Letter to Sam Harris
Dear Sam:
I just read your book, Letter to a Christian Nation. First of all, I would like to commend you on your clarity and honesty. There are probably many atheists who feel as you do and yet do not have the courage to take a stand and to risk looking intolerant. You express yourself in a clear and easy to understand manner.
It should not surprise you that I disagree with you. My disagreement is not just whether or not there is a God. You write your letter to Christians. Yet, I can’t help notice that when you need a powerful dig against religion, you pull in an example of Muslim violence as if that were relevant to what Christians think or believe. While this may be rhetorically effective, especially for people already antagonistic toward religion in general, it has very little to do with your stated purpose.
You anticipate Christian responses to your argument that Christianity and other religions are dangerous with examples of Stalin and other atheists being obviously evil. Leaving aside Hitler, even the other atheist regimes by themselves have inflicted death and suffering on millions of people. You reject these dictators as examples of atheism, because they lack a commitment to rationalism. Yet, later in your book you define atheism as not a philosophy but as a simple acknowledgment that there is no God. You can’t have it both ways. If atheism is the acknowledgment that there is no God, then Stalin and company are atheists.
You provide a number of examples of Christians and people of other religions who have done bad things. Can I make something clear? You and the rest of the new atheists are not providing exciting new revelation when you mention that some religious people are bad. We really already knew that. Yes, Christians can be jerks. There we said it, let’s get past it. When you take into account the percentage of people of the world present and past who have affiliated with a religion, it is no surprise that there are plenty of examples of religion-connected evils.
My main concern is the way you paint religion with such broad strokes. You respond to concerns of moderates by stating emphatically that they are wrong. Both you and violent extremists interpret the Bible and other holy books correct and moderates who use context and reason in interpretation are simply wrong. Religion should be judged by the actions of extremists and fundamentalists from any and every religion. This judgment is that religion is dangerous and must be stomped out. The Salvation Army officer who pours out their life helping the poor, by their acknowledgement of God is ultimately just as responsible for the 9/11 attacks as any terrorist training camp. No offence, but you take the slippery slope fallacy to the extreme! This may make sense to you, but I can imagine the names you would have for people suggesting that evolution will lead to holocaust atrocities or that atheism will lead to Stalinist forms of mass murder. Yet, that is the exact kind of reasoning you use.
Sam, I would like to conclude my letter by asking what you would like to see happen. Your letter ends with a reminder of the large number of Muslims (what does that have to do with Christianity again?) and the potential (or likelihood as you suggest) for violence they have toward non-Muslims. They are just an example of the general danger of religion, whether in its moderate or extremist forms. If religion is so dangerous, what would you like to see happen? Education is not the answer as evolution has been taught exclusively in schools for decades and yet the majority of Americans still see God’s involvement, if not an outright rejection of evolution. You are not going to teach people to give up religion. Is it time to bring back an Antiochus IV Epiphanes style of persecution against religion? He attempted to stamp put Judaism and impose “superior” Greek philosophy through persecution, banning of religion and burning of books. If religion is so dangerous, would you like to see the small minority of rational atheists take over and forcibly remove all religions from the world? I can’t imagine where else you would want to go with the views you have toward atheism. I would love to know.
Sincerely,
Steve
