"Sam Harris is no hero to me. His anti-Muslim screed and support for torture totally sank whatever his message may have been about religion.

Compared to people I consider great thinkers and synthesizers: Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, Huston Smith, Gary Snyder, Harris is third rate. He wrote a diatribe that became a best-seller. Easy to do in our reactive and unthinking age. He's not even as entertaining as the other great polemicist Christopher Hitchens, who at least knows how to write."

I'd be curious to explore just what your first two sentences here mean. The first one I don't get because I don't understand what being a "hero to [you]" has to do with whether a person's argument has merit. The second sentence mentions an "anti-Muslim screed" and "support for torture," neither of which comes immediately to mind when I think back on my reading of Harris (End of Faith; Letter to Christian Nation), but then also claims that those positions (unspecified) somehow scuttled Harris's claims (unspecified & treated as though unimportant to recognize) about religion.

I do not recognize "Harris the anti-Muslim." I do recognize Harris who does not believe in any god or gods, and feels that he has something to say, worth saying, on that subject. I'll join you in preferring the prose of Hitchens, but perhaps we'll agree that if the message is confined to that one speaker, it will soon find its way to obscurity.

Herring405