How does he think this “destruction” would come about? Forcing people into reeducation camps? Using the might of the state to ban religious writings and observances and institutions?

No.

Not by force, by finding new ways of talking.

To win this war of ideas, scientists and other rational people will need to find new ways of talking about ethics and spiritual experience. The distinction between science and religion is not a matter of excluding our ethical intuitions and non-ordinary states of consciousness from our conversation about the world; it is a matter of our being rigorous about what is reasonable to conclude on their basis. We must find ways of meeting our emotional needs that do not require the abject embrace of the preposterous. We must learn to invoke the power of ritual and to mark those transitions in every human life that demand profundity — birth, marriage, death, etc. — without lying to ourselves about the nature of reality.

I am hopeful that the necessary transformation in our thinking will come about as our scientific understanding of ourselves matures. When we find reliable ways to make human beings more loving, less fearful, and genuinely enraptured by the fact of our appearance in the cosmos, we will have no need for divisive religious myths.

Monkeymind said

I can see how it would be easy to interpret that as “religion must be banned” though he doesn’t exactly say that.

I think it’s easy to interpret anything badly if you make up your mind by reading the title of an article and disregard the lengthy footnote of the article itself. (Thanks to Richard Dawkins for that rather brilliant turn of phrase).

Folks are well within their rights to criticize Sam Harris, as I have done on plenty of occasions. But making up positions he does not advocate, in order to attack him, provides us with zero insight, and does not serve as a proper method in the pursuit of truth.

It is true that there are lots of times in history and the present when dictatorial systems that mix politics and religion do and some times when individual religions do but to make a blanket assertion is inaccurate. Liberal religion, like what I’m going to start calling liberal atheism, doesn’t insist on homogenous conformity but allows for individuals to have their own ideas on these things. And liberal religion is a lot less rigid than the kind of atheist orthodoxy that is found on most atheist blogs. This one and a few other’s I’ve seen are a marked exception. And there is quite a bit of pressure for people in the sciences to conform to the atheist-fundamentalist code of speech too.

I’m undecided on the Forrest Mims case, in which Martin Gardener crowed about his being denied a job on the basis of his fundamentalism. He was going to be writing in an area that had nothing to do with any of the pseudo-science aspects of fundamentalism since his expertise is electronics. Mims is certainly qualified to write on that. I don’t like his fundamentalism but I don’t like McCarthyism either. I am also rather attached to the Civil Rights laws protecting equal rights in employment, wishing it covered my minority group as well as race and religion.

Atheism requires thought. No one forces you to be an atheist. That’s something you see only in religion. The idea that all it takes to make someone an atheist is some savvy Internet advertising says more about the person who falls for it than it does about atheism.

This is a good point. I did not come by my ideas/beliefs via the internet, but I did do some research there as well as in various books and talked to people about my thoughts. In the process, I ran into some very good people (mostly Anglicans) who think a lot as I do. We don’t agree on everything obviously, but there is a common factor. Eventually, and for many other reasons besides my own thinking, I gave up going to church. This is one area Price and Spong disagree with me.

You know how many of you guys believe in the “meme” which is pretty much unsupported by science and which many scientists have mocked? I call it Richard Dawkins golden parachute from the possible wreck of his career as a strict adaptationist. His war on religion is just his back up chute if the “meme” turns out to be fairy dust.

Yes, and that’s a valid point for what, believing in leprechauns? You know what religion can’t explain everything either so I guess that means there is no god. Oops, I’ve made a mistake, religion can explain everything. God did it.