 | Been going thru this book, and find it of much interest --especially regarding many comments made in the threads on religious moderates and fundamentalists... for instance --
"Religious moderation springs from the fact that even the least educated person among us simply knows more about certain matters than anyone did two thousand years ago - and much of this knowledge is incompatible with scripture...
"While moderation in religion may seem a reasonable position to stake out, in light of all we have [and have not] learned about the universe, it offers no bulwark against religious extremists and religious violence. From the perspective of those seeking to live by the letter of the texts, the religious moderate is nothing more than a failed fundamentalist. He is, in all likelihood, going to wind up in hell with the rest of the unbelievers. The problem that religious moderation poses for all of us is that it does not permit anything very critical to be said about religious literalism. We cannot say that the fundamentalists are crazy, because they are merely practicing their freedom of belief; we cannot even say that they are mistaken in religious terms, because their knowledge of scripture is generally unrivaled. All we can say, as religious moderates, is that we don't like the personal and social costs that a full embrace of scripture exegesis; it is simply a capitulation to a variety of all-too-human interests that have nothing, in principle, to do with God. Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance -- and it has no bona fides, in religious terms, to put it on par with fundamentalism. The texts themselves are unequivoval: they are perfect in all their parts. By their light, religious moderation appears to be nothing more than an unwillingness to fully submit to God's law. By failing to live by the letter of the texts, while tolerating the irrationality of those who do, religious moderates betray faith and reason equally. Unless the core dogmas of faith are called into question --i.e., that we know there is a God, and that we know what he wants from us -- religious moderation will do nothing to lead us out of the wilderness."
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The End of Faith by Sam Harris
