It should be obvious that [Harris] simply has no idea what he is talking about, on any level, and has no moral compass whatsoever, rational or otherwise. His concern is not with the damage religion has done to humanity, because it is quite clear he doesn't care about real people - why advocate torture if he cares about human life and well-being? No, he cares about Sam Harris. He is, it would seem, an unthinking, unreflective, ignorant self-promoter, basking in the limelight provided by outrageous and unsubstantiated claims and argument with neither merit nor support in evidence. He is now revealed as a believer in some of the silliest ideas imaginable, ideas with no more (or less) support in "evidence" than the resurrection of Jesus, the divine authority of the Mosaic law, or the divine authorship of the Q'uran. I am not saying that ESP and reincarnation do not exist (actually, I am; I believe in neither, and the fact that both are matters of "belief" should already lead us well on the way to questioning the basis of Harris' attacks on religion), but rather that they are no more supported by evidence than any other wild claim. They are matter of belief, not verifiable evidence. I suppose consistency is too much to ask of some people, but I am unsurprised by the fact that, rather than the deep, serious thinker he claims to be, Harris is now outed as a shallow, unserious person in love with his new celebrity status. The fact that he tries to distance himself from his own beliefs in interviews show that he is a celebrity, not an intellectual.
Like the proverbial bad penny, or a herpes infection, Harris is back, writing in regards to "religious moderates". Far from considering him a threat to the faith, I consider him a joke of monumental proportions, as the above quote shows; as the title of the latter-linked post has it, I also think him silly, fanatical, and cowardly, the last because he attempted, in a follow-up to the Alternet interview, to disavow the very things he has both written and spoken about that he does believe.
Like Richard Dawkins, whose The God Delusion is a recycling of better arguments and better understanding by Bertrand Russell (Why I Am Not a Christian is the best atheist manifesto I have ever read; Dawkins adds nothing to Russell, and subtracts quite a bit), Harris offers nothing in his works but the idea that "religion" is very bad. Unlike Dawkins, who seems to somehow equate all religion with theistic faiths, Harris is at least clear-headed enough to mention Islam and Judaism (although he has always failed to mention his own pet-faith, Buddhism) in the list of religions in need of social euthanasia. The problem, of course, is that neither Harris nor Dawkins have a clue of the thing about which they write. I can listen to atheist arguments, and I will give heed to serious arguments; neither Dawkins nor Harris offer them, and by his own actions and in his own words, Harris has shown himself to be a cowardly hypocrite, wishing for nothing less than to be taken seriously precisely as he has no business being.
I feel bad the LA Times gave him column inches to resuscitate his flagging public profile, and in a column so devoid of moral, intellectual, or historical understanding it would be given an "F" by most college professors in an undergraduate course. On the other hand, it does remind us all why he should be devoutly ignored.
