Remember the New Atheists? Originally, the term meant Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, all of whom put out books denouncing God in the aftermath of 9/11. Harris later tried his hand at philosophy, with a book claiming that morality could be reduced to science and utilitarianism; this week he put up a long piece on his website arguing that the solution to crazed killers in America is armed guards in every school. Like his earlier demand that al-Qaida suspects be tortured, and indeed like his whole schtick about Muslims, this is a virtuoso display of wrapping the angry confusions of Weimar America in the language of dispassionate objectivity.

He claims, for example, that "100,000 Americans die each year because doctors and nurses fail to wash their hands properly. Measured in bodies, therefore, the problem of hand-washing in hospitals is worse than the problem of guns, even if we include accidents and suicides". Anyway, "mass shootings scarcely represent 0.1% of all murders".

The essential point about his position is that Harris himself is a gun nut: "Unlike my friends, I own several guns and train with them regularly. Every month or two, I spend a full day shooting with a highly qualified instructor… My involvement with guns goes back decades. I have always wanted to be able to protect myself and my family, and I have never had any illusions about how quickly the police can respond when called."

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The real danger of his kind of atheism is that it replaces fantasies about gods (who don't exist) with fantasies about human beings, who do. And which is more dangerous: to be wrong about something imaginary or about something real?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2013/jan/07/sam-harris-faith-guns

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