That’s what Billy Beck sometimes calls her, especially when talking in code to those of us who know what it means. I’d recommend checking out Billy’s post and the other two articles he links, first here, and then here.

This is timely, because as you might note, my two previous entries on this blog have involved an old friend who accuses me thusly:

This is a godless philosophy, a philosophy of atheism at its core.  It says "who are you to tell me how to live?" as if there were no absolute higher than man’s personal opinion to call on.  This is nothing but the Market preaching in your ear.  It is Ayn Rand atheism.

Well, as you’ll learn if you did the homework I gave you in the first paragraph, the phenomenon of people condemning Ayn Rand who’ve never actually read or studied her is legion. As you may have guessed, my friend is no exception. I finally had to tell him that I would no longer debate with him until he digs into Rand first hand. These debates always end up there, so it’s just about time. He has agreed, so we’ll see how that goes. Here’s what I sent him away with:

I never really had deeply emotional responses to great art until I became an atheist. Morality was never so important to me until I became an atheist. Until you fully grasp what that apparent contradiction means, you know nothing important about Rand.

For those who still are not going to read her, here’s a clue: all materialists are atheists, but not all atheists are materialists (materialism has nothing to do with shopping).