John_Galt_Lives

So then, I take it that, in your view, "everything sacred about the Temple," is it's secrecy? As I remember, the website of which I spoke gives the information in a very neutral, factual way. I don't remember any derogatory, or "snickering" comments.

Shhh! We're not supposed to talk about the endowment ceremony. No LDS here will tell you anything specific about the endowment, nor will the LDS.org site. There's at least one website that tells you about the ceremony and how it has changed over the years, but you'll have to find it on your own if you want to know, because I don't think a link will be welcome here. Good luck.

Yes, that would be an accurate statement. Objectivists regard being truly good as possible to every individual man or woman without the assistance of any "supernatural" beings. For an Objectivist, people are not pathetic dependents on God, Allah, Jesus, Zeus, or Ra, but autonomous and capable of making their own moral decisions, and of making their own lives happy.

Universeman, you might find this interesting. The following is a recounting of an event in the life of an acquaintance of mine (unsubstantiated faith demoting experience removed by moderator, please read site rules) Just a disclaimer: I don't know the guy who posted this well, so I don't know that this is true by first-hand experience. But it sounds VERY plausible to me, and I have no reason to believe that it is made up.

Actually, Ayn Rand specifically wrote in her nonfiction that humans are born tabula rasa, (without any inherent knowledge or moral tendencies.) Also, it is difficult to see how one could get from her novels that humanity is inherently good. In Atlas Shrugged, the number of good people is truly dwarfed by those who display immorality, depravity, or evil of one sort or another. This disparity in numbers frequently leads people to the opposite misconception: that Rand was a misanthropic elitist. (ie. that she hated everyone who wasn't of exceptional cognitive ability.) But, actually, the difference between the two groups is one of choice: the good people are those who think independently, and use their minds to the best of their ability, whereas the immoral are those who abandoned their minds to their corrupt, anti-reason culture, or actively engaged in attempts to get other people to surrender their minds. Ayn Rand's novels have both good characters and bad characters of higher intelligence, and good and bad characters of lower intelligence. Their intelligence is not the determinant of their moral status, and neither are they innately good for being biologically human. If my understanding of Marxist Communism is correct, they actually believe(d) that human nature, as it stands now, is corrupt. This corruption is generated by the "class system" that is an inevitable development of historical/economic forces. The current corruption of human nature and the class system is what, to them, necessitate the historical stage called the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. This dictatorship will forge human nature anew, and instead of being "naturally greedy bourgeoisie, and exploited proletariat," people will become naturally "good," (ie. altruistic) and will have no material needs beyond a basic level of sustenance and comfort. They will all be able to live by the maxim, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." (I must say that this final state reminds me a good deal of the way the Biblical apostles of Jesus behaved--minus proselytizing for God/Jesus, of course. And I fail to see how the ethic of selflessness in Christianity is consistent with the ethic of self-interest/profit-motive underlying capitalism.) As for the movie, it was okay as current movies go; but as an adaptation of the novel, it is fairly poor. This goes both for the depth of the theme and, especially, the characterization.