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#1623·Dennis Hackethal, about 2 months agoIf I get her right, one could in principle hold a rational belief which is false —a belief in god, say— so long as this belief stems from a sincere effort to explain the world and so long as the believer is ready to jettison his belief if he were to think of some reason why it cannot be true.
A belief in god is a form of mysticism. Rand writes that rationality “means the rejection of any form of mysticism […].” So a belief in god is not just false, it’s irrational. It’s also implausible that someone could hold on to as blatantly false an idea as the existence of god without some refusal to look into the matter critically.
This has to take time into context. At one point, a belief in god was all that we had. We didn't have hard to vary explanations. As such, a person might have a belief in god as the only worldview currently. So it isn't irrational for that person, or people back in the days, to believe in god.