So, by and large, I don't take the question seriously - I really can't see the sense in it - though I appreciate some people do.
Sam Harris (author of “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”) clearly does take the question seriously. And, in "An Atheist Manifesto" he sets out his stall.
One of the greatest challenges facing civilization in the 21st century is for human beings to learn to speak about their deepest personal concerns--about ethics, spiritual experience and the inevitability of human suffering--in ways that are not flagrantly irrational. Nothing stands in the way of this project more than the respect we accord religious faith. Incompatible religious doctrines have balkanized our world into separate moral communities--Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, etc.--and these divisions have become a continuous source of human conflict. Indeed, religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it was at any time in the past.So, what's the solution? For Harris, it seems, the answer lies in some grand public inquisition:-
[T]he 260 million Americans (87% of the population) who claim to never doubt the existence of God should be obliged to present evidence for his existence and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day.If this is meant to be a serious suggestion then I'm wrong to call it blustering rhetoric, but the idea of putting God on trial for Human Rights abuse is neither original nor realistic, and it seems unnecessarily confrontational. But far be it from me to get in the way when Harris is in full swing.
Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world’s suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life is--and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all.To which I would add: Only a certain type of atheist imagines that it's helpful to liken religious believers to deluded narcissists, sectarian bigots and brainwashed morons. In other words, the Atheist Manifesto does little to advance the dialogue that Harris believes is so desparately important. His Manifesto is a confused diatribe that holds religion to be the root of all evil in the world - this is "obvious" to Harris, which is presumably why he makes no attempt to substantiate the charge. Instead, he simply raises Atheism aloft as the one, true way.
Atheism is nothing more than a commitment to the most basic standard of intellectual honesty: One’s convictions should be proportional to one’s evidence. Pretending to be certain when one isn’t--indeed, pretending to be certain about propositions for which no evidence is even conceivable--is both an intellectual and a moral failing. Only the atheist has realized this. The atheist is simply a person who has perceived the lies of religion and refused to make them his own.So, according to Harris, atheists are right and everyone else is an intellectual and moral failure. And he's saying religions are divisive!? Yeesh! I hate to think what he'd make of Grapefruitism.
(Hat tip: Ophelia Benson at Notes and Comments)
