A Letter to the Christians

Letter to a Christian Nation [Sam Harris] on leondumoulin.nl *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. From the new afterword by the author: Humanity has had a long .
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There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. Easier to highlight and take notes, and you WILL want to. Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. I read on Kindle, and highlight things I want to remember. Typical a book will have 9 or 10 highlights. I've read hundreds of thousands of books. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens.

Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them. They share their meals, but not their wives. They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven. Obedient to the laws, they yet live on a level that transcends the law. Christians love all men, but all men persecute them.

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Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, but enrich many; they are totally destitute, but possess an abundance of everything. In the spirit of Harris' own book, our point by point response will be in the form of letters addressed to Harris that were first created in November and edited in June November 2, Dear Mr.

Harris, Greetings to you. I am writing to you because I am in possession of your latest work, Letter to a Christian Nation , about which I have been asked to deliver a detailed response that I intend to do over the next few days. Now, knowing this, you will understand why, quite frankly, I question your ability to deliver an accurate and fair assessment of Christianity.

Your decision to appear in a movie that posits the thesis that Jesus never existed - a position that credentialed, serious historians universally reject - raises some serious questions about your discernment. It is rather ironic that you critique Christians so readily for believing what they do uncritically, and yet deigned to appear in a film that endorsed such a blatantly counter-consensus position, one rejected by scholars of every religious persuasion.

The contrary view endorsed by Flemming is the province of non-scholars. You will not be able to say, "I didn't endorse the film's conclusions. In reviewing your Letter , I find the same sort of lack of discernment, and over the next few days I will be going over your book page by page, addressing these matters for the benefit of those who might think that you are an authority on this subject, which you clearly are not.

You are an expert in neuroscience. I do not imagine you would have a great deal of patience with a theologian or a Biblical scholar who wrote a book "debunking" neuroscience, would you? This all might be well and good if you actually used credible sources to back up your claims, but I see in your bibliography only one possibly relevant source: Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus , which itself has serious problems here is a general review here with links to more specific reviews.

And as we will see, what you derive from there is itself problematic. Let us proceed to the content of your book. As a summation of what I believe as a Christian, much of what you start with is accurate, although I might query your claim that I believe "all other faiths are mistaken, and profoundly so. I would say that the degree of error varies according to the religion. But since you haven't been more specific, that's all I can say. You are also certainly right to indicate that it is not possible for both you and I to be right. It may interest you to know that there is a view of hell -- held by educated Christians -- that does not match the one you apparently have in mind.

Harris, knowing your work as I do I don't expect you to present any sort of informed answer to this understanding. The answer I expect from you is, "Other Christians disagree, so this is more proof that Christianity is false. If you will, please try to actually engage interpretations and understandings rather than simply appealing to diversity. You say, 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. However, the fact that you manifest such poor knowledge of Christianity means that I am not worried in the least about your rejection.

I will say little of your points concerning religious "liberals" and "moderates" since I am neither by your definition You are certainly right about the dichotomy that exists between our two positions and the consequences for whoever is in error. Without substance is your statement that "every devout Muslim has the same reasons for being a Muslim that you have for being a Christian.

May I ask what exactly you think those "reasons" are and how you arrive at the conclusion that they are the "same" presumably, you mean, in quality, since it is wrong to say that a Christian uses "Mohammed did X" as a reason for being a Christian. You don't explain any of these "reasons," and I certainly do not see you offering any survey of, or answers to, Muslim or Christian scholars or apologists.

May I ask if in fact you have done any research concerning evidences for these or ANY religious systems? Have you in fact composed an argument promoting the "theft theory" for the body of Jesus? Have you indeed gone through the Koran showing it errors? Have you shown that Moses did not exist as Jews claim he did? What exactly have you done? As far as can be told, virtually nothing. Letter , which is supposed to be your best foot forward on this account, is a mere 84 pages, and there are works by literally hundreds of religious scholars -- all far more qualified than you -- that you don't seem to have addressed.

I am not a Muslim, because I have considered arguments for and against Islam and arrived at a rational decision. You may wish to check with such sources as the Answering Islam answering-islam. By the same token, to be fair, Muslims have apologists who have indeed taken the time to fulfill the burden you put on them to prove their beliefs are valid, and it speaks for itself that unlike Answering Islam and others, you feel that it is simply enough to dismiss them with a mere word, "absurd", and say that they are "simply not making claims about reality that can be corroborated.

And, it is just as appropriate for me to say, using your own words 7: The truth is, you know exactly what it is like to be a Muslims with respect to the beliefs of an atheist. Isn't it obvious that atheists are fooling themselves? Isn't it obvious that anyone who thinks the universe was a cosmic accident has not considered the universe critically?

Isn't it obvious that the doctrine of atheism represents a near-perfect barrier to honest inquiry? Yes, these things are obvious. No, actually, they are not. What is obvious is that you are using declarative assertions as a substitute for informed argument. I do not think that you are not sufficiently equipped to answer the truth claims of ANY religion -- Muslim, Christian, or otherwise. As you continue your "you believe" recitation, you are spot on until you say, "You believe that Perhaps this sort of argument is made in evangelistic tracts, but it isn't made by Christian academia.

I suppose especially given your association with Brian Flemming's film that I can now fairly say to you as an atheist, "You believe that Jesus didn't exist, that Mithra was a source for the life of Jesus, and that Nazareth didn't exist. Maybe you don't, but in any event, it seems evident that your "you believe" list could stand a little broader data sample. And finally, we get to see you at work with Biblical "exegesis".

I use the word loosely because it is apparent from your use of the Bible that you do not understand what this is. In attempting to criticize the moral teachings of the Bible, did it not at least occur to you that they were written to a specific context? And that the modern reader is expected to be a proper disciple, to know the meanings in their contexts and to best determine the application for themselves? Let's look at how you misuse the Bible's teachings. You refer to Proverbs as saying children should be beaten with a rod.

The first error you make is in assuming that a proverb is a universal absolute. Wisdom and proverbial literature was a leading genre of the Ancient Near East.

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Much of the OT, and parts of the NT, fall into this category. One of the best-known examples outside the Bible is the Egyptian Wisdom of Amenemope. Wisdom literature was and still is characterized by language of exclusivity. Our modern literature of this type -- for example, the maxims in Poor Richard's Almanac -- can be described similarly.

The wisdom genre has changed little over the years from a functional perspective. Because of these characteristics of proverbial and wisdom literature, the genre has a high rhetorical function and cannot be read as though it were absolute. Much of what is written in the OT, and a good deal in the NT, is subject to these constraints. So, for you to say that Proverbs is "straightforward" in advising the use of a rod for discipline, is simply wrong. Now this brings up the question you no doubt also wish to implicitly ask, as to whether a beating with a rod is even a fair punishment, ever.

Well, let me ask you a question, Mr. Harris, you, as you live in an air-conditioned housing unit, eat three full, healthy meals a day and have vast amounts of leisure time at your disposal: Do you know what it is like to live in a world where anarchy and chaos were constant threats, where life could be stolen from you at any moment?

We have lost the realization that for the ancients, education wasn't simply a matter of teaching times tables so we can get a job selling timeshares: Education was a matter of survival, of ensuring that what there was of civilization did not slip over that fine line from order into chaos. Thus all of the Ancient Near Eastern wisdom literature is filled with pithy sayings like this one you cite from Proverbs, along the lines of, "A student's back is his ear. We don't see a reason to associate severity with education, but if we wait long enough and have enough school shootings, perhaps we finally will.

So, you fail to contextualize Proverbs and thus err. Now let us consider your next error. You refer to stoning people to death for things like heresy and adultery Allow me to explain a few things to you of which you are obviously unaware. The laws of the Old Testament fall into three categories. First, some laws are universal moral laws.

This includes such things as do not steal, do not kill and others. Some of these are laws that even you agree should be obeyed today, and we will not discuss them further. Second, some laws are cultural universals, meaning laws geared to Israel's culture that have a universal moral law behind them. As an example, Deut. When you build a new house, make a parapet around your roof so that you may not bring the guilt of bloodshed on your house if someone falls from the roof.

You may say that one would be hard-pressed to find home builders who follow this rule, but actually they do follow the modern equivalent. In ancient Israel, the flat roof of a house would be used for many purposes, such as sleeping, household chores and entertaining. These chores included drying and storage of produce and even today the roof is used for such things in modern Arab nations. We don't use our roof the same way -- the modern equivalent is a balcony. Our builders certainly do make sure that they follow the point of this rule.

Finally, there are ceremonial laws: Instructions for building the Ark of the Covenant, for example, are definitely of this type, as are sacrificial and dietary laws. Put simply, you err in your assumption that every single bit of the legal strictures of the Bible are of the first sort; namely, Universal moral laws. The Old Testament law is embodied in the book of Deuteronomy you cite other books, but the same laws are repeated in Deuteronomy.

The book of Deuteronomy is laid out in the form of an ancient treaty between a king and his vassals.

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It is in essence a contract between God and Israel where they "signed on" and agreed to enforce the penalties. Modern Christians believe that we now have a new covenant or contract between Christ and the individual believer. The sins are paid for by Christ's blood, and he takes on the punishment for the transgression of those who break God's law and accept his payment.

The old covenant and our enmity with it is now abolished Ephesians 2: Our new contract, so to speak, does not contain specifications of enforcement -- that is now considered God's domain, with regard to each individual, on the basis of the new covenant terms. God will judge and punish moral crimes of the sort that are not prohibited by law, not men. Put another way, you are looking at the terms of a contract that was declared null and void some time ago. Christians have no mandate to execute persons who work on the Sabbath as only those who signed onto the covenant of Deuteronomy did.

It is an open question indeed whether God requires observance of a Sabbath today, but that is beside the point of this letter and your claims. However, your claim that the Bible demands that we must now stone people to death is simply misinformed. I realize that you quote Matthew 5: In so doing you fail to differentiate between law and judicial penalty. Judicial penalties are not "commandments".

Moving on, I find your appeal to allegedly peaceful religions like Jainism a curious one and for several reasons. First, if we wish to pursue that sort of fallacy, then it is fair to point out just as readily that your system -- atheism -- has been responsible for widespread torture, death and atrocity in atheist regimes like Cuba, China, North Korea and the former Soviet Union. Second, it is curious that you would cite Jainism's teaching to not do harm, while at the same time listing George Smith's volume, Atheism: The Case Against God , as a source.

Smith was quite adamant that passages like Matthew 5: You only briefly mention the Inquisition and that the teachings of the Bible are "muddled and self-contradictory. It was not inability to get a clear message from the Bible that allowed the Inquisition. Indeed, I wonder just how much you know about the Inquisition, for I am accustomed to atheists who claim that it killed millions of people -- more than the number who actually lived in most all countries in Europe at the time. Since you seem to be very adept at not discussing specifics, allow us to inform you somewhat using credentialed historians of the Inquisition as sources here.

Oddly, none of these historians seems to think that the Inquisition was enabled by "muddled and self-contradictory" Bible passages, but rather, conclude that the Inquisition was an honest attempt to implement a particular view not against a contrary one. You seem to think you have a trump card when you cite the likes of Luther saying that heretics, etc. If you were a serious researcher you would certainly realize that there is no shortage of criticisms of "influential thinkers" like Luther, Calvin, Aquinas, etc.

You would also be aware that no one expects someone living in medieval Germany, like Luther, to have a full grip on the concept of Ancient Near Eastern suzerainty treaties. The more pointed question is, isn't it amazing that you, Sam Harris, are so indifferent to finding out the truth that you merely noted but did not quote statements from the likes of Luther on burning heretics, and thought that represented the 'last word' on exegeting Scripture, when there are literally hundreds of scholars who have written on the same texts today?

Would you have patience with someone who tried to refute one of your theories about neuroscience by quoting the statement of a contemporary of Isaac Newton? An even more apparent flaw in your approach is that you seem to think merely citing passages like John You present no actual argument showing this, you merely present and assume -- this is what I call "argument by outrage" if you like Latin phrases, call it argumentum ad cerebrosus and it runs more or less like this: You find some event or passage in the Biblical text that you personally find morally offensive.

You merely recount this passage or event in such a way as to imply that by itself, the event or passage is enough of a moral outrage that there can be no argument or counter to it. Or as Glenn Miller has put it, similarly:. Harris, simply stating outrage is not a sufficient form of argument.

It is merely a substitute for true argument. No doubt the reason I have not seen you do this is that you are not actually able to make such judgments. Your tendency is simply to assume, "the punishment is undeserved, and can never be justified. To make your "argument by outrage" more than just an emotional appeal, you must do more than simply offer quotes. Mere statement of data on a broad level argues for nothing since a moral hierarchy must be examined and established.

Take these two statements:. We are rightly filled with moral outrage at the first one. The obvious reason is that we know about Hitler and we know about his Master race schemes; we know about his attempt to seize power; we know from the data that he was morally wrong. The core of your "argument by outrage" is to take something like the second item, however, and shake out the "least common denominator" so that the moral equivalency is made to seem to be the same. However, what if we start defining out the second one so that:.

Now that we have the context, whence is the "argument by outrage"? I have chosen a clearly extreme illustration, but between these extremes of black and white lie shades of gray which are a combination of black and white. We would suppose that you would agree that the Harlanians have a right to defend themselves. If the Refrons refuse to give up -- are willing to fight to the last to achieve their goal -- is it a moral outrage that the Harlanians exterminated 6 million of them? How indeed if the total population of Refrons was somewhere around 70 billion and executing 6 million was the only way to get the Refrons to decide that the cost of conquest was too high?

Lest you think this a fanciful idea, consider the key parallels to the arguments over whether or not to drop a nuclear bomb on Japan.

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Browse Articles By Passage: Latest News Ministry Manifesto The latest! Featured Resource Defining Inerrancy. Or as Glenn Miller has put it, similarly: But notice the problem -- the whole thing stands or falls on the accuracy of the personal moral intuition in Step 3. This, of course, puts the ball back in the individual's court to do one of two things: But in any event, someone would still have much, much work to do, to be able to even offer the 'it is a contradiction' position as an argument.

Without such work, this objection is simple assertion, unsubstantiated opinion e. Take these two statements: Hitler exterminated 6 million Jews. Blethkorp exterminated 6 million Refrons. However, what if we start defining out the second one so that: The "Refrons" are a predatory and parasitical race -- say like Star Trek's Borg -- whose only goal is to assimilate others into their culture or destroy those they consider inferior. One final irony, Mr. You seem rather pleased by the use of nonviolent protest as a form of social change, but as we will see in the next letter, you condemn the New Testament for commending slaves to obedience.

Such is your level of knowledge of the social world of the Bible. You fail to recognize that such NT admonitions are an ancient mode of the very sort of non-violent protest and undermining of the social system that Gandhi and King taught. But we will expose that aspect of your lack of education next time. For now, please, if you will, present some actual arguments -- not merely unexplained quotes or references. Holding November 3, Dear Mr.

Harris, Today I'd like to talk to you about the topic of slavery In all seriousness, Mr. Harris, has your education in this matter gone past simply slapping open a Bible, seeing the word "slave," and immediately assuming the worst? Please allow us to refer you to the detailed research provided by a friend of mine here. The following are some relevant excerpts in terms of what you offered in your book.

Naturally, if you respond, we expect you to do the same level of study as we have. I will add comments in italics to what my friend has written. Scholars in the ANE have often abandoned the use of the general term 'slavery' in descriptions of the many diverse forms of master-servant that are manifest in the ancient world. There are very few 'true' slave societies in the world with Roman and Greek being two of the major ones! A recent example of this comes from the discussion of the Hittite culture in [HI: This characterization may have been valid for house slaves whose master could treat them as he wished when they were at fault, but it is less suitable when they were capable of owning property and could pay betrothal money or fines.


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The meaning 'servant' seems more appropriate, or perhaps the designation 'semi-free'. It comprises every person who is subject to orders or dependent on another but nonetheless has a certain independence within his own sphere of active. Somewhere within this range, the literal meaning of "slavery" shifts into metaphorical meaning, but it is not entirely clear at what point. A similar problem arises when we look at other cultures.

The reason is that the term "Slavery" is evocative rather than analytical, calling to mind a loose bundle of diagnostic features. These features are mainly derived from the most recent direct Western experience with slavery, that of the southern United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America. The present Western image of slavery has been haphazardly constructed out of the representations of that experience in nineteenth-century abolitionist literature, and later novels, textbooks, and films From a global cross-cultural and historical perspective, however, New World slavery was a unique conjunction of features In brief, most varieties of slavery did not exhibit the three elements that were dominant in the New World: For example, in the West we would never say that the American President's Cabinet members were his 'slaves', but this term would have been applied to them in the ANE kingdoms.

Thus the subjects of a king were called his "slaves," even though they were free citizens.

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The king himself, if a vassal, was the "slave" of his emperor, emperor kings and commoners alike were "slaves" of the gods. Even a social inferior, when addressing a social superior, referred to himself out of politeness as "your slave. With these points in mind, Mr. Harris, merely quoting verses that mention "slaves" is irrelevant. Finally, the same term was also used in the figurative meaning "the slave or servant of God.

Similarly, all the subjects of Israel and Judah are called slaves of their kings, including even wives, sons, and brothers of the latter 1 Sam Addressing Moses and prophets, the Israelites called themselves their slaves Num Ruth refers to herself as a slave girl of her relative Boaz Ruth 3: Being a vassal of the Philistine king Achish, David called himself his slave 1 Sam It is natural that the same vague and inexplicitly formulated social terminology characteristic of the ANE is also used in the Bible in relation to the subjects of foreign rulers.

For example, courtiers of an Aramean ruler or the soldiers of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II were considered slaves of their monarchs 2 Kgs 6: It is natural that kings of Judah depending on more powerful rulers of neighboring countries were considered their slaves. Such translations, however, might create some confusion and give the incorrect impression that special terms for the designation of servants and slaves are attested in the Bible; however, selecting the proper meaning from such a broad metaphorical application of the term designating a general dependence rarely presents great difficulty.

For example, Abimelech, king of Gerar, called up his slaves and told them his dream Gen Apparently, these "slaves" were royal courtiers and officials.