A "religious moment" on the bus

This is week 3 of riding the bus to work and I must say, getting time to read in the mornings has turned out to be about the best part of my new job. Yes, it's a bit of a hassle to get to the Park and Ride before 7:00 to make sure there is still parking. Yes, some of the people on the bus are rude or may not smell the freshest. But, for that 25 minutes it takes to get to work in the morning I'm able to dive into Newsweek, The Week, Money, or one of the other magazines that used to go unread month after month at home and end up in the recycle bin because there's nothing interesting about old news.

I've been riding home with Wayson so that he can use the HOV lane, so I usually don't get to read in the afternoon commute.

Today I read a fascinating article in the September 11, 2006 issue of Newsweek. It's titled The New Naysayers and it is a fascinating discussion of religion throughout the ages and contrasts faith with other "belief systems" such as Darwinism or Humanisim.

One particularly interesting quote "They [the authors of the books discussed in the article] ask: where do people get their idea of God? From the Bible or the Qur'an. "Tell a devout Christian ... that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible," Harris writes, "and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever."

Whatever your beliefs happen to be, this is a very interesting article.