Culture And Society

Tara Smith Discusses Her New Article on Religious Exemptions

A new article by Tara Smith, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin and BB&T Chair for the Study of Objectivism, highlights her recent interest in the subject of religious exemptions in the law. “Religious Liberty or Religious License? Legal Schizophrenia and the Case against Exemptions,” published in the Journal of Law & Politics, “seeks to demonstrate that religious exemptions are unjustified in theory and corrosive, in practice,” according to the article’s abstract.
Culture And Society

If There’s No God, Murder Isn’t Wrong?

In a PragerU video, Dennis Prager claims that if God does not exist, then there is no objective basis for morality. Prager, and those who agree with him, should listen to Objectivist philosopher Onkar Ghate’s talk “Religion and Morality,” in which he argues that it is the belief in God that undermines objective morality. If God is the source of morality, Ghate points out, then murder is good — whenever God says it is.
Culture And Society

Salon’s Shady Interview With Sam Harris

Sam Harris is one of the few intellectuals today willing to speak frankly about the Islamic totalitarian movement. I agree broadly with his account of how the movement is fundamentally animated by religious ideas (rather than primarily political or economic grievances). Moreover, Harris has been courageous and articulate in fighting the smear of “Islamophobia,” a dishonest term intended to silence debate and marginalize dissenting views.

Further Reading

Ayn Rand | 1957
For the New Intellectual

The Moral Meaning of Capitalism

An industrialist who works for nothing but his own profit guiltlessly proclaims his refusal to be sacrificed for the “public good.”
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Ayn Rand | 1961
The Virtue of Selfishness

The Objectivist Ethics

What is morality? Why does man need it? — and how the answers to these questions give rise to an ethics of rational self-interest.
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