Review of "Letter to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris

I mentioned in an earlier blog that I was going to utilize the book by Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation, and deal with his arguments. There became a real problem as I kept reading the book. There are no real issues to deal with, as all his arguments are straw-man arguments, or just name calling.

It is by far one of the worst books I have read in arguing the atheist position, and all the arguments he employs he gives no evidence for at anytime, except for a few polls that anyone could find that say the exact opposite. If one reads his book closely he will argue against himself quite often. At one point he says that Europe is secular then goes on to talk about how fast the Muslim faith is growing and if keeps going it will be majority Muslim soon.

Mr. Harris never gives credit to Christians or Muslims for any of their scientific discoveries (Medicine, Math, and Science itself) and actually speaks as if those discoveries were made by atheists. He makes the claim that evolution is proved and anyone that does not believe it is fooling themselves. He discredits with no evidence anything not evolution. He sites that it has been proven in the fossil record that we have evolved. There is no evidence of it and that is why he does not site it.

Now I know why he refuses to debate Dinesh D’Souza, because he has nothing at all, but name calling and false opinion. There are much better books to deal with and spend time arguing. I was completely mistaken to think this is one of them. It is a sad rambling from someone that has most likely been hurt by someone claiming to be a Christian. It is just a personal rambling one would expect from someone sitting in a coffee shop complaining to a friend.

Do not waist your money or time with this book unless you know someone that may have read it and believes it. You can also read it if you want to read some of the typical arguments you might get from an emotionally based argument, but then there is no reason to be even engaged because they do not want to hear clear concise reasoning. If this is his argument then he sure does not want to hear truth, just rationalize his truth. In reality Sam Harris is the anti-intellectual, and is revealed in this book.

It is arguments and opinion like his that has caused more hate, death and destruction then probably any faith today. Atheism thought has been the basis for more killings then any religion, though Sam tries to write them off as not atheists though they are (Adolf Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Kim Il Sung). Mr. Harris complains of the dogma of religions then makes a dogmatic statement: “There is, in fact, no worldview more reprehensible in its arrogance than that of a religious believer. . . .” That seems a little dogmatic in belief. His whole book is a dogmatic statement about is atheism. Again, contradictory, which is a formula he uses though out the book?