Sam Harris who is making quite a name for himself as a militant, in your face atheist, has a dashed off column on the Pope’s boneheaded remarks re Islam last week — for which he has now apologized.
Sam Harris: ‘God’s Rottweiler’ Barks

[By the way, there is at least one long, disputatious comment following Harris’ post.]

As I posted earlier, I was mystified by Benedict’s choice of prefatory paragraphs in a speech about western science and the harm its empirical obsession had done (in his opinion) to the more inclusive “reason” of humanity, which includes faith. It seemed to me the Pope had several items on his agenda: 1) religious faith spread by the sword is unworthy the name. That he thought it a good idea to use Islam as an example of this, without a mention of Christianity, suggests a denied motive: 2) Islam is bad, Christianity is good. And 3) Western Science as a belief system has stripped the world of needed faith — faith which is best exemplified by Christianity but Islam, properly practiced, is better than nothing… These three themes got jumbled up (or were purposely jumbled) in the talk. The anti-Islam remarks got the most attention. Sam Harris, and I frankly, are more concerned about the anti-reason polemic which is the main part of the talk.

[By the way, Harris is no friend of Islam, any more than of Christianity. He does think Islam at this point in history has a near critical mass of believers bent on destruction and domination.]

Along these lines I was interested to read that Al Gore has a new book coming out soon.

With no fanfare, he signed a few weeks ago with Penguin Press to write “The Assault on Reason.”

As described by editor Scott Moyers, the book is a meditation on how “the public arena has grown more hostile to reason,” and how solving problems such as global warming is impeded by a political culture with a pervasive “unwillingness to let facts drive decisions.”

Raw Story: Gore Book and Plans?