MISSION STATEMENT

Welcome to BEYOND SCIENCE VERSUS RELIGION--the site that transcends and transforms the currently escalating struggle between science and religion.

You might think that, with so much being written about it, that struggle has been studied to saturation point.. You would be SO-O-O-O wrong. Many aspects of it have been ignored or hardly touched on. Why is conflict intensifying now, rather than at some other time? What are the social and historical forces that drive it? What aspects of religion are atheists wholly unaware of? How much is atheism due to the fact that, early in its history, Christianity went terribly wrong? Why won't Christians admit that their current practices travesty Christ's teachings? What is the hidden paradox in the atheist position that makes its denial of God scientifically untenable? Can atheism and religion turn out to be, at bottom, the same thing--acts of faith?

Hardly anyone has discussed these aspects so far, for a simple reason. Most who have taken part in the debate have been committed to one side or the other, ignoring weaknesses on their own side, knowing (or caring) too little about the other to understand its real flaws. The rest have made wishy-washy attempts to patch up a truce by papering over the cracks--equally, if for different reasons, failing to face unpalatable truths. What is most lacking and most needed is rigorous analysis, uncommitted to either side, dealing with both sides equally and equally objectively. Placing the struggle firmly in both its historical and cosmic contexts, this site will provides just such an analysis.

With my unwavering commitment to seek out bullshit and destroy it in all of its varying forms and disguises, I promise to do that, right here. Here's how we'll proceed. The atheists will get their turn first, for the simple reason that I'm getting really pissed off with their SMUG SELF-SATISFACTION. You'd think this kind of self-righteousness would be the sole prerogative of the religious, bur believe me, buddy, it ain't. So I start with the grandly-self-titled Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or, to cut them down to size, Four Guys against God--Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. I take each of them in turn and examine them minutely, then--if I haven't been sidetracked into trying to answer the brilliant, witty, devastating arguments that you, my readers, will produce, if indeed you exist (yet another act of faith, I suppose)--I'll look at some failings they all, to some degree, share. And then, if I live so long, if we ever get there, it will be the turn of the religious.

Sam Harris--as the most insubstantial, 120 pages on the most generous of counts--you're up first!