* Ongoing Dialogue ~ Andrew Sullivan & Sam Harris

God is Not a Moderate

Is Religion 'Built Upon Lies'?

Best-selling atheist Sam Harris and pro-religion blogger
Andrew Sullivan debate God, faith, and fundamentalism.

Most Americans oppose violence spurred by religious fundamentalism, but few agree on how to address it. In books like The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation and essays, author Sam Harris contends that religion itself--not its more extreme forms--is to blame.

Beginning January 16, 2007, Harris has been debating blogger and author Andrew Sullivan of The Conservative Soul (website) in a no-holds-barred blogalogue. The dialogue continues here.

* The Virus of Religious Moderation

Sam Harris: The Truthdig Interview
by Blair Golson

The most controversial aspect of my book has been this criticism I make of religious moderates. Most people think that while religious extremism is problematic and polarizing, religious tolerance is entirely blameless and is the remedy for all that ails us on this front.

But religious moderates are giving cover to fundamentalists because of the respect that moderates demand of faith-based talk. Religious moderation doesn’t allow us to say the really critical things we must say about the abject stupidity of religious fundamentalism. And as a result, it keeps fundamentalism in play, and fundamentalists make very cynical and artful use of the cover they’re getting by the political correctness in our discourse.

You also say religious moderation closes the door to more sophisticated approaches to spirituality, ethics and the building of strong communities. What did you mean by that?

Religious moderation is just a cherry-picking of scripture, ultimately. It is just diluted Iron Age philosophy. It isn’t a 21st century approach to talking about the contemplative life, or spiritual experience, or ethical norms, or those features that keep communities strong and healthy.

Religious moderation is a relaxation of the standards of adherence to ancient taboos and superstitions. That’s really all it is. Moderate Christians have agreed not to read the bible literally, and not read certain sections of it at all, and then they come away with a much more progressive, tolerant and ecumenical version of Christianity. They just pay attention to Jesus when he’s sermonizing on the Mount, and claim that is the true Christianity. Well that’s not the true Christianity. It’s a selective reading of certain aspects of Christianity. The other face of Christianity is always waiting in the book to be resurrected. You can find the Jesus of Second Thessalonians who’s going to come back and hurl sinners into the pit. This is the Jesus being celebrated in the Left Behind novels. This is the Jesus that half the American population is expecting to see come down out of the clouds.

truthdig

The Virus of Religious Moderation
London Times (PDF)

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* Sam Harris Calls for Rational Thinking & Living

Sam Harris' Website

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

Faith: The very ideal of religious tolerance—born of the notion that every human being should be free to believe whatever he wants about God—is one of the principal forces driving us toward the abyss, p.15

Religion: ... much of the world's population could be annihilated on account of religious ideas that belong on the same shelf with Batman, p.129

The Future of Reason: Reason is nothing less than the guardian of love, p.19

Sam Harris boldly challenges the influence that faith has on public life in our nation.

"For those of us who feel depressed by this country’s ever increasing unification of church and state, and the ever decreasing support for the sciences that deliver knowledge and reduce ignorance, this little book is a welcome hit of adrenalin."

— Marc Hauser, Professor of Psychology, Biology, and Biological Anthropology at Harvard University, author of Moral Minds

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