Like before, before, before and before, just click on the image to go to the Richard Dawkins site and download / watch the entire discussion.
Sam Harris: You can invent an ideology, which by your mere invention in that moment, is obviously untrue, which would be quite useful if propagated, to billions. I mean, you can say this is my new religion: teach people to demand that your children study science and math and economics, and all of our terrestrial disciplines, to the best of their abilities, and if they don’t persist in those efforts, they’ll be tortured after death by seventeen demons. This would be extremely useful, and maybe far more useful than Islam, propagated to billions, and yet what are the chances that the seventeen demons exist? Zero.
First — and I should not need to tell you this, of course — Harris is not suggesting that we create such a religion. But the idea is intriguing, and certainly worth discussing, I think.
You’ve probably heard many people — both religious and otherwise — praising religion in general as a good thing, regardless of its truth, simply because it supposedly makes people both feel better and behave better, giving special importance to the latter. This is not new — you may have heard of Plato’s “noble lie” –, but I can see several serious problems in it.
One of them, of course, is that it’s not true — and, at least to me, that matters. Another, I think, is that it encourages serfdom and acceptance of one’s fate (indeed, that was Plato’s use for it). Even when it doesn’t, you’d be encouraging people to “be good”, well, “just because”. Accept a command, and don’t think about it. And if you teach people to be obedient, even if their current “commandments” are good, there’s a huge risk that their next set of commandments won’t be. Besides, a religion may begin with good intentions, with a good set of moral rules and so on, but — to quote Ayn Rand — “the moral is the chosen, not the obeyed”. It’s not “morality” to act “morally” just because someone told you to do it.
Finally, there’s the problem that Harris suggests: most current religions are actually very bad ideas, and for every good thing they teach (e.g. “thou shalt not kill”), they also teach many, many rules and ideas that are simply monstrous. In just a sentence, Harris suggested a religion that would be much better both for its believers and for the entire world, which would be much better than Islam, as he says — or than any other religion I know.
Of course, a religion whose main tenet (expanding on Harris’s) was “think for yourself, question everything, and don’t accept anything on authority or on faith” would have a huge problem — you’re basically telling people to leave it! 
A fictional example of all of this is a brilliant Star Trek: TNG episode, Who Watches The Watchers, which I intend to dedicate a full post to, in the future. In it, a bronze age alien civilization begins to believe the Enterprise crew are gods, with Picard as their leader, and one of the scientists who were studying the civilization suggests that Picard “show them a sign”, give them some set of good moral rules, and leave them with their new religion. Although that would certainly be the easiest way to deal with the problem they caused by being seen (as the civilization is on the verge of chaos due to their new, fervent belief), Picard refuses; he will not leave those people with a lie, sending them back to the age of darkness and superstition they had already outgrown, and therefore has to work hard to convince the civilization’s leaders that, despite the Enterprise’s advanced technology, they are flesh and blood, not gods.
The first entry will probably be unfamiliar to you, unless you’re a fan of British heavy metal. It’s by Blaze Bayley, ex-singer of Wolfsbane and Iron Maiden, in the 3rd studio album by his solo band, called (the album, not the band) Blood & Belief.
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