No to Ayn Rand!

Ayn Rand saw herself as a rationalist, one who uses empiricism and reason to get to the truth. She  was hardly that as she used  her unconfirmed intuitions to make for the Truth as she declared her system as complete and tolerated no deviance as her heir Leonard Peikoff also does.
 Her egoism was nothing new but just her own view with her idiosyncratic definitions of egoism and altruism. To work, egoism must be universal, presupposing harmony amongst humans. She by definition stated that there are no rational  conflicts amongst people when two people apply for the same job that neither had the right to it and so no conflict.No, that is an ignoratio elenchi-irrelevant- as one wins over the other; that is the nature of the conflict.
 She uses a straw man in defining altruism as one enslaved to society when it only means helping others, and mutual altruism is no more than mutual back- scrubbing!
Our Social Contract provides for taxing for the benefit of all, and so she here makes the libertarian straw man of taking from the rich to give to the  poor, and  calling that theft!Government by vote has to establish how much taxation for what form of ensuring the general welfare..

The Skeptic's View

We skeptics find that some natters are settled in the negative completely like creationism, some provisionally like the steady state theory; we find others mainly true like evolution, but provisional in their parts like how much a role natural selection plays in evolution ; and we yet have to find much confirmation on others like the origin of language. We are open-minded but not credulous.
 Climate deniers are hardly skeptics by reason of their not overcoming what the consensus of scientists find to be the evidence. This in not the fallacy of authority, but rather what the inter subjective view is .There surges forth some doubts as to the magnitude up or down. The deniers seem to be reasoning a priori ideologically: some are libertarians who view this this view as due to leftist determination to increase the size of government by giving preference to new energy industries and to tax people even more. Then, too. oil companies don't want to face new competition. Now, why don t they get onto the act?
 Why not see that the new industries will make for more and better jobs?
Now, this is no case of the genetic fallacy but of divulging why people oppose themselves thereto and since their argumentation lack merit. They rest on dubious facts.
  Now, time and money limit what resources we can spend on investigations. Some matters, like creationism only have the extrinsic need to rebut from the false propaganda. And we give no attention to any propose perpetual motion machine!
I find that the supernatural and the paranormal are  of the extrinsic kind; they are what   philosopher Paul Kurtz calls the 'Transcendental Temptation."
However, the late great skeptic,Martin Gardner, was a fideistic deist- wishful thinking!
Let us all discuss how we can better use skepticism and how to combat ignorance about science and how it works!