Sam Harris seems interesting. Take his argument on Transubstantiation, for instance:

In The End of Faith, Harris devotes a chapter to “The Nature of Belief”. His main argument is that all of our beliefs, except those relating to religious dogma, are based on evidence and experience. He says that religion allows views that would otherwise be a sign of “madness” to become accepted or, in some cases, revered as “holy”. He gives specific attention to such teachings as transubstantiation – the Roman Catholic doctrine that, during the Mass, the bread and wine of the Eucharist changes in substance to the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. Harris argues that if a lone individual developed this belief, he or she would undoubtedly be considered “mad”.

For Harris, to assert this, he has to argue that bundle theory [2] is not only true, but that a rejection of it is bad. As bundle theory is rather esoteric:

Necessarily, for any concrete entity, a, if for any entity, b, b is a constituent of a, then b is an attribute.

I find it hard to believe. Now, bundle theory may or may not be true (it’s certainly not falsifiable, though at the same time not absurd on its face, either). But to compare rejection of it to madness? That’s the mark of an ignorant man.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Harris_(author)#Worldview
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_theory#Bundle_theory