2006-12-29 God's Enemies Are More Honest Than His Friends

2006-12-29 \Sam Harris/writings\atheism vs. religion http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/sam_harris/2006/12/gods_enemies_are_more_honest_t_1.html God's Enemies Are More Honest Than His Friends &ldquo;As someone who has spent the last few years publicly criticizing religion, I have become quite familiar with how people of faith rise to the defense of God. As it turns out, there aren't a hundred ways of doing this. There appear to be just three: either a person argues that a specific religion is true, or he argues that religion is useful, or he simply attacks atheism as intolerant, elitist, irrational, or otherwise worthy of contempt. Any conversation between atheists and believers is liable to fall into one or more of these ruts, or lurch back and forth between them:&rdquo; Harris proceeds to discuss and answer each of these three claims.   