You have reiterated some of the exact reasons why I started studying Rand (far after I was a teenager). I noticed that it was extremely difficult to find thorough debates and criticisms of her ideas. Her name brings up the same hostility (or worse, because it is from all "sides") and ad hominem attacks as uttering the names, Rush Limbaugh, or Sarah Palin... (and now Ted Cruz). That always piques my interest, so I delve deeper.
>>it is pretty clear to me that she would like to address all arguements from a rationalist perspective to avoid the larger questions of faith and virtue.
In my reading of her fiction and non-fiction, the questions of faith, values and virtue are all over the place. She also rejected the philosophical camps of rationalism and empiricism. If she were to be pigeonholed by academics though, they'd likely call her an empiricist. But she is mostly ignored by our "wise college professors," best I can tell.
Jonno’s first link at 15 is a good read.
I posted my comment about her trying to lay religous thought aside as fatuous and self serving because she even has you saying “that they often drop the context and reject her conclusion based on a premise that she did not put forward...” where she attempts to dodge the hindrance of atheism by asking all discourse and discussion lay aside religous belief before beginning her “logical” discussion.
Our first amendment is not meant to lay religion outside the public arena, it is meant to foster it in all its mydrid forms.
If modern man sits astride the three legged stool of science, ethics and religion answering what man is allowed to know, what man is allowed to do and what man is allowed to hope then it is simply gaming to ask him to take a leg off the stool prior to sitting down for a discussion and agreement — which is what Rand is doing in your quoted portion.
I remember the first time I read Whittaker Chambers review of Atlas Shrugged and being astonished at it vitrol. That was twenty-five years ago. After the last twenty years, I now think it is reasoned and mild.
Both of them hated Communism and it is indeed true that Rand is more well read and understood than Chambers. But which one understood the best what it was and why it must be fought? In my book it was Chambers.