NOTE TO THE READER
Since the publication of my first book, The End of Faith, thousands of
people have written to tell me that I am wrong not to believe in God. The
most hostile of these communications have come from Christians. This is
ironic, as Christians generally imagine that no faith imparts the virtues of
love and forgiveness more effectively than their own. The truth is that
many who claim to be transformed by Christ's love are deeply, even
murderously, intolerant of criticism. While we may want to ascribe this to
human nature, it is clear that such hatred draws considerable support from
the Bible. How do I know this? The most disturbed of my correspondents
always cite chapter and verse.
While this book is intended for people of all faiths, it has been written in
the form of a letter to a Christian. In it, I respond to many of the arguments
that Christians put forward in defense of their religious beliefs. The
primary purpose of the book is to arm secularists in our society, who
believe that religion should be kept out of public policy, against their
opponents on the Christian Right. Consequently, the "Christian" I address
throughout is a Christian in a narrow sense of the term. Such a person
believes, at a minimum, that the Bible is the inspired word of God and that
only those who accept the divinity of Jesus Christ will experience salvation
after death. Dozens of scientific surveys suggest that well over half of the
American population subscribes to these beliefs. Of course, such
metaphysical commitments do not imply any particular denomination of
Christianity. Conservatives in every sect - Catholics, mainline Protestants,
Evangelicals, Baptists, Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and so on - are
equally implicated in my argument. As is well known, the beliefs of
conservative Christians now exert an extraordinary influence over our
national discourse - in our courts, in our schools, and in every branch of
government.
In Letter to a Christian Nation, I have set out to demolish the intellectual
and moral pretensions of Christianity in its most committed forms.
Consequently, liberal and moderate Christians will not always recognize
themselves in the "Christian" I address. They should, however, recognize
one hundred and fifty million of their neighbors. I have little doubt that
liberals and moderates find the eerie certainties of the Christian Right to be
as troubling as I do. It is my hope, however, that they will also begin to see
that the respect they demand for their own religious beliefs gives shelter to
extremists of all faiths. Although liberals and moderates do not fly planes
into buildings or organize their lives around apocalyptic prophecy, they
rarely question the legitimacy of raising a child to believe that she is a
Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew. Even the most progressive faiths lend tacit
support to the religious divisions in our world. In Letter to a Christian
Nation, however, I engage Christianity at its most divisive, injurious, and
retrograde. In this, liberals, moderates, and nonbelievers can recognize a
common cause.
According to a recent Gallup poll, only 12 percent of Americans believe
that life on earth has evolved through a natural process, without the
interference of a deity. Thirty one percent believe that evolution has been
"guided by God." If our worldview were put to a vote, notions of
"intelligent design" would defeat the science of biology by nearly three to
one. This is troubling, as nature offers no compelling evidence for an
intelligent designer and countless examples of unintelligent design. But the
current controversy over "intelligent design" should not blind us to the true
scope of our religious bewilderment at the dawn of the twenty first century.
The same Gallup poll revealed that 53 percent of Americans are actu-ally
creationists. This means that despite a full century of scientific insights
attesting to the antiquity of life and the greater antiquity of the earth, more
than half of our neighbors believe that the entire cosmos was created six
thousand years ago. This is, incidentally, about a thousand years after the
Sumerians invented glue. Those with the power to elect our presidents and
congressmen - and many who them-selves get elected—believe that
dinosaurs lived two by two upon Noah's ark, that light from distant galaxies
was created en route to the earth, and that the first members of our species
were fashioned out of dirt and divine breath, in a garden with a talking
snake, by the hand of an invisible God.
Among developed nations, America stands alone in these convictions. Our
country now appears, as at no other time in her history, like a lumbering,
bellicose, dimwitted giant. Anyone who cares about the fate of civilization
would do well to recognize that the combination of great power and great
stupidity is simply terrifying, even to one's friends.
The truth, however, is that many of us may not care about the fate of
civilization. Forty four percent of the American population is convinced
that Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead sometime in the next
fifty years. According to the most common interpretation of biblical
prophecy, Jesus will return only after things have gone horribly awry here
on earth. It is, therefore, not an exaggeration to say that if the city of New
York were suddenly replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage
of the American population would see a silver lining in the subsequent
mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever
going to happen was about to happen: the return of Christ. It should be
blindingly obvious that beliefs of this sort will do little to help us create a
durable future for ourselves—socially, economically, environmentally, or
geopolitically. Imagine the conse-quences if any significant component of
the U.S. government actually believed that the world was about to end and
that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American
population apparently believes this, purely on the basis of religious dogma,
should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency. The book you are
about to read is my response to this emergency. It is my sincere hope that
you will find it useful.
Sam Harris May 1, 2006 New York
Letter to a Christian Nation
You believe that the Bible is the word of God, that Jesus is the Son of God,
and that only those who place their faith in Jesus will find salvation after
death. As a Christian, you believe these propositions not because they make
you feel good, but because you think they are true. Before I point out some
of the problems with these beliefs, I would like to acknowledge that there
are many points on which you and I agree. We agree, for instance, that if
one of us is right, the other is wrong. The Bible is either the word of God,
or it isn't. Either Jesus offers humanity the one, true path to salvation (John
14:6), or he does not. We agree that to be a true Christian is to believe that
all other faiths are mistaken, and profoundly so. If Christianity is correct,
and I persist in my unbelief, I should expect to suffer the torments of hell.
Worse still, I have persuaded others, and many close to me, to reject the
very idea of God. They too will languish in "eternal fire" (Matthew 25:41).
If the basic doctrine of Christianity is correct, I have misused my life in the
worst conceivable way. I admit this without a single caveat. The fact that
my continuous and public rejection of Christianity does not worry me in
the least should suggest to you just how inadequate I think your reasons for
being a Christian are.
Of course, there are Christians who do not agree with either of us. There
are Christians who consider other faiths to be equally valid paths to
salvation. There are Christians who have no fear of hell and who do not
believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus. These Christians often
describe themselves as "religious liberals" or "religious moderates." From
their point of view, you and I have both misunderstood what it means to be
a person of faith. There is, we are assured, a vast and beautiful terrain
between atheism and religious fundamentalism that generations of
thoughtful Christians have quietly explored. According to liberals and
moderates, faith is about mystery,
and meaning, and community, and love. People make religion out of the
full fabric of their lives, not out of mere beliefs.
I have written elsewhere about the problems I see with religious liberalism
and religious moderation. Here, we need only observe that the issue is both
simpler and more urgent than liberals and moderates generally admit.
Either the Bible is just an ordinary book, written by mortals, or it isn't.
Either Christ was divine, or he was not. If the Bible is an ordinary book,
and Christ an ordinary man, the basic doctrine of Christianity is false. If the
Bible is an ordinary book, and Christ an ordi-nary man, the history of
Christian theology is the story of bookish men parsing a collective
delusion. If the basic tenets of Christianity are true, then there are some
very grim surprises in store for nonbelievers like myself. You understand
this. At least half of the American population understands this. So let us be
honest with ourselves: in the fullness of time, one side is really going to
win this argument, and the other side is really going to lose.
Consider: every devout Muslim has the same reasons for being a Muslim
that you have for being a Christian. And yet you do not find their reasons
compelling. The Koran repeatedly declares that it is the perfect word of the
creator of the universe. Muslims believe this as fully as you believe the
Bible's account of itself. There is a vast literature describing the life of
Muhammad that, from the point of view of Islam, proves that he was the
most recent Prophet of God. Muhammad also assured his followers that
Jesus was not divine (Koran 5:71-75; 19:30-38) and that anyone who
believes otherwise will spend eternity in hell. Muslims are certain that
Muhammad's opinion on this subject, as on all others, is infallible.
Why don't you lose any sleep over whether to convert to Islam? Can you
prove that Allah is not the one, true God? Can you prove that the archangel
Gabriel did not visit Muhammad in his cave? Of course not. But you need
not prove any of these things to reject the beliefs of Muslims as absurd. The
burden is upon them to prove that their beliefs about God and Muhammad
are valid. They have not done this. They cannot do this. Muslims are
simply not making claims about reality that can be corroborated. This is
perfectly apparent to anyone who has not anesthetized himself with the
dogma of Islam.
The truth is, you know exactly what it is like to be an atheist with respect to
the beliefs of Muslims. Isn't it obvious that Muslims are fooling
themselves? Isn't it obvious that anyone who thinks that the Koran is the
perfect word of the creator of the universe has not read the book critically?
Isn't it obvious that the doctrine of Islam represents a near perfect barrier to
honest inquiry? Yes, these things are obvious. Understand that the way you
view Islam is precisely the way devout Muslims view Christianity. And it
is the way I view all religions.
The Wisdom of the Bible
You believe that Christianity is an unrivaled source of human goodness.
You believe that Jesus taught the virtues of love, compassion, and
selflessness better than any teacher who has ever lived. You believe that the
Bible is the most profound book ever written and that its contents have
stood the test of time so well that it must have been divinely inspired. All
of these beliefs are false.
Questions of morality are questions about happiness and suffering. This is
why you and I do not have moral obligations toward rocks. To the degree
that our actions can affect the experience of other creatures positively or
negatively, questions of morality apply. The idea that the Bible is a perfect
guide to morality is simply astounding, given the contents of the book.
Admittedly, God's counsel to parents is straightforward: whenever children
get out of line, we should beat them with a rod (Proverbs 13:24,20:30, and
23:13-14). If they are shameless enough to talk back to us, we should kill
them (Exodus 21:15, Leviticus 20:9, Deuteronomy 21:18-21, Mark 7:9-13,
and Matthew 15:4-7). We must also stone people to death for heresy,
adultery, homosexuality, working on the Sabbath, worshipping graven
images, practicing sorcery, and a wide variety of other imaginary crimes.
Here is just one example of God's timeless wisdom:
If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son, or your daughter, or
the wife of your bosom, or your friend who is as your own soul, entices you
secretly, saying, "Let us go and serve other gods,"... you shall not yield to
him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him,
nor shall you conceal him; but you shall kill him; your hand shall be first
against him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.
You shall stone him to death with stones, because he sought to draw you
away from the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt,
out of the house of bondage.... If you hear in one of your cities, which the
LORD your God gives you to dwell there, that certain base fellows have
gone out among you and have drawn away the inhabitants of the city,
saying, "Let us go and serve other gods" which you have not known, then
you shall inquire and make search and ask diligently; and behold, if it be
true and certain that such an abominable thing has been done among you,
you shall surely put the inhabitants of that city to the sword, destroying it
utterly, all who are in it and its cattle, with the edge of the sword.
----DEUTERONOMY 13:6, 8-15
Many Christians believe that Jesus did away with all this barbarism in the
clearest terms imaginable and delivered a doctrine of pure love and
toleration. He didn't. In fact, at several points in the New Testament, Jesus
can be read to endorse the entirety of Old Testament law.
For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a
dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes
one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called
least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them
shall he called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your
righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never
enter the kingdom of heaven.
---MATTHEW 5:18-19
The apostles regularly echo this theme (for example, see 2 Timothy 3:16-
17). It is true, of course, that Jesus said some profound things about love
and charity and forgiveness. The Golden Rule really is a wonderful moral
precept. But numerous teachers offered the same instruction centuries
before Jesus (Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, Epictetus...), and countless
scriptures discuss the importance of self-transcending love more
articulately than the Bible does, while being unblemished by the obscene
celebrations of violence that we find throughout the Old and New
Testaments. If you think that Christianity is the most direct and undefiled
expression of love and compassion the world has ever seen, you do not
know much about the world's other religions.
Take the religion of Jainism as one example. The Jains preach a doctrine of
utter non-violence. While the Jains believe many improbable things about
the universe, they do not believe the sorts of things that lit the fires of the
Inquisition. You probably think the Inquisition was a perversion of the
"true" spirit of Christianity. Perhaps it was. The problem, however, is that
the teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was
possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries.
It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the
Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that
heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin
Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics,
apostates, Jews, and witches. You are, of course, free to interpret the Bible
differently - though isn't it amazing that you have succeeded in discerning
the true teachings of Christianity, while the most influential thinkers in the
history of your faith failed? Of course, many Christians believe that a
harmless person like Martin Luther King, Jr., is the best exemplar of their
religion. But this presents a serious problem, because the doctrine of
Jainism is an objectively better guide for becoming like Martin Luther
King, Jr., than the doctrine of Christianity is. While King undoubtedly
considered himself a devout Christian, he acquired his commitment to
nonviolence primarily from the writings of Mohandas K. Gandhi. In 1959,
he even traveled to India to learn the principles of nonviolent social protest
directly from Gandhi's disciples. Where did Gandhi, a Hindu, get his
doctrine of nonviolence? He got it from the Jains.
If you think that Jesus taught only the Golden Rule and love of one's
neighbor, you should reread the New Testament. Pay particular attention to
the morality that will be on display when Jesus returns to earth trailing
clouds of glory:
God deems it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you ... when the
Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire,
inflicting vengeance upon those who do not know God and upon those who
do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They shall suffer the punishment
of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from
the glory of his might...
---2 THESSALONIANS 1:6-9
If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and
the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned.
---JOHN 15:6
If we take Jesus in half his moods, we can easily justify the actions of St.
Francis of Assisi or Martin Luther King, Jr. Taking the other half, we can
justify the Inquisition. Anyone who believes that the Bible offers the best
guidance we have on questions of morality has some very strange ideas
about either guidance or morality.
In assessing the moral wisdom of the Bible, it is useful to consider moral
questions that have been solved to everyone's satisfaction. Consider the
question of slavery. The entire civilized world now agrees that slavery is an
abomination. What moral instruction do we get from the God of Abraham
on this subject? Consult the Bible, and you will discover that the creator of
the universe clearly expects us to keep slaves:
As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy
male and female slaves from among the nations that are round about you.
You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and
their families that are with you, who have been born in your land; and they
may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you, to
inherit as a possession forever; you may make slaves of them, but over
your brethren the people of Israel you shall not rule, one over another, with
harshness.
—leviticus 25:44—46
The Bible also makes it clear that every man is free to sell his daughter into
sexual slavery— though certain niceties apply:
When a man setts his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male
slaves do. If she does not please her master, who has designated her for
himself, then he shall let her be redeemed; he shall have no right to sell her
to a foreign people, since he has dealt faithlessly with her. If he designates
her for hi
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