Sam Harris in Newsweek

As I sit here in the home stretch, the night before election day, I seriously wonder if I'll be able to function at all tomorrow, which is important because I have a lot of non-political related things to do. I said to Jenni earlier that I wish I could just go camping tomorrow all day and night and not come back 'till Wednesday night. No such luck.

Anyways, the cover story on the new Newsweek is 'The Politics of Jesus'. The 'Evangelical Identity Crisis' article is pretty interesting, in that it talks about the growing number of Christians, evangelicals in particular, that are increasingly concerned with the lack of social-justice issues in the religious right's political movement. Granted, I still wish religion would stay the hell out of politics completely, but I can't deny that this is at least a step in the right direction. Now if they would just stop obsessing about blatocysts and who's putting what in who's orifice, they'd make some real progress.

Better, though is an article in the same issue from Sam Harris, 'A Dissent: The Case Against Faith':

"Despite a full century of scientific insights attesting to the antiquity of life and the greater antiquity of the Earth, more than half the American population believes that the entire cosmos was created 6,000 years ago. This is, incidentally, about a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue. Those with the power to elect presidents and congressmen—and many who themselves get elected—believe that dinosaurs lived two by two upon Noah's Ark, that light from distant galaxies was created en route to the Earth and that the first members of our species were fashioned out of dirt and divine breath, in a garden with a talking snake, by the hand of an invisible God....This is embarrassing.
Religion is the one area of our discourse in which people are systematically protected from the demand to give good evidence and valid arguments in defense of their strongly held beliefs. And yet these beliefs regularly determine what they live for, what they will die for and—all too often—what they will kill for. Consequently, we are living in a world in which millions of grown men and women can rationalize the violent sacrifice of their own children by recourse to fairy tales..."

Now to those of you familiar with Harris, this will sound familiar, nothing he hasn't said before, no big deal. But I think the fact that it's in a major newsweekly is a big deal. I've mentioned in other entries about how atheist books are topping the bestseller lists and such, and the poll that shows an abnormally high number of Americans uncertain about God's existence. What I think we're seeing here is the beginning of a ripple, in that I suspect many, many Americans have doubts about the existence of a divine, all-knowing, judgmental creator. We see evidence every day that doesn't jive with what we're told to believe. And I think that maybe, just maybe, some people are starting to feel more emboldened to express that doubt, instead of giving a polite, vague answer.