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I have just spent the past two hours reading Sam Harris' new book, Letter to a Christian Nation, and I am compelled to write something about it.
It's short and sweet, weighing in at only 91 pages, but it represents, I think, one of the most cogently executed arguments against organized religion I have ever read.
While I have long been a fan of recent authors like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Robert Wright all of whom have tackled the issue head on, albeit from different scientific and philosophical perspectives, where they have failed is not in lack of persuasive evidence, rather, it has been in their consideration of their audience.
Dennett's recent book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, is a book of endless insight regarding the ways in which religion developed naturally throughout the course of human cultural evolution. Likewise, Robert Wright's Non-zero: The Logic of Human Destiny offers a compelling and beautiful alternative to divinely inspired "directionality."
Dawkins, who is perhaps the most recognizable thinker of the Secular Humanist movement if only for his undying commitment and accompanying ferocity can often be a polarizing figure. In a recent documentary he filmed for the BBC, The Root of All Evil? (Highly recommended, you can watch it here.), Dawkins wages intellectual attacks on religious leaders on their own stomping grounds, inside mosques and temples in the Middle East and "Super Churches" in the American West. His examples of "non-thinking," as he calls it, ring true for those of us of similar persuasion, but as much as I revere the man, I often question his efficacy in creating meaningful dialogue.
With that said, Sam Harris has produced a book that carefully considers its audience. In fact, his letter is directed particularly at Christians who believe "at a minimum, 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). Harris claims that more than half of the American populace (some 150 million people) believe just this.
With that in mind, Harris, on the whole, avoids lofty philosophical or scientfic arguments that refute the existence of God, and instead uses a source of evidence that should ring truer to his audience: The Bible. His presentation of the Ten Commandments "as nothing especially compelling" is particularly relevant, as today we find ourselves torn over the proper places in which the document should be displayed. Harris critically studies each commandment, and asserts that "It is a scientific fact that moral emotions...precede any exposure to scripture" (21). We can observe primates, who are as far as we know devoid of God's divine word, acting in accordance to the Ten Commandments, paying careful attention not to murder, steal or cheat. Morals are not derived from religious texts; they are commons sense rules that keep animals like us out of potentially dangerous situations.
Throughout the book, Harris repeatedly questions the moral infallibity of the Bible by quoting verse that would seem at odds with an modern notion of "moral behavior." If moral behavior is behavior that is codified in order to ease human suffering, than the Bible fails miserably in this regard, Harris argues.
His line of reasoning is, perhaps, most prescient in his discussion of the controversy surrounding stem cell research, and the subsequent harvesting of human embryos. As this sort of research has given researchers promise that some of the world's most fatal and widespread medical afflictions could be eradicated, Harris finds the moralizing Right to be severely misguided in terms of its moral priorities.
In comparison to the 150 cells that make up a three-day-old blastocyst, which is ideal for stem cell harvesting, there are
...more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly. The human embryos that are destroyed have no brains, or even neurons. Consequently, there is no reason to believe they can suffer their destruction in any way at all... If you are concerned about suffering in this universe, killing a fly should present you with a greater moral difficulty than killing a human blastocyst (30).
Common sense examples like the one above help Harris construct an argument that asks Christians to re-evaluate the origins of their moral and ethical codes. Do we act moral to ease human suffering, or do we act moral to please God and pave our way to a blissful afterlife?
Many will scoff at this review, or attempt to reject Harris outright by responding to the examples I have provided above. You may choose to do that, but it would be unfair and irresponsible to not consider Harris arguments in full.
"Letter to a Christian Nation" provides ammunition for non-believers like me, but it is squarely targeted at Christians, both hard-line and liberal/moderate ones, the latter of which Harris takes to task as well.
This sort of book is rhetorically powerful and unequivocally clear in its warnings regarding the danger religiosity holds for a future that finds its geographical borders melting away. To say the least, it deserves a serious response.
