Harris’ Words May Fall on Deaf Ears

I have just finished reading the excellent Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. Harris, like Dennett and Dawkins is part of the trio of vocal proponents of atheism that have sounded a trumpet call against theistic intolerance and ingrained religious ideologies, The format of this short letter to Christianity is simple in it’s construction yet delivers witty and biting arguments against outdated theistic belief as well as the vacuous platforms of “reason” and pseudo-science used by believers in the so called “intelligent design” movement.

The book is succinct, eloquent and thought provoking. It is neither apologetic for it’s stance nor does it mince words when talking of the fundamentalist madness found in both Christianity and Islam. As in The End of Faith, Harris calls attention to the role of religious moderates as a breeding ground for these fundamentalists. It is yet another in the current deluge of mind-expanding, myth busting books and it is thus very sad that I feel it will only be read by the converted.

I believe very few Christians will ever read this book, fewer still once the evils of the unholy trinity of Dennett, Dawkins and Harris have been expounded from the pulpit. Few champions of intelligent design will get to hear Harris’ excellent point that many biological entities and organic systems are in fact very badly designed. Although we represent the leading edge of the wave of natural selection with those creatures that adapted poorly relegated now to the dusty antiquity of the museum, surely an omniscient and omnipotent designer would have built biological system perfectly and thus perfectly created creatures, barring the odd whimsical flood of mass extinction, would not die out or suffer embarrassing and all to frequent plumbing problems.

Creationists will never take to heart the point that the bible – the purported outpourings of a universally omniscient mind – is full of errors and by now scientifically embarrassing statements like the very poor approximation of pi that had (at the time of it’s writing) already been calculated to a number of decimal points accurately by the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians. Indeed the following statement by Harris is both humourous and revealing:

It is absolutely true to say that if the Greek mathematician Archimedes has written the relevant passages in I Kings or II Chronicles, the text would bear much greater evidence of the author’s omniscience.

Surely, Harris asks, the bible would contain some great ideas about mathematics, or the very structure of our universe – it is a big book – surely a place could have been reserved for a cure for AIDS or Cancer – perhaps a little explanation to grieving parents explaining cot death or miscarriage. Indeed modern writers of fiction could do a better job at replicating the mind and thoughts of an omniscient creator although their creative efforts would be very hard pressed in the areas of injustice, bloodiness, viciousness and intolerance.

So this excellent book will not be read by the moderates who have half donned the mantle of their own pernicious brand of religious elitism, some will go on believing the world is a mere 6000 years old – an event that happened after the brewing of beer or the domestication of the dog. The moderates will continue to harbour, through ignorance, the extremists who believe that paradise awaits with martyrdom and murder or that this beautiful world on which we live will become a battle ground of fire and pain in the coming battle between the very binary concepts of good and evil. Our religious leaders will continue to incite to violence and will continue to push us closer to Armageddon than at any time in our history.

We are the sole guardians of our genome; this, now is the foundation for all that humanity can ever achieve or aspire too. It is time we grew up and took some sane and considered responsibility for that fact.