One of the most pernicious effects of religion is that it tends to divorce morality from the reality of human and animal suffering. Religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are not—that is, when they have nothing to do with suffering or its alleviation. Indeed, religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral—that is, when pressing these concerns inflicts unnecessary and appalling suffering on innocent human beings.
This explains why Christians like yourself expend more “moral” energy opposing abortion that fighting genocide. It explains why you are more concerned about human embryos than about the lifesaving promise of stem-cell research. And it explains why you can preach against condom use in sub-Saharan Africa while millions die from AIDS there each year.
Harris, Sam (2006). Letter to a Christian Nation. New York: Knopf. Page 25.
1 comment:
I love how some authors cherry pick ideas out of context, smash them together, and come up with an indictment of a whole group of people. It is what some Christians do to gays. Well, guess what? Sam Harris just used the same faulty logic against Christians: the smashing together of several viewpoints, each represented by some Christians, lining them up together and making a blanket indictment. It's no wonder very little real discussion happens in this world. Many authors on the left and right use the same tactics for the same purpose: to dismiss as trivial and insignificant an alternative viewpoint so that we do not have to be challenged by that point of view.
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