Families, it sometimes seems, are just a vast web of potential embarrassments . . . interspersed, no doubt, with the occasional opportunity for pride. Honor and shame, as much as love or liking, are what bind us to our kith and kin. The teenager rolls her eyes as her mother gets up to dance at the wedding; grandparents flush when their friends ask about the grandson who just “came out” in Sunday school; a wife looks down disconsolately as her intoxicated husband rises to make the after-dinner speech. We can all evoke such moments.
Sam Harris heads the youth wing of the New Atheists. “The End of Faith,” his blistering take-no-prisoners attack on the irrationality of religions, found him many fans and, not surprisingly, a great body of detractors.
