i just read sam harris’s letter to a christian nation, and i wish i could get back the hour he stole from my life. the book’s not deserving of critical review (or even any more than one or two cheap jokes).
i can’t help mentioning two serious weaknesses though. for background, his thesis is that fundamentalist religion is driving the world towards imminent destruction, and the only way to stop it is to drive out fundamentalism.
1. does he really believe that removing religion from the human experience will stop organized destruction?
2. even if he thinks he’s on to something big, he really misread his audience. this is surprising, since the name of his audience shows up in the title of his book. but with around 85-90%* of americans claiming to have some kind of faith, his unmitigated anger toward people of faith won’t help his readers see his point.
i guess harris was trying for a quick-and-dirty argument for why we should be less religious. but his arguments are so shallow that, while they of course hold no weight with fundamentalists, they must strike moderates as juvenile as well. really, the only reason this book could possibly have been published is because of the success of his first book, which i’m now quite anxious to avoid… for your benefit, it will go unplugged here.
if he thinks of himself as an intellectual (instead of the angst-ridden teen he writes as), he really ought to be ashamed.
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* this stat is from a quick google search. see here and, if you can afford it, here. if you have a more accurate estimate, feel free to comment.
December 19th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
I agree, Dave. I tried to read that book in a spirit of open-mindedness but I honestly could not follow his chain of reasoning. He has the unfortunate tendency to conflate evidential arguments against faith (of which he has only the standard ‘problem of evil’, pretty much) with pragmatic arguments (religion is bad for politics and world peace, etc.). He is eager to apply all sorts of relativistic analyses to theistic religion, but his own brand of atheism seems to be immune to that sort of thing. He presents it as the most straight-forward, commonsensical position, without considering how historical and cultural factors might have shaped atheism as well as theism.
Oh, dear me. Did I actually give a sober, intellectual response to Sam Harris’ ranting? Oh well. Merry Christmas, anyway.
December 30th, 2006 at 11:51 pm
I was thinking of picking that up but I’ll be sure to avoid it now.