He Sold His Soul on eBay at The New Atheist

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He Sold His Soul on eBay

By bk | April 15, 2007 18:46

This afternoon the Minnesota Atheists hosted Hemant Mehta, who blogs at Friendly Atheist and author of I Sold My Sould On eBay, about his experience visiting a number of churches. The book comes out on Tuesday, 17 April - but we were able get copies this afternoon. I haven’t started reading it yet (working on the redesign of this site), but I’m looking forward to it.

Mehta had about an hour and discussed the ’story of the book’ for lack of a better term. I was really impressed by his poise and demeanor, speaking to a friendly, though not always polite group. At just 24, his experience, thoughtfulness and wisdom are doubly impressive. His thoughts on how atheists can focus on positive, upbeat messages and open dialog with people of faith are not unique, but certainly are fresh. Mehta discussed the discourse he has had on the web through the course of the “I Sold My Soul…” experience (which can be found here) and the religious moderates who did not wish to change him, do not wish to evangelize others or insert their faith in to the government. According to Mehta, these are the religious people we need to be talking to, forming friendships with and encouraging. He disagrees with the Sam Harris ‘moderate religion allows fundamentalism to exist’ point of view.

I think he has an interesting point, though I don’t entirely agree. While there might be a few religious types who really do keep their beliefs close, I think those are 1) the minority, or 2) not the ones we’re really worried about. So, while I agree we don’t want to alienate this group, there are probably times that it is worth alienating, or at least risking it, while going after the more dangerous aspects of religion that are fundamentalism and evangelicalism (a la Harris). At the same time, the more we can project a positive message of reason, compassion, thoughtfulness and a reasonable level of tolerance (not total tolerance) the better off we are.

Thanks for coming up to Minnesota Hemant, it was cool, and please keep up the good writing.

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