Luke: At your request, I add my comment to Roger Smith's article.

Basically he deserves the same critique I provided (in German) to "Amazon.de" in relation with Sam Harris' book "The End of Faith", for Smith commits the same mistake as Harris does when he proposes to replace several of the existing religions by Buddhism which he, unwittingly, calls "a true religion".

Both Smith and Harris seem to have neglected to take a look at the encyclopedia, for religion is "belief in or devotion to religious faith or observance" (Webster, from Latin religio); hence, all religions are necessarily always "true" for what they are as such, namely "religions". While Smith and Harris state crude facts, they immediately afterwards perpetrate the same derailment: they start rationally… only to end up plunging into the irrational. Thus, both are far, far away from atheism.

I would recommend Roger Smith to read Ayn Rand's works as well as your own excellent summary (http://members.tripod.com/AttitudeAdjustment/Books/OPAR.htm), the extensive ground course "Objectivism 101" (http://objectivism101.com/) and Nathaniel Branden's "Mental Health versus Mysticism and Self-Sacrifice" (from "The Objectivist Ethics"). Another collaborator to this webpage, William Dwyer, wrote excellently and extensively on this and related subjects, so he always deserves to be read.

Smith, like Harris, reveals himself acting as a wolf in sheep's clothing when he pushes all other religions out the main entrance, to then allow them to re-enter society through the back door, dressed in Buddhist garbs.

Before he continues to tackle more attacks against religions - always a very worthwhile task for all atheists, such as Objectivists are - I would recommend him to keep Abu'l-Ala' al-Ma'arri's (975-1057) words in his mind: "The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts: those with brains, but no religions, and those with religion, but no brains." I am sure that it would help him tremendously!