Letter to a Christian Nation
29 November 2006
Sam Harris recently published a very tiny (96 pages) book entitled Letter to a Christian Nation. In this letter, Harris takes some of the more general criticisms of religious faith found in his first book (The End of Faith) and applies them to so-called fundamentalist Christians.
Unfortunately, Harris never deals with any of the evidence for Christianity provided by the very type of people he is criticizing. Indeed, Harris shows himself to be quite ignorant of such evidence when he states, “Consider: every devout Muslim has the same reasons for being a Muslim that you have for being a Christian.” (6) Really? That seems surprising, given the fact that Christians believe that Jesus Christ physically rose from the dead, and Muslims believe that the Prophet Muhammed received a special revelation from God. How could both groups possibly have the same reasons for believing? In actual fact, whether Harris is aware of it or not, Christians have advanced arguments for Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead, and a large chunk of dedicated Christians are at least somewhat aware of a few of the arguments. Harris probably thinks these arguments are bad, but that is a separate issue. By failing to even acknowledge the arguments given for Christ’s resurrection and equating our reasons for believing with that of Muslims, Harris reveals himself to be one of the most unsophisticated critics of Christianity writing today (a difficult challenge by any measure).
Harris’s critique of the Bible also lacks sophistication; in most places, he is content merely to quote a Bible verse and stand back appalled at the moral implications. There is no attempt, of course, to analyze these verses with respect to the context or background of the society. For example, Harris complains about the practice of slavery found in the Bible, but fails to realize that slavery in this culture was actually a form of indentured servitude usually entered willingly.
On the point of politics and ethics, Harris blames Christians for opposing embryonic stem cell research and abortion, even though not all Christians oppose it, and many non-Christians do. Despite this, Harris reveals himself as an uncritical ethical thinker-
“Let us look at the details. A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly. The human embryos that are destroyed in stem-cell research do not have brains, or even neurons. Consequently, there is no reason to believe they can suffer their destruction in any way at all.” (29)
For some reason, Harris seems to believe that size or number of cells is relevant to a human beings worth. This is clearly nonsensical, and his comparison to a fly brain adds no additional relevance. A careful moral thinker recognizes that the real issue at hand is whether or not the three-day-old embryo is a human being.
Additionally, Harris seems to believe that the fact that human embryos cannot suffer thier own destruction is relevant to their worth. But since when has it become permissible to kill someone because they can’t experience suffering? By this logic, it would be more morally acceptable to kill someone instantly while they sleep. What is the relevant difference? Harris is simply morally confused- he has not identified the main issue (is the embryo a human being or not) and has instead constructed several bad arguments for allowing their destruction. Notice that I have not, in this review, explicitly given my position on the embryonic stem cell research debate. One can (and should) recognize Harris’s simplistic and irrelevant moral thinking even if they agree with his overall position.
Not that any of this has any relevance whatsoever to the truth of Christianity. In fact, most of this book is so irrelevant to whether or not Christianity is true that, despite its brevity, its not worth the read. Letter to a Christian Nation may be useful for atheists who want a pep talk, but it is not useful for the intelligent Christian who is interested in scholarship rather than soundbites, and who wants to engage cultural issues with reasoned thinking rather than emotion.
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I have not read any of Harris’ books, but most of his arguments against Christianity I have read from magazine articles consist of “This is what Christians believe—I don’t like it, therefore Christianity is bad.” He is such an intellectual lightweight. I don’t know how anyone pays heed to what he has to say.
— Ingemar Pedron Dec 23, 05:40 PM #
I personally have never heard of Sam Harris until I read the above book review for his “Letter To A Christian Nation.” He does seem pretty flawed in his analysis of us Christians as far as I can tell, but then again, I’m pretty flawed in my analysis of atheists and other non-Christians, so I’m not going to give myself the right to criticize Harris directly. However, I honestly did not know that more non-Christians than Christians oppose abortion and embryonic stem cell research. How can that be, considering that all Christians are assumed to be very Pro-Life in reference to “thou shall not commit murder”?
— Joann Kelley Jan 30, 02:07 AM #
I have to admit that I am surprised by the lack of a solid critique of Harris’s book in the post above. Harris provides a lot of different arguments against Christianity. Among other things, he attacks the Bible as an authority on morality and as the inspired work of “god”, he identifies the christian dogma as a root cause of nationwide health and welfare issues, global conflicts, and our stunted intellectual growth compared to other nations, he reveals the lack of intelligence in “intelligent design”, and exposes religious “faith” as an inordinate lack of common sense. Yet the critique above merely makes a narrow rejoinder about the meaning of the word “slavery” and quibbles over Harris’s definition of what an embryo is? To an honest thinker, it should be obvious that Harris does not consider a 150-cell blastocyst to be a person. You probably believe differently, and Harris addresses some of these beliefs starting on page 30, where he answers the argument that these blastocysts, as human beings, possess souls. The (unsigned) critique above doesn’t answer any of these arguments, and only serves to prove how marginal, weak, and indefensible our religious beliefs are when addressed by a true skeptic.
— Terry Feb 5, 06:07 PM #
Terry,
You criticize my book review for failing to refute several of the claims that Harris mentions in his book. However, it should be clear that this is only a book review, not a full critique. If I were to give a rebuttal to all the claims made by Harris then it would clearly be too lengthy to be a book review. My purpose of this review was to analyze Harris’s general approach to Christianity and to highlight some representative blunders.
Next, you claim that I quibble over Harris’s definition of an embryo. Actually, I merely pointed out that Harris makes a number of critical thinking errors in the paragraph quoted, including the following:
1.) He implies that the number of cells a human person has is relevant to that human’s worth.
2.) He implies that it is morally permissible to kill a human person if that person cannot feel any pain as a result of the process.
As you point out, Harris doesn’t think that the embryo IS a human person. This is indeed the issue, as you seem to recognize. But if this is the case, then why did he preface his discussion of the issue with references to the number of cells in a human blastocyst and the fact that the blastocyst cannot feel its own destruction? These issues are distraction from the real issue.
In any case, as I said in the review, I did not even defend a particular view on the morality of embryonic stem cell research. I leave it an open question whether or not Harris is correct in his identification of the blastocyst as a non-person. Nevertheless, as I point out in the review, this whole issue is irrelevant to the truth of the Christian faith. Some Christians SUPPORT embryonic stem cell research. So even if Harris is correct that ‘fundamentalist’ Christians are hurting society by preventing this research, he has done nothing to undermine the truth of Christianity.
Sincerely,
Kyle.
— Kyle Deming Feb 5, 10:36 PM #
Kyle, I would like to take issue with the first half of your second paragraph in the review of Sam Harris’s book. It appears you have missed the point. You’ve either ignored or misinterpreted the key word used by Mr. Harris, which was “reasons”. To restate Mr. Harris, he is expressing that the same reasons (i.e., basis, mode of verification, support of evidence) exist for why a Muslim and a Christian believe in their religions. Mr. Harris did not say the two religions believe the same content or material (Jesus vs. Mohammed), but share the same reason for how they arrived at what to believe. You seem to be caught up in the differences of the two religions and assume the content is the reason on how Christians came to believe what they do. No, the content is not the reason. The content is only the stories passed on after a decision has been made on what is to be believed.
That decision – that reason – is Christians (and Muslims) have accepted the assumption that the contents of Christian stories (or Muslim stories) are true. That assumption is what Christians (and Muslims) call faith. The assumption is each faith’s holy book is divinely inspired or not to be faulted. Faith is that same reason Christians and Muslims (and all other flavors of religion) believe what they do, regardless of the differences between religions’ contents. The content is irrelevant to how they came to make a decision. What is relevant is having faith that their religious stories are true.
Perhaps the greatest factor (i.e., reason) to cause people to believe in a religion is the randomness of when and where they were born. Their “decision” ultimately reflects the same decision made by their parents, which was also decided by the fate of how they were born. I’ll posit a low percentage of people actually decide on a religion, but only decide on whether or not to defend the religious ideas they’ve been told since childhood.
It seems most religious people believe only the stories their own parents learned as children. It’s a passing-on of childhood stories and fables; not in just Christianity, but in all faiths. Do you doubt my statements about your religion? Yes? Now, do you doubt this about those religions that are notably different from your own? Christianity has no more reasons (i.e., evidence) to believe that holy events occurred than does Islam. You each have only faith and assumptions of truth. That is Mr. Harris’s point. The only evidence is a string of fables and stories passed on through time. You’ve come to accept Christianity by the same means as a Muslim has come to believe his religion – acceptance of an assumption that the stories are true. That is the “reason” to which Mr. Harris is referring.
— Jack Apr 2, 10:54 PM #
Jack,
I agree with you that Harris is saying that Muslims and Christians both just believe on faith, but I disagree with his claim. I think that there is good evidence for Christianity and poor evidence for Islam. But, since Harris never really deals with any of the evidence for Christianity provided by Christians, it is ludicrous for him to make the claim that Christians and Muslims believe for ‘the same reason.’
Sincerely,
Kyle.
— Kyle Deming Apr 3, 11:04 AM #
It does not really matter as to the details of the belief encompassed by any religion. All religious belief entails a concept of God etc. And since no believer can ever produce even a skerrick of evidence (that would even stand up in court (hearsay is not admissable)) It is blindingly obvious that there is not god!! Wether it be jehovah, allah, buddha, wotan, baal, mithras, zues, or the tooth fairy.
— Tony Jul 22, 06:10 PM #
We need to wear glasses that give us clarity to this issue. Letter to a Christian Nation is a black and white critique of religious dogma that permeates every level of culture. It seems only natural that secularism is a growing trend in our society as people realize that wasting energy and resources on some unknown entity is not fiscally nor socially responsible any longer. When we spend time and money in Africa, for example, is not not better to spend every moment and cent preventing aids and digging wells instead of preaching that Jesus was born of a virgin? What possible good would this do? I read that Catholics, in one region of Africa, had built twice as many churces as had dug wells. Now that’s telling…
— Brent Apr 30, 06:03 AM #