Great post, btw–Sam Harris and his ignorant brand of bourgeois pop-secularism is nothing but a dumbed-down riff on Huntington’s clash of civilizations theory, classic cultural imperialism at its finest. The End Of Faith contains many passages that would make even Ann Coulter blush. See Lenin’s Tomb on atheism done right and Chris Hedges on the dangerous utopianism of the so-called “New Atheists” (Hedges’ latest book, from which the preceding AlterNet was adapted from, is a must read, too–just finished it last weekend. Don’t entirely agree with his premise, but I do think he pegs the dangerous amoral bigotry of Harris, Hitchens, etc quite well.)

I’ve been fighting a losing battle for pro-life understanding for years. There is every reason - purely logically and scientifically - to be against abortion in all but the most extreme cases. And it’s almost impossible for me to make that case, because people like “Rev Don” come along and start praying at people instead of reasoning with them.

Rev Don: do you really think your tactic is going to work? Do you really think that coming in here and spouting off a prayer is going to make people suddenly see the light?

Or do you think it will simply show that you’ve judged our community and found it wanting, based on your own standards and what you perceive to be the standards of God? Because if that’s the case, might I remind you that it is neither your place nor mine to judge another human being’s sins - and that to claim to know the mind of God, without error or sin, would be the very height of arrogance, if you consider it logically. I cannot know the mind of God with perfect certainty. I have trouble believing that you do.

SAY THIS PRAYER: Dear Jesus, I am a sinner and am headed to eternal hell because of my sins. I believe you died on the cross to take away my sins and to take me to heaven. Jesus, I ask you now to come into my heart and take away my sins and give me eternal life.

What is important to bear in mind is that Sam Harris has made a living doing precisely that - calling out Christianity for it’s failings and flaws and sins. He’s hardly singling out Islam.

Look at Dawkins and the atheist movement. It’s not really an atheist movement at all - it’s an anti-Christian movement. Now, I have no problem with that - as a Christian, I’m fed up with the miserable acts so many of these church’s perform in God’s name that give the rest of us such a bad name, and I’m grateful to the Dawkins crew for calling them out - but by and large you don’t see calls for the murder of Dawkins or his ilk, and Dawkins routinely challenges well known uber-Christians to debates that are open to the public.

By contrast, the Danish cartoonists are living in hiding or with 24 hour personal bodyguards because of what they drew.

If you say something, and you are then assaulted for it - physically assaulted, and threatened with loss of your life and your loved ones - it’s unlikely you’ll say anything like that again. How is that freedom of speech?

Please bear in mind that I’m not disagreeing with you, for the most part - the radicals who have hijacked Islam (like the lesser radicals who have hijacked Christianity) wouldn’t have been able to garner anywhere near this kind of support without our bombs dropping around them and our oil tankers carting off their wealth. We are in many ways responsible for the problem, both for the reasons you cited and for the reasons Harris did.

I’m about to watch Fitna and see what the fuss is about. I’ll check back later with my thoughts on it.. I’ll leave the link below and if you get the chance, I’m interested in your thoughts too.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3369102968312745410