Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, both books which I admired, recently gave a speech at the Atheist Alliance conference in Washington D.C.
In it, he raised questions that are relevant to parents (like me) who are searching for a way to talk to our children about religion while not being religious ourselves.
Harris says we should not label ourselves "atheists" because that only plays into the hands of those who would like to marginalize non-religious people. And it also sets up a crude dichotomy between "people of faith" and the... faithless? This dichotomy gets in the way of more nuanced discussions of ideologies of all kinds and their specific commands, rules, catechisms, influences.
As he puts it: "The problem is that the concept of atheism imposes upon us a false burden of remaining fixated on people’s beliefs about God and remaining even-handed in our treatment of religion."
Sam argues instead that we should simply advocate reason, humility, doubt, science, arts, and other values which we aspire to in our own lives. The speech generated a lot of controversy at the conference.
You can read Harris' speech here.
My father in law is visiting and the wife unit and I just had a discussion about this very subject last night due to some comments made by the FiL. Thanks for the speech.
Posted by: Avagadro | October 18, 2007 at 01:32 PM