Ryan's Book Review: Letter to a Christian Nation

Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris

Love & Rockets, Everybody Wants to Go To Heaven

Earth, Sun, Moon (1987)

Synopsis: A neuroscientist writes an open letter to Christians--particularly Christians on the American political right--in order to explain why he believes what he believes, and why he doesn't believe what he doesn't, while intellectually dismantling religion.

Review: Something that has always driven me nuts is how the merits of an argument can be dismissed based on "tone" of the delivery.  Whether it was me fighting with my mom as a kid, participating in high school debate, or arguing in court as a lawyer, it has always made me crazy when what I've said is ignored because of how I've said it.  Maybe it's because I have no filter for that kind of thing; I just don't care.  I've become objectively aware of it, sure, but I don't give a shit if you're yelling at me or whispering, I'm concerned much more with the substance of whatever it is you are saying than the manner of delivery.

Which brings me to this book.  Sam Harris is one of the so-called "Four Horsemen of New Atheism."  It's him, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett.  I got into them because I have a huge man crush on Christopher Hitchens and read several of his other books before I finally got around to god is Not Great.  That got me to read Dawkins' The God Delusion for the first time (though it wasn't until the second time that I realized what a game changer it was--believer or not, I honestly think it is a book that everyone should read).  I still can't get through Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell (his thesis so intrigues me, but good grief, get to the point...and he and Dawkins and whomever else does it needs to quit calling themselves "Brights" (Hitchens explains why)).

So far I've skipped Sam Harris's The End of Faith, but I'm currently reading The Moral Landscape.  Letter to A Christian Nation is super short--it's more of an essay than a book--and I read it on a recent flight to Chicago.  What I like most about it is that unlike his fellow horsemen, it's difficult to deflect attention from his arguments by focusing instead on his disrespectful tone (an interesting practice, since the Christians that inevitably take offense when they feel that mean old atheists are being rude seemingly have no qualms about condemning atheists, queers, Muslims, etc., to an eternity of torturous damnation in the fires of hell).  This essay makes a lot of good points without pulling punches, but does so with out the polemic bents of Hitchens or Dawkins.  I'd like to read a real, substantive Christian response to this letter, but all I can seem to find (other than typical ad hominem crap) are apologists who essentially say "Well, Sam Harris doesn't really understand Christianity," and dismiss his arguments out of hand.

But at least Harris's delivery doesn't let them get off the hook by admonishing him for being nasty and disrespectful.  Instead, the apologists retreat to the "you just don't get it" ground, an approach that still permits them to ignore the more difficult issues (the real reason, in my opinion, for the "I don't like your tone" rebuttal), but forcing them to defend the proposition of a much more nuanced and merciful version of Christianity--real Christianity--that is misrepresented by trivialities such as the Crusades; the Inquisition; witch hunts; slavery; pedophilia; race, gender, and orientation discrimination, etc.  The reasoining is that all of the many, many negative things associated with religion are due to the fallibilities of people who have gotten it wrong for one reason or another, and Christianity has done a lot of nice things for a lot of people.  That begs questions for me, though, because if real Christianity really is the Golden Rule stuff, why aren't there more Golden Rule Christians?  If there are more, why don't more of them speak up?  And are the ones who are speaking up doing so because they're Christians, or just because they're good human beings?

There's a lot more that could be said about all of this, of course, but I'll save it for another time.