What the ...

Various canards:

"his assumption, without giving any evidence, that Barack Obama is a closet atheist who only professes to have Christian beliefs in order to get elected."

Not seeing any such assumption. What Harris does argue is that it is silly for a person running for political office to have to make representations about religion at all.

Moreover, Harris argues, our polity is worse off for our attachment to unreasonable metaphysical beliefs. Harris' point is that it's tragic that a smart guy like Obama is down in this muck, and that's all due to the existence of religion and its special status in our discourse. When Harris laments that Obama has to "claim" belief--he does not insinuate, as you so presumptuously declare, that Obama's belief is necessarily insincere. Either way, Obama would have to claim it.

"Sam Harris. Harris is the perfect embodiment of the very attitude he is mocking: he seems to believe that if everyone would abandon religion, and instead "get science", the world would be hunky-dory; the religious are sheep for him to save."

This is also not in the linked article. Harris points to largely atheistic countries not to say that all such countries are necessarily better--just that piety is not a prerequisite for prosperity. The point is well taken.

Harris does think that the world would be better off without religion. Note "think"--Harris makes reasoned arguments for why this would probably be so--he does warrant that it would, nor, to put it in terms of the utterly faulty comparison to religion that you made, does he profess to have gained knowledge about that through supernatural communication with a higher power.

Posted at March 25, 2008 11:51 PM in response to Sam Harris, Atheist Messiah