Baptists and Unity
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 51, No. 1 – Fall 2008
Managing Editor: Malcolm B. Yarnell III
By Sam Harris. New York: Alfred K. Knopf, 2006. 96 pages. Hardcover, $16.95.
“Reading Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation was like sitting ring- side, cheering the champion, yelling ‘Yes!’ at every jab. For those of us who feel depressed by this country’s ever increasing unification of church and state, this little book is a welcome hit of adrenaline.” Such are the words of praise for Sam Harris’s book by Harvard University professor Marc Hauser. Letter to a Christian Nation is a condensation of many of the arguments presented in Harris’ New York Times best seller, The End of Faith. Harris, one of the so-called Four Horsemen (along with Richard Dawkins, Chris- topher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett) of the New Atheism, sets forth his agenda for Letter early on: “to arm secularists in our society” (viii) and “to demolish the intellectual and moral pretensions of Christianity in its most committed forms” (ix).
Later, Harris reveals his true motivation for his rants against theism—he believes it to be dangerous. Commenting on the findings of a Gallup poll which suggests that 53% of Americans identify themselves as creationists, Harris claims that America is the only developed nation with such a high rate of religious conviction among its citizens, and sees this as a concern: “Our country now appears . . . like a lumbering, bellicose, dimwitted giant. Anyone who cares about the fate of civilization would do well to recognize that the combination of great power and great stupidity is simply terrifying” (xi).
Harris’ attack on belief in God generally and Christianity specifically includes nothing new and is juvenile in its level of sophistication, moving from topic to topic with little or no transition. It involves criticism of Christians, defense of atheism and evaluation of belief in God. At various points in the book, Harris chastises Christians for their supposed lack of compassion and intellectual acumen as well as their pride. Amazingly, he claims that Christians lack compassion for human suffering because of their opposition to abortion and stem cell research. Opponents of abortion expect those suffering from debilitating illnesses (such as Alzheimer’s) to wait until alternatives to stem-cell treatment are developed and they expect women with unwanted pregnancies to “suffer” through the delivery process, putting their own health at risk. This, Harris claims, demonstrates a fundamental lack of pathos.
Christians, Harris contends, are either dimwitted or simply dishonest, as evinced by the fact that so many question the established fact of Darwinian evolution. Christian belief in the Bible as God’s Word is also seen as a severe intellectual handicap. For example, he attacks the sugges- tion that the Bible serves as a good moral guide, citing several immoral teachings—those which prescribe capital punishment for heresy, adultery, wayward children, idolatry, sorcery, and the like. He then makes the spu- rious claim that Jainism is morally superior to Christianity: “Christians have abused, oppressed, enslaved, insulted, tormented, tortured, and killed people in the name of god for centuries, on the basis of a theologically defensible reading of the Bible. It is impossible to behave this way by ad- hering to the principles of Jainism” (23). Of course the key words here are “theologically defensible,” which is questionable at best. Last, he faults Christians for believing that God loves them and wants to know them, claiming this as evidence of “a level of arrogance simply unimaginable in scientific discourse” (74–75).
Harris defends atheism against charges that it leads to immorality. Unfortunately, he does not do so by addressing the philosophical question of the atheistic basis for morality, but instead by attacking the morality of actions by religious fanatics. He points to the Muslim riots which swept through Europe as a result of unflattering cartoons of Mohammed in a Danish newspaper as example of the general principle that religion leads to violence. Atheism is thereby deemed more moral than religion. After all, he points out, atheists have never rioted because their views were attacked! This sidestepping of a philosophical critique of the atheist worldview is characteristic of the work. Lumping all religious belief together, he asserts that religion leads to terrorism (citing Islamist terror acts as evidence). Not only does belief in God lead to violence, but it is unable to explain why evil exists. Appeals to creaturely freedom, Harris contends, are inadequate explanations.
According to Harris, then, it is religion that is the basis of social ills—abortion, teen pregnancy, homicide, etc. He makes his case by a sta- tistical comparison of secular European countries with the United States. Since crime rates and belief in God, for instance, are higher in the U.S., there must be a correlation between the two. He bolsters this claim by noting the higher crime rates in characteristically religious “Red” states over those of more enlightened “Blue” states, even claiming that the cities with the highest crime rates are in “Red” states: “Of the twenty-five most dan- gerous cities, 76 percent are in red states, 24 percent in blue states. In fact, three of the five most dangerous cities in the United States are in the pious state of Texas” (45). Unfortunately for the reader, Harris does not divulge where he gets his facts. It seems that this is clearly a case of manipulation of statistical data. For example, it very well could be the case that the high crime cities found in “Red” states are where the majority of the “Blue” votes in that state come from. There is also good reason to doubt that the crime rate in, for example, New York or Massachusetts is lower than, say, Nebraska.
While Harris’ book is full of polemic, half-truths, and in some cases, what can only be described as deliberate falsehoods, it is not without its moments of clarity. Perhaps the most important of these comes in his criticisms of secular religionists for their continued optimism regarding humanity and religion in spite of the events of September 11th. It is worth quoting him at length:
And yet, while the religious divisions in our world are self-evident, many people still imagine that religious conflict is always caused by a lack of education, by poverty, or by politics. Most nonbelievers, liberals, and moderates apparently think that no one really sacrifices his life, or the lives of others, on account of his religious beliefs. Such people simply do not know what it is like to be certain of Paradise It is worth remembering that the September 11 hijackers were college-educated, middle-class people who had no discernible experience of political oppression. The truth, astonishingly enough, is this: in the year 2006, a person can have sufficient intellectual and material resources to build a nuclear bomb and still believe that he will get seventy-two virgins in Paradise. Western secularists, liberals, and moderates have been very slow to understand this. The cause of their confusion is simple: they don’t know what it is to really believe in God (82–83).
Harris’ conclusion is perhaps the most astonishing—while much of the book is meant to proclaim the evils of religion, Harris seems to suggest that we invent an alternative to Judaism, Islam and Christianity that can only be described as a secular religion. He writes, “Clearly, it is time we learned to meet our emotional needs without embracing the preposterous. We must find ways to invoke the power of ritual and to mark those transitions in every human life that demand profundity—birth, marriage, death—without lying to ourselves about the nature of reality. Only then will the practice of raising our children to believe that they are Christian, Muslim, or Jewish be widely recognized as the ludicrous obscenity that it is. And only then will we stand a chance of healing the deepest and most dangerous fractures in our world” (88). This suggestion is fraught with problems.
First, it is self defeating. By offering secular humanism as a religion, Harris undercuts his previous claim that religion is the root of much evil. Second, it admits the need for transcendence, which has no good explana- tion in a naturalistic worldview. Third, it is too optimistic, something of which Harris chastises liberals, moderates and even fellow atheists. Fourth, it is historically naïve, ignoring the fact that atheistic regimes have not brought peace, but in many cases, more suffering. Harris’ answer is that it is dogmatism and fanaticism which led to the horrors of Nazism and Com- munism. This contention is inconsistent since he blames religion when it is present. Fifth, his own suggestion smacks of dogmatism insofar as the language he uses is inflammatory (e.g., “obscenity” language indicates that his beliefs are born not out of disinterested rational reflection). It is worth noting that Harris, Dennett, Dawkins and Hitchens have questioned why their works have elicited visceral reactions by religious people, seemingly oblivious to the offensive nature of their words, something Harris accuses Christians of on more than one occasion.
Perhaps the greatest contribution of Letter to a Christian Nation is its brevity. A short 96 pages (with reasonable font), the whole of Harris’ argu- ment can be consumed in a single sitting. Pastors, students and laypersons who want to know what the New Atheism is about, but do not have time to read the more lengthy treatises by Dawkins (The God Delusion), Hitchens (God is Not Great), Dennett (Breaking the Spell) or even Harris himself will be well-served by this little book. Of course, what it gains in brevity, it loses in depth, and the thoughtful critic may be left with more questions than answers at the end of the day.
