My problem with many casual church goers is that most of them have never actually studied the history of the church. I have a fundamentalist neighbor who regularly inhales what the priest tells her to think. When I ask her about the many revisions and deletions the Bible has left out, such as references to reincarnation being edited out by the Council of Nicea, she just shrugs her shoulders. No thought,just blind belief. When I ask her about the female holocaust, when millions of women during the middle ages where burned as witches by the Catholic church because they either became too powerful, to weak, or had property the church wanted, she gives the proper patriarchal response that those women were probably asking for it. The Papal armies killed any dessenters that had the audacity to go against the party line.

Many groups of Christians believed the Holy Spirit was the female part of God, and you better believe the church burned those heretics. The early founders of the church where female, but when Constantine took over the church, he basically overlaid Roman Empire belief systems on top of it and pushed women out.

People spend more time researching their car or house then they do actually questioning or researching their religious belief system. They would rather passively take in what other people tell them to believe. That made sense in a time when people couldn't read and had no access to other forms of information. What is our excuse now?

I'm sorry, but Harris did not do the unthinkable--philosophers have been attacking religious belief for centuries. Hume, for example, wrote about the foolishness and irrationality of religious faith. Notice that Harris wrote his book in the United States, where he had a constitutionally protected right to do so, free of punishment. I've heard lots of people over the years denounce believers as morons, lumping all monotheists together and ignoring the diversity within the faithful. They did not impress me with their courage.

I believe in God. I am not an alien-abduction kook. I have studied theology, philosophy, Church history, and literature. I believe, not because I was brainwashed or too stupid to know better, but because I have had transcendent experiences that convinced me of God's existence. Faith is not rational, although theology should be. Faith, if we have it, is a part of who we are. You don't believe in God because someone talked you into it--you are convinced by the arguments or not based on who you are and what is inside you. Faith is experiential, not intellectual.

What many anti-religious people seem to object to is organized religions or aspects thereof, not faith itself. Don't confuse the two. We believe in many things that we can't see or hear or prove--God is just one of them. Religious faith may inspire great acts of kindness and charity--think of Mother Theresa. It may also inspire acts of cruelty and brutality. But religion is not responsible for all cruelty in the world--Communism, which rejects religion, has birthed the Stalinist purges, the Cultural Revolution, the Killing Fields, etc. Nazism was not a religious movement. The genocide in Rwanda was not based on religion. People are capable of fanaticism and cruelty, and eliminating religion will just lead them to be fanatic about something else--like race or nationality.

Oh, and a minor point. Harris elides spirituality and mysticism, demonstrating that he does not well understand that which he condemns. He also uses the label "religious moderates" to describe what would better be called "religious relativism." Not all non-fundamentalists think that all religions are just super. I'd be more impressed with his arguments if it didn't appear that he was such a sloppy thinker.

True, many fundamentalists absorb whatever they are told by whoever is in charge without making any effort to think about it. But people are often ignorant and uncritical--take the viewership of Fox News as an example. People accept political soundbites and spin, parrot back what they were taught by their parents, or echo whatever they saw on TV. Few people take the trouble to even read the newspaper, let alone think about history or politics in any meaningful, informed way. Don't blame religion for that--blame human ignorance.

People who claim that they have faith in the supernatural because of some experience they think they had are pathetic. Your brain is fully capable of manufacturing all kinds of experiences for you. The fact that you had some experience that affected you profoundly is barely any evidence at all and certainly is not persuasive evidence. You people need to get over yourselves and stop making big brave claims that aren't true.

Interesting interview; obviously Harris knows what he's talking about. He is certainly correct that monotheistic "fundamentalists" - believers who don't try to explain away the rather brutal, primitive, authoritarian and narrow-minded mores recommended by the Bible etc. - are more intellectually "honest" than moderates who act like religion is all about being "nice." Monotheism presents itself as based on "sacred texts," i.e. "revealed truth": no argument, discussion, or personal interpretation or adaptation is desirable or possible for a true believer.

Having acknowledged this, though, I wonder if religious moderates shouldn't just be left alone by atheists, at least for the time being. Obviously religion fulfills immensely important functions: a coherent worldview, a goal for existence, a social bond with co-believers, an explanation for intense "mystical" experiences, moral guidelines, etc. For 99% of human history people haven't been able to meet these needs without "religion" of some form. When philosophy, science and art can meet these needs, humanity will have taken a huge step forward, but obviously most people just aren't ready for that step yet.

I have to read this guy's book. How can we get an entire culture to accept the idea consciously that it has already unconsciously accepted: that morality stands---and must stand---apart from religion. Religion is not only unnecessary for morality but I think he is arguing that is not even sufficient. I would agree. I was raised VERY fundamentalist Christian, and when I jettisoned the religion for logical reasons, I found myself quite suddenly without a moral code. Now my curiosity about spiritual matters and my morality are very distinct animals, and I do think I function better that way. As an example, I cannot remember the last time I was "tempted" to do something self-destructive or against my moral code. Why? Because I am an integrated human being with my own morality (quite conservative, by the way) and therefore suffer no dichotomy between my will and my conscience. They are very close to identical. I am living in a very "Christian" culture, however, and everywhere around me I see "religious" people self-destructing. My child, raised agnostic, lost a friendship over her "free-thinking" ways because the child's mother was apparently worried about the diabolical influence my child would have on hers. Well, a year down the line, her kid is now pregnant. Mine is an honor student who does not drink, drug, or indulge in sexual activity. Oh, and she's happy. Imagine that. A happy agnostic.