Bart sent me a link to an interview with Sam Harris author of The End of Faith and one of the interviewees in The God Movie.

I read it as a terribly American piece – with reason, given the precepts for his argument:

Harris: […] religious moderates are giving cover to fundamentalists because of the respect that moderates demand of faith-based talk. Religious moderation doesn’t allow us to say the really critical things we must say about the abject stupidity of religious fundamentalism. And as a result, it keeps fundamentalism in play, and fundamentalists make very cynical and artful use of the cover they’re getting by the political correctness in our discourse.

Question: You also say religious moderation closes the door to more sophisticated approaches to spirituality, ethics and the building of strong communities. What did you mean by that?

Harris: Religious moderation is just a cherry-picking of scripture, ultimately. It is just diluted Iron Age philosophy. It isn’t a 21st century approach to talking about the contemplative life, or spiritual experience, or ethical norms, or those features that keep communities strong and healthy.

Religious moderation is a relaxation of the standards of adherence to ancient taboos and superstitions. That’s really all it is. Moderate Christians have agreed not to read the bible literally, and not read certain sections of it at all, and then they come away with a much more progressive, tolerant and ecumenical version of Christianity. They just pay attention to Jesus when he’s sermonizing on the Mount, and claim that is the true Christianity. Well that’s not the true Christianity. It’s a selective reading of certain aspects of Christianity. The other face of Christianity is always waiting in the book to be resurrected. You can find the Jesus of Second Thessalonians who’s going to come back and hurl sinners into the pit. This is the Jesus being celebrated in the Left Behind novels. This is the Jesus that half the American population is expecting to see come down out of the clouds.

…and I don’t disagree; moderation in any faith provides haven for extremism. The style of his delivery, however, is very much “With Us Or Against Us” which suits reaction against American theocracy.

Here in the UK, certainly amongst the average Church of England congregation, and quite possibly amongst most of the “Hands down for coffee!” evangelicals, if you tell them they’re smugly waiting to be swept up into a nonexistent heaven – then they will just switch you off and ignore you just as much as they will any other apparent fundie, because they don’t believe all that stuff.

They just believe all the other stuff. The stuff which isn’t quite so embarrassing.

That’s why I call it an American piece; Mr Harris goes so far as to acknowledge that some (most?) Christians “cherry-pick” their belief, but he doesn’t adjust his guns to deal with that fact. Harris just blasts away at the whole front, even the bits which already contain gaping holes, thereby reducing his effectiveness. Dawkins has headed down a similar route with The Root of All Evil but sidestepped the problem by clearly picking targets who would appall the average British semibeliever.

I appreciate what Sam Harris is saying, but if he feels the need to play well outside of the USA, or at least in the UK, I’d recommend watching a particular episode of Yes, Prime Minister for some cultural context:

Jim Hacker: Is there anyone in the church who doesn’t believe in God?

Sir Humphrey: Yes, most of the Bishops.