insofar as they are atheists, i sympathize with people like sam harris and richard dawkins in the current wars about religion. and i think it's nice that there's a wave of popular atheism and revulsion toward religion: it's been awhile. but i must say that the debate is kind of pathetic and stuck in the 18th century: these people are fundamentalists about science, reason &c. in a way, they're unaware that they have an organizing cosmology that's not a mere expression of reason. we're atheists not because reason or science demonstrates that there is no god, but because we have an inchoate sense of what universe we live in. one way to put this is that the universe is a moral outrage, and the only way to calm down is to realize that there is no moral order. i wish actual philosophers were in this debate. at any rate, these religions are ridiculous, ludicrous, false on their face. but on the other hand no one is a mere reasoning machine, and if they were they'd simply be universal sceptics. we're all full of faith. or: our sense of ourselves and the universe is as expressed in music, poetry as much as in science, for example, and there's no sorting out the emotional commitments from the rational conclusions. maybe read some emerson or something.