Sam Harris Myths (1)
Not long ago atheist Sam Harris raged against Christianity as a cosmic poison and laid the world's troubles at the Christian door. In a recent Los Angeles Times piece he offers us ten myths about atheism he wants to set straight. In the course of a poorly worked out piece he has this to say:
"People of faith often claim that the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were the inevitable product of unbelief. The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions."
So, the unspeakable atrocities of these atheists are because they didn't have the right brand of atheism. They had fascist atheism and communist atheism. Now if they had the good old American brand of atheism all would have been different. Oh well.
Not only that, Sam tells us that these moral degenerates were too Christian. Had they been less Christian in their atheism they wouldn't have done what they did. Good grief! Still, the poor man tries hard; doesn't he?
Believers insist that all of our violence, injustice and evil stems for our sinfulness but I can think of only a few on the extreme outer fringe that believe that the nearly Christian people mentioned by Sam had to behave as they did. I suppose there are some believers who think that if you're an atheist that you must be a Stalin or a Pol Pot in the making. All the believers I know would think that was drivel. You have to watch Harris like a hawk when he's talking. Sometimes I can't tell if he's shrewd or careless in his speech.
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