Author Archives: Tibor R. Machan


About Tibor R. Machan

Machan holds the R. C. Hoiles Chair in Business Ethics & Free Enterprise at Chapman University's Argyros School of B&E and is a research fellow at the Pacific Research Institute (San Francisco, CA) and the Hoover Institution (Stanford University, CA). He is public policy adviser to Freedom Communications, Inc.'s newspapers.

Some Reflections on Whether God Exists

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The first point to take up is what the question asks.  Does it mean: “Is God part of the world, do we have rational–and thus communicable, non-mysterious and not inherently private–justification for believing that the claim is true?”  Or does it mean the somewhat different question, “Is God real?”  And if the latter, what criteria of reality is to be applied to searching out the answer? A problem in approaching the issue is that, as many believers maintain, God is … Read on…

Faiths and Public Affairs

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Former Republican Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum made an impassioned pitch in favor of rejecting the famous doctrine of the separation of church and state.  He made his position clear on the ABC-TV program, This Week, on Sunday, February 26:  “I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute,’’ Santorum noted. “The idea that the church should have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical of the objectives … Read on…

Atlas Shrugged & Ethics

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[This essay formed the basis of a talk at the Atlas Society celebration of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, in Washington, DC, on October 6, 2007] When Ayn Rand titled her collection of writings on ethics The Virtue of Selfishness, she also provided a clear clue to what kind of selfishness she had in mind. With the subtitle, “A New Concept of Egoism.” she put prospective readers on notice that by using the term … Read on…

Ayn Rand and I – Part 3 (of Three)

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This essay is a slightly revised version of a chapter from Tibor Machan’s memoir, The Man Without a Hobby (Hamilton Books, 2006). It had an earlier life as an essay in Liberty Magazine, although in a much-shortened version. IN RETROSPECT, despite my strong desire to connect with Rand and her clique, I am glad I was blackballed. I might have become a dependent as so many others did. I am glad, too, that being cut off was not so devastating … Read on…

Ayn Rand and I – Part 2 (of Three)

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This essay is a slightly revised version of a chapter from Tibor Machan’s memoir, The Man Without a Hobby (Hamilton Books, 2006). It had an earlier life as an essay in Liberty Magazine, although in a much-shortened version. When I had been at Claremont McKenna College for a while and had begun writing for the student newspaper to promulgate as best I could the ideas that I picked up from Rand and found sensible, a few of us on campus … Read on…

Ayn Rand and I – Part 1 (of Three)

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This essay is a slightly revised version of a chapter from Tibor Machan’s memoir, The Man Without a Hobby (Hamilton Books, 2006). It had an earlier life as an essay in Liberty Magazine, although in a much-shortened version. BECOMING AN atheist was not an easy decision to live with, at least not at first. I struggled with it for months. I had a hard time ridding myself of the habit of crossing myself when passing a church. I also felt … Read on…

Faith and Moral Relativism

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A charge that’s often leveled at atheists is that their position encourages moral relativism. Only religion can provide us with morality or ethics that is firm and stable, the charge continues, because, after all, religion rests ethics or morality on God’s word. Yet the very opposite is the case. In America alone there are some 4200 different religions and while many differ from each other minimally, if there are but 20 doctrines that are seriously distinct in what they preach, … Read on…

Thanking the Lord

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Ordinarily I ignore religion, just as I ignore astrology or palmistry. Sure, religion may have great social, even political impact, as a recent issue of The Economist illustrates (November 3-9, 2007). But I have much to do, so I leave religion as a very low “priority” on my daily agenda. Recently, however, I was part of a large group—3000 +/- residents—evacuated from Silverado Canyon, in Southern California’s Orange County, because of very serious threats of major fires and the difficulty … Read on…

Flew’s God

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Editor’s note: The subject of this essay, Anthony Flew, is an 84-year old retired philosopher, living in Reading, England. He famously argued against C.S. Lewis’ Christian apologetics and later declared in The Presumption of Atheism that without evidence for God, atheism is the appropriate stance. He has lately indicated, however, that he is more inclined toward deism, and has even endorsed a petition for the teaching of Intelligent Design in the British science curriculum. On November 4, 2007, Flew was … Read on…

From Atheism to Ethics

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Perhaps the greatest obstacle faced by atheism to becoming popular, or to becoming even palatable, is that most people associate it with amorality, even immorality.  That is because ethics and religion are so closely linked in people’s minds, despite the fact that there really is no reason to believe that religious people are more ethical than atheists. (Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great gives some compelling reasons in support of this idea.)   Why is atheism linked to the alleged … Read on…