More than 50% of Americans have a "negative" or "highly negative" view of people who don't believe in God. 70% think it important for presidential candidates to be "strongly religious."

"A person who believes that Elvis is still alive is very unlikely to get promoted to a position of great power and responsibility in our society. Neither will a person who believes that the holocaust was a hoax. But people who believe equally irrational things about God and the bible are now running our country. This is genuinely terrifying."

44% of Americans think Jesus Christ will return in the next 50 years. (22% are "certain" that he will, another 22% think he "probably" will.)

"According to the most common interpretation of biblical prophecy, Jesus will return only after things have gone horribly awry. Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency."

Only 28% of Americans believe in evolution (and two-thirds of these believe evolution was "guided by God"). 53% are actually creationists.

"Despite a full century of scientific insights attesting to the antiquity of the earth, more than half of our neighbors believe that the entire cosmos was created six thousand years ago. This is, incidentally, about a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue."

87% of Americans say they "never doubt the existence of God."

"Had the residents of New Orleans been content to rely on the beneficence of the Lord, they wouldn't have known that a killer hurricane was bearing down upon them until they felt the first gusts of wind on their faces, but a poll conducted by The Washington Post found that 80% of Katrina survivors claim that the event has only strengthened their faith in God."

28% of Americans believe that every word of the Bible is literally true. 49% believe that it is the "inspired word" of God.

"We read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses. And then we come across another of God's teachings on morality: if a man discovers on his wedding night that his bride is not a virgin, he must stone her to death on her father's doorstep (Deuteronomy 22:13-21)."

80% of Americans expect to be called before God on Judgment Day to answer for their sins. 90% believe in heaven. 77% rate their chances of going to heaven as "excellent" or "good."

"In the year 2006, a person can have sufficient intellectual and material resources to build a nuclear bomb and still believe that he will get seventy-two virgins in Paradise. Western secularists, liberals, and moderates have been very slow to understand this. The cause of their confusion is simple: they don't know what is like to really believe in God."

65% of Americans believe in the literal existence of Satan. 73% believe in Hell.

"It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion-to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions and religious diversions of scarce resources-is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity."

83% of Americans believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. (11% disbelieve. 6% don't know.)

"The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive."

These are quotes from Sam Harris' new book, Letter to a Christian Nation, written in response to feedback he received following the publication of his first book The End of Faith. I read the former over the weekend (it's quite concise) and finished the latter last week. Both are at the same time frightening and heartening.

They are frightening because Sam Harris in his brilliant points out the quite obvious problem that many of the most important decisions being made in the world today are being made by people who firmly believe their holy books are the literal word of god. They are heartening because Sam Harris is articulating what many people like me who live in a reality based world where evidence trumps faith is leading the charge against the dark age thinking that drives this country and much of the rest of the world.

One of the main problems with faith, and there are so many, is that the underlying beliefs are used to justify some of the most egregious affronts to humanity--the Crusades, the Holocaust, the Inquisition, suicide bombing. Each of these has a single common thread--they have been justifyed in the mind of the perpetrators by a firm belief that they were doing god's will.

Mr. Harris writes with far more eloquence and intelligence on this topic than I will ever be able to muster. I urge you to Check is books out of the library, go down to you local book monger or buy them from Amazon today.

And to the 50% of Americans have a "negative" or "highly negative" of my atheism, I say, wholeheartedly, FUCK YOU. My faith that your belief system is irrational and dangerous will never kill a single human being. FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU.

*Irony