The best way to view Harris's intolerance is through the lenses provided by Julian Baggini's Atheism: A Very Short Introduction. Baggini's excellent little book is intended not as an attack on religion but to give a positive explanation of a word, atheism, that conjures "dark images of something sinister, evil, and threatening." His point is that atheism need be neither "happy-clappy" nor "pessimistic or depressive." It is rather a kind of growing up, a turning away from "the innocence of supernatural world views" and an acceptance "that we have to make our way in the world."

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 11:48 AM  |