sam harris

The humanist community assembled many of its leading lights recently to award Richard Dawkins a prize for furthering rational thought. A secular humanist convention is not the witches’ coven that some sheltered theists might expect. I did not see anyone smoking and never heard a profane word. Drinking at the reception was modest by anyone but a teetotaler’s standards, and far less than at the Episcopal fundraiser I’d attended the previous week. Also unlike the Episcopal affair, I did not spot a single same-sex couple. I began to wonder how much fun these people, freed from religion’s rules, were having with their liberty.

Humanists are right to think that there is more to life than atheism, but wrong to think that they are the ones to provide it.

The New Atheists, armed with swords and cudgels, are still doing old-fashioned battle with religion; but they haven’t noticed that the skirmish may have passed them by. Are religion and science poised for a truce?

Does a belief that science and religion can co-exist in harmony disqualify Francis Collins from leading the NIH? Decisively not.

Sam Harris, a leading voice in the so-called New Atheism, believes that religious faith disqualifies a leading scientist from heading the National Institutes of Health. What does this reveal about the ideological prejudices of this brand of secularism?

Does morality come from religion or is it merely “the language games of one’s time”? Are the most basic moral boundaries we evolved that make life easier and less chaotic a reflection of the character of God? If there is no God, or if He doesn’t care about us, then our common morality is still the result of practical, reality-based needs, which also “teach” that a good life depends on the “Do unto others…” ethic.

…as do Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. Upon viewing Bill Maher’s Religulous the author asks: Why are the so-called New Atheists using the archaic and theologically conservative definition of religion pushed by home-schoolers?

In an interview with Bruce Ledewitz on his forthcoming Hallowed Secularism, the law professor tells RD that the so-called New Atheists want to lead secularists, many of whom know very little about religion, into opposition to religion. But for secularism to be healthy, he says, it must learn from the wisdom of the religious traditions.