Why care for the planet, educate children, or plan for the future if Jesus will erase it all in a matter of years anyway? This quick thought is a reminder to nonbelievers that the consequences of Christian mythology are not constrained to the insides of others' minds.īut I don't need to go into Harris' arguments in this forum (though I assure you, they're quite good). 'Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us unwilling to criticize ideas that are increasingly maladaptive and patently ridiculous' (80).įor example, the bizarre and arrogant belief that Jesus has been waiting 2,000 years to make his end-of-time-marking return in your lifetime, makes for disastrous social policy, the absence of compassion, and ultimately, nihilism. but his criticism of a society that is incapable of rooting out that irrationality from its foundations because of the respect it affords faith.īy retreating from any criticism of something that is a person's faith, we effectively forgo the opportunity to criticize the consequences of that faith. Your own intuitions are still primary, and your reasoning is circular' (49). 'You are using your own moral intuitions to decide that the Bible is the appropriate guarantor of your moral intuitions. I believe Harris' greatest achievement has not been his criticism of the irrationality of religion-this has been done before, though perhaps not much better than: These beliefs cannot be verified, or proved, or even supported, except in the final trump of retreating to faith, that rational-halt that has so long been left unchallenged. These myths comprise the metaphysical beliefs of the average American. Two things are most shocking about this depiction: 1) This isn't an eight year old and 2) This isn't an exception.

Harris describes an American Christian, 147 years after the publication of On the Origin of Species, believing that the universe is 6,000 years old that an invisible god inhaled life into dirt to make a man that spawned a wife from his ribs and talked to a snake that god fathered a biological son and that that son will return to Earth in the next few decades, trailing with him the Apocalypse. And the only thing sillier than the need for a book like Harris' is how desperate that need is. But, Harris didn't write his letter to a wise nation.

A wise nation might find such a trenchant criticism of religion almost charming in its quaintness, yet moot musings no longer relevant to the concerns of serious people.

It is a silly thing for a book such as Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation to appear atop the bestseller lists.

Letter to a christian nation