Letter to a Christian Nation
by Sam Harris
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Book Summary Information
Author: Sam HarrisEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-01-08
ISBN: 0307278778
Number of pages: 144
Publisher: Vintage
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- ISBN13: 9780307278777
- Condition: New
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Book Reviews of Letter to a Christian Nation
Book Review: Concise, Silly, Ignorant ... too typical
Summary: 3 Stars
It is difficult for me to start this review. On the one hand, I roll my eyes in wonder as I presume the author actually means what he writes - how can an educated person pen words of such astonishing ignorance? On the other hand, it seems to me that divisive books like this one can give the thinking reader a sort of measure of the social pulse of the world, so's to speak. I must confess that however strongly I disagree with much of what Mr. Harris writes, I am simultaneously drawn to such polemical writings! I consider myself religious and realize that given the tone of other reviews here I may well be in the minority of reviewers, the majority of which I presume are much more in sympathy with Mr. Harris. Hence, whether you, the reader, will agree with me or not is not as important as it is for you to know why a religious person like myself would consider a book like this to be silly or ignorant or worse.
In "Letter to a Christian Nation," Harris betrays his perfect sympathy with Dawkins, Hitchens, et al. and neatly dumps the very same tired anti-religious sentiment/rant on America. This is not to say the book is worthless, though, because in repeating regular atheistic vitriol he does it in a more concise fashion than any I've seen to date. And he really raises the level of ignorance applied against religious people everywhere. I wish I could put it more kindly, but I cannot. I will give two specific examples as support for this statement.
But first I'd like to point out that Harris isn't up-to-speed philosophically. His reasoning typically fails to adequately base conclusions on premises. For instance, he brings up the argument basically claiming that religion hasn't made the world perfect or better or that religious people are no better than others, ergo, religion is false, God is not real, etcetera. I'm making broad statements - I believe this to be true in outline if not detail. But whatever he is saying, his logic is inconclusive at best. A person might well believe and find himself unable or unwilling to live up to the standards as set down by his faith. In fact, I have never known a perfect person of any persuasion, myself included. Does it necessarily follow that the standard to which I aspire (or pretend to aspire!) is false? Suppose a super math whiz was an alcoholic - are his theories wrong because he can't seem to limit his booze intake? ("Why should I listen to his fancy theories - he can't even count his drinks!") I wish writers like Harris could make such distinctions. In failing to do so, they suggest a logical sloppiness or intellectual dishonesty that in the eyes of many readers will taint their entire work. I choose these derogatory words of accusation carefully, while refraining from actually applying them to Harris, for lack of conclusive evidence - but at the same time I likewise cannot conclusively disagree with others who would so accuse him. The problem is that a highly educated person like Harris should be less casual and more precise in what he says and not resort to what seems like mere mudslinging.
And now on to specific examples as mentioned above. Example one: looking at pages 60 and 61 of "Letter to a Christian Nation," I actually found myself rolling my eyes and shaking my head. Page 60, first full paragraph, is on the subject of divine omniscience regarding prophecy. It ends with the sentences "..[the Bible] does not contain a single sentence that could not have been written by a man or woman living in the first century. This should trouble you." The context of the statement is that Harris is holding a view of prophecy that is strictly limited to the foretelling of the future, by which he is echoing a rather popular sentiment. The only problem is that for many of us who consider the Bible sacred, prophecy is primarily something else - the prophet is acting as society's - usually the leaders' - conscience (and is never loved for it, of course). Therefore we are not "troubled" by Harris' observation. I would have to conclude that, regardless of his intention, Harris is basically engaging in the classic activity of building a straw man and tearing him down. To avoid such a charge it would be incumbent on him to portray a religious view as held by that religion's governing authority and then proceed to argue against it on those grounds. Otherwise, how can he avoid a charge of intellectual cowardice? He suggests that a certain moderate religion is tolerable to him, by which he seems to mean what I would consider a religion without content. In trying to sympathize with him, I attempted to mentally restrict the target of his polemic to a certain strain of fundamentalism that is prevalent in America today, many or most of who may well hold the view of Biblical prophecy that Harris holds up for ridicule. This would render my objection null. I couldn't do this, though, because he clearly states that it is his desire to eradicate all religion. How, then, could he have genuine respect for the people who he's trying to rob of their faith? How can such a learned person not understand that regardless of conviction, simple respect should demand I not make fun of any person's faith? His attitude makes it impossible for me to think he truly respects anyone's faith. Notice that this is not a conclusion I get from mere linear argumentation, but one that is suggested by various strands of his writings. It seems to me that he does try to target some of the more fundamentalist beliefs, likely because they're so easy to ridicule, but then what he'd really like to do is lump all other religious people under the same banner.
Example two comes immediately after that: he accuses the biblical writer(s) in I Kings 7:23-26 and II Chronicles 4:2-5 of approximating the value of pi so poorly. To me, this is ridiculous on two counts. The first is context - the verses in question are prescriptive instructions for some of the temple furnishings. Does Mr. Harris REALLY expect a people accustomed to the use of a measurement system based on cubits and spans to approximate the value of pi in such instructions? Secondly, he's not quite right, since a cubit and span do not lend themselves to precise division into anything like tenths. I learned the (math) concept of significant figures in college. In this case, the lack of easy divisibility means we can count on one significant figure. So a diameter of 10 means a circumference of 30 - and rounding of pi to one significant figure gives an answer of 3. But wait - shouldn't it be 31? Well, that's TWO significant figures. If I were writing these passages as instructions for the builders, I'd think I'd have to take into account the fact that cubits and spans are themselves harly uniform between people, and I suppose I could justify either one or two significant figures. It seems to me the builder could use either circumference OR diameter and attain to a good degree the design that the writer had in mind when the instructions were written down. Context suggests that these are PRACTICAL guides, not mathematical treatises. Does this "prove" the veracity of the Bible? Absolutely not - I mention this only to show why I see Harris' argumentation as perfectly ridiculous. He brings up theoretical mathematical considerations - the precision of the approximation of pi - and then wrongly accuses the writer of failing to attain it. Again assuming he believes what he's writing, it certainly shows how his line of thinking is way out of step with many people today. To put it more bluntly, most of us would be rather embarrassed to write such silliness and claim it as our own; I almost feel embarrassed in refuting an argument like his. But Mr. Harris seems to be of the mind that it's rather damning evidence against Biblical truth.
Harris tacitly assumes that the world's problems will disappear if religion would only do so. This is blatantly ignorant. People are simply not very perfect, regardless of the content of their belief or lack thereof. Specifically, Harris seems to suggest that the primary or only measure of morality is whether suffering is reduced or alleviated, and this seems oh-so-good on the surface. But a short consideration of the problem of suffering will show the concept of mere alleviation/elimination to be at best devoid of precision and at worst a terrible evil. How is suffering measured? This is an example of something Harris assumes and then projects on others. But it is in no way clear, let alone obvious. I need only to consider myself - there have been times that I, like everyone I know and presumably everyone else too, have suffered in some way that was personally significant at the time. Upon looking back I find that suffering hasn't had any real additive effect, and in fact, past sufferings have often strengthened me with their memory, making present sufferings much easier to tolerate and therefore less severe. For simplicity, I'm thinking of mere physical pain as I write this. My tolerance is much higher for physical pain than it was formerly. And here by "formerly" I'm not referring to the mere passage of time; I specifically mean that the more instances of physical suffering I've lived through, the more that present pains tend to be robbed of their perceived severity. But it could have gone the other way, and I might have developed such a fear of repeat suffering that I found it intolerable. It would depend on my internal make-up, but the point is that many sufferings from the past may actually lessen the sufferings of the present; it is inaccurate to conclude that pain is somehow additive. Socially, too - misery loves company! Who's to say that shared misery cannot serve to cancel itself in the persons of the sufferers? It can do so - or it can multiply and make them even more miserable! The problem, again, is that Harris is projecting his interpretation of suffering on the rest of us and assuming that not only do we all see it as the great evil he does, but that we see it in the same way. But in the most casual observation of people around me, I find this idea is simply not broadly, let alone universally, accepted. But let's suppose he's right. I'd suggest the perfect moral code to stop all suffering, a solution that neatly sidesteps those messy considerations as to how to practically measure suffering. The solution is simple, and was the great fear during Cold War - total nuclear annihilation! Of course, you'd rightly call me crazy. But try to recall one time in history where there was NOT a Ghengis Khan, or an Idi Amin, or Adolf Hitler, or ... insert the name of the world leader you most love to hate. Unfortunately, the historical evidence is there - some despot or another will always arise and try to blame the world's problems on one or more social groups, and then use that as a basis for rationalizing genocide. In trying to place the blame for the world's sufferings on religion, Mr. Harris is unavoidably allying himself in the methodological camp of present and former political tyrants. It would be superfluous to show where this is heading, and for the record I'm not accusing Harris personally of wishing to kill all the religious; I'm just trying to show how some yet-unknown leader may use Harris' thinking methods in justifying any sort of social "cleansing" whatsoever. How can it be otherwise? Again, how is suffering to be quantified? In practice, it would not be; and the alleviation of suffering as the moral summum bonum would inexorably lead to genocide. If Mr. Harris should argue that this is impossible; we're evolved beyond such cruelty, etc. I'd just flat-out call him deluded. History generally reads as a rather depressing litany of conquests, purgings, and oppressions. And even today there's plenty going on. I bet not all of it is among religious lines, either.
No more important, but more philosophically fundamental, and this should matter to Harris: it's impossible, even theoretically, to scientifically reason that the world's problems are mostly or exclusively a result of religion - what/who do we use as a control group to set up an experiment to conduct the research necessary to reach that conclusion? Isn't that the scientific method in action? But most of us are a mixture of belief and unbelief, since life is rarely black or white. What camp, then, would such a person be in? This is a theoretical question, but practically speaking it is naturally impossible to sequester the religious of the world from the nonreligious and conduct the experiment in any meaningful way. Who would do the data collection? And how? Again, how is suffering to be measured? I've already suggested that Harris and I are in deep disagreement here. How could we have a group of researchers that are neither religious or nonreligious - to avoid biases? Therefore - Harris' insistence that religion is to blame is no scientific conclusion, it is a premise. This is why, I think, some would accuse people like Harris of "atheistic fundamentalism," the point being that the title/epithet/label of "fundamentalist" describes one whose belief is strongly held without adequate proof.
This sort of book is more or less a preaching to the choir as others have mentioned. It will not be read by a great many religious people because of the author's anti-religious tone, which is to me is unfortunate, because the result will likely be that divisions are widened rather than bridged. It is impossible to "prove" either theism or atheism because we won't agree on a common intellectual ground, and therein lies the problem. Reason is drawing conclusions based on premises. One cannot forever recursively prove premises until one arrives at one that is self-evident, and at some point the arguing will break down into "is so!" and "is not!" I for one cannot see how one can with intellectual rigor hold a position of formal materialistic atheism. That is based on not only my premises but also those things I consider to be be more or less important in a secondary or even tertiary sense. The point is that if we examine the premises from which arguments are developed, that is where we would see the huge rift in society, in this case between Mr. Harris and myself. If Mr. Harris is serious about the alleviation of suffering, it seems to me that we must start by discussing suffering - what it is and what it is not. We would find, I'm sure, that one cannot just glibly gloss over such an important subject and assume broad-based tacit agreement. Do enough of these sorts of exercises and we shall much better see how and where society is divided. Eventually we would arrive at the point where we can't argue any further. And, since these will be the sorts of things (material vs. spiritual primacy, for instance) that can be neither conclusively proven nor disproven, I think it should follow that theists and atheists would find themselves still intellectually free to choose what to believe or doubt.
It would be a mistake to assume I am trying to invoke a huge argument here. My main emphasis has been to give a sort of counter-review of why I think Mr. Harris is way off base with his work. Of course you may disagree heartily, but it should at least merit your mental rumination. As a biblical theist, I have given much thought all my life doing the intellectual faith and knowledge dance - such is my inclination, and I can't recall when or why it started, but it was a habit well in place by the time I started school! This is not an easy exercise, but once one comes to a particular point in, one finds things becoming intellectually clarified in a way neither foreseen nor expected. At least such was/is the case with me. To then read some screed like "Letter to a Christian Nation" seems pretty ho-hum and basically boring, more like a caricature of the intellectual ground already traversed than anything else. I would absolutely love to read a good book on atheism, but I just can't find one. Why, you may ask, would I as a believer find this attractive? Because it is precisely by reading such material that I can examine my own knowledge and faith better - no need to stop that mental dance I began so long ago. I'm referring not to "proving" or "disproving" faith, agnosticism or atheism, but only to reasoning, and fitting my reasoning into that of others regardless of their sympathies or antipathies to what I know or believe. But ... *sigh* ... in this the book sorely disappoints; I had the same feeling after reading Dawkins.
The book seems a bit mean-spirited, but I admit this could be merely my own interpretation. It is, however, a very sad attempt at anything resembling a well-thought-out line of argumentation, and is instead a merely recycled list of tired accusations against religions.
Three stars - but only because I can't keep away from a book like this. I'd be falling all over myself with stars if Harris could actually reason and argue rather than merely ridicule.
Summary of Letter to a Christian Nation
From the new afterword by the author:Humanity has had a long fascination with blood sacrifice. In fact, it has been by no means uncommon for a child to be born into this world only to be patiently and lovingly reared by religious maniacs, who believe that the best way to keep the sun on its course or to ensure a rich harvest is to lead him by tender hand into a field or to a mountaintop and bury, butcher, or burn him alive as offering to an invisible God. The notion that Jesus Christ died for our sins and that his death constitutes a successful propitiation of a ?loving? God is a direct and undisguised inheritance of the superstitious bloodletting that has plagued bewildered people throughout history. . .Church & State Books
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