The Temple of Reason

This Sam Harris fellow seems to be an Enlightenment junky, both in the Buddhist sense, and more to the point, in the sense of the historical time period by the same name. This means he is a Modernist of sorts. He views religion as, a dangerous thing filled with irrational absolutes that get in the way of the common good and tolerance, the single most divisive thing in existence, and consequently the major cause of suffering in the world.
To maintain these claims Mr. Harris paints religion with a very broad brush. He tends to define religion on one hand very stereotypically- for example, the threat of hell is the only motivator that forces believers to act morally- and on the other hand very generally- really each time he says religion he should be saying ideology.
He also assumes that at base religion is nothing more than experience (which one must admit is no small thing). He is obviously influenced by Varieties of Religious Experience a book that compiled a lot of different examples of religious experience. In fact, some who follow this line of thought believe that they have found the part of the brain that only needs to be stimulated and a religious experience will occur.
As a sort of side note this line of thinking about religious experience, specifically the universality of religious experience and mysticism, is one of the issues that bible literalists are dealing with when they rely on the infallibility of the text. After all if Christian mystics and Muslim mystics are having the same experiences then it is of paramount importance to establish what is actually from God and what is simply a phenomenon. Their solution is Biblicism.
While Harris’ stated goal is a world where everyone is tolerant, since religion is the main obstacle to tolerance, he seems rather intolerant himself (which he would freely admit). At one point he suggests that fundamentalists should be undercut at all costs, even forcing moderates (in this case Muslims) to go to war against them. He’s saying his utopian atheist world is desirable at pretty much any cost, including inciting civil war. That seems to me to be an irrational absolute.
Being a pre-modern post-critical moderate evangelical Lutheran I can’t agree with Harris. Being pre-modern I believe that myth (properly defined) isn’t a bad thing, narrative is, if nothing else, a more soulful way to express truth than Harris’ cold science. Being post-critical I must concede that Harris is reacting to the realities of a post-9/11 world and attempting to combat what he perceives as the latent cause of those terrorist acts and prevent even more deadly attacks, for that I laud him. Being post-critical I must also affirm that Harris is failing to understand the complexity of faith, the worldview of the believer, and that his stereotypes are little more than paper tigers burnt only to illumine his views, for that I shame him. Being moderate and Lutheran I am horrified by his callous disregard for human life as exemplified by his advocacy of civil war in the Muslim world. Being an Evangelical I feel, to quote Jim Wallis, "the proper way to combat bad theology is good theology, not no theology."
At the end of the day Mr. Harris is pointing out the fact that religion is awful, in the truest sense of the word. It is powerful, it is awe inspiring, it can make a man strap explosives and nuclear fissile material to his chest and blow himself up in a crowded place, or give up all his possessions and feed the hungry.