Some In Between Thoughts

As we are "in between" in our reading . . .  finishing the Haught book when we meet next September 11th, and then starting a new book after that, I thought I'd post some thoughts, to keep the gray (or is it grey?) matter moving.  
     Sam Harris pulled no punches in his unrelenting assault on not just some religion, but all of it, from the most extreme forms to the most gentle.  The world would be able to be a far better place if we could all disavow our myths, legends and stories about the gods, and instead rely on reason and our innate longings to be kind to each other.  That some of the most horrific deeds in history, including misdeeds happening at this moment, were done in the name of this religion or that cannot be denied.  It is a sad history we have, we Christians.  We haven't done ONLY bad things -- hospitals, schools, food distribution centers etc etc etc literally around the world have been started by people of great faith -- people willing to give up their lives for the sake of obeying their God.  But our misunderstanding of our own sacred stories has sometimes fed our fears, and we have sinned, to say the least.
     There have been a number of very popular books on atheism the last few years, Sam Harris' being just one of many.  Like Harris, they are not shy to call us religionists out, and like Harris (so I gather from what I have read about them) they have nothing good to say about religion in the world.  I recently read about a fellow named Greg M. Epstein, the humanist chaplain at Harvard University. Epstein has a new book, Good Without God:  What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe.  In it he says, "The work that we need to do, we atheists, humanists and nonbelievers, is to build a better world and not try to tear down those with whom we disagree.  When our goal is erasing religion, rather than embracing human beings, we all lose."
     Epstein apparently is looking for a third way, a way between militant religion on the one hand, and militant atheism on the other.  That sounds to me like a good way to go.   We should, and could, learn a thing or two from those who most radically disagree with us.  No?