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May 23, 2013
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 Sam Harris, DisbelieverPosted on Jul 7, 2006The frequent Truthdig contributor and interviewee tells Salon.com that Martin Luther King Jr. performed his admirable works in spite of his religious beliefs, not because of them. (Link - reg req’d)
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By dwhiteism, June 17, 2009 at 9:58 am Link to this comment
Dr. King did NOT believe in the virgin birth or the resurrection. He was thinking of becoming a Unitarian minister, but chose Baptist so that he could reach more blacks and involve them in the civil rights movement. Of course he was a follower of Ghandi; who was a Hindu, although spiritually eclectic.
Report thisBy dwhiteism, June 17, 2009 at 9:58 am Link to this comment
Dr. King did NOT believe in the virgin birth or the resurrection. He was thinking of becoming a Unitarian minister, but chose Baptist so that he could reach more blacks and involve them in the civil rights movement. Of course he was a follower of Ghandi; who was a Hindu, although spiritually eclectic
Report thisBy jonny, September 18, 2008 at 12:10 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Alan Richard, I think you might be wrong there, sure there are some exceptions to what Harris is saying, there always are, but Harris points common patterns that I have seen as well
I have met many Christians, who, so sure of everything, love to have their opinions, have them heard and make sure everyone knows who their candidate is
They show off their big morals, yet when it comes to actually doing something, it’s much easier, more of an impact and more of a buzz, to make their presence felt writing articles, blogging about how good they are and how wrong everyone else is, on their computer with an internet connection.
everything comes from your world view and more often than not their’s is ‘Jesus has already saved the world’
my world view is science, I’m an engineering UG, and I damn wish there were more politicians who knew some basic science.
Report thisBy Alan Richard, January 16, 2007 at 7:31 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
I agree with lots that Harris has to say, but he is completely wrong about this one, and the above diatribe actually contradicts what he has written elsewhere. You can’t have it both ways, Sam: either religion causes extreme and apparently suicidal behavior or it does not. King took risks that were not rational when you begin from the assumption that indifferent chance and necessity are all there is to it. What King was able to do cannot be separated from his confidence that unmerited suffering would win out over both brute force and propaganda because love and not malevolance or indifference is at the heart of the world.
The confidence that enables one to throw one’s body in front of a gun or a fire hose for an apparently irrational hope that an apparently intransigent injustice is not different from the confidence that enables one to blow oneself up for the same kind of hope. King was not a fundamentalist and may not have believed in life after death, but he DID trust Reality to ultimately support the downtrodden and his behavior cannot be separated from that trust, which he himself (with a theology informed by Christian existentialism) would have acknowledged to be a leap of faith.
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