On ‘The Fountainhead’: Man living godly is the only real proof of God

Howard Roark: “I didn’t know it then, but it’s because I’ve never believed in God.”

Henry Cameron: “Come on, talk sense.”

Howard Roark: “Because I love this earth. That’s all I love. I don’t like the shape of things on the earth. I want to change them.”

Henry Cameron: “For whom?”

Howard Roark: “For myself.”

~ The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand

Question: When asked by Cameron about his career choice, why did Roark (the protagonist in Ayn Rand’s ‘The Fountainhead’) say, “I’ve never believed in God,” while he seems to be the one who actually does?

Acharya Prashant: Most people blame of shape of things on Earth, on God. Most people say, “God is the father, the creator. So if things on the Earth are ugly, who is responsible? God.”

And this is accepted.

Isn’t this a great fad in Spirituality, — ‘Accept things as they are’? When you say, “Accept things as they are,” what you are saying is, “After all it is God’s wish, how can you not accept it?”

“If things are totally rotten, why are they totally rotten? Who is the prime mover? God. He is the doer, He did it. And if He did it, who are you to not to accept His wish, His designs? In fact you must accept what it is and say, ‘Whatever God does is for the good’.”

Roark is demolishing that myth. He is saying, “I love this Earth and I fully well know that how man lives on Earth, and what shape he gives to the Earth, what life he spends on the Earth. The entire quality of his existence is not dictated by any agency outside of himself.”

Man has an inherent Freedom.

Man has the capacity to choose.

And man must take responsibility of how he is living his life, what he has turned the Earth into.

In fact there can be only one purposeful action, and that purpose has to be — demolition.

In fact I feel impelled to say this — when I was in the process of quitting my corporate career and moving to teaching, I was asked by many people, “Why are you doing this?” I would say many things, but the one thing that I…