Evil is as evil does

http://authormichaelprescott.blogspot.com/2005/03/was-ayn-rand-evil.html

Michael Prescott has written an interesting post in which he asks whether or not Ayn Rand was evil.

I don't want to discuss whether Ayn Rand was evil. I will leave that one alone and assume that she was a well meaning individualism. I do think, though, that her philosophy, "Objectivism" was evil. With its focus on greed and hatred of most Christian virtues (such as charity).

This leaves me to wonder. Can a good person promote evil ideas?

I think it is possible. I think that one of the roles of religion is to offer limits to what kind of ideas we can embrace to prevent us from going off the deep end.

Call me intellectually weak, but I like having limit situations (or imperatives) that I have to answer to when I try to solve a problem.

This isn't always easy. It would be fun to believe a lot of bad things (like its ok to only think of myself and not other people) and it might even make my life easier. However, would it make my life better? Probably not.