plutopsyche:
“Whoever best
describes
the problem
is the one most
likely
to solve it.”
–Dan Roam

jesus:
Ponies for everyone!

(You can tell it’s a poem by the line breaks.)

Popularity: 9% [?]

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

W. W. Norton, 978-0-393-32765-6, 348 pp. (incl. notes, bibliography and index), 2004

I picked up Sam Harris’ The End of Faith after watching The Four Horsemen, a two hour atheist roundtable he appeared in with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett. I found many of Harris’ comments on spirituality intriguing, though I found myself repulsed by bigoted comments regarding Islam.

The End of Faith deals with several themes surrounding religion and why it’s no good (to put it mildly). Harris rightly states that “most religions offer no valid mechanism by which their core beliefs can be tested and revised, each new generation of believers is condemned to inherit the superstitions and tribal hatreds of its predecessors”.⁽¹⁾ Worse, religions tend to decry critical examination of any kind.

The bulk of  Harris’s criticism of religion is is focused on Christianity and vitriol towards Islam. While the underlying sentiment is sound – that religion induces people who might otherwise make good friends and neighbours to kill and maim one another at the behest of grotesquely cruel imaginary beings – the conclusions Harris draws regarding what is to be done about these irrationally harmful beliefs is disquieting, to say the least. Continue reading »

Popularity: 8% [?]

Footnotes:

1. p. 31 [↩]

Titled with a with a cute wink the apocalypse, The Four Horsemen features Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. On September 30th, 2007 they sat down together and filmed a two-hour unmoderated discussion. It’s a wonderful thing.

While I’m an atheist,⁽¹⁾ this isn’t a requirement to appreciate four brilliant men philosophizing brilliantly about religion, atheism and the state of the world.

I’ve read a couple of Dawkins’ books (namely The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker)⁽²⁾ and two by Hitchens (Why Orwell Matters and God Is Not Great), but this is the first time I’ve really heard any of them speak.⁽³⁾

The video, filmed by Josh Timonen, has been provided by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (what a name!) and has been available on YouTube for about a month in two, one-hour segments.

Naturally, with their genius so well publicized, they require no introduction, but for the uninitiated, from left to right they are Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Continue reading »

Popularity: 15% [?]

Footnotes:

1. Please don’t read this self-important essay I wrote five years ago. [↩]
2. My responses to reading The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker. Ah, early, earnest posts. Was it only a year or so ago? [↩]
3. I don’t have cable. [↩]