Sam Harris - Letter to a Christian Nation

I picked up Letter to a Christian Nation today because I wanted to read more of what Harris had to say after reading The End of Faith. Specifically, because so much of The End of Faith was about Islam, I wanted to read more of his opinion about Christianity. Although much of what Harris says in Letter to a Christian Nation was very similar to what he said in The End of Faith, I enjoyed the book very much.

One of the biggest arguments in Letter to a Christian Nation is about morality. Harris approaches this argument from several directions. First, he argues that contrary to what Christian fundamentalists claim they do not truly get their morals from the bible (which is the same argument that Dawkins made in The God Delusion). For example, he looks at the issue of slavery. Not only is slavery acceptable and widespread in the bible, both the Old and New Testaments give guidance for how slaves should be treated and how they should act. Those slave owners in the 1800s who argued in favour of slavery using the bible as justification were correctly citing their text, but it is now agreed by the vast majority of people (including the fundamentalists) that slavery is morally wrong. In other words, society has labelled something as morally repugnant even though the bible says that it is not. He goes further in order to address protests by moderate Christians by saying that while it is possible to cherry-pick arguments from the bible that go against things like slavery, a thorough reading of the entire text does not justify their moderate beliefs. His second argument about morality is directed at those who wish to control the morals of others even when it means causing harm. He outlines the standard arguments, including that missionaries and NGOs discouraging condom use in Africa contributes to the spread of HIV/AIDS, and that the attempt to force the teaching of abstinence in schools as the only option has caused America to have extremely high teenage pregnancy and STD rates when compared to other developed countries. Overall, Harris argues that following the morals of the fundamentalist Christian community does far more harm to society than good. Finally, Harris argues that contrary to popular Christian fundamentalist belief, being a "Christian" society does not lead to greater happiness or morality. On the contrary, societies with less religion (both countries such as Sweden or Norway and areas of the US like the northeastern states) tend to be happier, wealthier, and have less crime than those that are highly religious.

Discussions of morality took up the majority of Letter to a Christian Nation, but Harris also takes the opportunity to examine the validity of Christian belief itself. First, he points out that the bible was fairly obviously written by people with very limited understanding of how the world worked rather than by people inspired by an omniscient god who had created the earth and should presumably know how it worked. There are lots of discussions about slaves and menstruation in the Old Testament, but not a lot of knowledge of germs or cancer (or stars, or the sun, or really anything else that science has discovered). In addition, the "prophecies" that are sprinkled throughout the bible are oddly unspecific for an omniscient god who could have presumably predicted things with extreme accuracy but chose instead to speak in vague generalities that are not overly difficult to fulfill (rather like a carnival psychic). Harris also points out the various illogical natural things in the world, such as fetuses growing a coat temporary of hair or snakes that have pelvises to point out that so-called intelligent design does not really appear all that intelligent.

I really enjoyed Letter to a Christian Nation. It was a fairly quick read, and makes strong arguments against the beliefs of fundamentalist Christians (it is explicitly not directed at moderate or liberal Christians, who Harris does not have terribly much respect for). I would highly recommend it.