https://web.archive.org/web/20160426054144/http://jimmcguiggan.com/nonbelievers2.asp?id=68
Sam Harris Myths (2)
It could be my bias, of course, but I can't help thinking that atheist Sam Harris whinges a lot. Not only has he done some whimpering about fellow-atheists criticizing how he goes about proclaiming his faith, he's now whining about atheists being kept out of politics. Now I don't know how many atheists want to get into politics but are held back specifically because sixty seven per cent would rather not have an atheist as President. I'm going to guess that you won't find many atheists who were on the verge of beginning the long run for the presidency until recently but dropped the notion when they heard the Newsweek poll result.
Then Harris juxtaposes his list of myths that is supposed to give us the reasons 67% of Americans would rather not have an atheist for President. Harris said he was going to deflate the myths to help put atheists in the senate, congress and the White House. Bless me, is he writing for fellow-atheists or for the 67% that are believers? I'm going to take it that he's trying to persuade believers with such pieces as this Los Angeles Times serving. Is he really aiming to persuade believers? Maybe these believers aren't the rabid dogmatists he keeps saying they are. If they're the sickness and poison that are at the heart of America wouldn't you think he's wasting his time talking to them? I mean these believers are no part of that elite group of intellectuals in the NAS and they're sick dogmatists to boot.
{In any case, if he thinks this sloppy little piece is going to change minds he should think again. G.K. Chesterton said he was an atheist until he started reading atheist material and had his first doubts about his doubts. Then he read the atheist Robert Ingersoll and said to himself, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.")
But for all his whimpering about how muzzled atheists are in America, Sam is beside himself with delight when he tells us that 93% of the members of the National Academy of Science are atheists.
I take it, then, that being an atheist in America is no hindrance to someone becoming a part of probably the most powerful fraternity in the Western world. Put the pharmaceutical companies, their political lobbyists, the scientists, the equipment manufacturers, etc., all together in a symbiotic relationship and you have a force that gets its way to an astonishing degree. Harris pretends that atheists are downtrodden and that he needs to deflate the myths that he claims are keeping atheists from having "a larger role in our national discourse." You think that fraternity doesn't have a power disproportionate to its numbers? (And I don't hear any state supported colleges and universities launching an investigation into the vast sums of taxpayers money being spent on nurturing atheists for the NAS.)
On top of all that, he wants to leave the impression that 67% of Americans would rather not have an atheist for President because they think that atheists are (characteristically) immoral. Sixty-seven out of every hundred Americans think that atheists don't love their husbands and wives, their children, their friends and don't live in warm and honourable faithfulness with them?
Sixty-seven out of every hundred Americans think that if you're an atheist you don't see beauty in a little child or a golden field of wheat or some majestic mountain range?
This is supposed to be what's keeping an atheist from getting to be President?
Drivel.
That kind of believer is mythical.
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