continued, “the argument made by my Christian friend in high school when he was telling us about why he believed in Jesus. He kept saying, ‘You just have to have faith.’”
“You just have to have faith,” repeated Bryan.
“You just have to have faith. You just have to have faith. Like some mantra,” Zach said. “You just have to have faith. ”
Zach continued, “As if by repeating himself, it would become true. Well, I don’t mind if people have faith, as long as they first look at the facts and think before they blindly follow the lead of someone else.” Zach pulled a book down from the top shelf and opened it up, and said, “It reminds me of a passage Ayn Rand wrote in Atlas Shrugged (page 324), when one of the corrupt leaders said:
You see, Dr. Stadler, people don’t want to think. And the deeper they get into trouble, the less they want to think. But by some sort of instinct, they feel that they ought to and it makes them feel guilty. So they’ll bless and follow anyone who gives them a justification for not thinking. Anyone who makes a virtue - a highly intellectual virtue - out of what they know to be their sin, their weakness and their guilt.
Zach looked Bryan in the eye and said, “Many, if not all, religions are based on people not thinking and just doing as they are told. Think of all the examples I just asked you about. We know that at least some of these religions teach false beliefs. But people still have believed the lies and deception. I want people to think. That’s the bottom line. I want the truth.”
“It always is with you, Zach,” Bryan acknowledged. “The truth and nothing but the truth.”
“Is there anything else?” Zach asked.
“Any new ideas about a name for this film?” Bryan wanted to know.
“I’m thinking about ‘Truth Be Known’ or ‘Truth Be Told’. Or ‘Truth Seeker’. Maybe ‘True Truths.’ After all, that’s what I’m going after. The truth. As much of the truth as can be known. Maybe something about the shame and deceit in religion, and the corruption and arrogance that surrounds so many religions.”
Zach continued, “So much in religion is about claims and beliefs and teachings. In many cases the only 'proof’ is what people of the church or religious documents tell us to believe. Is that proof really proof or is it more a biased perspective held together by self-interest or self-delusion? If nothing else, the subject of religion really makes you think. Let’s keep thinking and looking for the truth.”
And Zach had every intention of making this project tell the truth. With religion, though, that could be a tall order. So many people say they know the truth. But they can’t all be right. So would he arrive at the truth? Zach didn’t know. He would get as close as he could. He’d do his best.
That’s all he could do.
The time has come for thinkers to think.
*****
Atlas Shrugged, Pages 931 – 936,
True Truths, Pages 42 - 43
MAN’S SEARCH FOR GOD
Zach had been gathering everything he could get his hands on that dealt with the subject of religion. He started with books he had read that had made a lasting impression. He grabbed Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged off the top shelf in his library. Down came The World’s Religions by Huston Smith, out came the Bible he’d had since the 5th grade, out came Sunday School lesson guides from years past. He grabbed Lake Wobegon by Garrison Keillor, Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt, More Than A Carpenter by Josh McDowell, and countless other books dealing with religion. And he pulled down a very interesting book he had recently run across, The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold by Acharya S.
He pulled up internet sites on religion, on Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Atheism. He read and printed articles, highlighted, searched, and amassed a great collection of information. He watched videos, read books and magazines, newspapers and pamphlets. He attended worship services at the Catholic Church, at the Baptist Church, at the Jewish synagogue, and various other temples and churches. He talked to Muslim friends, Hindus, and Mormons. He talked and talked, and listened even more.
As always, he totally immersed himself in the project. He knew the truth would not come find him – he had to search and dig and scrounge – and think – to find the truth.
One of his favorite books, Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, had a special meaning for Zach. He loved the story of how the prime movers of the world made society work, how the inventors and creators and builders of the world were responsible for the greatness of man. That without the thinking and inventiveness and hard work of the prime movers the progress and improvements in our world would cease.
Several excerpts jumped out at Zach as he was deciding what information to include in his film. Much of it came from John Galt’s radio address to the world, where he was explaining the truth about how man and society grew to great strength and prosperity, and who the enemy is. He spoke of truth and the power of the thinking man.
Zach recorded these passages from John Galt's address, and noted the page numbers in parentheses:
Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform. Man has the power to act as his own destroyer - and that is the way he has acted through most of his history. The history of man has been a struggle to deny and destroy his mind. (931)
No, you do not have to think; it is an act of moral choice. (933)
Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man’s only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth.
... but if devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.
That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call ‘free will’ is your mind’s freedom to think or not, then only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.
Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think - not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment - on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict ‘It is.’ Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. (935)
If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man’s only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a moral commandment is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.(936)
Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it - that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life - that the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence. (p. 936)
Zach loved those passages. Like John Galt, he just wanted people to think. Take the information, the facts. Observe, listen, discuss, question and analyze. And THINK. Then make choices. And keep thinking. But don’t let others do your thinking for you. THINK. Because if people keep thinking, there is hope for the future.
*****
True Truths, Pages 43 - 45
Atlas Shrugged, various parts of Pages 944 - 967
Zach loved what Rand said about the truth. He also loved her analysis and interpretations regarding God and religion.
In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand has John Galt say:
The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man’s power to conceive – a definition that invalidates man’s consciousness and nullifies its concepts of existence… Man’s mind, say the mystics of spirit, must be subordinated to the will of God…. Man’s standard of value, says the mystics of spirit, is the pleasure of God, whose standards are beyond man’s power of comprehension and must be accepted on faith…The purpose of man’s life, say both, is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question. His reward, say the mystics of spirit, will be given to him beyond the grave. (944)
For centuries, the mystics of spirit had existed by running a protection racket - by making life on earth unbearable, then charging you for consolation and relief, by forbidding all the virtues that make existence possible, then riding on the shoulders of your guilt, by declaring production and joy to be sins, then collecting blackmail from the sinners. (955)
All your gang of mystics, of spirit or muscle, are fighting one another for power to rule you, snarling that love is the solution for all the problems of your spirit .... (960)
Every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator. A mystic craves obedience from men, not their agreement. He wants them to surrender their consciousness to his assertions, his edicts, his wishes, his whims - as his consciousness is surrendered to theirs… (961)
Zach also noted these passages Rand wrote about free will and the supernatural:
From the rites of the jungle witch-doctors, which distorted reality into grotesque absurdities, stunted the minds of their victims and kept them in terror of the supernatural for stagnant stretches of centuries - to the supernatural doctrines of the Middle Ages, which kept men huddling on the mud floors of their hovels, in terror that the devil might steal the soup they had worked eighteen hours to earn ......who assures you that you have no means of perception and must blindly obey the omnipotent will of that supernatural force ....
But it cannot be done to you without your consent. If you permit it to be done, you deserve it.” (960)
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. His surrender took the form of the feeling that he must hide his lack of understanding, that others possess some mysterious knowledge of which he alone is deprived, that reality is whatever they want it to be, through some means forever denied to him.
From then on, afraid to think, he is left at the mercy of unidentified feelings.
Every period ruled by mystics was an era of stagnation and want, when most men were on strike against existence, working for their barest survival, leaving nothing but scraps for their rulers to loot, refusing to think, to venture, to produce, when the ultimate collector of their profits and the final authority on truth or error was the whim of some gilded degenerate sanctioned as superior to reason by divine right and by grace of a club. The road of human history was a string of blank-outs over sterile stretches eroded by faith and force, with only a few brief bursts of sunlight, when the released energy of the mind performed the wonders you gaped at, admired and promptly extinguished again. (967)
The mystics of both schools, who preach the creed of sacrifice, are germs that attack you through a single sore; your fear of relying on your mind. They tell you that they possess a means of knowledge higher than the mind, a mode of consciousness superior to reason- like a special pull with some bureaucrat of the universe who gives them secret tips withheld from others. The mystics of spirit declare that they possess an extra sense you lack: this special sixth sense consists of contradicting the whole of the knowledge of your five…...demand that you invalidate your own consciousness and surrender yourself into their power.
They claim that they perceive a mode of being superior to your existence on this earth. The mystics of spirit call it ‘another dimension,’ which consist of denying dimensions…. All their identifications consist of negating: God is that which no human mind can know, they say – and proceed to demand that you consider it knowledge – God is non-man, heaven is non-earth, soul is non-body, virtue is non-profit….Their definitions are not acts of defining, but of wiping out. (951)
There is no honest revolt against reason – and when you accept any part of their creed, your motive is to get away with something your reason would not permit you to attempt. (952)
How many people could read these words or think these thoughts, and still allow others to tell them what to do, what to believe, and how to think? As Zach well realized, lots of folks were willing to do just that – assume others are more intelligent and superior than they are, and that others had some inside information from God that they were not privy to. And then, because they were inferior, they would do and believe as these other “superior” beings told them to.
Atlas Shrugged, a classic from over 50 years ago, proved to be a great source of information for Zach. Another great source was a much more recent source, but just as valuable. During his Internet searches, Zach came across a website called www.truthbeknown.com.
The name caught his eye, and directed him to a goldmine of information. At this website, he also found information about a book called The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold. The website and the book were both written by Acharya S. They proved to be very insightful and well researched, and they asked lots of questions and provided many answers for the thinking individual.
As always, Zach dug in and went to work.
*****
True Truths, Pages 89 - 90
Atlas Shrugged, various parts of Pages 942 - 943
BORN A SINNER
“My God is a loving God,” Peter repeated.
“What do you mean by that?” asked Zach.
Peter explained. “I mean what I said. God looks after me and helps me see the light. He takes care of me and my family. I give my love to the Lord, and he will show me the way.”
“So,” said Zach. “It kind of makes your life a lot simpler. Just put your faith in God, and whatever happens happens.”
“Right. He will take care of me. I put my life in his hands. His son came down and died for our sins so that we might live.” Peter so believed what he was saying.
“What sins had you committed, Peter? You seem like a good guy to me,” questioned Zach.
“We are all sinners, Zach, including you and me. Since Adam ate the apple, man has had a sinful nature. We were born sinners. Only through the grace of God can that sin be washed away.”
“Let me get this straight, Peter. Thousands and thousands of years ago, some guy named Adam ate the wrong fruit, and because he did, I am a sinner. I didn’t do anything to deserve being labeled a sinner because of what one of my supposed ancestors did long ago,” said Zach. He never had bought into the idea of Original Sin.
Peter countered. “We were all created by God, and are all a family of God, starting with Adam and Eve. The sins of Adam became the sins of all mankind.”
“So, if my great-great-great grandfather killed a man in cold blood, then I am also guilty of the crime of murder? People should look at me and say, ‘You must suffer for the sins of your ancestor many years ago?’ That would be crazy.”
“Well, that’s different,” said Peter.
“How is it different?” asked Zach.
“It just is.”
“Okay, Peter.” Zach asked, “Why do you believe this story about Adam and Eve anyway?”
“Because it says so in the Bible,” Peter said matter of factly.
“And everything in the Bible is true?” asked Zach.
“Of course. It’s God’s word,” answered Peter.
“So I guess you believe in the idea of Original Sin.”
“Of course,” replied Peter.
Zach remembered his own thoughts on the shakiness of the doctrine of Original Sin, and recalled reading some passages in Atlas Shrugged that had stuck with him.
“Peter,” Zach asked, “have you ever read Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand?”
“No, can’t say that I have.”
Zach pulled out his well-worn paperback copy of Atlas Shrugged, and searched for those passages. He found one passage he had marked that dealt with Original Sin, the idea Christian – and other - churches pass on that, because Adam ate the apple, man is a sinful creature and can only be cleansed by the glory of God. Zach read part of what Ayn Rand had written in Atlas Shrugged:
“Peter, listen to this.”
Your code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice. It demands, as his first proof of virtue, that he accept his own depravity without proof. It demands that he start, not with a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which he is not.…
The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin.…
A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man’s sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man’s nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, just and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. Yet that is the root of your code... (p. 942-3) …
What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge - he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil - he became a moral being...
...
Man’s fall, according to your teachers, was that he gained the virtues required to live. These virtues, by their standard, are his Sin, his evil, they charge, is that he’s man. His guilt, they charge, is that he lives. (p. 943)
*****
References listed at the end of True Truths
Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, (especially pages 931 – 968)