So I was talking to a friend about Nietzsche earlier today at a pub, and he said something staggeringly insightful. 

We were talking about the death of god and the predicted implications that Freddy had mentioned, and how they were manifesting themselves in the modern world.

What he meant by the death of god (to clarify, because many misinterpret this) is that the old christian god was no longer compatible with the world as we know it. His prediction in the madman parable was that people would try to cling to him still long after he would no longer work with our society.

On the one hand you have the fundamentalist christians, who seemingly have abandoned christian morality in the name of their god (presumably, for expedience in our capitalist world). They try to let the society change without changing their cosmology.

On the other hand you have secular humanists, who by and large have essentially the conventional christian morality (with tweaks), but without the christian god. They cling to the dead god as well, according to nietzschean thought. They try to let their cosmology change without wanting to change their society.

I thought it was strange that you didn’t see more atheist libertarians, as Rand herself was. His insight was to do with meaning. He said that the christians didn’t need any more meaning from morality; that it was good enough for them to think that their god loved them. The humanitarians however can not have that notion, and so the only way for them to know that what they are living a worthy life is by clinging to the morality. It is shocking, how much that explains.

Not of course to compare the two in any other respect. Humanists are great and fundamentalist christians are irritating. It is just interesting to look at the both of them from this perspective.