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Toronto Star
Jul. 2, 2005. 01:00 AM
Jul. 2, 2005. 01:00 AM
.Losing faith in religion
Author pleads for an age of reason that will render religious faith as archaic as the worship of Odin Sam Harris says religious myths must die if we are to survive as a species, Ron Csillag reports
Compared to Sam Harris, Karl Marx was a piker. The 19th-century political philosopher derided religion as the "opium of the people." To Harris, organized faith is more like crack cocaine, and its fruits every bit as ruinous. And we must quit the pipe, cold turkey, before it's too late
Myths die hard, Harris realizes, but die they must if we are to survive as a species. For now that millions embrace the metaphysics of martyrdom or the truth of the book of Revelation and are armed to the teeth "words like `God' and `Allah' must go the way of `Apollo' and `Baal' or they will unmake our world," he warns. Faith-based religion "must suffer the same slide into obsolescence" as alchemy.
Other example of Harris's carpet-bombing:
"There is no more evidence to justify a belief in the literal existence of Yahweh or Satan than there was to keep Zeus perched upon his mountain throne or Poseidon churning the sea ... we as a species have grown perfectly intoxicated by our myths."
"How can any person presume to know that this is the way the universe works? Because it says so in our holy books. How do we know that our holy books are free from error? Because the books themselves say so. Epistemological black holes of this sort are fast draining the light from our world."
"Given the link between belief and action, it is clear that we can no more tolerate a diversity of religious beliefs than a diversity of beliefs about epidemiology and basic hygiene."
"It is time we recognized that all reasonable men and women have a common enemy. It is an enemy so near to us and so deceptive, that we keep its counsel even as it threatens to destroy the very possibility of human happiness. Our enemy is nothing other than faith itself."