From PZ Myers:

    An atheist's creed

    I believe in time,
    matter, and energy,
    which make up the whole of the world.

    I believe in reason, evidence and the human mind,
    the only tools we have;
    they are the product of natural forces
    in a majestic but impersonal universe,
    grander and richer than we can imagine,
    a source of endless opportunities for discovery.

    I believe in the power of doubt;
    I do not seek out reassurances,
    but embrace the question,
    and strive to challenge my own beliefs.

    I accept human mortality.

    We have but one life,
    brief and full of struggle,
    leavened with love and community,
    learning and exploration,
    beauty and the creation of
    new life, new art, and new ideas.

    I rejoice in this life that I have,
    and in the grandeur of a world that preceded me,
    and an earth that will abide without me.

Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation is a short, provocative pamphlet, written in response to vociferously critical letters and emails he received from Christians of all stripes after the publication of his The End of Faith (which I reviewed here). Aimed most directly at the most conservative of Christians, the book carefully spells out just how bizarre and irrational a "deep and abiding faith" can be.

It seems to me to be shooting fish in a barrel by trotting out all the truly sadistic, tribal, and primitive the Bible can be, but fundamentalists bring this upon themselves by quoting it constantly. I love this Richard Dawkins quote from his The God Delusion book:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction:
jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty
ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal,
pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadamasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

So I suppose it is of some civic good to point out just how fallible a book the Bible is, and Sam Harris trots out a few more examples. He also tackles the canard brought up by the religious of how "atheists" like Hitler, Pol Pot, and Stalin remain some of the most brutal killers of the 20th century. As Harris says:

While it is true that such men are sometimes enemies of organized religion, they are never especially rational. ... The problem with such tyrants is not that they reject the dogma of religion, but that they embrace other life-destroying myths.

Other weighty subjects Harris discusses in such a thin volume include discussing just how good the Ten Commandments are, whether morality needs a God, just how off track the religious right can be when it comes to doing "good", are the states that are more religious lower in crime (they are not), discussing how fallible this "God" is when it comes to showing any kind of mercy (and the "pirouettes" the devout go through to try and justify the overwhelming misery of so many), Biblical prophesies and their astounding bad track record (or, even better, how they accurately reflect a two thousand year old point of view) and other basic tenets of "faith". It is quite a short, sweet, distillation of all that is irrational when it comes to the Bible and the conservative Christians who live by it.

It ends with:

This letter is the product of failure - the failure of the many brilliant attacks upon religion that preceded it, the failure of our schools to announce the death of God in a way that each generation can understand, the failure of the media to criticize the abject religious certainties of our public figures - failures great and small that have kept almost every society on this earth muddling over God and despising those who muddle differently.

Non believers like myself stand beside you, dumbstruck by the Muslim hordes who chant death to whole nations of the living. But we stand dumbstruck by you as well - by your denial of tangible reality, by the suffering you create in service to your religious myths, and by your attachment to an imaginary God. this letter has been an expression of that amazement - and, perhaps, of a little hope.

His list of recommended books is:

1. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins 
   
2. Breaking the Spell by Danial C. Dennett
3. Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman
4. Kingdom Coming by Michelle Goldberg
5. The End of Days by Gershom Gorenberg
6. Freethinkers by Susan Jacoby (my review is here)
7. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay
8. Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell
9. God, the Devil, and Darwin by Neil Shanks
10. Atheism: The Case Against God by George H. Smit

To which one could, of course, add his own The End Of Faith. I am currently reading Breaking the Spell, which is a fascinating exploration of religion as a phenomenon, biological and psychological. Dennett is a professor at a local university (Tufts) and I am keeping my eye out for any local talks he might be giving. Here is a video of Richard Dawkins introducting Dennett as he receives an award at  the Atheists Allegiance International '07 conference. Dan Dennett receives the "Richard Dawkins Award" at the AAI 07 conference in Washington, D.C. Julia Sweeney introduces Richard Dawkins, and Richard Dawkins introduces Dan Dennett.

Ah, another brilliant post by PZ Myers, including this treasure:

These principles are a reliance on natural causes and demanding explanations in terms of the real world, with a documentary chain of evidence, that anyone can examine. The virtues are critical thinking, flexibility, openness, verification, and evidence. The sins are dogma, faith, tradition, revelation, superstition, and the supernatural. There is no holy writ, and a central idea is that everything must be open to rational, evidence-based criticism — it's the opposite of fundamentalism.

He's reacting to a stupid article in Newsweek's "Belief Watch" section, which contains this beaut:

It may not be fair to call what's happening in the atheist community a backlash, since atheists have always been and continue to be one of the smallest, most derided groups in the country.

I guess I'm just damned proud to be part of one of the "smallest" groups in the country. What a bizarro description. And "most derided"? Wow, I think I feel honored, actually.

These new Gallup poll numbers need very little explanation, and require much weeping and gnashing of teeth but as usual, PZ Myers does a good job of explaining them here.

Partisanship

Church_attendance

Not much time left for this, but one of my favorite bloggers, John Scalzi from Whatever, is offering to go to the hideous "Creation Museum" if we come up with at least a $250 donation to Americans United for Separation of Church and State. He's a very good blogger and a very popular sci-fi author. I read his first one (Old Man's War) and found it interesting, but not enough to overcome my natural antipathy towards science fiction these days.

I think the money goes to a good cause, and I think the resulting post will be bitingly funny. I've sent in my $5, how about you? Full post is here.

Speaking of The End of Faith:

But a series of books doing quite well on bestseller lists -- by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and, soon, Christopher Hitchens -- argues it's time to be a lot less deferential to faith, and I have to say I find it hard to disagree. After all, we live in a time when blowing children to bits is an increasingly popular form of worship, the most powerful man on earth thinks he's got a hotline to God, and much of the electorate who gave that man his power would never consider replacing him with someone who does not believe the son of a carpenter who died 2,000 years ago sits in heaven advising presidents, fixing football games, and waiting for the day he will return to the Earth to brutally murder all unbelievers and erect a worldwide dictatorship.

Those fanatical atheists

The End of Faith : Religion, Terror and the future of Reason is the controversial best seller by philosopher Sam Harris. In it, he postulates the very real possibility of the end of civilization as we know it if we don't let go of two thousand year old dogmas and give up believing in invisible deities.  Given the awesome power a single small group can command these days, and the irrational belief in a better "hereafter", Harris strongly argues this is a recipe for disaster in today's world.

He begins the book with a short overview of religious dogma gone crazy, including the Inquisition, the Salem witch trials and other examples of intolerance.  He also lists several pages of apocalyptic and violent prescriptions against all infidels found in the Koran.  Harris is not the first to notice the irony of the Muslim problems with sex during life and yet promising an afterlife replete with orgies.  He also notes how "moderate Muslim" is an oxymoron, where by someone would have to pick and chose what parts of a holy book to believe and what not to believe. If you swallow any of the major books whole, you're living your life by the mores of a long dead culture.

The second half of The End of Faith is his attempt to rationally define things like morality, ethics and what it means to be a part of civilization, without resorting to some mystical being to kowtow to. He points out the failures of policies like pacifism, and the moral conundrum of torture and bombing civilians, as well as the old "would you torture someone if it meant saving countless other lives?" question. I found this part of the book a little hard going, but I think it was a very important part, as many attack atheism by saying you can't be moral if you don't believe in God, which is pure bunkum.

I found the book to be both enlightening and frightening. In many ways, I find the current backlash against Mormonism, especially by other religious fundamental groups, to be illustrative of many Harris points.  I think the only reason why other groups make fun of the Mormon belief in a charlatan like Joseph Smith's "discovery" of the Book of Mormon buried under a bush in upstate New York is because of its relative recentness.  At its heart, that story is as nonsensical as the burning bush, the Koran or any other "celestial" visions. And if anyone said that happened today, we would throw them in the loonie bin, yet instead these dusty old ideas remain inviolate today.

I'm anxious to read Harris' follow up, Letter to a Christian Nation, where he replies to the unsurprising invective hurled at him from all corners of the religious world after The End of Faith was published.  I also liked his recent Washington Post article, The Empty Wager, where he eviscerates Pascal's famous wager, where believers are simply taking the wiser of two bets - believe in God and if he exists, you're golden and if he doesn't, well, you're just dead. But if the atheist is wrong, he's in big trouble. Be sure to also follow the link to his "debate" with Pastor Rick Warren. Good stuff. Between him, Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers, there's hope yet for a rational future.

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

Sam Harris