Collateral Bloggage What passes for thought around here…

Wordful Wednesday Night: Letter to a Christian Nation

Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation can hardly be described as anything but a rant.  Well, a screed might be a more accurate label for it.   He’s very angry/depressed/just generally emo about the whole problem that lots of people believe in God.  And since he’s so much smarter than all us poor theistic souls, he’s written us a letter.

From the “Advance Praise” section on the back cover, I expected something a bit more hard-hitting.  Instead it’s the same old, tired, atheistic claptrap we’ve seen since, well, ever.

I’m not saying that there aren’t logical and intelligent objections to Christianity.  This book just doesn’t contain many of them.  I don’t say it doesn’t contain any, just not many.

I’m sure there’s a point-by-point response out there somewhere (I don’t say “rebuttal,” because in spite of his best efforts, Mr. Harris actually makes some sense in a couple of places).  I won’t even attempt to do a detailed response.  Rather, I’ll just point out a few of his more blatant missteps, and emphasize a couple of things I agreed with. 

(Oh, and J.P. Holding of Tektonics.org has provided that point-by-point response I mentioned.)

The tone of the book is that of a pointed letter, addressed to The Christian, referred to throughout as “you.”  So it feels personal.  In fact, the first sentence goes like this:

You believe that the Bible is the word of God, that Jesus is the Son of Go, and that only those who place their faith in Jesus will find salvation after death.

I guess he’s not looking for the Christian Universalist crowd here.  In fact, he acknowledges that he’s writing to the most conservative/fundamentalist types of Christians.  I’m not really one of those, but I press on.  I also don’t seem to fit his definition of “moderate,” so I guess he’s unaware of any nuance to Christian beliefs beyond the broadest categories.

But Mr. Harris doesn’t really apply much in the way of logic even when discussing issues that should be easy to clarify.  For instance, in his discussion of Eternal Destines, he writes this:

If the basic tenets of Christianity are true, then there are some very grim surprises in store for nonbelievers like myself.  You understand this.  At least half of the American population understands this.  So let us be honest with ourselves:  in the fullness of time, one side is really going to win this argument, and the other side is really going to lose.

I’m not sure what, exactly, he feels Christians have to lose here.  I’m sure he must, as a learned man of philosophy, be familiar with Pascal’s Wager (Nutshell: it’s a no-lose-proposition to serve God, even if He doesn’t exist).  What do I really stand to lose?  Some years of life I couldn’t keep anyway?  Money?  Some other fleeting carnal frivolity?

He moves on from this initial “clarification” to discuss how morally bankrupt Scripture is, focusing largely on the Old Testament Law, then pointing out the famous (famously used by lazy atheists) quote from Jesus about how the Law will never pass away.  He neglects to analyze the key “until all is accomplished” clause.  Shocker.

And of course he wrenches passages from context, painting them in the worst possible light.  And of course, parts of the Law seem pretty brutal by today’s standards.  But he fails to demonstrate that Jesus fully approved the Law.  I’m not sure what he’d say about the fact that David wasn’t stoned for his adultery and murder, or how Jesus got around stoning the woman taken in adultery.

Of course, the Church’s morality can be rightly questioned, especially given its scarred past of persecutions and power-mongering.  Nobody really disputes this, least of all modern Christians.  Most of us are fairly embarrassed by it.

In general, I don’t believe Mr. Harris can really be expected to intelligently discuss Biblical issues, since he’s apparently almost entirely ignorant of it.  As evidenced by his ridiculous insistence that the Bible Condones Slavery!!!

Sigh.  It doesn’t take more than a cursory read of the regulations for dealing with servants under the Old Covenant to realize that what is termed “slavery” there is nothing other than indentured servitude.  Not the same as what we saw in America and Europe and Africa.  I won’t go into depth here about this, because the link to the Tektonics article should suffice for anyone curious.

What I really admired about Mr. Harris’s understanding of morality was his attempt to prove that there could be objective standards of morality apart from Scripture.  While I don’t necessarily disagree with him on the point, he used absolutely subjective reasoning in his attempt to prove it.

But, again in spite of his best efforts, he manages to make a point I agree with, and that is that Christians tend to spend an awful lot of time worrying more about what people do with their clothes off than actually attempting to relieve human suffering.  We do need to do better on this.

Of course, no discussion of morality would be complete without a little bit of “Christians are immoral for opposing stem-cell research.”  Of course, the whole argument presupposes that embryonic-stem-cell research is actually promising.  (This is a side issue, but if it was so promising, it would get funding from the private sector.  The mere fact that this research is so desperate for federal funding is eloquent proof of its lack of promise.)

(Oh, and read more here if you like.)

The Talented Mr. Harris concluded his “thoughts” on this subject with a paragraph I noted was “just crapola” in the margin of the book.  To be fair, I’ll print his own words (warning:  you may suffer loss of intelligence by reading it).  He’s arguing against the common statement that a fertilized egg is a potential human being, which really cannot be challenged in any meaningful way.  But he keeps flapping his gums with this gem:

But almost every cell in your body is a potential human being, given our recent advances in genetic engineering.  Every time you scratch your nose, you have committed a Holocaust of potential human beings.  This is a fact.  The argument from a cell’s potential gets you absolutely nowhere.

(A sentence was removed here because my mom doesn’t approve of bathroom humor, and she might read this.  And I already used the word “crapola.”)

And did he really claim to be spewing “fact” there?  It’s seriously one of the stupidest things I’ve ever read.  And I read Ladies and Gentlemen: The Bible! just this year!  Are we really going to equate the potentials of genetic engineering to the potential of the natural development of human beings? 

I realize I’m beginning to ramble.  But I have to point out one more thing.  Mr. Harris actually expressed that he’d be more likely to accept the Truth of the Bible if it contained more Math.  Seriously.  Or Science.  If the Bible commented more on Physics or Chemistry or Calculus, he’d give it a chance.  I don’t really know what to say about this.  I am sitting here beside myself.  (Yes, that was a modified movie quote.  I need the humor.)

I realize I set out to present a couple of things I agreed with, but I’ve changed my mind.  I just don’t have it in me right now.  Flipping back through this sea of fail in order to pull out a couple of places where the stopped-clock that is Mr. Harris’s writing was right just isn’t going to happen.

As a way of familiarizing oneself with the current state of anti-Theist rhetoric, this book has some value.  As a serious critique of Christianity, it’s rather lacking.  In fact, I guess I’ve just realized that the book isn’t so much objecting to Christianity as it’s objecting to Christians. 

And I found it fairly objectionable.

I’m sure Mr. Harris wouldn’t be impressed with my opinions.  But as the feeling is mutual, I’m okay with that.