New on AlterNet: Book Excerpt!
My latest article has just been posted on AlterNet, The Biggest Threats We Face From Conservative Religion. It’s a substantial excerpt from chapter 1 of my new book, and is based on (but greatly expanded from) my 2006 essay “Fossil Fuels“. In this chapter, I lay out the grave dangers that religious faith poses to a modern world where powerful, destructive 21st-century technologies coexist with medievally minded fanatics steering the ship of state.
Read the teaser below, then click through to see the rest. And if you like this excerpt, I hope you’ll consider buying the book!
But combustible hydrocarbons aren’t the only product of the Middle East that shapes the face of the world today. From those desert sands comes another fuel. Like oil and coal, this fuel has its origins in the distant past; unlike oil and coal, this one is invisible, intangible. Rather than being transmitted through drills and pipelines, it travels through the air, leaping from one mind to the next, igniting conflagrations figurative and literal. Our economy runs on the fossil fuels of oil, gas and coal, but our society runs on the fossil fuel of religion.
