More of the same

Harvey Mansfield in the Weekly Standard (still faithfully losing a million dollars each year) offers his opinion on the recent atheist tracts. It is filled with the usual appeals, "we might infer," "we can suspect," "Edmund Burke speculated," ect., and the usual canard that atheism produced the greatest tyranny ever know (sorry it was Marxism and Fascism both violent, totalitarian ideologies of which Fascism was not atheistic but rather had more similarities with ancient paganism) Yes we all know the traditional connection people have made between God, government, and morality but he does nothing to answer the obvious objection that since David Hume anyone exercising epistemological diligence will find it impossible to believe in god. And he furthermore is blind to the fact that it is the contention of these books that as science makes it more and more impossible to believe in god even for the philosophical layman we should try to find a different basis for our ethics- specifically one which takes account of human experience and suffering, which appeals to god do not- a point with which Sam Harris is especially concerned. And any view to history will find that religions negate the value of human suffering hence the use of fire to purify souls during the Inquisition and the cult of suffering and poverty started by Mother Teresa. So I think that in the 21st century it is not outrageous of us to claim that with all the outrages against human dignity through human history maybe the most familiar aspect of human society (religion) ought to be jettisoned as it loses it value in explaining the world. (it has already done this)