End of Faith, Chapter Two

I've put this off long enough. On to chapter two which is entitled 'The Nature of Belief'. After spending several pages stating what to me are very obvious claims such as, "When I answer the phone it is either my brother on the other end or it isn't.", Harris makes many other staggeringly astute observations. He then moves on to a section entitled 'Faith & Evidence' where he tries to show that beliefs require, nay demand, causal answers rather than answers along the lines of 'it makes me feel good.' Apparently, Harris believes that people of faith believe in their God because it makes them feel good. Here is where he starts to make major blunders in his line of reasoning. The first one comes at the beginning of the chapter on page 51 where he states, "What must a brain do in order to believe that a given statement is true or false? We currently have no idea." Really? No idea at all? Harris puts forth an epistemological assertion that we have no idea what must happen in order for us to believe a given statement is true or false and then proceeds to tell us what that process must be in the rest of the chapter! Now, I don't have a problem with someone trying his best to put forth a hypothesis where one is needed, but he ignores some very important literature on religious epistemology. If he were simply writing from a naturalistic viewpoint about the nature of belief I could let this slide. But his main point in writing this book is to examine religious beliefs as well as the role of faith. Harris does not even give a hint that there have been Christians writing about epistemology for years. For me, or anyone else, to take Mr. Harris seriously he must first interact with and comment on any one of the following:

Warrant: The Current Debate

Warrant and Proper Function and

Warranted Christian Belief

all by Alvin Plantinga. All three of these books were published before 2004 (End of Faith's pub. date) so Harris has no excuse for not knowing they were available. There are plenty of other options he had at his disposal as well:

A Realist Conception of Truth by William Alston
Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience by William Alston

Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous by W. Jay Wood
Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge (various authors)
Faith Beyond Reason: A Kierkegaardian Account by C. Stephen Evans
Why Believe?: Reason and Mystery As Pointers to God by C. Stephen Evans

Epistemic Justification by Richard Swinburne
Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology by Nicholas Wolterstorff

This list does not include the numerous articles on religious epistemology found in several different journals nor does it include other books that contain chapters or sections devoted to religious epistemology. The list given does not included the many books written about the role of Faith & Reason over the years. Harris probably will not be persuaded (much) by these books due to his radical naturalistic and utilitarian frame of mind. But to not even acknowledge that Christians have wrestled with and spilled much ink on the topic at hand is disingenuous at best. Until Harris shows a willingness to even make an attempt to engage the arguments put forth by any of these books, I'm afraid I cannot take him seriously, nor should anyone else for that matter.

Two more big blunders on Harris' part happens simultaneously. His misuse of the word 'believe' and his misrepresentation of Pascal's wager. On page 62 he states that in answer to the question why do I believe that God exists one should not answer 'because it makes me feel good' or 'that it is prudent to do so' (Pascal). Harris continues with "Of course, I can say this, but I cannot mean by the word "believe" what I mean when I say things like... "I believe there is an oak in my yard because I can see it." I left out the first example of the make-up of water to deal with this oak tree example first. Harris is confusing the meaning and use of the word 'believe' here. When someone is making a statement about whether or not there is an oak tree in their yard or not belief does not come into play. You either know you have an oak tree or not. Your belief doesn't enter into it. If you are unsure if the tree in question is in fact an oak tree one would consult various references to determine whether or not it is in fact an oak tree or not. Then belief would have no more place in the statement. It would simply be a matter of fact, "I have an oak tree in my yard."

But maybe I have over-analyzed Harris' point. Maybe his point is that he believes that there is a tree (regardless of whether it is an oak, elm, birch, or even a larch) in his yard because he sees a tree. This would seem to fit in with his demand for empirical evidence for all things religious. The question is, then, do we need to provide this kind of evidence for believing in God? I would argue we do not. My reason lies in the realm of categories. God is a different category than trees or water and is not subject to empirical testing and/or evidence. Harris' kind of evidence requires that God can somehow be placed in a lab and studied. How can we do this? We cannot take a being who by definition is beyond us and place that being in a lab to study. This, to me, is the naturalists downfall. Thinking (believing?) that by naturalistic means we can ascertain the existence (and thereby our justification for believing in) of a supernatural being. No amount of prodding, poking, or measuring will tell us one way or another whether or not a supernatural being exists! We only will know if such a being exists (for the most part) if that being initiates contact with us. As far as the Christian view is concerned we can also know of God's existence through nature and observing it as well as an internal 'knowing' of what's right and wrong by God having 'written' his law on our hearts. Again, if Harris would have taken the time to look into any of the previously listed books, many of his concerns at least would have been addressed even if he wasn't convinced by them.

Finally, Harris' misrepresentation of Pascal's wager. Harris seems to equate Pascal's wager with the same kind of answer as "I believe in God because it makes me feel good." This is not what Pascal was getting at. I will finish with a lengthy (but good!) quote from Peter Kreeft's web site on Pascal's Wager. He articulates it better than I can:

To understand Pascal's Wager you have to understand the background of the argument. Pascal lived in a time of great scepticism. Medieval philosophy was dead, and medieval theology was being ignored or sneered at by the new intellectuals of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. Montaigne, the great sceptical essayist, was the most popular writer of the day. The classic arguments for the existence of God were no longer popularly believed. What could the Christian apologist say to the sceptical mind of this age? Suppose such a typical mind lacked both the gift of faith and the confidence in reason to prove God's existence; could there be a third ladder out of the pit of unbelief into the light of belief?

Pascal's Wager claims to be that third ladder. Pascal well knew that it was a low ladder. If you believe in God only as a bet, that is certainly not a deep, mature, or adequate faith. But it is something, it is a start, it is enough to dam the tide of atheism. The Wager appeals not to a high ideal, like faith, hope, love, or proof, but to a low one: the instinct for self-preservation, the desire to be happy and not unhappy. But on that low natural level, it has tremendous force. Thus Pascal prefaces his argument with the words, "Let us now speak according to our natural lights."

Imagine you are playing a game for two prizes. You wager blue chips to win blue prizes and red chips to win red prizes. The blue chips are your mind, your reason, and the blue prize is the truth about God's existence. The red chips are your will, your desires, and the red prize is heavenly happiness. Everyone wants both prizes, truth and happiness. Now suppose there is no way of calculating how to play the blue chips. Suppose your reason cannot win you the truth. In that case, you can still calculate how to play the red chips. Believe in God not because your reason can prove with certainty that it is true that God exists but because your will seeks happiness, and God is your only chance of attaining happiness eternally.

Pascal says, "Either God is, or he is not. But to which view shall we be inclined? Reason cannot decide this question. [Remember that Pascal's Wager is an argument for sceptics.] Infinite chaos separates us. At the far end of this infinite distance [death] a coin is being spun that will come down heads [God] or tails [no God]. How will you wager?"

The most powerful part of Pascal's argument comes next. It is not his refutation of atheism as a foolish wager (that comes last) but his refutation of agnosticism as impossible. Agnosticism, not-knowing, maintaining a sceptical, uncommitted attitude, seems to be the most reasonable option. The agnostic says, "The right thing is not to wager at all." Pascal replies, "But you must wager. There is no choice. You are already committed [embarked]." We are not outside observers of life, but participants. We are like ships that need to get home, sailing past a port that has signs on it proclaiming that it is our true home and our true happiness. The ships are our own lives and the signs on the port say "God". The agnostic says he will neither put in at that port (believe) nor turn away from it (disbelieve) but stay anchored a reasonable distance away until the weather clears and he can see better whether this is the true port or a fake (for there are a lot of fakes around). Why is this attitude unreasonable, even impossible? Because we are moving. The ship of life is moving along the waters of time, and there comes a point of no return, when our fuel runs out, when it is too late. The Wager works because of the fact of death.

Suppose Romeo proposes to Juliet and Juliet says, "Give me some time to make up my mind." Suppose Romeo keeps coming back day after day, and Juliet keeps saying the same thing day after day: "Perhaps tomorrow." In the words of a small, female, red-haired American philosopher, "Tomorrow is always a day away. And there comes a time when there are no more tomorrows. Then "maybe" becomes "no". Romeo will die. Corpses do not marry. Christianity is God's marriage proposal to the soul. Saying "maybe" and "perhaps tomorrow" cannot continue indefinitely because life does not continue indefinitely. The weather will never clear enough for the agnostic navigator to be sure whether the port is true home or false just by looking at it through binoculars from a distance. He has to take a chance, on this port or some other, or he will never get home.

Once it is decided that we must wager; once it is decided that there are only two options, theism and atheism, not three, theism, atheism, and agnosticism; then the rest of the argument is simple. Atheism is a terrible bet. It gives you no chance of winning the red prize. Pascal states the argument this way:

You have two things to lose: the true and the good; and two things to stake: your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to avoid: error and wretchedness. Since you must necessarily choose, your reason is no more affronted by choosing one rather than the other. That is one point cleared up. But your happiness? Let us weigh up the gain and the loss involved in calling heads that God exists. Let us assess the two cases: if you win, you win everything: if you lose, you lose nothing. Do not hesitate then: wager that he does exist.

If God does not exist, it does not matter how you wager, for there is nothing to win after death and nothing to lose after death. But if God does exist, your only chance of winning eternal happiness is to believe, and your only chance of losing it is to refuse to believe. As Pascal says, "I should be much more afraid of being mistaken and then finding out that Christianity is true than of being mistaken in believing it to be true." If you believe too much, you neither win nor lose eternal happiness. But if you believe too little, you risk losing everything.

But is it worth the price? What must be given up to wager that God exists? Whatever it is, it is only finite, and it is most reasonable to wager something finite on the chance of winning an infinite prize. Perhaps you must give up autonomy or illicit pleasures, but you will gain infinite happiness in eternity, and "I tell you that you will gain even in this life "—purpose, peace, hope, joy, the things that put smiles on the lips of martyrs.

Lest we take this argument with less seriousness than Pascal meant it, he concludes: "If my words please you and seem cogent, you must know that they come from a man who went down upon his knees before and after."

To the high-minded objector who refuses to believe for the low motive of saving the eternal skin of his own soul, we may reply that the Wager works quite as well if we change the motive. Let us say we want to give God his due if there is a God. Now if there is a God, justice demands total faith, hope, love, obedience, and worship. If there is a God and we refuse to give him these things, we sin maximally against the truth. But the only chance of doing infinite justice is if God exists and we believe, while the only chance of doing infinite injustice is if God exists and we do not believe. If God does not exist, there is no one there to do infinite justice or infinite injustice to. So the motive of doing justice moves the Wager just as well as the motive of seeking happiness. Pascal used the more selfish motive because we all have that all the time, while only some are motivated by justice, and only some of the time.

Because the whole argument moves on the practical rather than the theoretical level, it is fitting that Pascal next imagines the listener offering the practical objection that he just cannot bring himself to believe. Pascal then answers the objection with stunningly practical psychology, with the suggestion that the prospective convert "act into" his belief if he cannot yet "act out" of it.

If you are unable to believe, it is because of your passions since reason impels you to believe and yet you cannot do so. Concentrate then not on convincing yourself by multiplying proofs of God's existence but by diminishing your passions. You want to find faith, and you do not know the road. You want to be cured of unbelief, and you ask for the remedy: learn from those who were once bound like you and who now wager all they have. . . . They behaved just as if they did believe.

This is the same advice Dostoevsky's guru, Father Zossima, gives to the "woman of little faith" in The Brothers Karamazov. The behavior Pascal mentions is "taking holy water, having Masses said, and so on". The behavior Father Zossima counsels to the same end is "active and indefatigable love of your neighbor." In both cases, living the Faith can be a way of getting the Faith. As Pascal says: "That will make you believe quite naturally and will make you more docile." "But that is what I am afraid of.'' ''But why? What have you to lose?"

An atheist visited the great rabbi and philosopher Martin Buber and demanded that Buber prove the existence of God to him. Buber refused, and the atheist got up to leave in anger. As he left, Buber called after him, "But can you be sure there is no God?" That atheist wrote, forty years later, "I am still an atheist. But Buber's question has haunted me every day of my life." The Wager has just that haunting power.

Film History

I would like to share with my readership of two one of my most beloved passions - film history. I attended Full Sail college in Orlando, FL from 1997-1998 and graduated with an Associates degree in Film & Video Production. My best class was, you guessed it, Film History. I enjoyed it so much and had such a good relationship with my instructor that after I graduated he asked me to teach his class for a week while he was on vacation! It was truly one of the best experiences I've ever had. 

While attending Full Sail AFI released their top 100 films of all times. Being in Film School I thought I should know more about the history of the major I was studying. I have to admit that I had not seen about half of the movies on that first list (yes, they updated the list ten years later in 2007 adding some new films and subtracting old ones). I set out to view all of the remaining films I had not seen as well as all of the Best Picture winners. Now 11 years later having seen all of the films on both AFI top 100 films of all time lists and viewed all of the Best Picture winners I have finally settled on my top 100 films of the 20th century! This was a long and agonizing process as I wrestled with thoughts such as "Who cares what I think are the greatest films of the 20th century?" and "Does this film really belong on such a list?". I finally concluded that I just needed to come to grips with the fact that I cannot be completely unbiased and pick solely on objective merits for a film's inclusion on such a list as this. I tried not to make this list too esoteric and "artsy-fartsy", but also not so popular that summer blockbuster entries made it because "it had that one great scene."

But I digress. Here it is, my final list (for now, until I get freaked out and think "What the hell is that film doing on the list? What was I thinking?!").

1916 Intolerance

1919 Broken Blossoms

1921 The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

1924 He Who Gets Slapped

1925 The Gold Rush

1927 Sunrise

1927 The General

1931 City Lights

1931 Dracula

1931 Frankenstein

1933 Duck Soup

1934 It Happened One Night

1935 A Night at the Opera

1935 Top Hat

1936 Modern Times

1936 My Man Godfry

1938 Bringing Up Baby

1939 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

1939 Ninotchka

1939 The Wizard of Oz

1940 Foreign Correspondent

1940 Gaslight

1940 The Grapes of Wrath

1940 The Great Dictator

1940 His Girl Friday

1940 The Philadelphia Story

1940 Rebecca

1941 Citizen Kane

1941 The Lady Eve

1941 The Maltese Falcon

1942 The Man Who Came to Dinner

1942 Sullivan's Travels

1942 Yankee Doodle Dandy

1943 Casablanca

1944 Arsenic & Old Lace

1944 Double Indemnity

1944 Laura

1946 The Best Years of Our Lives

1946 The Big Sleep

1946 It's a Wonderful Life

1946 My Darling Clementine

1946 Notorious

1947 Monsieur Verdoux

1948 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

1949 All the King's Men

1949 The Third Man

1949 White Heat

1950 All About Eve

1950 Sunset Boulevard

1951 An American in Paris

1952 The Bad and the Beautiful

1952 Singin' in the Rain

1953 Roman Holiday

1954 Dial 'M' for Murder

1954 On the Waterfront

1954 Rear Window

1955 Marty

1956 The Searchers

1957 12 Angry Men

1957 Bridge on the River Kwai

1957 Paths of Glory

1957 Sweet Smell of Success

1957 Witness for the Prosecution

1958 Touch of Evil

1958 Vertigo

1959 Ben-Hur

1959 North by Northwest

1959 Some Like it Hot

1960 The Apartment

1960 Pyscho

1961 One, Two, Three

1962 Lawrence of Arabia

1962 The Manchurian Candidate

1962 To Kill a Mockingbird

1963 The Haunting

1964 Dr. Strangelove

1964 My Fair Lady

1965 Doctor Zhivago

1965 Sound of Music

1965 A Thousand Clowns

1966 A Man for All Seasons

1968 2001: A Space Odyssey

1968 The Producers

1972 The Godfather

1974 The Godfather part II

1975 Jaws

1976 Rocky

1977 Star Wars

1981 Chariots of Fire

1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark

1982 Bladerunner

1985 Back to the Future

1986 Brazil

1989 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

1992 Unforgiven

1993 Schindler's List

1995 Braveheart

1999 The Matrix

1999 The Sixth Sense

The End of Faith? chapter one, part 2

Before I move on to chapter two of my review/critique of The End of Faith I wanted to comment on the first part of this quote: 

"It is time we admitted, from kings and presidents on down, that there is no evidence that any of our books was authored by the Creator of the universe."

I will not attempt to speak to other religious Scriptures as I want to focus on the Bible since I consider myself a Christian and I do not want to stray out of my field of expertise. There are two problems with this statement. One, what kind of evidence is Harris looking for that would show that a book was from our Creator? Two, I do not claim, and I don't think other Christians should claim, that the Bible was authored by God. Let's take a look at both of these issues.

First, the evidence issue. What kind of evidence would convince Harris that any of our books was authored by the Creator of the universe? Well, in this book he does not say. We have no idea what kind of criteria we are looking for. We are simply left with the assertion that there is no evidence at all. Now I have not read his second book, Letter to a Christian Nation, but I understand that there he gives some indication of what sort of evidence we are to accept. If I am not mistaken, he states that any communication from God would include more than what we find in our Bible. He should have included more science, technology, medical, and other more practical, helpful information. Since we find no schematics, blueprints, or other helpful, utilitarian items we are safe to conclude it is not from an All-Knowing, All-Loving God. Like other atheists, Harris thinks God to be fairly cold and uninterested (and probably just down right mean) to leave us on our own to figure all this stuff out on our own. 

The question is, then, do we, as Christians, need to have this kind of evidence to believe that the Bible came from God? Not at all. Harris isn't the first person to make a similar claim. I used to work with an agnostic who believed more in something like "The Force" from Star Wars than anything else. His problem with this issue was if God wrote the Bible, why doesn't it mention anything about dinosaurs? My reply to my friend will also answer Harris' critique. It's irrelevant. God didn't include a detailed account of the dinosaurs' time on earth because it is (was) irrelevant. Why do I say this? Because God didn't have a problem with the dinosaurs and he had a problem with us! The piece of information that seems to escape most atheists and skeptics is the Christians account of history. Christians have always claimed that after we became alienated from God He set out to redeem us. So when we told God that we could handle living our lives without Him, He gave us that opportunity. After some time, God sought out someone that He could work through to redeem all peoples of the earth. He sought out and found Abram, whom He later changed his name to Abraham. The communication God had with Abraham and all people from that time forward was about His plan to restore all people back to Him. Dinosaurs, science, technology, and all the rest are irrelevant to being redeemed to our Creator. I have no problem with these things, but they are not as imperative as getting back into a relationship with the Creator of the universe. 

To sum up, the evidence is there. It's just that it is more subtle than most atheists and skeptics are willing to accept. The evidence is relational, not utilitarian.

As to the second issue, that of authorship, I claimed that the Bible was not authored by God. I claim that it was inspired by God. Paul claims that "All Scripture is inspired by God..." (2 Timothy 3:16). This word in the Greek, qeopneusto, is transliterated as Theopneustos (theh-op-nyoo-stos) can be rendered as 'God-breathed' (see NIV translation). Peter, in his second letter, claims that, "...prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." Quoting Scripture to an atheist or skeptic is like pouring lemon juice on a open cut. They cringe and cry "Foul!". They can't stand it. But I believe it is necessary to at least see what the people who were involved in the writing of Scripture thought about the process. They didn't make any wild claims of going into a trance and when they awoke they found they had written Scripture! The only instance of God actually writing anything Himself was the Ten Commandments. Every other instance can best be described as God bringing to mind of the writers what to say, but left it up to them in how to say it, in what order, or what details to leave in or out (here I am thinking specifically of the Gospel accounts). 

Now that we see what the people involved in the process thought about God's role in the "authoring" of Scripture was, I think I can make a fairly strong case to answer Harris' claim to no evidence. I believe both answers to evidence and authorship lies in the relational aspect of Christianity. That God inspired the Bible instead of authoring it shows that He is relational. This is a different kind of evidence that is difficult for atheists and skeptics alike to accept. They want clear cut yes or no type answers. While Christianity does offer some clear cut answers for some topics, there is the ever present fact of God being relational and dealing with us as such. There has to be a more holistic approach to understanding Christianity in this light. I would like to finish this section with a quote from Robert Adams, a professor of Philosophy at UCLA, Yale, and Oxford University from an article he wrote for the anthology Reasoned Faith (1993):

"Theistic beliefs are not necessarily religious beliefs. Belief in a first cause, "which all call God", can be just a piece of metaphysics. Even belief in a divine command theory could be just a piece of metaethics. And belief in a supernatural agent of eschatological fulfillment, if the eschatology really offers nothing more than "pie in the sky", is not necessarily more religious than the daily horoscope. It's not that I am against metaphysics, metaethics, or eschatology; on the contrary, I am for all of them. But if these beliefs are not connected with any impulse to worship God, I am inclined to say that religiously, they have missed the point."

The End of Faith? Chapter One

As promised, here is my review/critique of The End of Faith. The first chapter is an attempt to show the reader just how horrible people of faith are. Filled with horrific stories of incredible ugliness and cruelty, Harris depicts in great detail just what is wrong with people of faith. We blind, maim, and kill people who believe differently than we believe. Are there Christians who have not lived their lives as Jesus would have them live their lives? Of course! I am not about to try to skirt the issue and claim that "these people probably weren't true Christians" and/or "True Christians would never behave that way." That would be not only naïve but false. Christians have committed terrible atrocities throughout the centuries, but so have other people of faith and people of no faith. There is not one single people group on the planet that is exempt from stupidity, ignorance and bad judgement, including "free thinkers", skeptics, or just plain old atheists. This is no way justifies their actions, but it does point out that no one is exempt either. There is a very arrogant and superior tone Harris takes in this opening chapter. In particular, on page 45 where he states,

"The Bible, it seems certain, was the work of sand-strewn men and women who thought the earth was flat and for whom a wheelbarrow would have been a breathtaking example of emerging technology."

It is clear from this description that Harris has no idea what he is talking about. There is no evidence that Hebrews (or anyone else for that matter) of that time believed the earth was flat.They also possessed, and were not awe struck by, more sophisticated pieces of equipment than a wheelbarrow. Mr. Harris, did you actually pay careful attention when you read the Bible, if you read it al all? The Israelites made weapons for war, built elaborate temples, and great fortresses around their cities. There was a special on The History Channel a few months ago from their 'Cities of the Underworld' series that chronicled how the ancient Israelis constructed these elaborate underground tunnels for defensive purposes as well as a way to get water into the city without the need to go outside the city walls. It also showed how they created this huge, elaborate underground pigeon coupe. They also worked as slave labor for the Egyptians who clearly had more sophisticated technology than a wheelbarrow. Mr. Harris may counter he was only using hyperbole to make a point, but such an ignorant and condescending comment cannot, and should not, be taken seriously.

The rest of the chapter is more hand-wringing and worry over the fate of our civilization if something isn't done about those people of faith. While I do not want to underestimate his concern about the possibility of future events like 9/11 and other atrocities, I am convinced he is wrong about the solution. The best way I can sum up chapter one is to make this observation. Mr. Harris appears to be trying to solve the problem of evil. That age old bug-a-boo of Philosophy of Religion. The solution to the problem of evil is not to eradicate faith, but sin. Now I'm sure this would fry his circuits and claims of irrationality would be hurled my way. But as far as Christians are concerned, sin is the problem of evil and the solution is faith in Christ. Now faith in Christ will not completely eradicate evil, but if Christians would trust in Him rather than themselves during times of fear, remorse, anger, or jealousy, there would be a whole lot less of the evils that Harris outlines in chapter one. I will be dealing with the rest of the book in future posts. Stay tuned! It should be fun!

8 Random Things

It seems I have been tagged by my wife to post 8 Random Things about myself.

1] I love both Classical music and Death Metal

2] I read philosophy of religion books...for fun!

3] I'm a Macintosh guy. I don't do Windows (except at work).

4] I crave chocolate after meals the way smokers crave cigarettes.

5] I've seen more movies from the Silent Era to the 60's than I have from the 70's to the present for a grand total of 1,690 movies viewed so far (yes I keep track of how many movies I've seen).

6] Monty Python, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Bugs Bunny, Animaniacs, and The Tick have all played a role in my ever developing sense of humor.

7] I have learned more about Pokémon and Bionicles from my son than I ever thought was humanly possible.

8] I seem to be too liberal for conservatives and too conservative for liberals.

9] I like sports: NFL, NBA, college football and basketball.

Yes, aren't you lucky? You got nine random things about me! I could have listed a couple more but I didn't want to come off as too self-absorbed. Oh, wait..isn't that what blogging is all about? It's the me channel! All me all the time! ;-)

Explaining the Title of My Blog

1995. That's when I started my journey of exploring the Internet. Now 13 years later I have finally decided to  enter the wonderful world of blogging. Why, you may ask? Well, I have opinions about many topics and needed to find an outlet to express those opinions. Recently, I was reading The End of Faith by Sam Harris at the request of a self-proclaimed "Secular Humanist". On the back was a review by Johann Hari of "The Independent" where he proclaims: "Sam Harris launches a sustained nuclear assault..." After reading Mr. Harris' book, I couldn't help but to be amused by the description Mr. Hari gave to The End of Faith. This book is pugilistic, as Mr. Hari also describes it. But it is little more than that. My next blog will be a more detailed examination of The End of Faith. I hope that in some way my blog will be its own "sustained nuclear assault" on ignorance, straw men, poorly constructed arguments, and invective modes of persuasion.