One can see a certain diabolical coherency to atheist Richard Dawkins. At least on most occasions he passes a self-consistency test. Sam Harris, however, defies analysis.
At first he seems like a young, heir apparent. Like Dawkins, he begs the question: he assumes religion and rationality are orthogonal and then concludes that if we are to achieve a rational society we must, obviously, abandon religion.
There, however, the similarity ends. The rational-minded Sam Harris declares an end to irrational religion in order to make room for the scientific spirituality he advocates: xenoglossy†, ESP, and other New-Age mystical touchie-feelies. Who knew that pure ice-cold atheism could be so mind expanding?
For the rest of the story, see Joy's post on Telic Thoughts.
By the way: have I ever mentioned that, in my opinion, Telic Thoughts is the web's best ID site? (Not just because they haven't banned me, although that's nice of them.)
† No, I thought, there couldn't possibly be a wikipedia entry on xenoglossy. I was wrong, of course.
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