http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Harris
Moderation That the world would be an altogether happier place if religious extremism were replaced by religious moderation, is plainly acknowledged by Harris. He then proceeds, counter-intuitively, to turn some of his strongest fire upon religious moderates themselves. The first problem, as he sees it, is that religious moderation gives *cover*to religious fundamentalism <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalism>. Under the banner of moderation, respect and tolerance are sacred, from which stance it becomes impossible to mount a credible assault upon extremism. Moderate religion therefore provides the *context* in which religious fundamentalism of any stripe can never be adequately opposed. Secondly, as Harris observes, it is quite absurd to imagine that we can continue to respect everyone's crazy and conflicting religious beliefs equally. Once again, this is not something attempted in any other area of discourse. In fact the very notion that we should be free to believe whatever we please, has to be jettisoned the moment we comprehend that beliefs are simply actions waiting to happen. Beliefs have consequences, potentially *catastrophic* ones. And thirdly, moderation is simply bad *theology<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theology> * because the extremists are in fact right. God<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God>really *does* want to put homosexuals<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_and_Christianity>to death and destroy infidels <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafir>, if one reads the texts * honestly*. Harris further notes that religious moderates (and indeed some secularists) appear to be blinded to the fact that the fundamentalists literally *believe* in all this stuff. A moderate tends to think that a suicide attack can more readily be attributed to a range of social and economic factors. *To speak plainly and truthfully about the state of our world to say, for instance, that the Bible and the Koran both contain mountains of life-destroying gibberish is antithetical to tolerance as moderates currently conceive it.* [edit<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sam_Harris&action=edit§ion=7> ] Morality and ethics Sam Harris considers that the time is long overdue to reclaim morality<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality>and ethics <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics> for rational secular humanism<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_humanism>, where they have always rightly belonged. He believes that the link between religion and morality is an utter myth, not borne out by current statistical evidence. He notes, for instance, that the highly secular Scandinavian <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavia>countries are among the most generous in terms of helping the developing world <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World>, as well as enjoying higher standards of living themselves by almost any index. [image: A human being?]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Embryo%2C_8_cells.jpg> [image: Enlarge] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Embryo%2C_8_cells.jpg> A human being? But Harris goes further and posits that, far from being the source of our moral intuition, religion is in fact a *travesty* of good ethical behaviour, something he attributes to the unfortunate tendency of religion to decouple the concept of morality from issues of human suffering. He cites as two examples, the Catholic<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Church>prohibition of condom <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condom> use, and the attempts by the religious lobby in America <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States> to impede funding for stem cell <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell>research. In the first case, we have literally *millions* dying each year of AIDS <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS> in sub-Saharan Africa <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-Saharan_Africa>. In the second case, one of the most promising lines of medical research is liable to be trumped by a medieval notion that the soul enters the zygote<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zygote>at the moment of conception. *It is in the very nature of reason to fuse cognitive and moral horizons. Reason is nothing less than the guardian of love.* [edit<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sam_Harris&action=edit§ion=8> ] Spirituality Finally, Harris also wishes to recapture spirituality<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality>for the domain of human reason and creativity. He draws his inspiration from the *practices* (but not the beliefs) of Eastern religion<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Religion>, in particular that of meditation <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation>. By paying very close attention to one's moment-to-moment conscious experience, Harris assures us that it is quite possible to make our sense of "self" vanish, while retaining a vivid awareness of the continuum of experience, and thereby reach a hitherto unknown state of personal well-being. He has received considerable criticism from atheists<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism>(normally his friends) for this assertion. For example he has stated, to the bewilderment of some, that he considers it likely that the happiest man on the planet might well have spent the last twenty years living alone in a cave. But Harris is unapologetic, claiming a necessary connection between personal spiritual development and ethics <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics>. It is simply that at no stage is it necessary to resort to myth and superstition as part of the process. Rather, such things can only hinder us. *Clearly, it must be possible to bring reason, spirituality, and ethics together in our thinking about the world. This would be the beginning of a rational approach to our deepest personal concerns. It would also be the end of faith.* [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> DonorsChoose.org helps at-risk students succeed. 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