Atheist Sam Harris was the guest on The Colbert Report recently. A few weeks back I blogged an excerpt from an interview with Harris where he commented on Islam and civil society. You can watch him on Colbert here.

Harris began the interview by trying to establish that an atheist is not exactly an exotic specimen:

Colbert: Tonight I'll ask, "If there is no Jesus, then who carried me on that beach?"...

Harris: We're all atheists with respect to Poseidon. We all know exactly what it's like to be an atheist with respect to Poseidon. Anyone worshipping Poseidon, even at sea, is a lunatic...

Colbert: Your book is called the end of faith. Um, what do you mean by the end of faith? Is faith ending or do you believe that faith should end?

Harris: I think it should end. I think either you have good reasons for what you believe or you don't. If you have good reasons, those beliefs are part of the world view of science and rationality generally. If there were good reasons to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin or that Mohammad went to heaven on a winged horse, that would be part of our rational world view. And it's only when people lose their purchase on evidence and argument - when they have bad reasons - that they talk about faith.

Colbert: Well I've got historical evidence. The Bible tells me that Jesus was born of a virgin... The Bible is without flaw. It is inerrant. We know this because the Bible says it is without flaw...

Harris' main point seemed to be that society is not sufficiently critical of the harm caused by religion (for example, opposition to condom use exacerbating the spread of AIDS in Africa) because of the respect it gives to religious dogma.

From an article in USA Today by Haya El Nasser titled "Michigan pulling itself out of slump":

Detroit, Michigan's most populous city, has shrunk by more than 50,000 people this decade to about 900,000. Its biggest industry, automobiles, has been battered by global competition.

One of its largest employers, General Motors, lost $10.6 billion last year and has offered buyouts to more than 100,000 workers.

But fresh county population estimates from the Census Bureau show modest turnarounds in several other parts of the state. Sixty of Michigan's 83 counties have grown this decade, and 19 had population gains of at least 5%...

Michigan is moving away from manufacturing and tapping its intellectual base around universities and medical centers....

So far, the gains have been concentrated in three regions:

•West. Counties including the cities of Muskegon, Holland, Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo are seeing modest to robust growth. A highway extension south of Grand Rapids, home of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, has opened neighboring counties to commuters. The Grand Rapids area is attracting medical investment and professionals.

"They're attractive, quality-of-life places and have a somewhat more diverse economic base," says John Austin, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and vice president of the Michigan State Board of Education. "It's close to Chicago."

•Southeast. Washtenaw County, home of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan, is a center of research and development and biotech activity. It's a place "where there are educated people, where knowledge works," Austin says.

•Northwest. Traverse City and counties on the shores of Lake Michigan are benefiting from tourists and retirees moving in. Beaches and other natural attractions are luring entrepreneurs and executives who can work anywhere because of wealth and technology.