WaPo/Newsweek feature Sam Harris in "On Faith" series
The Washington Post / Newsweek “On Faith” series has had several interesting pieces to date, but Sam Harris’ “God’s Enemies Are More Honest Than His Friends” is the highlight. Along the way, he lists—and succinctly demolishes—the three arguments for theism: religion is true, religion is useful, and atheism is bad. Harris criticizes “Iron Age stupidity and horror,” noting that:
Our capacity for self-destruction is now spreading with 21st century efficiency, and yet our beliefs about how we should pass our days and nights on this earth still spring from ancient literature. This marriage of modern technology and preliterate superstition is a bad one, for reasons that I should not have to specify, much less argue for—and yet, arguing for them has taken up most of my time since September 11th, 2001, the day that nineteen pious men showed our pious nation just how beneficial religious certainty can be.
I recommend the entire site, as true dialogue on faith is something sorely lacking in our public discourse. As Harris himself observed previously:
If there is common ground to be found through interfaith dialogue, it will only be found by people who are willing to keep their eyes averted from the chasm that divides their faith from all others. It is time we began to wonder whether such a strategy of politeness and denial will ever heal the divisions in our world.True dialogue requires a willingness to have one’s beliefs about reality modified through conversation. Such an openness to criticism and inquiry is the very antithesis of dogmatism.
update (10:26pm):
Speaking of dialogue, Cal Thomas makes a number of elementary mistakes in “The Atheist Wager.” James Hrynyshyn gives Thomas a good fisking in “Worst Columnist Ever” (h/t: PZ Myers):
Every now and then someone with a substantial public platform says or writes something that transcends the stupid to the realm of the genuinely idiotic. […] … it's not every day that every single phrase in a widely distributed, non-Ann Coulter column is so utterly wrong. Plus, the folks who syndicate Thomas describe him as "America's most widely syndicated op-ed columnist," so it's hard to let him go without a rebuttal.
The rebuttal that Hrynyshyn delivers is brutal, but no less than Thomas deserves.