Review by Taylor Thomas, 2018
Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. Vintage Books, 2006, 2008. 120 pages. $11.00.
Letter to a Christian Nation is written as an open response to the plethora of criticisms Harris received after writing his first book, The End of Faith. The book demonstrates and unapologetically challenges the hypocrisy of contemporary Christianity, pointing out the incompatibility of dogmatic beliefs with modern scientific views of the world and questioning the overall benefit of being a person of faith in light of contradictory evidence. Fighting religious fervor with wit, sarcasm, and unrestrained honesty, Harris combats what he sees as toxic religiosity by assuming an uncompromising position in favor of science, decisively positioning himself against organized religion. He illustrates the logical inconsistencies that saturate modern religious discourse and those he sees as inherent to Biblical literature, ultimately presenting scientific reason as the only viable alternative. Harris leaves no mode of religious conviction untouched, failing to spare even the progressive Christians of the world. In fact, in his view religious moderates are just as guilty as their fundamentalist counterparts for propagating doctrines and beliefs that have no factual basis in reality. Further, he deconstructs the very nature of religious belief. Accordingly, Harris suggests that indoctrination pollutes otherwise capable minds into believing myths and fairytales that lack substantial evidence to support their metaphysical or moral claims. Consequently, otherwise reasonable people support religious views that are irrational and, at times, dangerous. When this occurs, theological discourse is accepted, rather uncritically, over scientific methods of investigation. Harris is quick to note that without early social influences, most Christians, and likewise most religious people, would reject their faith in the same manner they reject other world religions, viewing them all as an embodiment of the same essential absurdity. In Harris’ eyes, this blind acceptance is detrimental to society as a whole. To support this claim, he refers to Islam. Harris notes that his Christian audience largely finds the beliefs of Muslims to be preposterous. In this manner, Christians, particularly those in America, frequently fail to identify how similarly unreasonable their own faith is by comparison. Harris considers this mindset to be dangerous precisely because it obfuscates authentic truth with propositions that are grounded in unverifiable beliefs. Individuals become lost in their religious conviction and dogma confines every conversation surrounding morality and human well-being to an ancient era.
Harris also devotes ample time to analyzing the conflict between science and religion in the west. By his estimate, this conflict can be summarized as the difference between how individuals understand reality and fiction. Do they make evidence-based claims about the world through logical reasoning or abandon empirical evidence in favor of religious doctrine? According to Harris, the later lacks both a reliable method of falsification and the necessary intellectual integrity that underpins scientific inquiry. In his words, “It is time we acknowledged a basic feature of human discourse: When considering the truth of a proposition, one is either engaged in an honest appraisal of the evidence and logical arguments, or one isn’t.” We are to assume that religion is in the second category. Much of the book is dedicated towards illustrating the errancy of biblical scripture as a means of contesting the ethical claims regularly made by Christians regarding the Bible. Harris criticizes these individuals for erroneously reinforcing the belief that the Bible is an embodiment of perfect ethical virtue and moral objectivity. He draws specific textual examples, such as verses from the Old Testament, to illustrate the relative inconsistency in considering such texts to be moral exemplars. For instance, he specifically references the book of Leviticus, whose verses outline various ethical principles and guidelines for living. Some of these condone slavery, violence, and reduce women to the status of property. Here he begs a difficult question of his audience: if the Bible is as wonderfully transcendent in its ethical precepts as Christians assert, why does it fail to treat ethical issues that every individual living in modern society has almost unilaterally demonized with the same disgust and ridicule that contemporary audiences regard them with? Thus, it becomes questionable whether or not the Bible truly offers the best guidance for humanity. The failure of the Bible to adequately attest to its apparent moral shortcomings is enough to prompt Harris to significantly reduce its overall worth. Even the message of peace and forgiveness reportedly endorsed throughout the New Testament is closely scrutinized as Harris points to various passages that contradict the universal love which supposedly characterizes the text. Here, Harris points out the unnecessary pain and devastation caused by the thoughtless adherence to religious doctrines, even remarking on the unrelenting violence that has stemmed from religious conflict over the centuries. These episodes of human suffering, combined with the inadequacy of scripture, culminate in the conclusion that there is no rational justification for faith. In the end, Harris asserts that the only way forward is through summoning the intellectual integrity necessary to identify harmful ideas where they exist.
Overall, Letter to a Christian Nation offers worthy and necessary criticisms regarding the normative role of religion in modern society. However, rather than open the doors for conversation with a book that invites dialogue, Harris offers a scathing and fairly contemptuous critique of Christianity that affirms those who agree with him while systematically delegitimizing anyone who opposes his positions. In the opening sections, he suggests his purpose is to reach out to his critics, yet some of his actual words come soured by unnecessary condescension. As an atheist, Harris does not seem to fully appreciate precisely how religion functions in an individual's life nor the relative difficulty in simply abandoning one’s faith in favor of pure reason. Therein lies a great divide between his own opinions about religion and those of his intended audience. Because he is either unable or unwilling to temporarily put himself in the shoes of the ordinary believer, his primary mode of engagement lacks insight into how the majority of religious people think and engage with the world through their spiritual experiences. In his closing remarks, he admits that religious belief often offers tremendously helpful consolation in times of stress. However, he compares having faith to being robbed by a pickpocket, rendering religious systems as fundamentally exploitative. Perhaps if Harris considered the limitations of treating humans as purely rational agents, he would not embed his critique with such unforgiving sarcasm nor would he insist that reason alone is capable of producing the demographic change he desires. Further, Harris might be less eager to ignore the realistic human needs and desires that fuel religious engagement.
Despite the drawbacks in his chosen method of debate, his criticisms regarding religion should be taken seriously. He employs a well-developed argument against blind belief and his insistence that moral truth can and must exist independently of any sacred text is desperately needed in a world where lifesaving scientific research is routinely blocked merely to appease arbitrary religious sentiments. Even more significant is his concern for the measurable suffering religious institutions have inflicted upon society. Harris presents clear evidence that religious attitudes have motivated counterproductive policies which have negatively contributed to issues such as teen pregnancy and sexual health. The harrowing statistics he lists are reason enough for anyone, even the most pious Christian, to reconsider what role religious thinking should play in shaping public policy.
As a celebrated public figure, Sam Harris is quite the persuasive rhetorician and, in some instances, has proven himself to be an intellectual blackbelt on matters that concern public policy and political discourse. However, in this case Harris’ arguments primarily work to affirm what the majority of his actual audience already believes to be true: There is no God, science alone has the capacity to explain every unknown in the universe, and religion is a relic from a bygone era; a refuge for the cognitively unrefined that must necessarily be abandoned. Despite critically exploring the enigmas religion poses to modern society, Letter to a Christian Nation leaves little room for disagreement. For Harris, the truth as he sees it is obvious and, rather unfortunately, excludes religious thought.
Review by Brice Tennant, 2009
Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. Vintage Books, 2006, 2008. 120 pages. $11.00.
Sam Harris, like a forest ranger stationed in a fire tower, spies a conflagration that is threatening to consume civilization. Fueled by an humanitarian impulse and a sense of moral responsibility, Harris pens Letter to a Christian Nation in order to warn civilization of the impending danger. The conflagration Harris spies is religious conservatism in America, specifically, the “Christian Right” (viii). Harris directs his warning toward an American audience consisting of secularists and people of diverse faiths. His delivery is similar, again, to a forest ranger that has been trained to handle emergency situations. He speaks in an urgent, grave tone that is absent of panic. Unlike the forest ranger, Harris knows that his audience may view his warning skeptically. In order to disarm this skepticism, he nimbly acknowledges nuance when his argument allows. When Harris departs from the tone of measured urgency, his can become vitriolic or incendiary. The vitriol manifests when Harris discusses the irrationality of faith; and the incendiary tone surfaces when he describes the Catholic Church as “the very institution that has produced and sheltered an elite army of child molesters” (66).
Letter to a Christian Nation is addressed to Christian conservatives, which is a literary device that enables Harris to address three audiences and achieve three tasks simultaneously. First, it enables him to critique the religious claims of conservatives. Second, it enables him to inform secularists and religious moderates and liberals about the baneful beliefs of conservatives. And third, it enables him to critique religious moderates and liberals for negligently fostering an environment conducive to the growth of religious conservatism. Christian conservatives are identified as those who “at a minimum,” believe “that the Bible is the inspired word of God and that only those who accept the divinity of Jesus Christ will experience salvation after death” (viii). The religious moderate or liberal is differentiated from the conservative by three marks. Moderates and liberals are receptive to scientific findings, they approach the Bible figuratively, and they recognize the “dubious” nature of many biblical claims (105).
Harris’ principle thesis is straightforward—since a significant percentage of the population is conservative, their social, economic, and political power threatens American civilization; therefore, to prevent this potential destruction, the conservative movement must be stopped. How is it to be stopped? Harris does not offer a comprehensive strategy for eliminating the force of Christian conservatism, but his tactics aim at demolishing the intellectual foundation of conservatism and raising the awareness of others thereby stimulating further action. As the text progresses, Harris broadens this thesis to include worldwide religious conservatism, especially Islamic conservatism, that threatens the future of human civilization as a whole. Given the gravity of the crisis, those concerned with the future of humanity must mobilize.
The foundation of Christian conservatism is the belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent God. This God created the world and selected human beings to govern its inhabitants. This God inspired the Old and New Testament scriptures that provide the basis for morality and record the life and teaching of God’s son, Jesus. The Bible also informs human beings about the future through prophecies that describe the turbulent destruction of the planet and the final judgment of every human being. At the time of judgment, those who believed in Jesus receive eternal life and those who did not receive eternal suffering. Harris puts his explosive wit to work against this foundation by arguing that the scriptures are not inspired, morality is not grounded in the scriptures, God did not create the world, and, finally, God does not exist.
By surveying the morality promulgated by the Old and New Testaments, Harris seeks to show that scriptures possess an equivocal moral voice, and therefore, cannot be the source and ground for morality. By means of examples chosen to offend modern sensibilities, Harris illustrates that God requires the capital punishment of those who do not follow the state religion, that God sanctions the buying and selling of human beings, and that God decrees perpetual, eternal punishment for those who have not believed in God. Harris acknowledges that “Jesus said some profound things about love and charity and forgiveness,” but he notes that these are not unique in the history of ideas (10). Other sages preceding Jesus pronounced similar statements of “self-transcending love” (11). Furthermore, other religious texts and traditions, e.g., Jainism, speak of love and compassion with greater lucidity and less ambiguity than the Biblical tradition. With this being the historical reality, how can one accurately assert that the Bible is the “perfect guide to morality” since, if it were the perfect guide, one would expect it to surpass the moral quality of other religious texts. In a similar vein, Harris finds that the Ten Commandments are far from being the original legislative declarations that they are purported to be. A brief historical survey quickly reveals the widespread development of similar codes of laws. Through the repeated comparison between the scriptures and other religious traditions, Harris directly confronts the claim about the uniqueness of the Biblical revelation. In respect to prophecy, Harris invokes the findings of modern biblical scholarship that show the authors of scripture wrote their prophecies and fulfillment records post-event so there is little surprise when alignment is found within the text. Even with this authorial practice, the biblical text still exhibits numerous internal contradictions, mathematical inaccuracies, and a failure to address pressing issues faced by human beings after the first century. Harris observes that one would expect more from divine revelation.
After showing that the content of the Bible is woefully lagging behind the lofty claims made about it, Harris turns his attention to comparative ethics. He reasons thus: if the Bible is the paragon of morality, then those who profess to follow this guide should be more moral and more sensitive to suffering than those who do not. Turning to statistical data, Harris finds that when compared to secular European countries, Christian America is “uniquely beleaguered by high rates of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, and infant mortality” (44). In respect to the demographics within the United States, crime rates in the ‘red states’ that are traditionally more religious are markedly higher than the rates within the more liberal ‘blue’ states (44-45). On the issue of sensitivity to human and animal suffering, the conservatives also straggle behind. Harris asserts that conservatives are more concerned with fighting for religious claims about morality than they are about actually alleviating present suffering. Conservatives expend vast resources advocating sexual abstinence, yet fail to recognize that such policies enacted without correlative prophylactic measures significantly increase the spread of disease, and hence, increase present suffering. To bolster his assertion, Harris turns to an analysis of the conservative position on embryonic stem-cell research. Stem-cell research has the potential to unlock innumerable cures, but Christian conservatives aggressively resist such research because it utilizes “three-day-old human embryos” (29). These embryos that are incapable of suffering and feeling pain receive more concern than victims living with cancer, HIV, diabetes, etc. Flies, when killed, suffer more than sensationless embryos. Driving his point home, Harris declares, “Your resistance to embryonic research is, at best, uninformed. … anyone who feels that the interests of a blastocyst just might supersede the interests of a child with a spinal cord injury has had his moral sense blinded by religious metaphysics” (32). When the final tally is secured, Harris discerns that conservatives do not have the market share of morality that they claim.
Harris’ explicit confrontation with theodicy appears midway through the text and follows the traditional format. Christian conservatives broadcast the goodness and benevolence of God, but when one surveys the landscape of human existence one finds boundless and indiscriminate suffering. When faced with the evidence, Harris delineates two conclusions that conservatives face: one, God is impotent, or two, God is malevolent. For Harris, in light of the evidence, the solution is clear: God does not exist. But conservatives, it seems, are immune to concrete evidence.
How one deals with evidence, or reality, is the crux of Harris’ final prominent theme, the conflict between science and religion. According a formal statement issued by the National Academy of Sciences, conflict between religion and science is non-existent since each field engages a different body of knowledge. Harris calls for a complete rejection of this ostensible truce on the simple observation that science and religion are in conflict because both make claims, divergent claims, about reality. In order to illustrate his point, Harris expounds upon the “debate” between proponents of Intelligent Design and proponents of evolution. The issue of evidence versus dogma rises to prominence again in this exposition as Christian conservatives reject the voluminous physical evidence supporting evolution in favor of an unsubstantiated Intelligent Designer of the universe. Harris disintegrates the Intelligent Design position by highlighting a few examples of unintelligent “design,” e.g., the extinction of numerous species, the vitality of viruses, and the bizarre and ineffectual construction of the human body. Harris sends out a clarion call for vigorous confrontation between science and religion because survey statistics indicate that the United States ranks next to last in the worldwide percentage of adult populations that recognizes the validity of evolutionary theory. The warning is shrill for the situation is dire. “We are building a civilization of ignorance,” writes Harris, and this poses an extreme threat when combined with the political, social, and economic influence of the United States (70).
Letter to a Christian Nation achieves its aim of awakening and informing those readers who are unfamiliar with the social breadth, political power, and intellectual framework of the Christian conservative. Harris constructs a text that is accessible for a popular audience and that presents a network of quick hitting theses that can win the day when read too swiftly. For those desiring a formidable, tightly organized, and exhaustive critique of religion, their reading will have to extend beyond this text. But, no matter one’s original motivation for reading Sam Harris’ Letter, its energy will prove provocative.