With the new year upon us, I reflect upon the amazing time we “evangelical atheists” have had in 2006. Several bestselling books by articulate spokespeople such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, the political implosion of the Religious Right, the Blasphemy Challenge, and more media attention than you can shake a stick at. We’ve earned a celebration!
And what better way to celebrate than with a drinking game?
Well, OK— I’ve never been interested in genocidal behavior against my own brain cells, so I’ve never been drunk. But sometimes when I’m sitting there reading the latest Harris article or watching him hold forth in some YouTube clip, something he says causes me to become possessed with a strong and repeated urge to raise a glass, bellow some Viking toast, and take a deep draught of whatever I’m swilling at the moment (which is usually a Monster or Vitamin Water).
What causes this sudden, celebratory compulsion? Well, for me it started when reading The End of Faith. His boldness and tenacity in shredding the rotten roots of religion were positively inspiring. And though I thoroughly enjoyed it all, by the second half of the book I began to see a niggling pattern in Sam’s style of discourse.
There, I said it: discourse. Sam says that word a lot. A lot. He just likes it I suppose. Whenever he wants to mention societal communication or debate on religion or superstition, he uses it— and to be fair, much of what Sam advocates is a fundamental shift in the kind of… dialog… our society has about dogmas and taboos. So it’s perfectly cromulent. It’s just…
sigh
…gotten really cliché for me.
An Amazon.com search reveals that the word “discourse” appears on 44 pages of The End of Faith, and although Amazon doesn’t as of this writing allow searching the text of Letter to a Christian Nation, I’m positive my eye twitched at that word many times while reading it as well. (Update for the OCD: He uses it 10 times in Letter to a Christian Nation, which means it appears on 7% of the pages, while it appears on 17% of the pages in The End of Faith, so he definitely toned it down.)
So, if you’re a Sam Harris fan and want to ring in the New Year in style, the rule is simple: whenever Sam says or writes the word… drink! I’ve also compiled a helpful guide below based on a few texts, arranged by number of occurrences.
Happy New Year! 
