Sam Harris has a new "must read" book.

Q: You wrote the best seller The End of Faith (2004). In it, you detail the flaws—to put it mildly—you see in organized religion. What is your new book, Letter to a Christian Nation, all about, and why did you write it so soon after The End of Faith?

A: After The End of Faith came out, I received thousands of emails, many from devout Christians who did their best to show me the error of my ways. I answered these emails individually at first, but they then came in such torrents, and were so similar in content, that I developed a boiler-plate “Letter to a Christian” in response. Occasionally, someone would respond to my form letter with further arguments in defense of God. So the letter began to evolve, and then I realized that I could write a short book and address all the committed Christians at once.

Q: The book argues for the eradication of religion, at least religion as we know it. You write, “If we ever do transcend our religious bewilderment, we will look back upon this period in human history with horror and amazement” much as we now do slavery in the United States. Why must religion be wiped out? Is there any happy in-between state that resides somewhere along the continuum from fundamentalism to atheism?

A:Well, the first thing I’d like to point out is that I’m not advocating that we jettison ethics or people’s search for “spiritual” experience (to use a loaded term). I’m simply saying that believing propositions on bad evidence is never a good idea. If there were sufficient reasons to believe Jesus will be returning to earth like a superhero, this belief would form part of our rational, scientific worldview. Of course, there are no good reasons to believe this, but this hasn’t kept a majority of Americans from watching the skies in the hopes that the savior the world will soon arrive. In fact, 44% of Americans believe that Jesus will return sometime inthe next fifty years.Apocalyptic beliefs of this sort actually have political, economic, and environmental consequences. And yet they are based purely on religious dogma. Dogmatism is dangerous because it is intrinsically divisive—these ideas aren’t rationally held, so they can’t be rationally discussed—and it uncouples people from the events in the world that should actually inform their beliefs. Religious dogmatism impedes medical research, starts wars, diverts scarce material and intellectual resources—in short, it gets people killed. What most people call “faith” (in the religious sense of the word) is nothing but a willingness to accept religious dogma uncritically. I am definitely arguing that we have to transcend this impulse.

I love this author! I read his first book, "The End of Faith", and found it very intelligent and unafraid to address subjects that are usually considered taboo. I will certainly put this on my "must read" list.