Forty-four percent of the American population is convinced that Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead sometime in the next fifty years.The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this, purely on the basis of religious dogma, should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency
Mr Harris actually disagrees that we should call ourselves atheists. We don’t, for example, have a word for someone who rejects astrology, an idea as equally ridiculous as god. He is also worried that a label such as “atheist” can be seen as standing for a fixed, all encompassing philosophy or representative of “a cranky subculture that meets in hotel ballrooms”. Harris also says that non-theists shouldn’t be embarrassed about embracing meditation or even living in a cave for ten years living off the moss and icicles like some bloody Buddhist.
