I was watching Bill Maher last night and he had Sam Harris, the founder of The Reason Project, on. Bill Maher apparently sits on the advisory board for this organization.
Mr. Harris and his organization supports an open direct dialogue regarding religious dogma using science and secular arguments to dispel the irrational notion of God and to explore trans formative events using the same.
I found the concept that we are engaged in a war of ideas to be very intriguing. I recently watched a video production with Richard Dawkins in which he said we need to confront the nonsensical ideas of astrology, mysticism, holistic medicine, and religion because they are retarding the growth of the species. In the above clip Sam Harris discusses a similar notion.
I would imagine, with most of my religious friends, actively confronting their beliefs would make me an unpopular guest. However, I do believe when someone uses religion as a justification for poor behavior or bad public policy it is fair game to 'prosecute the war of ideas'.
The Reason Project did have some tools on their web page that I found useful and somewhat exciting. The one that has the most use to me is "The Scripture Project" which has annotated versions of the Bible, Book of Mormon, and the Qur’an. I started reading the Book of Mormon recently and I found some of the annotations made here were similar to the things I had noted myself.
