By SAM HARRIS
Added: Sat, 25 Nov 2006 00:00:00 UTC

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Author of the thundering anti-theist polemics The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, Harris may just be the Thomas Paine of an emerging movement to wrench religion out of American life. Prager is a nationally syndicated talk radio host who trumpets the virtues of the Judeo-Christian tradition… (www.jewcy.com)



From: Sam Harris
To: Dennis Prager
Subject: Yahweh Belongs on the Scrapheap of Mythology

I'd like to begin this exchange by making the observation that "atheist" is a term that should not even exist. We do not, after all, have a name for a person who does not believe in Zeus or Thor. In fact, we are all "atheists" with respect to Zeus and Thor and the thousands of other dead gods that now lie upon the scrapheap of mythology.

A politician who seriously invokes Poseidon in a campaign speech will have thereby announced the end of his political career. Why is this so? Did someone around the time of Constantine discover that the pagan gods do not actually exist, while the biblical God does? Of course not. There are thousands of gods that were once worshipped with absolute conviction by men and women like ourselves, and yet we all now agree that they are rightly dead. An "atheist" is simply someone who thinks that the God of Abraham should be buried with the rest of these imaginary friends. I am quite sure that we need only use words like "reason," "common sense," "evidence," and "intellectual honesty" to do the job.

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TAGGED: ATHEISM, RELIGION, SPEECHES