Did you read the article? I think you may have missed the point. Granted, easy to do with Harris.

I haven't finished it, other things intervened.

Are you kidding me? He is talking specifically about the POTUS. The most powerful, most important job in the world.

Also, he is not saying that you find the smartest person in the world and make that person president, as your first paragraph implies. Rather, he is arguing that we should have extremely high standards for our candidates.

Sheesh. What an odd thing to have to argue.

I just read the wiki bio of Jesse Ventura:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Ventura

Wow. UtahDan may want to rethink his hypothesis on governors.

Harris was the guy who went on for an entire book ranting at how only atheists have half a brain. Then wrapped it up by making a plug for buddhism. He's my exhibit A that historically and even today "atheist" just means you don't believe in the Judeo-Christian formula. Read Harris or Dawkins' "The God Delusion" and that's all they do. The attacks get redundant and it's curious to me that they go on like this material is new. Their points have been made by folks like Spinoza and Hume for centuries.

Thanks for posting that, JL. I don't think I would have run into it myself, and I always love to read Harris. Not because I agree with him, usually, but because he makes for pretty good entertainment and because I like to keep up with the evangelical atheism movement.

Anyhow, in this instance Harris makes some great points that should raise concerns for anyone, regardless of political preference. The problem with Harris's essay, though, is the problem with all of Harris's writings: no one will take him seriously except those who already agreed with him to begin with.

I find Sam a little frustrating. If you follow his work, he's got a lot of important points to make about what faith has turned into for many believers, and about the implications of the evolution of faith for our society in general.

The problem with his work is that he constructs his messages in such a way that he's more likely to further alienate his readers than to draw them in. Just look at this piece. Incredibly sarcastic and hyperbolic, and he deliberately uses inflated diction and convoluted syntax so that the average Nascar Palin apologist will feel belittled and inferior after reading the commentary. And he just comes across as so self-righteous and full of himself.

He's like this in all his writing. And the irony is that he writes about the growing rift between those who appeal to reason and those who appeal to ideology, yet his own writing only serves to widen the chasm by reinforcing all the stereotypes the ideologues have of the rationals: that they are elitist, condescending, presumptive, irreligious, leftist bastards.

I've never figured out whether his goal is really to improve society, or simply to inflate his own ego and villify religion.

I realized that was a bit harsh. But seriously, does anyone think this essay, in the way it was constructed, is going to cause any readers to rethink their assessment of Palin? It doesn't seem likely to me. Seems more likely that it will only further entrench readers in whatever opinion they already have of the vice presidential candidate, her apologists, and her critics.

I'm remembering that video that Sooner posted with the cleric chanting and such. I have two thoughts about that. First, as Sooner tacitly acknowledged, if you videotaped some of the stuff Mormons do many people would roar with laughter at that too.

Second, I can't believe people including Harris take that kind of stuff so seriously. They might just as well have had a vidoe of people line dancing, as far as I'm concerned. If I decided not to like or not to vote for or work for anyone who had weird religious practices in this country I'd probably be nearly a recluse. This is a country fraught with weird religious movements.

I hope you all have seen that I approach religion with a great deal of humor. It doesn't scare me anymore. I think it's mostly artifact, and I think American born religions are pretty much all ridiculous. The fact they hate one another and ridicule one another is farcical. Pure kitsch. They're also all scared, sad speactacles that are in decline.

Have any of you considered that Harris writes this stuff because it's his living? He's no different than people on cross-fire. He doesn't take it as seriously as you do. It's just a job.

The only truly dangerous religious movement left is Islam.

Are you being serious?

Look, many of them are quite bright, but to say that no single Senator or Governor is or has ever been stupid and uneducated is pretty off the mark, in my opinion.

Exactly. He's a professional troll.