the Evil Line

Until now I haven't been two impressed with the dialogue between Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan that I linked earlier. That is, I wasn't impressed until I read Sullivan's latest piece, which is phenomenal. I had trouble picking an excerpt that did it justice; we'll start here:

No civilization has ever been atheist at its core. No polity has ever been constructed in the absence of faith, or in the absence of a tradition of faith that makes belief in the present possible at all. Earth to Sam: Does this not tell you something? Or is it plausible that human beings tomorrow will become something that in all of human history and pre-history they have never, ever been?

Read the whole thing. It's long, but I'm serious. Go read it.