Below is an excerpt taken from the transcript  of the April 2007 discussion between atheist Sam Harris and Christian Rick Warren. I thought Sam’s response to why atheism isn’t more popular was particularly amusing. While many on the atheist side will point at the Ted Haggards and the Jim Bakkers and the Pope and other stellar examples hypocrisy and evil leading Christian flock, we have popular atheist writers who appear rabid and insane to the believers when they speak.

We need more moderates in the atheist camp, and fun… funny colouring books and humorous tracts about there being no god and how much of a hedonistic party life is… Contests like “denounce God, and win a t-shirt!”

Rick, what is your role as a pastor in encouraging reformation of other faiths?
WARREN: All of the great questions of the 21st century will be religious questions. Will Islam modernize peacefully? What’s going to happen to the influx of Muslims into secular Europe, which has lost its faith in Christianity and has nothing to counteract this loss in religious terms? What will replace Marxism in China? In all likelihood it’s going to be Christianity. Will America return to its historic roots—will there be a Third Great Awakening, or will America go the way of Europe?

HARRIS: I think the answers, in spiritual and ethical terms, are going to be nondenominational. We are suffering the collision of denominations, specifically the collision with Islam. Whatever is true about us isn’t Christian. And it isn’t Muslim. Physics isn’t Christian, though it was invented by Christians. Algebra isn’t Muslim, even though it was invented by Muslims. Whenever we get at the truth, we transcend culture, we transcend our upbringing. The discourse of science is a good example of where we should hold out hope for transcending our tribalism.

WARREN: Why isn’t atheism more appealing if it’s supposedly the most intellectually honest?

HARRIS: Frankly, it has a terrible PR campaign.

WARREN: [Laughs] It’s not a matter of PR.

HARRIS: It is right next to child molester as something you don’t want to be. But that is a product, I would argue, of what religious people tell one another about atheism.