Faith Bashing

I was reading Killing the Buddha site and came across a book review:
http://www.killingthebuddha.com/dogma/samharris.htm

This deals with a Mr. Sam Harris’ book Letter to a Christian Nation. The review writer starts by describing a situation where she and her Buddhist companions were opposed to a developer’s plans to clear-cut a mountain top for a resort; by implication there were grand designs of money and jobs for the other locals, so there were those for and those against the development. There was a lot of work in order to deal with the anger that will arise in heated discussions. Good little story.
When we get to the book review, we remember that not all Buddhists are smiling. Some of them have a not so hidden agenda.

First, about Mr. Harris himself we read:  

Harris does not consider himself a Buddhist because Buddhism is a religion. But he is, by his own account, someone who sits in meditation as taught in Buddhist centers, with other Buddhists.  

I suppose this somehow – magically, perhaps – establishes the bona fides of everyone on our side: Buddha, Buddha, Buddha…chanted like some mantra. There is a certain irony in that this review occurs in the site Killing the Buddha (KtB). The name of the site is based on the story that teaches the moral that the Buddha you see is NOT the Buddha.
Yet the writing is heavy with Buddhas.

There is an implication that Meditation Makes the Buddhist. Meditation is only one step of the Eight-fold Path. What happened to the other seven? Then Faith comes in for a good shellacking:  

For instance, he writes: "While believing strongly, without evidence, is considered a mark of madness or stupidity in any other area of our lives, faith in God still holds immense prestige in our society. Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about. It is telling that this aura of nobility extends only to those faiths that still have many subscribers.  

I believe one of the definitions of Faith is belief without absolute verification.
Believing without proof does not hold prestige. What holds prestige is the acts of those who fight in the big jihad of forcing one’s actions to conform with the will of the Holy. That holds prestige…in fact, it holds more prestige than sitting in meditation as taught in Buddhist centers.

We have already talked about statements that cannot be proven to be true or false; something as simple as “The Cure concert was great!” cannot be proven true or false. There is no means of verifying it since some will have liked the music and some will not have liked it. There is no characteristic of "being musically great" which may be measured with the same ease we use to measure the attendance figures.

We can generate an infinity of statements that cannot be proven and we deal with them constantly. We experience the reduction ad absurdsum of everything when we come to:  

Harris also makes strong cases against creationism, in support of atheism, and generally attempts to "demolish the intellectual and moral pretensions of Christianity in its most committed forms." And he uses the language of scientific certainty (he is himself a neuroscientist) to support his claims. It is easy to say, as many do, that Harris is prone to fall into the same fundamentalism that he so articulately dismantles. But this is simply the nature of an argument like his. He is trying to say that some things actually are intolerable, things like beliefs that inspire people to fly planes into buildings. But unlike the intolerance of religious absolutism, these things are intolerable for good reasons.  

Yes. It is too facile to say that Atheism is not susceptible of verification, just as is Faith. Yet what would be the point? I do not think it would add anything positive to this process. And Neuroscience as the effective means to establish atheism? Surely not.
If something cannot be proven nor disproven, it really does one not a bit of good to bring in "hard science" and have it strut its stuff. One gets the notion here that science may prove something that is not capable of proof.

It was quaint to see the entire history of Islam collapsed into a flight of airplanes. And it would be too facile again to point out that horrible things merely require horrible people. If religion is involved, however, it gets the bad rap. . If the Holy were responsible for every idiocy that comes forth from mankind, the universe would indeed be a strange countryside.
I am not really sure that the last two sentences quoted make a point of any kind. I mean, I sort of think I know where the author wants to go, but she does not really go there. The reviewer is extremely sympathetic to Mr. Harris. I am not clear why.
Why would a self-proclaimed Buddhist finds this so enchanting? It has all the earmarks of erudite, well written twaddle.

It reminds me of the story in
http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2006/10/faith-and-its-manifestations.html
where an old Granny with a gangrenous leg refuses amputation for religious reasons:  

What life do these people mean to save this grandmother for? A life of poverty wherein she finds herself an object of scorn and ridicule? Perhaps Granny has born enough suffering and decided that it is time to leave suffering behind. That is one point that never dawns on thepeople of Reason who heap scorn upon her; maybe Granny has attained Nirvana. 

The problem of Religion is the attitudes of mankind that are made very clear in this review.

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