You Guys Need to Communicate! (thoughts from an ex evangelical Christian)

I might be a bit mixed up between Dawkins and Harris but I think they would both agree on this:The biggest danger of even moderates is that they make a virtue out of taking things on faith. The idea that it is a good thing to believe something is true with no or even contradictory evidence allows for all sorts of stupid and horrific things to be built from there.I think that taking things on faith is not a good thing at all. It is what you do when you don't have time or don't think it is worth investing effort to determine the credibility of an idea. It is a stop gap and not a good thing to be praised at all.

While I agree, to some degree, with your "comfort" excuse and I happen to think there are other values in what we see in moderate religious organizations now I think that this quote applies: And we know from psychology that such subjective experience are not evidence that a rational person should trust. All you do is prove that there is danger in even moderate religious thought by suggesting that such experiences should count for anything at all.We all have this frailty; to encourage it is not a virtue. There are many frailties that we must come to understand and learn to overcome or our oh-so-brainy species might not make it.

It is a sound bite. The underlying valid issue is deciding that something is good if you are made happy even if it is false. It is fine to delude a child but what makes an adult is someone able to deal with reality and be happy. I've been married twice. I got it very right the second time. There was at least a little rationality that time. It is the total disregard for rationality ingendered by falling in love that makes for some very bad marriages.