[This is a stunning and quite delicious attack (esp. the part where he makes common cause with the religous right for its moral clarity about torturing muslims). Are his books really this awful?]
http://www.alternet.org/stories/46196/
January 5, 2007 AlterNet
Sam Harris's Faith in Eastern Spirituality and Muslim Torture By John Gorenfeld
Sam Harris's books "The End Of Faith" and "Letter To A Christian
Nation" have established him as second only to the British biologist
and author Richard Dawkins in the ranks of famous 21st century
atheists. The thrust of Harris's best-sellers is that with the world
so crazed by religion, it's high time Americans stopped tolerating
faith in the Rapture, the Resurrection and anything else not grounded
in evidence. Only trouble is, our country's foremost promoter of
"reason" is also supportive of ESP, reincarnation and other
unscientific concepts. Not all of it is harmless yoga class hokum --
he's also a proponent of waterboarding and other forms of torture.
"We know [torture] works. It has worked. It's just a lie to say that
it has never worked," he says. "Accidentally torturing a few innocent
people" is no big deal next to bombing them, he continues. Why sweat
it?
I wanted to interview Harris to find out why a man sold to the
American public as the voice of scientific reason is promoting Hindu
gods and mind reading in his writing. But we spend much of our time
discussing his call for torture and his Buddhist perspectives on
"compassionately killing the bad guy."
Rest at: http://www.alternet.org/stories/46196/
[I enjoyed the whole thing to the very end, but it's 15K and thus busts the list limit]
Michael