I agree with Spinoza - if God is real, all-powerful and omnipresent, then God is reality itself

I agree about worship of State but I think it's Platonism vs Aristotelianism, which is slightly broader.

God is the State/self/society (etc) vs God is Nature (or nature's Creator)

God of Mind vs a God of Matter

Leading to: power is control over people ('s minds) vs power is ability to thrive within/control nature

-wnich may seem paradoxical but (Bacon): "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed"

Which to me is the essence of daoism - effortless action - striving not against reality but accepting it

I view Rand (because Aristotelian) as compatible with the best of Christianity (because Thomistic and thus Aristotelian). For a good nonfiction exposition I recommend Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. I think Anthem is the best fiction of hers to get a sense of her philosophy. Anthem can be found free online.

Rand's philosophy, roughly:

1) Metaphysics: only the ordinary world is real

2) Epistemology: we can learn about the ordinary world via observation and reason

3) Ethics: Each individual faces the dilemma of individual survival, and the whole point of ethics is to aid him in doing so; reason is his primary tool so rational self-interest is the essence of ethics

4) Politics: Because rational self-interest is the essence of ethics, men must be left uncoerced and classical liberalism is the correct politics

I agree with her metaphysics and somewhat with her epistemology (I think she is missing action, see "Senses as Perceptual Systems", scientific method, OODA loops).

I think Rand's ethics is just wrong which I've written about at some length, I'll post a reply with that but briefly, survival is impossible - all men must die - so instead we should focus on genetic survival, which provides a basis for pro-family & pro-social "selfishness". Also note selfishness in the Randian sense doesn't have to mean being a prick, the core idea is that my life is for me, that my effort should focus on my own betterment. I recommend Dawkins' The Selfish Gene but ignoring his pleas for post-theist Christian/leftist ethics.

Finally I don't think any sort of God's-eye-view version of politics is coherent. I think political philosophy should be advice for the human individual, not some idealistic notion of shaping society out of clay. So my notion of philsophically correct politics is an extension of Nietzsche's master/slave dichotomy which resolves the tension by introducing "trader" as the synthesis and correct role to play. (Something Rand also does but with much less focus). The key question becomes not so much what is the best society, but how to disentangle myself from a would-be master.