by Dish Staff
Ten years ago this month, Sam Harris published The End of Faith, perhaps the first example of what would become known as the New Atheist publishing phenomenon – Dennett, Dawkins, and Hitchens weren’t far behind with their own polemics against religion. Looking back at what’s happened since the book’s release, Harris clarifies one way he doesn’t fit comfortably with that cohort:
I’m not a big fan of rallying around the concept of “atheism” — for reasons that I once spelled out in a talk entitled “The Problem With Atheism.” In fact, I never even used the term “atheism” in The End of Faith, simply because it never occurred to me to use it. I agree that it serves a narrow political purpose, and [can] sometimes be useful, but it comes with a host of liabilities. I prefer to talk about the conflict between faith and reason, religion and science, bad evidence vs. good evidence, etc. One very dangerous blind spot engendered by generic “atheism” is a default assumption that all religions are the equally bad and should be condemned in the same terms. This is not only foolish, it’s increasingly dangerous. Anyone who is just as concerned about the Anglican Communion as he is about ISIS, al-Qaeda, and rest of the jihadist menace needs to have his head examined.
The future of “atheism” — one in which our hopes for a truly secular and rational world are fulfilled — is one in which we keep important distinctions in focus. Above all, it is a future in which we remain free to criticize bad ideas, and are moved to criticize them in proportion to how much harm they are doing in our world.
Read a transcript of Andrew’s recent conversation with Sam Harris here.
The Dish 