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Letters to the New York Times
in Response to Nicholas Kristof's A Modest Proposal for a Truce on Religion
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The New York Times printed responses from Sam Harris
and Richard Dawkins today (December 5):
To the Editor:
Contrary to Mr. Kristofs opinion, it isnt
intolerant or fundamentalist to point out that
there is no good reason to believe that one of our
books was dictated by an omniscient deity.
Half of the American population believes that the
universe is 6,000 years old. They are wrong about
this. Declaring them so is not irreligious
intolerance. It is intellectual honesty.
Given the astounding number of galaxies and
potential worlds arrayed overhead, the complexities
of life on earth and the advances in our ethical
discourse over the last 2,000 years, the worlds
religions offer a view of reality that is now so
utterly impoverished as to scarcely constitute a
view of reality at all.
This is a fact that can be argued for from a dozen
sides, as Richard Dawkins and I have recently done
in our books. Calling our efforts mean overlooks
our genuine concern for the future of civilization.
And its not much of a counterargument either.
Sam Harris
New York, Dec. 3, 2006
To the Editor:
Nicholas D. Kristof is one of many commentators to
find the tone of the newly resurgent atheism
obnoxious or mean.
Ubiquitous as they are, such epithets are not borne
out by an objective reading of the works he cites:
Sam Harriss Letter to a Christian Nation, my own
God Delusion and www.whydoesgodhateamputees.com (I
had not been aware of this splendid Web site; thank
you, Mr. Kristof).
I have scanned all three atheist sources carefully
for polemic, and my honest judgment is that they are
gentle by the standards of normal political
commentary, say, or the standards of theater and
arts critics.
Mr. Kristof has simply become acclimatized to the
convention that you can criticize anything else but
you mustnt criticize religion. Ears calibrated to
this norm will hear gentle criticism of religion as
intemperate, and robust criticism as obnoxious.
Without wishing to offend, I want The God Delusion
to raise our consciousness of this weird double
standard.
How did religion acquire its extraordinary immunity
against normal levels of criticism?
Richard Dawkins
Oxford, England, Dec. 4, 2006
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email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
web: http://www.samharris.org/
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