Sam Harris’ Atheist Manifesto. Most of what he says is reasonable, however, the editor suggests that Harris argues that religious toleration is a menace – this is not a defensible argument since it empirically leads to persecution. Its true that there is not a single ideology that is truly tolerant of other ideologies, therefore an anti-ideology like atheism can be more tolerant by making no absolute claims of its own but adaptable guidelines based upon evidence and reason. One should not be intolerant of belief itself but unreasonable acts based upon it. However, since ideological dogma, of which religious dogma is a subset, is not based upon reason – its acts are very often unreasonable and intolerant. A consistent maxim for an atheist would be to be tolerant of religious faith, but intolerant of intolerance itself. This is not a nihilist view, but a defense of moral relativism. Its also…

In Worldnet Daily’s ‘lets rape unfaithful women’ OpEd is the following sentence: “There may be a genuine moral argument against rape to be made outside of the Judeo-Christian ethic, but I have yet to hear it.” – how very deaf you must be. I’ve noticed increasing reference to the so called ‘Judeo-Christian’ tradition. This lumping of Judaism with Christianity together with the claims of Millennium Christian radicals is an insult that could possibly lead to injury, since historical precedent suggests that jews will eventually get the blame. Given that there are three religious sects that worship the same deity and find common ancestry in Abraham: Judaism, Islam and Christianity, reference to the Judeo-Islamo-Christian, or, more elegantly, ‘Abrahamic’, tradition makes some sense. The permutation: ‘Judeo-Christian tradition’ stems, obviously, from the fact that Christianity supersizes the Torah into its own edition, whereas Islam rewrites it. But what of the other alternatives: Given…

“if a woman consents to extramarital sex, she is committing a moral offense which is equal to that committed by the man who engages in consensual sex with her, or by the man who, in the absence of such consent, rapes her. Christianity knows no hierarchy of sins. Since only the woman who is not entertaining the possibility of sex with a man and is subsequently raped can truly be considered a wholly innocent victim under this ethic” I’ll paraphrase this nonsense because the writing is so bad: ‘A woman who considers, for a second, the possibility of sex outside of marriage is no better than a man who actually rapes her.’ This is what some people who call themselves Christians actually believe. As an aside, the guy who wrote the article describes himself as a Christian Libertarian (i.e. someone who both rejects and blindly worships authority). Here are some…