Sam Harris has a hilarious article at the Huffington Post where he takes the negative reviews written of the various atheist books on the market and replaces some of the words…
“Religion” becomes “Witchcraft.”
“God” becomes “the Devil.”
“Atheist” becomes “skeptic.”
Harris’ point is clear: Look at how ridiculous the reviews seem now.
And this, my friends, is what it’s like to be an atheist, listening to people talk about religion.
One example of Harris’ revised review:
“[None of these authors] takes time to consider contemporary [witchcraft] in the light of some of its most sophisticated and heroic practitioners…. Moreover, none of them ever put their weak, confused, and unplumbed ideas about [the Devil] under scrutiny. Their natural habit of mind is anthropomorphic. They tend to think of [the Devil] as if He were a human being, bound to human limitations… [These] authors pride themselves on how science advances in understanding over time, and also on how moral thinking becomes in some ways deeper and more demanding. They do not give any attention to the ways in which [magical] understanding also grows, develops, and evolves… It hardly dawns upon them that [witches and warlocks] have been, from the very beginning, in constant–and mutually enriching–dialogue with [skeptics]… The path of modern science was made straight and smooth by deep convictions that every stray element in the world of human experience–from the number of hairs on one’s head to the lonely lily in the meadow–is thoroughly known to [the Devil and his familiars] and, therefore, lies within a field of intelligibility, mutual connection, and multiple logics. All these odd and angular levels of reality, given arduous, disciplined, and cooperative effort, are in principle penetrable by the human mind… [Skepticism] cannot be true, because it is self-contradictory. Moreover, this self-contradiction is willful, and its latent purpose is pathetically transparent. [Skeptics] want all the comforts of the rationality that emanates from rational [sorcery], but without personal indebtedness to [the supernatural]. That is why they allow themselves to be rationalists only part of the way down. The alternative makes them very nervous.” –Michael Novak, National Review
And there are plenty more where that came from.
[tags]atheist, atheism, Sam Harris, Huffington Post, God, Devil, skeptic, Michael Novak, National Review[/tags]