Sam Harris: Letter to a Christian Nation
Sam Harris, author of he End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, has written Letter to a Christian Nation.
His new book is guaranteed to make a lot of people angry. That is, if they’ll read it.
[tease]
I’m not saying that people should be jailed for their religious beliefs. I am saying, however, that certain beliefs are so lacking in merit that there should be no question of our “respecting” them. People who claim to be certain about things they cannot be certain about should meet resistance in our discourse. This happens quite naturally on every subject but religion.
For instance, a person who believes that Elvis is still alive is very unlikely to get promoted to a position of great power and responsibility in our society. Neither will a person who believes that the holocaust was a hoax. But people who believe equally irrational things about God and the bible are now running our country. This is genuinely terrifying. We must find a way of criticizing and marginalizing bad ideas, even when they come under the cloak of religion.