Skip to main content

"The End of Faith"

I recently heard the presentation that Sam Harris made at PopTech in 2006. I haven't read his book "The End of Faith" but I think I got the gist of it from his speech. Basically religious belief is fantasy, those who practice it are stupid and ignorant, and worse yet religion is dangerous [to the point where Harris actually advocates making religon socially and morally wrong] because it's fantasies undermine logical scientific reasoning and ultimately lead to [are basically the cause of] war, poverty, environmental disaster, etc.

On the other hand, the Christain Science Monitor pointed out that German philosopher and secularist Jürgen Habermas wrote this in 2004 in his essay "A Time of Transition"

Christianity, and nothing else is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [to Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter.
It appears that the secularists are a little bit confused about cause and effect.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Energy Profits

I got tired of the hype about "excess" oil company profits and decided to get the facts. It turns out that the oil and gas industry generally is near the middle of the pack of American industries earning about 8% on sales in the 3rd quarter of 2005 as compared to the average of about 6.5%, but far lower than, for example, the semiconductor industry which earned about 14% on sales in the same period, or pharma & banks which both earned more than 18% on sales.
Post a Comment
Read more

Barry Schwartz - The Paradox of Choice

MediaPost Publications - Americans Get More Channels, Watch Fewer Of Them, Especially Broadcast - 03/13/2006 Ironically, Barry Schwartz spoke at PC Forum last night about the Paradox of Choice, and what did I wake up to this morning. Another possible example of too much choice in the channels people have to choose from on television. I wonder whether the "a la carte" crowd has thought about this problem. I'll have to ask Prof. Schwartz about that today.
1 comment
Read more

50th Anniversary

This past May my wife and I celebrated our 50th Wedding Anniversary. The time has passed quickly but it certainly doesn't seem like 50 years. Like most, we've had our ups and downs in fifty years, but on the whole have been blessed with good health, three fine sons and nine grandchildren. Looking forward to the next chapter.
Post a Comment
Read more