Chapter 5: “The End of Faith” (2004) Sam Harris, the ... on Sam Harris.pdf · that “whenever...

Chapter 5: “The End of Faith” (2004)

Sam Harris, the scholar of atheism

“As a bone fide pinko-liberal-feminist…Harris’s presentation of religion as inherently

repressive is just plain wrong…I too fear the dogma, meanness and narrow mindedness of the

religious right, but I know from first-hand experience – learned at my mother’s knee – that the

left hand of God is also one of the greatest powers for social change on this planet.”1

- Atheist Margaret Wertheim reviewing The End of Faith for The Huffington Post

“It is one thing to say was we ought to move away from politically correct euphemisms

(which I agree with), and then to go on to say that everyone in the history of the world outside

your little atheistic society is a raving psychopathic wackjob.”2

- John Wilson reviewing Harris’ book Letter to a Christian Nation

“His [Harris’] argument rides on the back of some startling

oversimplifications, exaggerations, and elisions.”3

- David Boulton, writing for the New Humanist

Fairness necessitates I disclose that by the time I read The End of Faith, I had read a

huge amount of atheist literature, watched numerous debates, and listened to many

podcasts so I was starting to repeatedly hear the same arguments which I already found

unconvincing with only slight variations and different illustrations. Therefore, I started

Sam’s book with a bit of skepticism and, as expected, did not find anything substantively

new in The End of Faith. However, I had heard, researched, and pondered these points

before and there was nothing substantively new which would have really sold me on

atheism if I were merely more inclined to the worldview. As I mentioned previously, I did

not read all these books in the order they were chronologically published which is how I

present them here. Therefore, when I summarize Harris’ key concepts at the end of the

chapter, it appears only a few issues were raised earlier by Nietzsche or Bertrand Russell.

While that is true historically, for me personally almost nothing in Harris’ writing was

something I had not already read in Dawkins or Hitchens or heard from Dennett or other

sources.

I made every effort to give the book the respect it deserves as the second best-

selling atheist book after Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion.4 In addition to selling over a

quarter of a million copies (as of 2007), it has been translated into 15 languages, won the

PEN Award for nonfiction in 2005, and spent 33 weeks on the New York Times best seller

list,5 all the more impressive being it was Harris’ first published book. Nine years after its

release, it remains Amazon’s© #1 selling Kindle© book in the Comparative Religion

category and their #2 print book in the Rationalism category.6 The sheer volume of sales

demonstrates a significant number of people take Harris’ argument seriously so it deserve

an honest hearing.

Harris’ Bio

Sam Harris is as All-American as they come. He grew up in Los Angeles, the son of

an actor and TV producer. His mother was a secular Jew and his father a Quaker, but Harris

has repeatedly stated his upbringing was entirely secular. He is a devout student of martial

arts and, by his own admission experimented with the drug ecstasy, not that drug use

makes someone American but it does make him more relatable than pastors who maintain

a façade of perfection while everyone knows they are almost certainly more human than

they pretend to be. I have complementarily dubbed Sam atheism’s “poster child” because of

his youth, good looks, and charisma which make him more appealing on the popular level.

Although he is 47, Harris looks much younger, especially compared to Richard Dawkins at

73 or Daniel Dennett at 72. While none of this matters to intellectuals, in a society where

the circulation of People magazine far exceeds the circulation of Scientific American and

Christianity Today combined, it is no wonder that Harris has ascended to the ranks of the

most well-known atheists. Not that any of this disparages his scholarship, it merely

extends his influence.

He is clearly the most open minded to spiritual topics among the “Four Horsemen”

of the New Atheist apocalypse (the fourth horseman, Christopher Hitchens having passed

away late December 2011 might now be more open than Harris), having left Stanford

University after his second year as a English major to travel to Asia to study meditation

with Hindu and Buddhist teachers.7 Harris has stated there is, “nothing irrational about

seeking the states of mind that lie at the core of many religions. Compassion, awe, devotion

and feelings of oneness are surely among the most valuable experiences a person can

have.”,8 but he is not open to monotheism and does not believe we will find such spiritual

experience in “our current beliefs about God”9. Harris returned to Stanford eleven years

later to complete a B.A. in philosophy in 2000.

The September 11 terrorist attacks played no small role in Harris’ life. Indeed this

book grew out of “a long essay…produced in those first weeks of collective grief and

stupefaction” immediately after September 11, 2001.10 That essay begun shortly after the

attacks evolved into The End of Faith.11 He then went on to complete a Ph.D. in cognitive

neuroscience at UCLA in 2009. In his studies there, Harris used fMRI scans to explore how

the brain responds to different sentences that subjects judge as true, false, or undecided12.

While the studies produced some interesting results how statements of belief affect the

ventromedial prefrontal cortex, I have not read any claims from Harris of neurological

causes for religious belief.

In my perception, there is disparity between Sam Harris the speaker and Sam Harris

the author. He is perhaps the most cordial, kind, and soft-spoken of the New Atheist

debaters. I have never seen him loose his cool in a debate or act in any way less than civil.

His writing, however, is a bit more radical. Harris has been outspoken about the need for

intolerance of religious views, stating it would be appropriate to mock someone who

believes in Jesus’ resurrection with “ill-concealed laughter” similar to a person claiming

that Elvis is still alive.13 Harris’ more controversial comments about advocating a nuclear

first strike against Islamists14 and that “certain beliefs place their adherents beyond the

reach of every peaceful means of persuasion...[so that] tolerant people may be justified in

killing them”15 has been criticized both by both journalists Chris Hedges and Madeleine

Bunting for sounding “exactly like the kind of argument put forward by those who ran the

Inquisition.”16 However, Harris has insisted his critics merely misunderstood his views

that “whenever we can capture and imprison jihadist, we should”,17 but in the “many cases

this is either impossible or too risky”, only then is it permissible to kill people because of

their beliefs. However, this sounds a lot like ends-justifies-the-means rationalization to

vindicate his belief there are circumstances were it is justified to kill people for their beliefs

while simultaneously taking the Catholic church to task for doing the same.

In general, I found it difficult to find personal information about Harris. His website

SamHarris.org has only a few sentences on the “About” page18 and personal information

about him is scant online, not that I would criticize him ad hominem. Rather, since the

same set of facts are available to both theists and atheists, it is always interesting to note

what different life experiences potentially influence how authors interpret the facts be it

Nietzsche’s alleged homosexuality or Russell and Harris’ atheistic upbringing. Any factors

which might influence Harris are largely unknown.

Harris’ Argument

REASON IN EXILE

Harris opens the chapter with a vivid, emotional story of a young man on a bus

wearing an overcoat packed with explosives, nails, and ball bearings which he uses to kill

himself, everyone on the bus and innocent bystanders in the market. He describes the

people on the bus soon to be killed by this terrorist including the couple sitting next to him

whose only crime that day is shopping for a new refrigerator.

The objection Harris raises in the aftermath of such a terrorist act is how “the role

that faith played in his actions is invariably discounted. His motives [according to religious

people] must have been political, economic, or entirely personal.” While Sam acknowledges

that even, “without faith, desperate people would still do terrible things.”,19 he wishes to

shine the spotlight on his hypothetical bus bomber’s religious motivations because Harris

feels that because of people like this hypothetical suicide bomber, “Words like ‘God’ and

‘Allah’ must go the way of ‘Apollo’ and ‘Baal’ or they will unmake our world.”20

In this same section Harris observes “Certainty about the next life is simply

incompatible with tolerance in this one.”21 If someone believes on the basis of religious

authority that it is not only acceptable to kill people of different religious persuasion but

that doing so even brings reward in the next life then “religious faith perpetuates man’s

inhumanity to man.”22

[critique on page 21]

REASON IN EXILE: THE MYTH OF “MODERATION” IN RELIGION

Before digging into the problems with religion “moderation”, Harris observes how

religious moderates retreat from scriptural literalism. Says Harris:

The first thing to observe about the moderate’s retreat from scriptural

literalism is that it draws its inspiration not from scripture but from cultural

developments that have rendered many of God’s utterances difficult to accept

as written23.

the utility of ignoring (or “reinterpreting”) certain articles of faith is now

overwhelming.24

Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural

ignorance…By their light, religious moderation appears to be nothing more

than an unwillingness to fully submit to God’s law.25

Harris cites Deuteronomy 13:7-11 as an example of a passage being ignored or

reinterpreted by religious moderates. In it we are told if a son or daughter or a spouse or

intimate friend tried to seduce an Israelite from the worship of Yahweh, the Israelites were

commanded “You must stone him to death, since he has tried to divert you from Yahweh

your God.” Harris observes that today this would include stoning your son or daughter

who returned from yoga class advocating the worship of Krishna. The problem with

moderation, according to Harris, is these passages are still in the Bible. While moderates

may look to such passage for only a “symbolic” reading, by not rejecting the Bible entirely

as an antiquated Bronze Age book, moderates provide shelter for zealots who share the

same Bible but take such passages literally.

After commending religious moderates for not taking the Bible literally, Harris

identifies two problems religious moderates still poss. First, even though such groups do

not engage in religious extremism themselves, they fail to disassociate themselves from

such groups and thereby do “not permit anything very critical to be said about religious

literalism”.26 Harris feels, for example, the majority of peaceful Muslims prohibit society

from attacking the militant Muslims responsible for terrorism because the moderates

consider the extremist as part of their flock. Second, moderate religion, according to Harris,

“offers no bulwark against religion extremism and religious violence.”27 In other words,

they not only shelter religious extremists from attack but fail to criticize extremists

themselves due to the perception that, despite their short comings, they are still one of “us”.


REASON IN EXILE: THE BURDEN OF PARADISE

Harris cites the Kashmir conflict as an example of how “the irrational embrace of

myth”28 leads to the death of over one million people. He points out how two countries

(India and Pakistan) have fought three official wars resulting in 66 years of bloodshed and

counting about facts “that are every bit as fanciful as the name of Santa’s reindeer.”29

Harris points out that their conflict is only minimally about land because their claims to it

are a direct consequence of their religious differences.


THE NATURE OF BELIEF: THE WORLD BEYOND REASON

Harris raises the mind-body problem—how can anyone who believes in materialism

be certain of any thought since, in materialism, our thoughts are nothing more than

products of our biology or, in his own words, “nothing arises in consciousness that has not

first been structured, edited, or amplified by the nervous system. While this gives rise to a

few philosophical problems concerning the foundations of our knowledge, it also offers us a

remarkable opportunity to deliberately transform the character of our experience.”30

Harris does not, however, offer any solutions to these philosophical problems. Luckily this

is one of the numerous overlapping subjects and Dawkins does explore the issues of

Dualism and Monism more in depth so there is a fuller discussion of the issue on page

[refers to chapter outside this document].

While he does not elaborate on the subject in this book, in a later book Free Will,

Harris argues, “the concept of free will makes no sense and so those who believe they act

freely and are responsible for those actions are being duped by their biology.”31


THE NATURE OF BELIEF

In Chapter 2 “The Nature of Belief”, Harris defines what belief is and how belief

works. He says we cannot say we “believe” something that lacks empirical evidence such as

“Muhammad ascended to heaven on a winged horse” in the same way that we believe a

demonstrable fact like “the house is infested with termites”.32 A belief should have a

correspondence with reality or, as Harris puts says it must “represent states of the

world…they must stand in the right relation to the world to be valid.”33

He goes on to observe how easily we believe things that do not correspond with

reality such as a wife who believes her husband is faithful despite evidence to the contrary.

We do this because choosing to believe things despite evidence makes us feel good.

However, this does not make the belief valid. As he points out, “the fact that I would feel

good if there were a God does not give me the slightest reason to believe one exists.”34

Harris concludes, “the truth is that religious faith is simply unjustified belief in matters of

ultimate concern – specifically in propositions that promise some mechanism by which

human life can be spared the ravages of time and death.”35

[critiqued on page 27]

THE NATURE OF BELIEF: FAITH AND MADNESS

In this brief section, Harris observes how beliefs that would be deemed absurd if

held by one person somehow become respectable if they become held by a lot of people.

Harris says, “When their beliefs are extremely common we call them ‘religious’; otherwise,

they are likely to be called ‘mad’, ‘psychotic’, or ‘delusional’.” As I mentioned in his bio,

Harris has stated people who believe Jesus rose from the dead should be mocked with “ill-

concealed laughter” the way one would respond to someone who claims Elvis is still alive.36

Harris argues the former is just as mad as latter. The fact a lot more people believe Jesus

rose from the dead does not make it any less absurd than someone claiming they saw Elvis

at Walmart©.


THE NATURE OF BELIEF: WHAT SHOULD WE BELIEVE?

Harris’ section “What Should We Believe?” might probably have been better titled

“Who Should We Believe?” it revolves around our need to rely on the authority of experts

due to life being too short to directly investigate all matters on our own. Harris asks who

among these experts we should trust. He gives the example of three sources of

information, an anchorman, a biologist and the Pope which provide three reports: the

report of a forest fire in Colorado, the report that DNA is the molecular basis for sexual

reproduction, and the report that Jesus was born of a virgin and is the Son of God who

created the universe in six days.

Regarding an anchorman’s reporting a Colorado forest fire, Harris deems it

“reasonably sure that there really is a fire in Colorado”37 based on the respectability of the

television network and that the anchorman is highly paid and therefore has much to lose by

perpetuating a hoax. Harris considers the possibility miniscule that thousands of

firefighters, newsmen, and terrified homeowners have mistaken Texas for Colorado

therefore he also rules out that the anchorman is sincerely perpetuating misinformation

that he does not know is false.

Regarding the scientist reporting about DNA, Harris acknowledges Karl Poppers

observation that “we never prove a theory right; we merely fail to prove it wrong.”38 Harris

acknowledges that there is no telling which theory we hold true today will be proved

wrong tomorrow so he asks how much confidence we should have in any of them. He

answers his own question by observing how different theories have different levels of

corroborating evidence. DNA in particular is backed by some fifty years of

experimentation. While this is no guarantee it will never be overturned, any alternative

explanation will have to account for “the ocean of data that now conforms to these

assumptions” ergo Harris deems the odds of this occurring to be “effectively zero”.39

Regarding the Pope, Harris asserts that the Pope, nor anyone born in the twentieth

century for that matter, has any way of knowing that Jesus was born of a virgin. Harris

acknowledges that the Pope allegedly has visionary experience but these are not

sufficiently based on verifiable statements in order to deem them credible. For example,

Harris says if Jesus appeared to the Pope in a dream to tell him there were exactly 37,226

books in the Vatican Library and he turned out to be right, given a sufficient number of

accurate visions with such verifiable statements, Harris would then attach more trust in

unverifiable visions like a dream where Jesus told the Pope that Mary was a virgin.

At this point, Harris tosses in another section on religious atrocities which is has no

particular relevance to the expert opinions discussion but he likes to pepper these kinds of

stories throughout his book whenever possible. Says Harris, “There is no act of cruelty so

appalling that it cannot be justified, or even mandated, by recourse to their [the Bible’s]

pages.”40 For a specific example, he cites our friend Bertrand Russell:

The Spaniards in Mexico and Peru used to baptize Indian infants and then

immediately dash their brains out: by this means they secured these infants

went to Heaven. No orthodox Christian can find any logical reason for

condemning their action, although all nowadays do so.41

Harris concludes his section on expert opinions with another seemingly misplaced

diversion about communism. Echoing Bertrand Russell, Harris says, “Consider the millions

of people who were killed by Stalin and Mao: although these tyrants paid lip service to

rationality, communism was little more than a political religion.”42 Since this issue was

already raised and responded in the chapter of Russell, I mention it here only in passing.


IN THE SHADOW OF GOD

Harris opens chapter 3 with a two page list of torture methods from the Inquisition

which gruesomeness rivals the Saw horror film franchise. The methods religious people

have come up with to torture other human beings is disturbing to say the least. The

Catholic Church found justification for these atrocities, according to Harris, in that “a literal

reading of Old Testament not only permits but requires heretics to be put to death.”43

Harris observes, “The problem with scripture, however, is that many of its possible

interpretations (including most of the literal ones) can be used to justify atrocities in

defense of the faith.”44


IN THE SHADOW OF GOD: WITCH AND JEW

Harris spends the next twenty-three pages outlining atrocities committed against

Jews and witches, or rather people alleged of committing witchcraft since, according to

Harris, it is after all an imaginary crime. Harris gives a few specific accounts like the

incident of William Montgomery of Caithness, Scotland who managed to wound some cats

in his backyard who he suspected of being witches shape shifted into the form of cats.

Nancy Gilbert was subsequently found in bed with an injury similar to what Montgomery

inflected on a cat a few nights prior. She was tortured until she confessed she was indeed a

witch and had been wounded by Montgomery while in her cat form. She subsequently died

from the tortures previously inflected upon her. Harris provides a few more stories in this

tone and vein.

Regarding anti-Semitism, he gives a long list of the kind of crimes Jews were accused

of in lieu of the longer anecdotes of people’s stories he gives about alleged witches. The

accusations leveled against the Jews included murdering Christian infants and waylaying

innocent travelers on the road, usually for their blood which Europeans believed the Jews

required for various rituals as bizarre as replacing blood loss from terrible hemorrhoids

that were divine punishment for the murder of Christ, as well as curing blindness, and

smearing their dying brethren with the blood of an innocent Christian babe which would

ensure them eternal life in the event they were wrong about the Messiah.


IN THE SHADOW OF GOD: OLD TESTAMENT PROPHECY

Harris tackles one of the more famous Bible passages, Isaiah 7:14, often quoted in

church Christmas services and holiday greeting cards, “a virgin will conceive and give birth

to a son, and will call him Immanuel”. Harris points out the Hebrew word alma here

translated as “virgin” simply means “young woman” without any implication of virginity. It

was translated as parthenos, Greek for “virgin”, in a Greek translation of the Old Testament.

While Harris does not name this translation, he is almost certainly talking about the

Septuagint since this text is at the center of the controversy. According to Harris, this

rendering is “a mistranslation from the Hebrew.”45 Based on the original Hebrew wording

of Isaiah, Harris points out Isaiah predicted nothing more than “a young woman will get

pregnant”.

Harris further points out that Mark and John “seem to know nothing about it [Jesus’

virgin birth]” because neither report it in their Gospel accounts.46 He suggests the first

Christians were attempting to make the life of Jesus conform to Old Testament prophecy

but the issue of fulfilled of prophecy is not what Christians make it out to be.


IN THE SHADOW OF GOD: THE HOLOCAUST

Harris opens this section with a quote from Rudolf Hess, “We believe that the Fuhrer

is obeying a higher call to fashion German history. There can be no criticism of this

belief.”47 Harris points out how such dogmatic allegiance to “outlandish dogmas” like

Heinrich Himmler’s belief, without any evidence, that the Aryans had not evolved from

monkeys and apes like other races but had come down to earth from the heavens paved the

road to the atrocities of WW2.

Harris brings charge for “the overt complicity of the church in the attempted murder

of an entire people.”48 He says the Catholic Church was sinister in its willingness to open its

genealogical records to the Nazis which enabled them to trace the extent of a person’s

Jewish ancestry. 49 He observes how throughout the period of the Nazi’s rise and WW2 the

Catholic Church continued to excommunicate theologians and scholars and to censor books

by the hundreds, “and yet not a single perpetrator of genocide—of whom there were

countless examples—succeeded in furrowing Pope Pius XII’s censorious brow.”50 In fact,

Harris observes that not a single leader of the Third Reich—not even Hitler himself—was

ever excommunicated from the Catholic Church.

While Harris acknowledges Christians risked their lives to protect the Jews during

WW2, he is also quick to point out “The fact that people are sometime inspired to heroic

acts of kindness by the teaching of Christ says nothing about the wisdom or necessity of

believe that he, exclusively, was the Son of God.”51 Harris points out that our common

humanity is reason enough to protect our fellow human beings from harm, no supernatural

dogma is required.


THE PROBLEM WITH ISLAM

Chapter 4 opens with a frank admission there are “unmistakable” differences

between faiths. For example, Harris observes Jainism does not produce terrorists like

Islam because there is nothing in Jain theology to inspire adherents to commit acts of

suicide against unbelievers. After acknowledging not all religion lead to violence, Harris

spends the rest of this chapter building his case that Islam is one religion that certainly

does. As he says, “Islam, more than any other religion human being have devised has all the

makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death.”52

Before delving into his case against Islam, Harris is magnanimous enough to

acknowledge that Islam has made positive contributions including algebra and even

creating the seeds of the Renaissance in western Europe by releasing forgotten Greek texts

into Latin translations after the Muslim conquest of Spain. It is a kind gesture but does

sounds a bit like that thing “southern belles” do when they say, “Bless her heart but…” then

proceed to slander someone is as if everything else they say after “bless her heart…” is not

an insult because it was prefaced by a feigned compliment. Nevertheless, it is a

commendable acknowledgement from Harris. By contrast, Christopher Hitchens who

claimed religion poisons everything was not likely to give Islam credit even for algebra

(even though it is hard to fathom how religion poisons math problems) so Harris is at least

more charitable than Hitchens.

Harris immediately qualifies his compliment one sentence later by pointing out that

“nearly every person who has ever swung a hammer or trimmed a sail has been a devout

member of one or another religious culture.”, not because religion inspired them but

merely because everyone was religious at the time so, “There has been simply no one else

to do the job.”53 The fact that almost every great human achievement prior to the twentieth

century was accomplished by a person of faith should not be considered proof of the value

of religion, says Harris, because “there is no telling what our world would now be like had

some great kingdom of Reason emerged at the time of the Crusades and pacified the

credulous multitude of Europe and the Middle East.”54 He suggests with reason at the helm

we may have had modern democracy and the Internet by the year 1600.

Harris freely admits that his opening chapter example of the Muslim suicide bomber

“ignores the painful history of Israeli occupation”, ignores “the collusion of Western powers

with corrupt dictatorships”, and “ignores the endemic poverty and lack of economic

opportunity” that plagues the Arab world. He says, however, it is justified to discount these

factors since “the world is filled with poor, uneducated, and exploited people who do not

commit acts of terrorism”.55

Harris acknowledges several specific economic and educational factors such as the

combined GDP off all Arab countries combined fell short of the GDP of just Spain alone in

2002 and that Spain translates more books into Spanish each year than the entire Muslim

world has translated into Arabic since the ninth century.56 Nevertheless, he says such

statistics “should not lead us to believe that poverty and lack of education are the roots of

the problem.”57 He observes that Ahmed Omar Sheikh who organized the kidnapping and

murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl studied at the London School of

Economics. Also, the leaders of Hamas are all college graduates, and some have master’s

degrees. According to Harris, “These facts suggest that even if every Muslim enjoyed a

standard of living comparable to that of the average middle-class American, the West might

still be in profound danger of colliding with Islam.”, 58 and, “There is no reason to believe

that economic and political improvements in the Muslim world, in and of themselves,

would remedy this [the danger posed by Islam].”59

Harris feels we are at war with Islam although our political leaders do not openly

acknowledge it because it because doing so does not serve their foreign policy objectives.


A FRINGE WITHOUT A CENTER

Harris sees little doctrinal differences between fundamentalists Muslims and the

mainstream. He says that Muslims themselves do not refer to Muslims who take military

action as “fundamentalists” or “extremists” but, rather, simply “Islamists.” Says Harris,

“Moderate Islam – really moderate, really critical of Muslim irrationality – scarcely seems

to exist.”60

He goes on to say that even those who appear “tolerant” should be suspect. Simply

because they are in the minority, does not mean they are peaceful. They may simply be

“biding their time”61 until they have sufficient numbers to act.

Harris gives a disturbing chart from the Pew Research Center asking Muslims “Is it

ever justified to target civilians in the defense of Islam”.62 As much as 73% of Muslims

living in Lebanon responded “yes”. Even in the most westernized Islamic state, Turkey,

13% still though suicide bombing was justifiable. He wants to make the world aware and

rightly disturbed by how many Muslims are willing to kill civilians in the defense of Islam.


PERFECT WEAPONS

This is one of Harris’ stronger points. He responds to views advanced by leftists

such as philosopher Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus from MIT who has suggested that

terrorism against America is the consequence of our sins returning to roost. As an

example, Chomsky cites the August 20, 1998 American cruise missile strike on the Al-Shifa

pharmaceutical plant in Sudan which the US mistaken thought was being used by al-Qaeda

to make VX nerve gas chemical weapons. Instead we only succeeded in destroying fifty

percent of Sudan’s medicine supply denying crucial medicine to tens of thousands of

innocent Sudanese who may have died of tuberculosis, malaria, and other terrible diseases

as a result.63

Harris points out a critical difference in our intent versus the intent of Muslim

terrorists. The US had no intention of denying vital pharmaceuticals to the Sudanese

people. We thought we were thwarting the production of chemical weapons of mass

destruction. Eliminating an important source of medicine was merely the unfortunate

result of poor military intelligence.

In stark contrast, Muslim Extremist Kamel Bourgass who was caught by London’s

Metropolitan Police Service on January 5, 2003 was preparing to unleash ricin poison in a

planned attack against the London Underground (subway). London’s Daily Star newspaper

claimed as many as 250,000 could have died including women and children, although some

have challenged that claim is exaggerated.64 Unlike Sudanese women and children who

later died from malaria as an unintended side effect of the US pharmaceutical plant

bombing, Bourgass’ specifically intended to target men, women and children alike in

London’s subway. It was his explicit intention to harm women and children. They were his

desired victims, not collateral damage of some “legitimate” attack. As Harris says, “Where

ethics are concerned, intentions are everything.”65

Harris points out that “collateral damage” casualties like Sudan are not the result of

some irrational religious philosophy but rather the unfortunate consequence of less than

perfect military intelligence and imperfect weapons. If we had perfect military intelligence,

America would never (again) blow up a wedding convoy of innocent civilians in Yemen.66

If we had the technology to blow up a suspected chemical weapons factory without civilian

casualties, we would. Unfortunately, America must work with the weapons we have which

means attacking a factory at night so that only one civilian employee is killed.67 al-Qaeda

would show no such restraint if they had a cruise missile. To the contrary, they would

strike when it would inflect the maximum casualties.

While perfect weapons would allow America to only strike terrorists without

civilian casualties, the opposite is not true for Muslim Extremists. Better technology would

only allow them to inflict more casualties, not less.


WHAT CAN WE DO?

Harris advocates a very proactive response to Islam, something far more aggressive

than current economic sanctions in place to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Harris

advocates that if radical reforms leading to more benign Muslim governments “cannot

emerge from within a state, it must be imposed from without.”68 He advocates means of

“economic isolation, military intervention (whether open or covert), or some combination

of both.”69 His most radical proposition is we need a world government, although he

expresses doubt about the possibility of creating one primarily due to the diversity of our

religious beliefs.

In addition to those external pressures, Harris says reform must come from within

Islam. He says:

This transformation, to be palatable to the Muslims, must also appear to come

from Muslims themselves. It does not seem much of an exaggeration to say that

the fate of civilization lies largely in the hands of “moderate” Muslims. Unless

Muslims can reshape their religion into an ideology that is basically benign – or

outgrow it altogether – it is difficult to see how Islam and the West can avoid

falling into a continue state of war.70

Unless Islam can be reformed, Harris says, “we will be obligated to protect our interest in

the world with force—continually.”71 The stakes are simply too great with possibilities

such as weapons of mass destruction dribbling out of the former Soviet Union into the

hands of fanatics.


WEST OF EDEN

Harris suggests religious ideas determining government policies presents a grave

danger to everyone even here in America. He points out by example how Ronald Reagan

viewed the Middle East through the lens of biblical prophecy. He even included men like

Jerry Falwell and Hal Lindsey in national security briefings. He observes how US foreign

policy toward Israel has been largely shaped by the belief that the rebuilding of Solomon’s

temple will “usher in both the Second Coming of Christ and the final destruction of the

Jews.”72 Harris further notes that the first international support for the Jewish return to

Palestine, Britain’s Balfour Declaration of 1917, was at least partially inspired by biblical

prophecy. Says Harris, “These intrusions of eschatology into modern politics suggest that

the dangers of religious faith can scarcely be overstated.”73


THE ETERNAL LEGISLATOR

In this section, Harris gives a list of religious people in politics and explains the

things they say or do that concern him. His list includes examples like Alabama Supreme

Court chief justice Roy Moore erecting a large monument of the Ten Commandments

outside the Alabama courthouse and defying on religious grounds a federal court order to

remove it. Also, Lieutenant General William G. Boykin, deputy undersecretary of defense

for intelligent at the Pentagon believed he saw Satan in the shadows of a photograph taken

in Mogadishu after his forces were routed there in 1993.

Harris talks in depth about how Supreme Court Justice Antonio Scalia’s Catholicism

influences his strong support for the death penalty, even in cases where the defendant is

acknowledged to be mentally retarded. Harris, who is against the death penalty, takes

Scalia to task. Says Harris, “It seems true enough to say that the men and women on death

row either have bad genes, bad parents, bad ideas, or bad luck. Which of these quantities

are they responsible for?”74 He feels religion unjustly leads to the execution of men who

are merely the victim of their genes and/or of conditions of harsh upbringing over which

they had no control.


THE WAR ON SIN

THE GOD OF MEDICINCE

Harris criticizes the absurdity of laws limiting sexual acts undertaken in private by

consenting adults. He also says laws that prohibit marijuana yet allow alcohol make no

sense as the former is less dangerous than the latter. He says that Congress banning stem-

cell research on February 27, 2003 is an irrational approach to ethics wherein potentially

lifesaving research was abandoned in favor of religious superstitions. Finally, regarding

abstinence based sex education, he says “millions could die as a direct result of this single

efflorescence of religious dogmatism”.75

All of these are arguments against the effects of religion. Even if Harris has

accurately described these results, none of this says anything about whether God exists.

Therefore, I have summarized them very concisely to attempt to convey an accurate

summary of his book. However, as I mentioned in the intro, a read these books to settle the

question of whether God exists and no arguments are being advanced for that here.


A SCIENCE OF GOOD AND EVIL

Harris is unique in maintaining atheism affords a foundation for absolute morality.

He disagrees that ethical truths are culturally contingent while scientific truths are not.76

To Harris, we do not “get our sense that two plus two equal four from the pages of a

textbook on mathematics”77 nor do we get our sense that cruelty is wrong from the pages

of the Bible.

His later book, The Moral Landscape, is essentially a book-length expounding on this

chapter. The core of his position is “questions of right and wrong are rally questions about

the happiness and suffering of sentient creatures.”78

Of course, God cannot be the source of morals because, as Harris point out, “the God

of Abraham is a ridiculous fellow – capricious, petulant, and cruel.”79 The human attributes

exhibited by God in the Bible – jealousy, wrath, suspicion, and the lust to dominate – are not

qualities upon which we can found ethics. Harris says the problem of theodicy (the

challenge of vindicating an omnipotent and omniscient God in the face of evil) is

insurmountable.


MORAL COMMUNITIES

Harris raises a useful concept of moral communities. He points out that a Nazi

guard could return home each day from his labors at the crematoria and be a loving father

to his children because he deemed the Jews outside his moral community, thus not an

object of his moral concern. Instead of uniting humanity into one moral community, Harris

observes “rather than find real reasons for human solidarity, faith offers us a solidarity

born of tribal and tribalizing fictions…most believers differentiate themselves, in moral

terms, from those who do not share their faith.”80 By creating communities of Muslim, Jew,

Christian, Buddhist, and unbeliever, religion divides humanity into moral communities

which allows indifference to suffering with other communities.


THE DEMON OF RELATIVISM

In this brilliant section Harris advocates some worldviews really are better than

others. He points out how moral relativism is ultimately self-contradictory. He explains

pragmatism, the view that the utility of a belief trumps all other concerns, then proceeds to

explain how pragmatism lacks cognitive coherence. Finally he explains realism and says

“for the realist, our statement about the world will be ‘true’ or ‘false’ not merely in virtue of

how they function amid the welter of our other beliefs, or with reference to any culture-

bound criteria, but because reality simply is a certain way, independent of our thoughts.”81

In other words, ethics, like physics, is a truth out there waiting to be discovered in the same

way that 2 + 2 = 4 is an external reality so whether we are right or wrong is a matter of

whether we believe the answer is 4 and not a question of what we have been taught to

believe.

Harris then adds that consensus might be the arbiter of truth, but it cannot

constitute it, meaning group consensus can help us arrive at truth but something is not true

merely because the majority believe it. As Harris explains it, “It is quite conceivable that

everyone might agree and yet be wrong about the way the world is. It is also conceivable

that a single person might be right in the face of unanimous opposition.”82


INTUITION, ETHICS, SELF-INTEREST, HAPPINES AND OTHER TOPICS

Harris argues intuition is a necessary component in delineating ethics. He says,

“while this is true in matters of ethics, it is not less true in science. When we can break

down our knowledge of a thing no further, the irreducible leap that remains is intuitively

taken. Thus, the traditional opposition between reason and intuition is a false one.”83 He

adds a caution, however, that intuitions have been known to fail. For example, someone

might intuitively imagine a page of the newspaper folded one hundred times in succession

would be about the size of a brick. However, applying arithmetic reveals such an object

would actually be as thick as the known universe.

Although he does not directly state it, it appears that his discussion on the necessary

role of intuition is his explanation for his assertion that happiness and suffering offers the

foundation of ethics.84 Although he does not clearly state his source is intuition, he does

say it is a “fact that we must rely on certain intuitions to answer ethical questions”,85 then

proceeds in the very next paragraph to say “for ethics to matter to us, the happiness and

suffering of others must matter to us.”86 I want to faithfully represent each author’s

position so I hate to conjecture but I do not think I am putting words in his mouth by saying

he suggests the idea that the peak of human flourishing is an absolute foundation for ethics

that comes to us via pure, simple intuition.

He parts company with atheist like Richard Dawkins when Harris says, “To say that

something is ‘natural’, or that it has conferred an adaptive advantage upon our species, is

not to say that is it ‘good’ in the required sense of contributing to human happiness in the

present.”, 87 and “appeals to genetics and natural selection can take us only so far, because

nature has not adapted us to do anything more than breed.”88 If nature were the measure

of good, the highest good would be men lining up at sperm banks to father thousands of

children for whom they would bear no financial responsibility.

Having qualified ethics comes from intuition not from nature, Harris finally lays out

his definition, “To treat others ethically is to act out of concern for their happiness and

suffering.”89 He then adds, “love is more conducive to happiness, both our own and that of

others, than hate.” He holds this definition is a discovered truth like math not a culturally

derived principle. Using the example of literary, he says, “Not learning how to read is not

another style of literary, and not learning to see other as ends in themselves is not another

style of ethics. It is a failure of ethics.”90 From everything I have read, this absolute view of

ethics in unique to Harris among all the best-selling atheists.

Harris then adds a qualifier that being loving and compassionate is not a guarantee

of happiness because “compassionate people can still be horribly unlucky.”91 Ergo, we

cannot simply look at people’s general happiness as a measure of whether this model

works but individuals should know their “condition will be generally improved by his

becoming yet more loving and compassionate.”92

Then Harris takes a surprising detour where he spends more pages arguing for the

use of torture than he does describing the role of intuition and happiness in ethics

combined. Apparently this is a subject Harris is personally passionate about post 9/11

judging by the space he affords it or perhaps he feels advocating torture immediately after

laying out his case for the seeking the maximum of human happiness might seem self-

contradictory so he goes to lengths to explain how he feels collateral damage is an

unfortunate side effect of war and the possibility of inadvertently torturing an innocent

man by accident is roughly equivalent to inadvertently killing a child in an air strike against

a legitimate target. Harris concludes, “I believe that I have successfully argued for the use

of torture in any circumstance in which we would be willing to cause collateral damage.”93

I commend him for not shying away from such a hard and controversial subject.

He closes the chapter with a short section on pacifism which he calls “flagrantly

immoral”. Harris says, “We must accept the fact that violence (or its threat) is often an

ethical necessity.”94 Here he parts company with Bertrand Russell who not only believed in

pacifism but was quite active in it during World War I leading to his dismissal from Trinity

College and six months’ imprisonment for publically lecturing against inviting the US to

enter the war on Britain’s side. Not that there is an “official” atheist position on the matter,

I simply found their fairly polarized opposite views interesting. Harris says a strong stance

against the “world’s thugs” is necessary because, “Life under the Taliban is, to a first

approximation, what millions of Muslims around the world want to impose on the rest of

us. They long to establish a society in which—when times are good—women will remain

vanquished and invisible, and anyone given to spiritual, intellectual, or sexual freedom will

be slaughtered.”95


EXPERIMENTS IN CONSCIOUSNESS

Harris opens his final chapter discussing the quest for happiness. He questions

whether a person is guaranteed to be happy merely by virtue of having health, wealth, and

meaningful relationships. He observes how Indian yogis who have renounced all material

things and familial attachments seem to have achieved great happiness by spending

decades alone in a cave practicing meditation. He loosely defines “spirituality” as the

search for happiness.

Harris points out that almost all scientists now reject Descartes’ declaration there

are two substances in the universe: matter and spirit. However, Harris parts company with

scientists who are physicalists, meaning that they believe consciousness is wholly

dependent on the working of our brain and must therefore come to an end when the brain

dies. In his own words:

The truth is that we simply do not know what happens after death. While there

is much to be said against a naïve conception of a soul that is independent of

the brain, the place of consciousness in the natural world is very much an open

question. The idea that the brain produces consciousness is little more than an

article of faith among scientists.96

It goes without saying that openness to the idea of a conscious, non-material existence after

death puts Harris in a very small minority of atheists.

Having defined spirituality as the search for happiness, Harris adds that

“investigating the nature of consciousness…is simply another name for spiritual practice.”, 97 and says such spiritual practices like fasting, chanting, sensory deprivation, prayer,

meditation, and the use of psychotropic plants is nothing more than “our attempts to

explore and modify the deliverance of consciousness.”98

Then, in a section about the meaning of “I”, Harris lays out a three step progression.

First, he argues “If the term ‘I’ refers to anything at all, it does not refer simply to the body.

After all, most of us feel individuated as a self within the body.”99 By example, he points out

how we refer to “my” body and “my” car similarly with an understand that I, as a subject,

am something separate from it as an object. This combined with his speculation that we

survive our deaths portrays an “I” that is different from just our physical body.

He then takes a step back from that position by saying while “I” is separate from the

body it could still be related to the body. “Whatever the relationship between

consciousness and the body actually is, in experiential terms the body is something to

which the conscious self, if such there be, stands in relation [italics are his].”100 So he now

suggests that while “I” is more than just my body, it is somehow related to my body and the

universe my body resides in.

Then, expanding on the idea that “I” is separate from my body but also related to it,

he suggest the idea that we are separate from the universe is the ultimate source of pain. In

his words, “Almost every problem we have can be ascribed to the fact that human being are

utterly beguiled by their feelings of separateness [from the universe].”101 He says that “a

spirituality that undermined such dualism [or separateness from the universe]….could not

help but improve our situation.”102 The implication being our situation would be improved

if we recognized our oneness with the universe.

At this point, he qualifies his argument because he recognizes it “will strike certain

readers as a confusing eruption of speculative philosophy.”103 He counters objections by

pointing out he is not being speculative but rather drawing upon the wisdom of eastern

philosophy. He admits the ideas might be confusing to some readers because due to “the

illusion of self…many of us in the West are conceptually unequipped to understand.”104 He

blames our reluctance to accept mysticism on “the Christian, Jewish and Muslim emphasis

on faith itself.”105 This he claims is a mistake because the great philosopher mystics of the

East like Buddha, Shankara, Padmasambhava, and others “have no equivalents in the West”

according to Harris.106 As proof, he quotes a passage by Padmasambhava at length and

claims its superiority to other religious teaching is self-evident stating, “I invite the read to

find anything even remotely like this in the Bible or the Koran.”107 The challenge sounds

suspiciously like the Muslim claim that Koran is a “miracle” of Mohammad as evidenced by

its sheer beauty (which conveniently can only allegedly be appreciated in the original

Arabic text). Although the passage he cites speaks of “clarity”, “emptiness” and “pure

observing…without anyone being there who is the observer”, Harris insists the passage “is

a rigorously empirical document, not a statement of metaphysics.”108

In a section titled “Meditation”, Harris continues explaining the illusion of self. He

claims medication “refers to any means whereby our sense of ‘self’ – of subject/object

dualism in perception and cognition – can be made to vanish.”109 He explains that

mediation is not the cessation of thinking but a matter of breaking our identification with

our thoughts. Says Harris, “Break the spell of though, and the duality of subject and object

will vanish – as will the fundamental difference between conventional states of happiness

and suffering.”110

Surprising for a scientist who emphasizes the empiricism of these ideas, Harris says,

“Your consciousness, while still inscrutable in scientific terms, is an utter simplicity as a

matter of experience.”111 He says the more negative social emotions we harbor such as

hatred, envy and spite, the more difficult will be our experience of the “selflessness of

consciousness”, but if we can let go of self, “the more the feeling of self-hood is relaxed, the

less those states that are predicated upon it will arise—states like fear and anger.”112

Although this cannot be scientifically explained, Harris says it is empirical in the sense that

mystics can communicate about it afterwards “just as athletes can communicate effectively

about the pleasures of sport”.113

He continues to insist all this is rational (while maintaining religion is not) because

it is a different way of perceiving reality. As he says, “The roiling mystery of the world can

be analyzed with concepts (this is science), or it can be experience free of concepts (this is

mysticism).”114 In fact, he claims mysticism is the beginning of a rational approach to our

deepest concerns and also the end of faith.

Critique

REASON IN EXILE

Harris tries to build the case that the Palestinian bus bomber had no political, economic

or personal motivation and that the Koran was the entirely sufficient cause of his terrorism,

however, Harris never even attempts to explain how 3.5 million Muslims living in America115

read the same Koran yet, absent the political and economic factors present in the Middle East,

they find nothing in the Koran that compels them to commit acts of terror. Moreover, more than

three times as many Muslims live in the Asia-Pacific as live in the Middle East-North Africa

(roughly a billion versus 317 million) yet we very rarely hear of Islamic acts of terrorism in the

more politically stable and economically prosperous areas of Asia. Invariably when the USA

finds Osama bin Laden hiding in a terrorist cell in Pakistan or extremist attack the US Embassy

in Benghazi or a Muslim group kidnaps 200 girls being educated in Nigeria, these events almost

always occur in unstable political regions with failed economies and other non-religious

contributing factors. In fact, if you made a map of the locations of over 200 terrorist attacks in

2013116 and overlay it on a map of the most politically unstable and economically depressed

regions in the world, they overlap almost 100%. Having personally traveled extensively through

Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Turkey, India, Morocco and the Asia-Pacific, it seems to me that Harris is

simply ignorant of the political, economic, and personal forces in these areas which he cavalierly

dismisses in his desire to pin terrorism exclusively upon religion.

When a depressed, failed American business man puts a gun in his mouth and pulls the

trigger, Harris understands that is not religious extremism. When Tarek Bouazizi, whose father

died when he was three, who had to drop out of school when he was ten to work to support his

family in a city with 30% unemployment117, making roughly $140 a month selling produce on the

street has over $200 in produce, more than he earns in a month, seized by the police even

though he broke no law selling from a street cart,118 Harris seems to assume only Islam could

explain his suicide. It was his death, not some Imam’s sermon from the Koran, that caused the

2011 Arab Spring uprising of North Africa which broke out the very next day as thousands of

other Muslims rallied around Bouazizi’s story and revolted against the same kind of poverty and

oppression that led him to take his life. One wonders how much clearer links can be before

Harris is willing to acknowledge them.

When impoverished, homeless Americans commit minor crimes to receive air-

conditioned shelter in jail and three square meals a day, Harris assumes this is an unfortunate

but reasonable response to the problem of poverty. When men like Bouazizi escape hopeless

conditions of poverty and oppression by joining groups like al-Qaeda, Harris glibly assumes

jihad is the only possible motive.

I personally cannot imagine a more religious person than the Pope. From all I have

heard, every day of his life is consumed from sunrise to sunset with prayer, Bible reading, and

fasting. If Harris is correct that fervent devotion to religion alone is sufficient cause for someone

to blow himself up, one would expect the Pope would have done that several times over by now.

Harris’ candid admission, “without faith, desperate people would still do terrible

things.”,119 is worthy of book-length exposition. On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza walked

onto the campus of Sandy Hook Elementary School and fatally shot 20 children and 6 adult

staff. Only hours earlier the very same day, Min Yongjun walked onto the campus of Chenpeng

Elementary school in the Henan province of China and stabbed 23 children120. Knowing a

majority of Chinese are non-religious while only 16% of Americans are religiously unaffiliated,121

one would statistically expect Lanza had a religious upbringing and Yongjun had an irreligious

upbringing.a However, this proves nothing beyond one mentally unstable individual grew up in a

predominantly religious country while the other grew up in an irreligious country.

When I researched the two incidents, I found Adam Lanza was deeply disturbed. He did

not speak till he was three, was diagnosed with Asperger’s, Autism,122 sensory-integration

disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. His father further suspects undiagnosed

schizophrenia.123 He changed his socks 20 times a day, to the point where his mother did three

loads of laundry a day124 and he would go through an entire box of tissues in a day because he

refused to touch a doorknob with his bare hand. He is not known to have had any friends at

school.125 Lanza expressed no religious motivation for his terrorism. He did terrible things

without faith as a motivation. More importantly though, I share his background to point out that

if he had quoted scripture or made insane comments about shooting children so they would go

to heaven, this would only mean he was expressing his pre-existing mental illness in the

vocabulary of his upbringing. Religion did not make Adam Lanza a sociopath. However, had

Lanza made any Biblical references, he may well have replaced Harris’ hypothetical bomber

example as the opening paragraph of his book. For Harris, any mention of religious beliefs is all

one needs to make someone out to be a religious terrorist since he is willing to discount all

family, political, economic, mental and personal influences.

Research has demonstrated about one percent of the global population is

psychopathic.126 With or without religion, these deranged people are ticking time bombs

amongst us. When these people do go off, common sense suggests they will delineate their

motivations in the vocabulary of their culture and upbringing. Their mental illness can be voiced

either religiously (“I hate people in Allah’s name”) or irreligiously (“I hate people”). Ergo, when

an Asian psychopath like Min Yongjun in East Asia were irreligious people are the majority

stabs a bunch of children, it surprised me if he elicits religious motivation. If a psychopath from

the Middle East flies an airplane into the World Trade Center to kill men, women and children, it

would surprise me if he did not cite religious motivation. People will express their mental illness

in the terms of their culture. Stripping religion from culture is not a solution. As Harris admits,

“without faith, desperate people would still do terrible things.” They will merely explain their

motivation in different terms.

One exhaustive list of global terrorist attacks lists 201 terrorist attacks last year,

predominantly suicide bombings, car bombings, and shootings mostly in the Middle East and

Africa with the April 15, 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing being the most infamous incident on

the list for western readers127. With 1.6 billion Muslims in the world128 and the rate of

a I was unable to find conclusive documentation of either man’s religion. Adam Lanza attended St. Rose of Lima Catholic School before high school but also refused to have a Christmas tree in the house and circulated photos of Karl Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao at school when he was sixteen (www.newyorker.com/reporting/). Information on Yongjun is even more limited due to Chinese censorship and media control. He is said to have been influenced by the Oriental Lightning cult but given the Chinese government characterized that group “a social cancer and plague on humankind” (New York Time, Dec 19, 2012) and the government controls the media, the association could be foist for political ends.

psychopathy running roughly 1% globally129 that means there are 16 million Muslims in the

world with severe mental disorders. Are 16 million mental disabled Muslims a sufficient pool to

account for 201 terrorists? Indisputably so.

Moreover, according to CIA statistics, atheists account for 2.01% of the world

population.130 Therefore, statistically speaking if someone tells you a person had a mental

breakdown at work and killed a bunch of his co-workers, before you turn on the news to get the

details, would you assume the person was religious or an atheist? If you worked in atheist

China, your assumption would be the opposite.

I find Harris naïve to suggest eliminating religion eliminates the problem. Adam Lanza

did not need Islam to commit an atrocity and find enough comfort to take his own life. He did

not shoot those children with hopes of being rewarded with celestial virgins. He had no skewed

view of the afterlife to enable his actions. He was a mentally ill young man. The sad reality is

sick people do sick things. Sometimes those sick people are also religious.

The comical irony of Harris’ statement “certainty about the next life is simply

incompatible with tolerance in this one” is that he fails to recognize how his own certainty about

the end of life makes him intolerant of religious people.

[original argument on page 3]

REASON IN EXILE: THE MYTH OF “MODERATION” IN RELIGION

Sam Harris lecturing about scriptural ignorance is like listening to a lecture on medieval

history from someone whose sole knowledge of the period is solely based on the Robin Hood

fables. He shows no understanding of why Christians call the Old Testament “Old” compared to

Judaism which calls the same books the TaNaK, an acronym for the three sections Torah

(“Teaching”), Nev’im (“Prophets”) and Ketuvim (“Writings”), which carries none of the Christian

title’s implication of an outdated model. Writing a serious rebuttal to someone whose

knowledge of the Bible is so superficial that he does not even understand the title let alone the

content is like trying to write a straight faced response to a classic literature critique who thinks

Homer is just a character on The Simpsons. I mean no disrespect; I simply wish to put the utter

absurdity of his claims into perspective. The reason Christians call it “Old” has absolutely

nothing to do with “ignoring” or “reinterpreting” certain passages for symbolic meanings as he

suggests.

When Harris suggests we should stone our daughter for talking about Krishna after yoga

class and that anything less would be “an unwillingness to fully submit to God’s law”, Harris

demonstrates complete ignorance of the fact those laws had an express expiration date many

millennia ago. No Christian with the most rudimentary understanding of the Bible believes, as

Harris suggests, that the Mosaic Law could or should be in effect today since the Old Testament

clearly predicts in Jeremiah 31:31-33:

“Behold the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new

covenant with the house of Israel and Judah, not like the covenant I made with

their fathers in the day I brought them out of the land of Egypt [i.e. the Mosaic

Law Harris loves to quote]. This is the covenant I will make with the house of

Israel after those days [their time in exile in Babylon 597-538 BC]”, declares the

Lord, “I will put my law within them, and on their heart I will write it [in contrast to

the Mosaic Law which was carved on stone tablets].”

That this new law of conscience replaced the Mosaic Law is also echoed in Ezekiel 11 and 36.

This is clearly not the “retreat from scriptural literalism” in light of cultural developments that

Harris misrepresents it to be because Christians already understood 2,000 years ago that the

Mosaic Law had been replaced and was rendered obsolete by Jesus. As the writer of Hebrews

said, “The old system under the law of Moses was only a shadow, a dim preview of good things

to come” (Heb. 11:1) and then quoted the Jeremiah 31 passage to remind his readers the

Mosaic Law always had a finite expiration date from its beginning. Paul describes the law as a

tutor (Gal. 3:24), an apt analogy in that once you understand the subject matter, in this case

morality, you no longer need the tutor. Paul expresses it perhaps most clearly in Romans 6:14

“You no longer live under the requirements of the law” (NLT). Ergo, no one besides Harris

believes there is any requirement to stone your daughter who comes back from yoga class

talking about Krishna. If Harris sincerely thinks so (and is not, as I suspect, just quote mining

even though he knows better), he is demonstrating the very ignorance of scripture he faults in

others. Perhaps some uninformed readers from his atheist fan base are stirred by such writing

to say, “You tell them Sam! Stoning people is absurd in this day and age.”, but readers with

even minimal Bible knowledge are left scratching their head wondering when Harris will land a

meaningful point since they already agree with him that stoning your daughter because she

became a Hare Krishna is absurd today.

If we grant the truth that these harsh penalties are past, however, the reasonable

question lingers why such stiff prohibitions were ever sanctioned by God. A similar question

was put to Jesus when he advocated people should not divorce their spouses (Matt. 5:31). The

Pharisees who were experts in Mosaic Law pointed out Moses allowed a husband who disliked

her wife simply to write her a certificate of divorce and send her on her way (Deut. 24:3). Jesus

replies that God tolerated this practice because of the “hardness of their hearts” but that was

never God’s intent (Mark 10:4). In other words, Jesus was claiming some Old Testament

precepts were less than ideal not due to defects in God’s character but rather defects in Israel’s

character which led God to meet Israel partway. He gave them laws they could handle at that

stage in their society’s moral immaturity. In context, they were improvements but they also

anticipated future improvements as society matured.b In that culture, women did not work

outside the home. They were not educated, did not have careers, and were utterly incapable of

generating income and supporting themselves. A divorced woman’s only hope for avoiding

b A tangible example is a nomadic nation like Israel had nothing like Guantanamo Bay where they could detain enemy combatants. This several limited Israel’s options to 1) execute POW’s (overly harsh) 2) release them (unrealistic as they would just re-attack Israel) or, what the Mosaic Law prescribed 3) incorporate them into Israel as servants whereby they were provided with food, shelter, and clothing while being monitored (Deut. 20:10-11). While the New Atheists are found of miss-labeling the Mosaic Law as barbaric, consider whether you would rather be deemed an enemy of the USA whereby you could be tortured by waterboarding at Guantanamo Bay without a trial or be an enemy of Israel where it was not legal to so much as slap a prisoner prior to a trial and conviction (Acts 23:3; Deut. 25:1-2).

destitution and starvation was to remarry but without a divorce certificate clearly stating she was

eligible to remarry, no man would approach her. God in his omniscience knew the Israelites

were still too morally immature to handle total prohibition on divorce. Knowing that men would

divorce their wives whether or not the Mosaic Law forbade it, God allowed provision to protect

the well-being of women with a certificate that would allow them to remarry. A less than ideal

legal system functionally implemented was better than a perfect legal system that was ignored

in practice. Actual protection of women via the Certificate of Divorce was better than the

theoretical protection offered by ignored laws prohibiting divorce.

An atheist once told me at one our coffee house discussions, “It is unjustifiable in this

day and age to practice [blank] from the Old Testament.” I leave out the issue because what he

said actually applies to every issue since in this day and age society has progressed further

morally than the days of the Ancient Near East. Indeed, if society has not progressed in four

thousand years, you should be reading books about gunsmithing and survival training instead of

theology because society is surely doomed. The real question is whether the Mosaic Law was

an improvement in its day and age.

When we compare the Mosaic Law to the Ancient Near East we find numerous ways the

Mosaic Law improved the quality of life for people at that time in that place. The Code of

Hammurabi insisted on death for a thief, whereas the Mosaic Law forbade the death penalty for

property crimes.131 The Mosaic Law’s allowance of up to 40 lashes (Deut. 15:1-3) may seem

harsh if we are unaware that Egyptian laws of the time allowed punishment for crimes like

perjury or libel with between one hundred and two hundred stokes, with one hundred being the

minimum penalty.132 Where would you rather have lived if you were convicted of perjury? The

New Atheists are fond to point out the Mosaic Law allowed masters to strike their servants

(Exod. 21:20) but you will never hear them admit, be it from ignorance or the logical fallacy of

Cherry Picking, that the Hammurabi Code at that time allowed masters to cut off a disobedient

slaves ear, tongue or hand.133 By contrast, an Israeli master who was too aggressive in

discipline and disfigured his servant by, for example, by inadvertently knocking out one of their

teeth was required to grant the slave his/her freedom (Exod. 21:27). In Babylonian or Hittite

law, individuals of status or social rank were above the law. By contrast, the Mosaic Law held

even the king and priests to the same standard as the common person.134

Consider the protections the Mosaic Law afforded slaves. Some translations render the

Hebrew word “ebed” as “bond servant” because our concept of “slave” is so prejudiced by

conditions in the antebellum South that it portrays a very different meaning than ebed.

Kidnapping a person to sell as a slave was punishable by death (Exod. 2:16) as was selling a

person against their will (Deut. 24:7). These servants were primarily their own countrymen who

voluntarily indentured themselves into service during economically unbearable times (Lev.

25:47). This was a contract for a fixed period of seven years after which they must be freed

(Deut. 15) similar to the contract someone signs when they join the US military and become a

“military asset” with no say on where they live or what job they perform until their contract is

fulfilled. Opposite the Southern states Fugitive Slave Law that required runway slaves to be

returned to their masters, Israelites were commanded to offer safe harbor to runaway slaves

(Deut. 23:15-16). Indeed if the Mosaic Law precepts: 1) you cannot kidnap a person 2) you

cannot sell a person and 3) a slave who felt mistreated could run away without impunity were

observed in the Antebellum Era, slavery as we know it in America would have been rendered

impossible. It took America 4,000 years to catch up to the “barbaric” Mosaic Law.

My atheist friend at the coffee house whom I referenced above found this unconvincing.

He deemed it insufficient that the Mosaic Law offering superior protection to slaves in Israel over

conditions anywhere else in the Ancient Near East. He insisted if God did not want slavery he

would simply forbid slavery, not merely improve slaves’ quality of life. I found his position

interesting because I knew from prior conversations he was strongly in favor of non-abstinence

based sex education in public school so I asked him if teaching his junior high age daughter

how to have protected sex meant he wanted her to be sexually active at such an emotionally

vulnerable age. Not surprisingly he did not want his daughter to engage in sex yet but, realizing

she would probably do so against his wishes, he felt it was better that she be protected from

sexual diseases and pregnancy. I pointed out how he was advocating a less than idea system

that would actually work (sex ed) over the his preferred system (abstinence until she was

emotionally mature) and asked him how that was different than God making provisions to

protect slaves in Israel when He really preferred Israel simply abolish slavery. He answer

surprised me. He acknowledged it was a double standard but said it is different for God

because, “God can do anything.” I say it surprised me because when a Christian used that very

same argument in an earlier discussion, he had dismissed it as a meaningless platitude which

lacked any explanatory power.

Regarding Harris’ comments that religious moderation is “no bulwark against religious

extremism” this is one of numerous areas where the New Atheists are incredibly redundant so I

refer you page Error! Bookmark not defined. where I address this in Dawkins’ chapter under

“What’s Wrong with Religion? Why Be So Hostile?”. Assessing the impact of Harris’ hard line

approach to Islam, he has succeeded at eliciting enough hostility that he must travel with

bodyguards but has produced no other visible impact.135


REASON IN EXILE: THE BURDEN OF PARADISE

Harris’ summary of the conflict in the Kashmir region is highly interpretive based on very

selective Cherry Picking of facts. Harris is correct in so far as Kashmir has a population split

between 77% Muslims and 20% Hindus with a 3% Sikhs minority.136 However, Harris fails to

mention the ethnic and culturally diversity between the Tibetan inhabitants of Ladakh and the

Kashmiri Pandits community of the valley, or how the Muslim majority of the Poonch have ethnic

in addition to religious differences with the Hindu Pandits. Kashmir sided with the British in the

Indian Rebellion of 1857 which ties the regions troubles as much to the impact of British

Colonialism as any other issue. While unjustly pointing fingers, Harris might as well blame

religion for the American War of Independence since British colonialism was also a factor there.

In very similar fashion to The Troubles in Ireland, the poverty of the Muslim masses was

appalling while a minority who happened to have other religious beliefs ruled them. As

Sumantra Bose observed in his book, Kashmir: roots of conflict, paths to peace, “The majority

Muslim community was mostly landless laborers, working as serfs for absentee [Hindu]

landlords.”137 Like Apartheid in South Africa, for almost a century the small Kashmir Hindu elite

had ruled over a vast and impoverished Muslim peasantry. Anytime you have an oppression of

a majority by a minority, be it on the basis of skin (Apartheid), nationality (The Troubles), or

religion (Kashmir), it will cause conflict. No religion is required to embitter hostility and violence

when a minority forcefully oppresses the majority. Indeed, if all parties involved were atheists

and treated each other as people did in Kashmir, the result would be no different.

Even nonbelievers can see this simple truth. David Boulton writing for the New

Humanist observes, “he [Harris] cites the conflicts in Palestine, the Balkans, Northern Ireland,

Kashmir, Sudan and so on. That religion as a badge of tribalism is frequently a major

complicating factor in such conflicts is obvious, but it is by no means self-evident that religion is

invariably the root cause.”138

I learned a tremendous amount about world history reading the works of the New

Atheist, none of which came from them though. Rather, knowing a good deal about the Old

Testament such that it was immediately apparent how disingenuously Harris was handling the

text, it naturally made me suspicious how he was handling the facts about Kashmir or Dawkins

the facts about Ireland or Hitchens handles the Soviet Union. In every case when I took the

time to research the truth, I found the conflicts to be substantially different than how the New

Atheist’s represented them. For people who pay at least lip service to the importance of

evidence, I was quite disappointed by their willingness to ignore evidence when it does not

support their point.


REASON IN EXILE: THE WORLD BEYOND REASON

Since Harris only mentions the mind-body problem in passing while Dawkins goes more

in-depth, I will save my response till page Error! Bookmark not defined.. However, I would

like to point out this is a major problem for materialist, perhaps the single largest hurdle for

believing in naturalism, and Harris glazes over it as a lone subordinate clause contained in a

sentence about another topic. These are the issues why I found his book so unconvincing.

When an author takes the known largest problems with his position and just glazes past them

without even attempting to offer a solution, it is hard to take him seriously. I do not have enough

blind faith to adopt Sam Harris’ view when he will not even try to address the problems within

that view.


THE NATURE OF BELIEF

The problem with Harris’ chapter on the nature of belief is the entire argument commits

the fallacy of begging the question. The entire argument is presented as-if God does not exist.

Sure, if there is no God, Harris raises a good point that our belief needs to correspond to reality

but he never tackles the existence of God just merely assumes the lack thereof. Therefore,

while the idea may be good for preaching to the (atheist) choir, there’s no convincing argument

of any sort offered for a believer.

Harris also raises the “wishful thinking” argument which is really an old argument going

back to German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach who argued in 1841 that God was basically an

invention dreamed up by human beings to provide metaphysical and spiritual consolation. This

tired argument has been thoroughly refuted over the last one hundred plus years. First, wanting

something does not equate with the lack of its existence. The fact humans thirst actually points

to a need for water not the lack thereof. As C.S. Lewis observed, desires point toward the

things that satisfy those desires:

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A

baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim:

well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a

thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can

satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.139

I got married quite late in life so there were many years that I wished for a wife. The fact

I wished to be married is no reason for me to doubt that I am married nor doubt I have a faithful

spouse simply because I longed for one.

Second, the wishful thinking argument is like waking up in the middle of the night to find

a burglar your bedroom and solving the problem by pulling the pin on a hand grenade and

dropping it in the middle of the room. It may address the problem of the burglar but it creates a

whole new set of problems for you. As Alister McGrath observed, atheism “can be seen as a

response to the human desire for moral autonomy.”,140 so each group has its own set of wishes.

Similarly, I shared in chapter one how throughout his many years as an atheist C.S. Lewis

wished for freedom from God. The charge of wishful thinking is bringing a grenade to a knife

fight; it is equally devastating for both parties.


THE NATURE OF BELIEF: FAITH AND MADNESS

My wife and I visited Disney’s Animal Kingdom© last week. If someone came running

toward us screaming that the lions had escaped their cages, I would be inclined to believe they

were animatronic lion robots rather than real lions and the person was merely mistaken. After

all Disney© is a multi-billion dollar business known for their attention to detail. Since Animal

Kingdom opened in 1998, not once have the animals escaped into the park. If two people ran

up screaming lions were roaming the park, I would probably think they had conspired to clear

out the line at Expedition Everest so they did not have to wait an hour to ride. Two or more

people having the same misperception is less likely but friends colluding to scare people out of

a long line is more probable than wild lions roaming Disney©. I assume you know where this is

going. At appoint somewhere between 2 and 25,000c people screaming about lions loose in the

park, any rational person would conclude something highly unusual has happened that probably

involves lions out of the cages and a rational person would head for the exit, post haste. The

point being what initially sounds like an absurd proposition turns out not to be absurd after all

when 84%+ of the population find it convincing141. The irony is when the less than 16% who

claim “no credible evidence of lions loose in the park exists” and label the 84% “mad” as Harris

does, the irrational skeptic is in reality the deluded one who is about to become Mufasa’s®

dinner.

The point is not lost on me that believing in the resurrection is believing an event

immensely more improbable than a lion escaping its cage at Disney© but the point should not be

lost on the skeptic that immensely more than 25,000 people believe it, a little over 2 billion or

roughly every third person on the planet to be precise.142

A better analogy might be the existence of aliens. While I have never encountered and

alien or even know anyone who has, I must admit they are at least theoretically possible.

Richard Dawkins has gone a step further claiming “there are very probably alien civilizations

that are superhuman.”,143 which I cite because I have never heard Harris’ position on the matter.

Taking up Harris’ Elvis challenge, I researched what percentage of people believe Dawkins’

“very probable” existence of aliens, what percentage believe in Jesus’ resurrection, and what

percentage believe in the premise Harris deems laughable namely that Elvis is still alive. The

results were fascinating. 38% of respondents to a Huffington Post poll agreed with Dawkins that

intelligent life exists on other planets144. This is nearly a statistical tie with the 33.4% who

believe in Jesus’ resurrection145. However, only 7% believe far-fetched ideas that Elvis is still

roaming suburban shopping malls.146

This seems to suggest that the public whom Harris dubs “mad” and “delusional” have

more common sense than Harris suggests. On issues atheist deem probable like alien life,

large numbers of the public agree while issues atheists deem absurd like Elvis still being alive

are similarly rejected by the overwhelming majority of people. This observation that the general

public find plausible things plausible and ridiculous things, well, ridiculous should make a

thinking atheist think twice about labeling people who disagree with him as “mad”, “psychotic”,

or “delusional”. Moreover, it should make an open-minded person seriously consider that

everyone else seems to see which they may be overlooking themselves.


THE NATURE OF BELIEF: WHAT SHOULD WE BELIEVE?

Harris’ criteria of a credible source is he must be respectable (employed by a “respected

television network”) and have much to lose by deceit (“a highly paid anchorman”)147. Based on

these criteria, Harris says “we can be reasonably sure that there really is a fire in Colorado”

based on the anchorman’s report.

c Disney attracts an estimated 30,000 visitors a day according to Ask.com. Various sources identify atheists as between 2-13% of the world population. In this analogy that would mean 25,000+ guests would believe they saw loose lions in Animal Kingdom while less than 5,000 would remain “skeptical”.

This is precisely the same criteria why Christians believe the reports about Jesus—the

respectability of the eyewitnesses and how much they had to lose by lying. Were the

eyewitnesses respectable? The origin of Christianity was inextricably tied to the disciples’

integrity because they primarily based the foundation of Christianity not on private discourses

with Jesus but rather a well-known public historical event, an empty tomb which was an easily

falsifiable claim if the disciples were liars. All Christianity’s detractors, who were numerous and

powerful in the Pharisees and the Sadducees, needed to stop the movement dead in its tracks

was to produce the body of Jesus because without the resurrection there is no Christianity.

Unlike Muhammad who was able to force conversions by the sword, the disciples were a weak

minority and their claims were easily falsifiable but their powerful opponents who proved unable

to disprove their testimony.

We simply need to compare Christianity’s origins to Islam or Mormonism to see how

Christianity rested upon the integrity of eyewitness testimony. Muhammad founded Islam on

the basis of alleged revelations to him by the angel Gabriel beginning in the Cave of Hira

isolated in the mountains. This conveniently precluded the possibility of any eyewitnesses.

Thus, while one can certainly choose not to believe Muhammad, no one could ever prove him

wrong in the manner the disciples would have been utterly discredited if the Pharisees produced

Jesus’ body.

In similar fashion, Joseph Smith founded Mormonism on a private appearance of the

angel Moroni which allegedly visited him beginning on September 21, 1823, leading him to

golden plates engraved with “reformed Egyptian”148 writings which he translated into the Book of

Mormon with the help of some magical seer stones.149 While Joseph allegedly showed these

plates to eleven people, none were witnesses of either the angel or excavation of the plates, nor

does their testimony prove anything beyond they saw some plates with indiscernible characters

since “no archeological, linguistic or other evidence of the use of [Reformed] Egyptian

writing…has ever been discovered.” 150, so while the Mormon church refers to them as

“witnesses”, Joseph Smith presented nothing to them that would allow his story to be proved

false. Jesus’ disciples, by contrast, based the entire success of their movement on highly

visible public events that were so well known that almost thirty years later standing trial before

Governor Festus in Caesarea some 75 miles away, Paul points out that the events of Jesus’

crucifixion and resurrection are a matter of common public knowledge (Acts. 26:25-26).

What about Harris’ second criteria, did Jesus’ disciples have much to lose by deceit?

They had far more to lose than an anchorman’s highly paid salary. They lost their lives. History

tells us all but one of Jesus’ disciples (John) died a martyr’s death. Faced with the chance to

recant their testimony or die they sealed their testimony with their lives. Unlike Muslim martyrs

who have died in the name of Allah but were not eyewitnesses in the Cave of Hira and therefore

not in the position to know whether they died for a lie, if the disciples made up the resurrection

they died for a lie with the full knowledge it was a lie. History is full of examples of people who

died for a lie because they believed it was true but no one dies for a lie knowing it is lie. To me,

and presumably to any rational person, sealing your testimony with your life demonstrates the

highest possible level of commitment to one’s account.

F. F. Bruce who wrote the definitive book on the historicity of the New Testament, The

New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?, a work so highly regarded it has been

translated into more than a dozen languages since it was first published in 1943, hits the nail on

the head:

If the New Testament documents were a collection of secular writings, their

authenticity would generally be regarded as beyond all doubt…there are people

who regard a ‘sacred book’ as ipso facto under suspicion, and demand much

more corroborative evidence for such a work than they would for an ordinary

secular or pagan writing.151

In these two sentences Bruce exposes what Harris fails to mention, namely his ipso

facto suspicion of the disciples. This is a bias not based on evidence but rather an a priori

commitment to naturalism which precludes the belief people return from the dead. It is clearly

not based on evidence because “nature is everything” is never observable in a test tube, under

a microscope or through a telescope; it is a philosophical conclusion which must be accepted by

faith. Ergo, all Harris’ talk about respectability of the source and consequence of deceit is

ultimately moot when there are certain reports Harris simply will not accept no matter what is the

source. If the same anchorman Harris deems a trustworthy source about a Colorado fire were

to report someone had risen from the dead in Colorado, Harris would not change his mind on

the possibility of resurrection. He would simply reverse his opinion on the respectability of the

anchorman.

If someone assumes like Harris does that reporting about a certain occurrences

immediately calls the witness’ respectability into doubt then no historical event could ever be

satisfactorily proved. Just imagine trying to prove the holocaust to someone like former Iranian

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who deems any evidence for the holocaust suspect ipso

facto. You cannot prove anything to anyone who applies special pleading to all testimony

unfavorable to their point of view. Harris is entitled to demand a higher standard of a sacred

book. He is not, however, entitled to pretend this has anything to do with evidence when the

real issue is his philosophical assumptions about what is possible.

Regarding the Pope, I do not doubt that out of 1.1 billion Catholics152 in the world Harris

could find a few that believe in the virgin birth on the authority of the Pope alone but yet again

we see another example of the New Atheists misrepresenting the minority as the norm. Harris

simply ignores half of the world’s 2.2 billion Christians153 who do not view the Pope as an

authority on any matter. Even among Catholics, in a four year survey only 37% affirmed the

statement “The Pope has the authority to speak with infallibility”.154 Ergo, Harris takes one

religion representing only half of Christians then selects the minority one third within that one

half and uses this small subset to represent normative behavior of people of faith. I find it

difficult to attribute any credibility to an author so disingenuous in his representations.

The vast majority of Christians who believe in the virgin birth, contrary to Harris’ absurd

suggestion, do so on the basis of the New Testament documents not visions of the Pope.

Harris flippantly dismisses these “given the standards of evidence that prevailed at the time of

its [the Bible] composition”.155 In such statements, Harris comes across uninformed of the

history of skepticism I outlined in chapter two. I will have to send him a copy of this book so he

can be enlightened. Those who wish to dig deeper look to historians such as Dr. John Dickson

who corroborates the disciples’ testimony with historical documents such as the writing of

Celsus and statements about Jesus from hostile sources such as the Talmud156. If Harris

interacted with historians and the documentary record, we would at least have the beginning of

an intelligent conversation rather than his absurd caricature that most believers are forming their

beliefs on the basis that “the Pope said so” which is patently absurd.

When Harris claims slaughtering infants is justified or even mandated by the Bible, he

demonstrates almost total ignorance regarding what the Bible teaches. At best, such an

argument can only be made by quote mining Bible passages out of their context while

completely ignoring whole scale sections of the Bibled. The Bible expressly prohibits child

sacrifice (Lev. 18:21) which was a crime punishable by death (Lev. 20:1-5). When Israel

ignored this clear prohibition God judged them for it (Ezek. 16:20; 2 Kings 17:17-18). Causing

even the accidental death of a child such as hitting a pregnant woman so that she miscarried a

stillborn child was punishable by death (Ex. 21:22-25). God speaks of knowing infants even

while still in the womb (Psalm 139:13-16). Jesus showed special care for children (Matt. 19:14)

and said it would be better for someone to be thrown in the sea tied to a heavy stone than allow

that person to harm a child (Luke 17:2). Russell’s Spaniards were indisputably acting in

contradiction to Biblical teaching, certainly not under mandate from it.

I already addressed the mistaken notion that communism was a religion (see page

Error! Bookmark not defined.). Harris goes a step further in citing two authors to substantiate

his claim but the premise is still the same, namely that the belief was embraced dogmatically

which makes it a religion. This is only convincing to someone willing to ignore the normative

definition of words since this watered down definition of religion as nothing more than firm belief

in something would make atheism a religion by the same standard. To call a system a religion

when it actively proselytizes its citizens to belief in atheism and tries to eliminate the church is at

best comical if not preposterous157.


IN THE SHADOW OF GOD

While it is certainly true the Catholic Church has committed atrocities (which it has

apologized for), let us not be so naïve to not see the blood of atheism’s hands. The officially

atheistic Soviet Union advocated the control, suppression, and elimination of religious beliefs.158

The state destroyed churches, mosques, and temples159, and forced secularization on society

through the school and media160. Christian victims of Soviet state atheistic policies are

d The New Atheists are fond of pointing out passages like 1 Samuel 15 where Samuel calls on King Saul to kill all the

Amalekites including “man and woman, child and infant” but they invariably fail to consider the context. The Amalekites attacked the Israelites first during the Exodus (Ex. 17:8-10). God uniquely singled them out for judgment because of how they preyed on the women, weak and elderly who lagged behind the main group (Deut. 25:18). The Amalekites were the perpetually enemies of Israel attacking them repeatedly over a period of hundreds of years (Judges 6:3; 6:33; 7:12). Every time Israel fought them and allowed women and children to live, the women raised the children to attack Israel again, thus the etymology of their name as “a people who lick blood”. This was a culture unique in history in their barbarism. Their national identity revolved around the hatred of Israel and every generation that could would and did wage war on Israel. No reasonable parallel can be drawn from this to Russell’s description of the Indians in Mexico and Peru.

estimated to range between 12-20 million161. In stark contrast Garcia Carcel estimates between

3,000 and 5,000 were executed in the Spanish Inquisition162. Henry Kamen estimates a death

toll “of about 2,000 executions in persona in the whole of Spain up to 1530.”163 During the first

five years of Soviet power, on the other hand, the Bolsheviks executed 1,200 Russian Orthodox

priests alone, let alone millions of their fellow citizens. Believers were subject to torture, prison

camps, labor camps164 and sent to mental hospitals for punitive psychiatric treatment165.

Father Gheorghe Calciu-Dumitreasa was the Galileo of atheism, except Galileo’s house

arrest was a picnic compared to how Romania’s atheist government treated Father Calciu. He

was jailed for 16 years simply because he “protested atheism, the collectivization of the means

of production, and destruction of the intelligentsia”, he explained to the Washington-Post.166

When released, the government forbid him to study theology. He spoke out against the

government’s persecution of religion. In response, the government sealed the gates to the

seminary. Those brave enough to want to hear more climbed over the seminary walls to hear

him. He was subsequently jailed again, tortured, beaten, and not allowed to eat, drink, speak or

relieve himself without permission. When he was finally released, he was confined to house

arrest and, like Galileo, would probably have spent the remainder of his life there where it not for

pressure from the Reagan administration for his release. Even after fleeing to America, Father

Calciu was still not free from the oppression of atheism. In 1989, the FBI warned Calciu that

atheist Nicolae Ceausescu, General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party, had

dispatched assassins to kill Father Calciu. He lived in hiding in rural Pennsylvania for a while

but decided to stop living in fear of Romania’s atheist government having already survived two

attempts on his life by poising.

The excuse I repeatedly hear for atheism’s atrocities is they were committed in the name

of Communism not Atheism since absence of a belief cannot provide positive motivation for

oppression. Such statements are flagrant insult to people like Father Calciu who were prisoned,

tortured, and often killed in the name of atheism. The suggestion makes my father who grew up

in the Soviet satellite state of Hungary laugh. He told me an example from his grade school

days of the teacher having all the children put their heads on their desk, close their eyes, and

pray to God for a piece of candy which, of course, was not there when they children opened

their eyes. The teacher then had them close their eyes again but this time pray to Stalin for a

piece of candy. This time the teacher went about the room while their heads were bowed and

placed a piece of candy on each desk so the children’s prayers were miraculously “answered”

by Stalin when they opened their eyes, or so he thought until his parents explained the truth to

him but only after strictly warning him to tell no one else the teacher was lying for fear of

retribution from the Soviet State Protection Authority, Hungary’s version of Germany’s dreaded

Gestapo. The two prayers highlight how the Soviets sought both commitment to Communism

and the absence of religion. It was always “both/and” not the “either/or” claimed by the New

Atheists.

Regarding Harris’ misinformed understanding that the Old Testament requiring heretics

to be put to death was applicable in Medieval Europe, I refer back to page 23 where I have

already explained why this is not true. No one who follows Christ’s teaching (which is, after all,

the definition of “Christian”) to “turn the other cheek” (Matt. 5:39) and “put your sword away!”

(John 18:11) believes the Bible warranted much less required the atrocities of the Inquisition. I

could not help but notice Harris’ footnote does not cite any Inquisitor who actually believed they

had an Old Testament mandate. Rather, he only points to verses some unnamed person may

possibly have misconstrued. Hypothetically. Perhaps on Tuesdays.

Regarding why the Old Testament ever allowed heretics to be killed even in Moses’ day,

Harris is uniformed of the context of the Ancient Near East and how dangerous these “heretics”

were, which he demonstrates by comparing them to a “daughter returning from yoga class

advocating the worship of Krishna.”167 Unlike Harris’ absurd comparison to peaceful people in

orange robes passing out flowers at airports, the “heretics” in the Old Testament were the

Canaanites and Ammonites who worshiped the god Moloch by sacrificing children168. I rather

suspect that if Harris’ daughter came home extolling the virtues of her new cult that practiced

child sacrifice and drinking human blood, he would take it a lot more seriously than his Krishna

analogy. It might even be enough to reverse his stand against the death penalty169, but surely,

at the very least, a father with any sense of morality would demand a cult that killed innocent

children and convinced his own daughter to do the same should be locked in prison and the key

thrown away.

The problem for Israel was they had no prisons. They were a still a nomadic tribe

wandering in the dessert when Moses gave them these instructions. So what do you do with

child killers when you have no means to incarcerate them? Let them go with a stern warning not

to do it again? Execute them? Here we begin to see how the context is far more complicated

than Harris’ over-simplification comparing the Old Testament heretics to peaceful Hare

Krishnas. Not without cause do other atheists accuse Harris of “startling oversimplifications”.170

The argument that scripture can be used to justify atrocities makes as much sense as

the argument that a tree is evil because it can be used to make a battering ram to attack the

gates of a castle. A tree can be fashioned into a priceless object of intricate beauty like a

Stradivarius violin or into an object for warfare like a battering ram but this does not make the

tree good or evil. When someone uses a gun to commit a murder instead of its intended

purpose of self-defense, we put the person on trial, not the gun. Harris turns this common

sense on its head and disparages the object rather than the people who misuse it.

The irony of Harris’ argument that the misuse of the Bible counts against believing it, is

that he has previously argued that the Bible’s “great [positive] influence on human life”171 does

not count in its favor. For Harris, nothing good the Bible accomplishes can validate it yet any

evil done in its name invalidates it. Selectively counting only the evidence which supports one’s

position while ignoring all evidence to the contrary is not a rational, open-minded position.


IN THE SHADOW OF GOD: WITCH AND JEW

My initial inclination was to follow Harris’ footnotes and research the sources of his

accounts of the witch trials and Jewish persecutions out of curiosity whether they were really as

egregious as he makes them sound but I realized it is ultimately irrelevant because, personally, I

am not going to reject an entire philosophical worldview simply because some of its proponents

have gone astray. If I grant his accounts are accurate, a fairly generous assumption given his

inaccurate description of the Holocaust (see page 38), I would not abandon spirituality on that

basis any more than any atheist is going to become a Christian after reading about Soviet

atrocities under Stalin’s atheist regime. If past mistakes are the measure of present worth, then

no individual, country, organization, or belief is above reproach including atheism. I have no

qualms acknowledging Christianity has made its share of mistakes over a 2000 year run

because no worldview, including atheism, can claim a perfect track record. I would expect a

religion (or irreligion) that has been around two millennia will have committed its share of sins

and the witch trials seem to be among Christianity’s. The question for me is how does

Christianity’s history measure up against other benchmarks. For example, having only been

around about 1/10th as long, what is America’s track record in her 200 year run?

The article “Child Labor in U.S. History” on the University of Iowa webserver begins:

Forms of child labor, including indentured servitude and child slavery, have

existed throughout American history. As industrialization moved workers from

farms and home workshops into urban areas and factory work, children were

often preferred, because factory owners viewed them as more manageable,

cheaper, and less likely to strike.172

In addition to child labor, the American colonies shamefully practiced slavery for two hundred

years until 1865. We forcefully relocated as many as 100,000 Native Americans from their

homes to reservations west of the Mississippi River173 and massacred 7,193 Native Americans

between 1511 and 1890.174 US Army “Charlie” Company soldiers mass murdered between 347

and 504 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians on March 16, 1968 including women, children and

babies. Some of the victims were mutilated, others were gang-raped175. Our country did not

grant all women the right to vote until 1920176 and rampant racism was still fueling major riots as

late as the 1960’s.177

Is there any atheist who would argue that America is not a great country despite her

mistakes with child labor, slavery, massacring her own citizens, racism, sexism and war crimes?

Any author who suggests someone can be proud to be American but must hang their head in

shame to be Catholic is practicing extremely selective forgiveness. While Harris decries

Catholic Europe, he fails to note that a country with separation of church and state in its

constitution has committed its own share of atrocities and officially atheistic countries like the

Soviet Union and China have fared even worse.


IN THE SHADOW OF GOD: OLD TESTAMENT PROPHECY

I will preface this section with a candid admission the following is not undeniable

“smoking gun” evidence. The issues surrounding Isaiah 7:14 are complex. People in

disagreement usually want very black and white evidence; they rarely concede points of subtle

nuance such as the ones below. I only bring this up because Harris’ explanation omits key facts

which merit a rebuttal. It is not the place I would start as “proof” of who Jesus was but I do think

anyone who weighs all the evidence will never view Christmas cards and Holiday carols the

same.

Harris claims the Greek rendering of Isaiah 7:14 referring to May’s virginity is “a

mistranslation from the Hebrew”,178 but this is far short of the whole truth. In the preceding

sentence, Harris faulted the “poor scholarship, of the gospel writers”,179 then names Matthew

and Luke, which may just be poor wording but he comes across implying the Disciples

misunderstood Isaiah. However, the Greek translation Harris references is the Septuagint

which was a translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek in Alexandria, during the reign

of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-244 B.C.E.).180 Thus we should clarify that the claim of Jesus’

virgin birth was not something which originated with Christians like Luke or Matthew in the first

century but was unquestionably committed to writing some 250 years before Jesus was born.

The Septuagint was commissioned by aforementioned Greek King of Egypt Ptolemy II

Philadelphus who wanted a Greek translation of the Old Testament Torah for his library in

Alexandria.181 According to ancient historian Philo of Alexandria, King Ptolemy gathered 72

Jewish scholars chosen by selecting six scholars from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, whom

he placed in 72 separate chambers to see if their translations would be identical.182 Whether

such precautions were actually observed is hard to say but what we know indisputably is dating

of Septuagint manuscripts firmly place it early 2nd century BC.183 Ergo, a translation enlisting

considerable Hebrew scholarship deemed Isaiah 7:14 was a prophecy of a virgin birth over 200

years before Matthew and Luke ever made such claim. These Jewish scholars had no affiliation

with Christianity or motive to promote it.

What about Harris’ claim Septuagint translators were simply mistaken? Before leaping

to that conclusion, it is worth at least considering if there is any reason that would cause them to

believe “virgin” was the correct rendering for almah. Harris only looks at the term almah and

entirely ignores the context which any good Hebrew scholar would take into consideration.

In Isaiah’s day, Jerusalem was under siege by Rezin, King of Aram. The city’s

inhabitants were shaking in fear “like trees in the wind” (Isaiah 7:2). In this context, God sends

Isaiah to King Ahaz with a prophecy. Isaiah’s message begins with a conditional statement in

verse 9, “If you [King Ahaz] do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand.” Simmer that on a

back burner for now. Isaiah goes on to tell the king God will deliver Jerusalem from his

enemies. Immediately before the part in question, in the same verse in fact, Isaiah clearly

states God is giving a sign so that the king will be able to recognize after Jerusalem is victorious

and thereby know they did not prevail by chance but rather because God had kept his promise.

Once we know the prophecy’s context, Harris’ argument that Isaiah 7:14 means nothing

more than “a young woman will get pregnant” makes no sense. Women get pregnant every

day. That would not be a sign of anything. There must be something unique about this

pregnancy that King Ahaz can later see in hindsight, otherwise the whole context of it being a

sign makes no sense at all.

Isaiah says the sign is, “an alma [virgin] will conceive and give birth to a son” and before

that child knows right from wrong, God will deliver Israel from their enemies. In the immediate

context, the timing of the conception is miraculous—before a woman who is currently a virgin

can get naturally pregnant and deliver a child (i.e. 9 months); God says Israel will be delivered.

Isaiah is offering a predictive timeline for the end of the current war as a sign. When the war

concludes within the prophesied time frame, King Ahaz will see the sign was fulfilled.

Why would Isaiah not simply state, “the war will end in a year”, instead of tying it to a

special pregnancy? There is a well of symbolism the Hebrews understood but Harris

completely misses. First, Isaiah was well aware King Ahaz had been sacrificing children to

pagan gods for sixteen years (2 Chron. 28:1-3). Thus, by tying the king’s deliverance from his

enemies to the birth and formative years of a child, King Ahaz was confronted with a difficult

dilemma. Any child he sacrificed could be his own undoing because he might be killing the very

child whose life guaranteed his victory in the war. Second, Isaiah was anchoring the prophecy

to a well-known historical event so that any Jew in first century Palestine could see the tie in.

King Henry the VIII is a household name in England for the simple fact he was morbidly obese.

If a king can stand out in history for something as simple as his weight, how much more would

the Jews remember their king who killed children for sixteen years? Thus when King Herod

unleashed a massacre on Jewish boys in Jesus’ day (Matt. 2:16-18), it would remind the Jews

of the last time an Israelite king killed Hebrew babies and a prophesy made by Isaiah, the

nations’ most famous prophet, back then. This is not the “poor scholarship” Harris alleges. It is

a connection even a Jewish school boy would make. The amazing “coincidence” of children

being massacred both when Isaiah gave the prophecy in the 8th century BC184 and in the first

century AD suggests that either Isaiah was, well, “miraculously” lucky in his prediction or that

perhaps there might be something to his prophecy.

Now as aforementioned, this outcome was conditional on King Ahaz’s response. The

record of this war in 2 Chronicles 28 tells us King Ahaz did not stand firm in faith. To the

contrary, he did not trust God at all and instead sought a military alliance with the Assyrians.185

Even more appallingly, he continued his practice of child sacrifice according to the pagan

religions of the area. Therefore, Jerusalem fell just as Isaiah prophesied would happen if King

Ahaz abandoned Judaism.

Because of King Ahaz’s response, the prophecy was not fulfilled in Isaiah’s lifetime. No

child fitting the description of “Immanuel” which means “God with us” was born at that time.

Thus, it would appear the Septuagint scholars anticipated a still future fulfillment in another

special birth. This is no special pleading for Isaiah’s prophecy as such delayed fulfilment would

not seem abnormal to them. For example, God had promised to give the Israelites their own

land when he brought them out of Egypt (Exod. 3:17), which he did fulfill but not as soon as the

Israelites initially expected. Instead, their possession of the land was postponed forty years

because of their disobedience before finally being fulfilled (Num. 32:13).

When the Septuagint writers rendered Isaiah 7:14 into Greek, the timing of the birth was

no longer relevant (the war was long over, 9 months was no longer a meaningful sign).

Therefore, they seem to have understood the nature of the conception was the essential

focus—a woman who had not had sexual relations would conceive and deliver a child, the “God

with us” here on Earth part of the prophecy. As it turns out, alma was precisely the right word

for Isaiah to use because it could contain the double meaning of a young woman not yet

pregnant as well as a virgin conceiving supernaturally. Had Isaiah used the alternative Hebrew

word for virgin, bethulah, this would mean both Mary and the young maiden in Isaiah’s day

would miraculously conceive but that was not the message Isaiah was trying to convey to King

Ahab. Had Ahab not affected his own demise by sacrificing children, God would have delivered

him in the time frame of a pregnancy but Isaiah was not offering King Ahab an immaculate

conception as a sign. Virginity was the issue in both cases but the timing of the conception was

the issue in Isaiah’s day while the nature of the conception was the issue in Mary’s day.

Before dismissing this as a Christian apologist’s biased explanation, we should consider

the source. The Septuagint translation came from the same kind of Hebrew scribes who were

hostile to Jesus’ ministry (John 8:6). They have no interest whatsoever in reinterpreting Old

Testament prophecies to justify Christianity. It is at least as plausible the Septuagint writers

were taking the context of verse into consideration as Harris’ suggestion they did not know the

meaning of words from their own language.

Ultimately, even if we disregard the context completely and only address the definition of

words, Harris’ claim almah is “without any implication of virginity”186 is still not justified. Almah is

used unambiguously two other times in the Old Testament to refer to two women, Rebekah the

future wife of Jacob and Miriam the sister of Moses, both of whom were virgins.187 The verb

form of Almah in Hebrew means “to hide” or “to conceal”, as in the societal custom of that time

whereby a father “hid” his daughter from society to protect her virginity until her wedding day.188

It was a technical term for a stage of life in the progression, yeled (newborn), yonek (nursing

baby), olel (baby who eats food), gamal (weaned child), taph (young child), almah (strong child)

and na’arah (free child or “girl”). Thus, a very young child is in view which does not require

virginity as an interpretation but certainly strongly suggests it.


IN THE SHADOW OF GOD: THE HOLOCAUST

When Harris suggests the Catholic Church should have pushed Hitler harder for humane

treatment of the Jews he demonstrates ignorance of how Hitler “negotiated” with requests from

organizations like politicians and the church. For example, when the Enabling Act was passed

on March 23, 1933 yielding Hitler authority to rule for four years by emergency decree, although

Hitler said, “It is for you, gentlemen of the Reichstag [Germany’s government] to decide

between war and peace.”, that sounds like a reasonable negotiation but the rest of the story,

however, is the Reichstag building was at the time encircled with armed Nazi paramilitary

soldiers.189 When Nazi soldiers were not standing directly outside to execute dissenters, Hitler

would simply record their names to have them rounded up later and killed or sent to

concentration camps such as occurred on the “Night of the Long Knives” when at least 85 of

Hitler’s opponents were killed in the three days spanning June 30 to July 2, 1934 and more than

a thousand others arrested and sent to concentration camps, including Catholic leaders who

were targeted for persecution like Fritz Gerlich, editor of Munich’s Catholic weekly who was

murdered during the purge190 to silence Catholic opposition to Nazism.191

Harris’ implied friendship between the Catholic Church and Third Reich is an outrageous

distortion of history. In early 1933, Hitler told Herman Rauschning, “Matters [between the Nazis

and the church] will never come to a head. They will recognize a firm will, and we need only

show them once or twice who is the master. They will know which way the wind blows.”192 In

January 1934, Hitler appointed neo-pagan and notoriously anti-Catholic Alfred Rosenberg as

the cultural and educational leader of the Reich.193 Rosenberg outlined the future Hitler

envisioned for religion in Germany with a thirty point program. Among the key points: The Reich

was to control all churches; publication of the Bible was to cease; crucifixes, Bibles and saints

were to be removed from altars; Bibles were to be replaced by Mein Kampf as God’s “most

sacred book”; and the Christian Cross was to be removed from all churches.194

Hitler manifested his hatred of the church in overt actions. Of 2,720 clergy imprisoned at

Dachau, 95% were Catholic including 400 German priests195. The Nazis phased out Catholic

schools in Germany by 1939 and closed the Catholic press by 1941. Monasteries and convents

were targeted and church property seized.196 In Germany, thousands of clergy were arrested,

often on trumped up charges of currency smuggling or “immorality”.197 Outside of Germany,

beyond the view of German citizens, Nazi persecution of the church was even more severe. At

least 1,811 Polish clergy died in Nazi concentration camps as Hitler tried to systematically

dismantle the Church.198

While Harris is correct that the Catholic Church never excommunicated Hitler, Harris’

claim the Church never denounced Hitler’s actions is patently historical fantasy. Harris is remiss

to not mention Mit brennender Sorge (German for “With Burning Anxiety”) issued by Pope Pius

XI on March 10, 1937. It was read from the pulpit of every German Catholic church on one of

the busiest Sundays of the year, Palm Sunday, the broadest possible airing the Church could

give it, on March 21, 1937. It condemned elevation of one race above others,199 condemned

“the so-called myth of race and blood”,200 denounced the Nazis as pagans implicitly calling

Hitler “Satan”, and called on Catholics not only to pray but sever ties with the enemy and

embrace heroism and action. Although it is too lengthy to quote in full, exerts include:

We wished neither to be an accomplice to equivocation by an untimely

silence.

[on denouncing the Nazis…]

The believer in God is not he who utters the name in his speech…whoever

follows that so-called pre-Christian Germanic conception of substituting a

dark and impersonal destiny for the personal God, denies thereby the

Wisdom and Providence of God…Neither is he a believer in God.

Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State,

or the depositories of power…he is far from the true faith in God.

None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a national God, of a

national religion; or attempt to lock within the frontiers of a single people,

within the narrow limits of a single race, God, the Creator of the universe, King

and Legislator of all nations

Your priests and Faithful, who have persisted in their Christian duty and in

the defense of God's rights in the teeth of an aggressive paganism.

[on the Nazi idea of Aryan race…]

“Behold what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed on us, that we

should be called and should be the sons of God" (1 John iii. 1). To discard this

gratuitous and free elevation in the name of a so-called German type amounts

to repudiating openly a fundamental truth of Christianity.

It [the Gospel] admits no substitutes or arbitrary alternatives such as certain

leaders pretend to draw from the so-called myth of race and blood.

[on Jews…]

The sacred books of the Old Testament are exclusively the word of God…

they also record the story of the chosen people [the Jews], bearers of the

Revelation and the Promise,

The use of this word [“Revelation” as used by the Nazis] for the "suggestions"

of race and blood, for the irradiations of a people's history, is mere

equivocation. False coins of this sort do not deserve Christian currency.

The Church founded by the Redeemer is one, the same for all races and all

nations.

Be the guides of the faithful, the support of those who fail, the doctors of the

doubting, the consolers of the afflicted, the disinterested counselors and

assistants of all.

[on the need for action…]

Then the violation of temples is nigh, and it will be every one's duty to sever

his responsibility from the opposite camp, and free his conscience from guilty

cooperation with such corruption.

the judgment which the Church and all her sons must pronounce on what

was and what is sin. Secret and open measures of intimidation, the threat of

economic and civic disabilities, bear on the loyalty of certain classes of

Catholic functionaries, a pressure which violates every human right and

dignity…there is but one alternative left, that of heroism. If the oppressor

offers one the Judas bargain of apostasy he can only, at the cost of every

worldly sacrifice, answer with Our Lord: "Begone, Satan!

Whoever counters these erroneous developments with an uncompromising

“No!” from the very outset, not only serves the purity of his faith in Christ, but

also the welfare and the vitality of his own people.

Humility in the spirit of the Gospel and prayer for the assistance of grace are

perfectly compatible with self-confidence and heroism. The Church of Christ,

which throughout the ages and to the present day numbers more confessors

and voluntary martyrs than any other moral collectivity, needs lessons from

no one in heroism of feeling and action.

one must judge the axiom, that "right is common utility," a proposition which

may be given a correct significance, it means that what is morally indefensible,

can never contribute to the good of the people.

the basic fact that man as a person possesses rights he holds from God, and

which any collectivity must protect against denial, suppression or neglect.201

Although Harris tries to re-write history, there can be no doubt the Nazis themselves

understood the Church opposed them. Frank Coppa describes how the Nazi’s viewed the

above encyclical as “a call to battle against the Reich” and how Hitler was furious and “vowed

revenge against the church”.202 Nazi reprisal was swift and furious. The Gestapo raided every

German Catholic Church the next day to confiscate all copies of Mit brennender Sorge they

could find and the presses that had printed the letter were closed.

According to Eamon Duffy, History Professor at the University of Cambridge, the

encyclical “dispelled at once all suspicion of a Fascist Pope…The last year of his [Pope Pius XI]

life left no one any doubt of his total repudiation of the ring-wing tyrannies in Germany.”, also,

“His speeches and conversations were blunt, filled with phrases like ‘stupid racialism’, ‘barbaric

Hitlerism’.”203 As Thomas Bokenkotter describes it:

When Hitler showed increasing belligerence toward the Church, Pius met the

challenge with a decisiveness that astonished the world. His encyclical Mit

brennender Sorge was the 'first great official public document to dare to confront

and criticize Nazism' and 'one of the greatest such condemnations ever issued

by the Vatican.' ... It exposed the fallacy and denounced the Nazi myth of blood

and soil; it decried its Neopaganism, its war of annihilation against the Church,

and even described the Führer himself as a 'mad prophet possessed of repulsive

arrogance.204

Carlo Falconi echoes this sentiment, “the pontifical letter still remains the first great official public

document to dare to confront and criticize Nazism, and the Pope’s courage astonished the

world.”205 The Church’s opposition to Hitler is an undisputable historical fact. So undisputed, in

fact, that I would encourage anyone skeptical to simple Google “”Nazi persecution of the

Catholic Church in Germany” because this issue, as good as any, shows how disingenuously

Harris misrepresents history to anyone willing to fact check him.

Catholic opposition to Hitler cost thousands of clergy their lives. Thousands more spent

years in concentration camps. The Church lost its schools, presses, and cathedrals. One

wonders what more they could possibly have done to receive any credit from Harris.

Indeed, the American ambassador reported that Mit brennender Sorge “had helped the

Catholic Church in Germany very little but on the contrary has provoked the Nazi state…to

continue its oblique assault upon Catholic institutions”.206 The Pope backed down upon

realizing the amount of suffering the Nazis inflicted upon Catholic priests and parishioners alike

in response to Church opposition was a greater evil than silence. Had the Pope pressed

harder, undoubtedly Harris would then fault him for needless suffering the Church could have

avoided if the Pope just kept silent. The situation is a great example of how, no matter what the

church does, Harris finds fault with it. Religion simply cannot do anything good by his

estimation.

I understand why Harris says people do not need to believe Jesus was the Son of God

to be inspired to heroic acts of kindness. After all, many people were inspired to non-violence

by the teaching and example of Gandhi even though he made no claims of divinity. Certainly

Christ had some sayings like, “Let him who is without sin be the first to throw a stone (John

8:7)”, which Harris could choose to incorporate into his personal ethic without believing Jesus

was divine.

The difference, however, is Jesus also said at times we must do right not only when it

gives us warm fuzzy feelings but even during dark times like WW2 when doing right is hard. We

do so on his command and his authority as God because Jesus said when people do good in

his name they are acting as agents of God and will receive heavenly rewards (Matt. 10:42) to

the point where someone who dies doing good in God’s name will find eternal life (Matt. 16:25).

Catholics like Jan Gies hid Jews like Anne Frank and her family from the Gestapo

because he believed in so doing, he was sheltering God himself. Atheism is devoid of on

equivalent motivation. Harris’ Kumbaya feelings of “common humanity”207 might work in songs

sung around campfires during times of peace and beer commercials aired around the Christmas

holidays. In times of war and starvation, however, such motivation seems to evaporate. Where

are the stories of atheistic Jan Gies equivalents who sheltered Jews at grave personal danger to

themselves due to inspiration derived from the “common humanity” of their secular humanism?

Deeper motivation is lacking in the models Harris describes like Gandhi’s inspirational

passivism. When passivism fails, no one reframes from turning their plowshares into swords “in

Gandhi’s name”. That makes no more sense than reframing from violence “in Charlie Chaplin’s

name”. In either example, it is nothing more than an example to follow for as long as one

deems it convenient. However, there is no moral imperative in times when living morally

becomes cumbersome.

Nietzsche himself acknowledged this principle, “To love man for God’s sake—that has

so far been the noblest and most renown feeling attained among men.” 208


THE PROBLEM WITH ISLAM

Harris’ argument that exploitation, politics, endemic poverty and the lack of economic

opportunity should be discounted as influencing terrorism because “the world is filled with poor,

uneducated, and exploited people who do not commit acts of terrorism”209 falls apart when we

look past anecdotal examples like Ahmed Omar Sheikh or a few members of Hamas that are

college graduates to larger studies of who supports terrorism and what are their stated reasons.

Before delving into specifics though it is worth nothing how Harris’ proposition fails ab initio

because his comparison to other poor, peaceful groups draws non sequitur conclusions. Just

because some other group is also poor, uneducated, and exploited yet chooses not to fight back

for any number of reasons (maybe they are demoralized, maybe they are isolated and thus

unaware their predicament, maybe they live under an authoritarian regime, etc.), that does not

mean that Arabic aggression must therefore come from Islam and could not be fueled by

poverty, lack of education and exploitation. It simply does not follow that Muslims must fight due

to religion simply because other poor people choose not to fight.

For example, you would not make the argument poor, uneducated teens in China do not

join gangs, therefore poverty and lack of education cannot be the reason American teens join

gangs. Such a claim is an absurd oversimplification. Maybe the Chinese government cracks

down tougher, maybe Chinese teens simply have no concept of “gang” because they have

never seen one, whatever reason(s) Chinese teenagers have for not joining gangs, it has no

relevance to whether poverty and lack of education push American teens into gangs.

Now if Harris demonstrated that poor, uneducated, exploited non-Muslim people in

China do not commit acts of terror because of their atheism, he would have a substantial point.

However, he does not even attempt to offer that kind of evidence—namely that secular

humanism thwarts terrorism in areas of poverty and oppression. Instead, all he offers is the

beginning half of an incomplete argument.

Harris feels the external factors of poverty, lack of education and exploitation are not the

problem; Islam alone is the problem. Understanding that he feels religion is the sole problem,

nevertheless, I am shocked by his indifference to the human condition since nowhere in the

book does he suggest even attempting to address the evils of poverty and oppression. He

acknowledges their influence “is not a role that suggests easy remedies”210 but one would think

an author who rises to the challenge of eradicate all of religion from the face of the planet would

not shy from tackling a little social injustice along the way. The fact he so candid admits the

problems with poverty, lack of education and oppression in the Muslim world, rather than trying

to minimalize or dismiss them, makes him sound cruelly indifferent to that poverty and

exploitation when he only argues for eradicating religion. His position left me asking why should

we only be concerned with ending poverty and exploitation if there is something in it for us? Are

eradicating poverty and exploitation not worthy enough goals in and off themselves? After all,

this is the same author who wrote an entire book defining “good” as seeking the “peak of human

flourishing”.211 It would seem that “flourishing” has more to do with whether people embrace his

views on atheism than if they have adequate food or clothing.

Going beyond the poor logic and delving into hard statistical facts, Harris’ “Islam-alone”

explanation of terrorism is powerless to explain how over a billion educated Muslims living

outside regions of poverty and exploitation find no motivation in Islam alone for terrorism.212

Harris acknowledges but dismisses Fareed Zakaria, journalist, editor of Time, and CNN host

who points out millions of Muslims living in the United States, Canada, and Europe “have found

a way of being devout without being obscurantist, and pious without embracing fury.”213 I find

Zakaria more convincing than Harris because it seems incredibly improbably that Islam

necessitates violence, millions of peaceful Muslims have missed that fact, and only Harris along

with a few Muslim extremist have stumbled upon the “true” meaning of Islam that everyone else

has missed. To me this makes as much sense as someone advocating Romeo & Juliet has a

really cheerful ending that most people have overlooked.

As we saw above in “Reason in Exile”, if you plot the over 200 terrorist acts in 2013, it

looks like a map of regions of poverty, lack of education and exploitation.214 By Harris’ own

admission, “Turkey is an island of ambassadorial goodwill compared with the rest of Muslim

world.”215 The fact seems lost on Harris that Turkey has the least poverty, best education and

least exploitation of all the countries he lists. Indeed, a Pew Research Global Attitudes Project

poll, the very same source cited by Harris, found “country-specific differences are significant,

suggesting the importance of local social, political and religious conditions.”, and “Several

authors examine the link between political authoritarianism and terror.”216 On such author is

Scott Atran, author of such books as Talking to the Enemy: Faith, Brotherhood, and the

(Un)Making of Terrorist. He finds “no evidence that most people who support suicide actions

hate Americans’ internal cultural freedoms, but rather every indication that they oppose U.S.

foreign policies, particularly regarding the Middle East.”217

Giles Dorronsoro, Ph.D. in Political Sociology, professor of political science in Paris, and

scholar for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace spent several months traveling in

Afghanistan in the spring and summer of 2009.218 Not simply an authority by credentials, Dr.

Dorronsoro is an authority on the Taliban in a way Harris could never be short of spending

months among them himself. Therefore, Dorronsoro is worth quoting at length:

Most of the fighters do not join the Taliban for money. They join because the

Afghan government is unjust, corrupt, or simply not there. They also join because

the Americans have bombed their houses or shown disrespect for their values.

For young people, joining the Taliban is a way to earn social status…Whatever

his initial motivations in joining the Taliban, once a fighter has seen a friend or

family member killed by foreign forces, he becomes fully committed to the

cause….loyalty is often not a matter of individual choice; it’s a matter of family

honor to fight the people who’ve killed your father or your brother.219

Dorronsoro and Atran are far from alone. Christine Fair of the United States Institute of

Peace in Washington, DC and Bryan Shepherd of the University of Texas wrote the chapter

“Who Supports Terrorism? Evidence from Fourteen Muslim Countries”, as part of the 74 page

report Studies in Conflict & Terrorism.220 They drew upon the same 2002 Pew Research Center

data as Harris. Writing a secular analysis of terrorism for non-religious purposes, they drew

radically different conclusions from the same data then Harris does.

The authors concluded “those [Muslims] who are very poor are less likely to support

terrorism, but those who are not extremely poor are more likely to support it.”221 The distinction

between “poor” and “extremely poor” was drawn from two questions within the Pew Survey, one

question whether the respondent had times during the prior year they did not have enough

money to buy food their family needed (i.e. those so extremely poor they were struggling just to

eat) and another question whether during that prior year they did not have enough money to buy

clothes their family needed (i.e. not starving but poor enough to lack basic clothing). The

authors associated the decrease in support for terrorism among the extremely poor with

Maslow’s hierarch of needs noting, “according to this [Maslow’s] theory, when basic needs are

unmet, their satiation is the primary focus of motivation. Extremely economically deprived

persons do not have the ‘luxury’ of expending efforts towards those issues unrelated to day-to-

day survival.” Once the most basic needs of food and shelter are secured, poor individuals

begin to have time to consider why they are so poor. If the reasons are external exploitation,

they will logically seek who is responsible for those conditions.

Fair and Bryan also noted how the ownership of a cell phone and computer impacted

support for terrorism. They noted this was no so much an indication of socioeconomic status as

a measure of connectivity and access to information. Would anyone disagree this sounds like

logical, rational analysis?

Finally they noted the marginal effect on support for terrorism among responds who

believed Islam was under treat. The marginal effect of impression of threat against Islam on

support for terrorism was 89.9% in Lebanon, 75.1% in Jordan and 70.6% in Pakistan. These

three countries ranked in the top five countries were the perception of threat influenced support

for terrorism. Anyone acquainted with world geography will immediately recognize these

countries are either adjacent to countries America has invaded (Afghanistan) or neighbors of

Israel who America has consistently sided with. By contrast, Ghana and Bangladesh, both far

removed geographically and politically from any US military action, showed a marginal effect of

threat perception of only 2.0% and 4.2% respectively. In other words, there was direct

correlation between regions of US military action in the Muslim world and areas with higher

support for terrorism.

To put into perspective how much influence US military action has on support for

terrorism, Fair and Bryan found the marginal effects of computer ownership upon support for

terrorism peaked at 29.6% in Bangladesh. Access to information about US military action and

foreign policy in far off countries had dramatically less impact than US involvement in directly

adjoining nations. The closer US military action hit to home, the greater the support for

terrorism.

The final items Fair and Bryan noted were, surprisingly, Muslim females are more likely

than males to support terrorism and, not surprisingly, older people are less likely to support

terrorism than younger Muslims.

I highly encourage anyone who believes Harris’ rhetoric to read the Fair/Shepherd report

and see for them self how a scholarly, non-biased analysis of the Pew Center data noted no

links between religion and terrorism whatsoever. Even without reading the entire report, just

logically considering the variations above between the sexes, between age groups, and

especially between the impoverished and those lacking access to information, one immediately

recognizes that no verse from the Koran cited in Harris’ six page tirade offers any explanations

whatsoever for all these variations. They all read the same Koran; it is only the socio-economic

conditions that vary between countries.

Harris dismisses reports like Fair/Shepherd’s with comments like it “may not serve our

immediate foreign policy objective for our political leaders to openly acknowledge…we are at

war with Islam”.222 The data indisputably shows though that support for terrorism escalates

most dramatically when people attack Islam. It would appear that the President, Pentagon, and

Congress might just be smarter than Harris gives them credit for. Inflammatory statements like

Harris’ bold assertion “We are at war with Islam.”, are surely just adding fuel to the fire. With

Harris making statements like we must impose our will from without by “military intervention

(whether open or covert)”223 and we are “obligated to protect our interest in the world with force--

-continually”224, it is easy to see why any diligent al-Qaeda recruiter would be remiss to not keep

copies of Harris’ books on hand to point out western antagonism to impressionable young

Muslims. Harris is an al-Qaeda recruiter’s dream come true.


A FRINGE WITHOUT A CENTER

When Harris questions the tolerance of tolerant Muslims, it reminds me of Richard

Dawkins’ response to Pope John Paul II endorsing Darwinism. Dawkins’ response was “that the

pope was a hypocrite, that he could not be genuine about science”.225 Dawkins simply refuses

to believe the Pope believes in evolution no matter what the Pope claims to believe.

Pause a moment to let that sink in. No matter what religion says, no matter how religion

acts, for the New Atheists religion is always wrong. Why? Did the Pope say the wrong thing

about evolution? Was the moderate Muslim intolerant? Not at all. Rather despite saying and

doing the right thing, on the basis of what Richard Dawkins thinks the Pope is thinking or what

Harris thinks the Muslim wants to act like rather than how he is actually acting, on this basis

religion is vilified. It matters not that the Pope endorses evolution. It matters not whether

Muslims act tolerant. To the New Atheists, when religion says and does all the right things,

religion is still guilty on the presumption they cannot be sincere. No group could stand under

such scrutiny, not even atheists.

The absurdity becomes obvious if we simply turn the argument on its head and say

atheists must be “just biding their time” until the next Stalin arises who can bring about a society

free of religion by force if necessary. Atheists must be evil people. Why? Because they said or

did something wrong? No, because I presume to know what they are thinking or what they

would really like to be doing given the chance and you should take my word for it that it is quite

evil. The whole argument immediately sounds stupid when atheists are the ones being

disparaged not on the basis of anything they have said or done but based on what some theist

thinks they think or believes they would want to do despite their actions to the contrary.

The interesting thing about Harris’ list of countries where Muslims in large numbers

believe suicide bombing is justifiable behavior is that it seems to directly contradict his earlier

claim that poverty, lack of education, and exploitation are not the cause of terrorism. If anyone

disagrees, I challenge them to take their own straw poll among their friends, “What is the last

place on Earth you would want to live?” Inevitably you would find much overlap with Harris’ list.

How about Pakistan with its unstable government? How about Nigeria with its abject poverty?

Anyone lining up to live in Lebanon were the occasional missile from Israel misses military

targets and explodes in residential neighborhoods? Take the survey a step deeper, “If that

country (Pakistan, Nigeria, Lebanon) had no religion whatsoever but every other issue (poverty,

war, political instability) remained unchanged, would you want to live in a non-religious country

with these problems?”

I found the 2002 Pew Research Study cited by Harris as well as a more recent 2005

update from the Pew Research group. The 2005 study found support for terrorism has

generally declined by an average of 11% in the three years since the 2002 study cited by Harris

with the exception of Jordan.

SUICIDE BOMBINGS IS JUSTIFIED IN DEFENSE OF ISLAM 226

Country 2002 2005 Change Jordan 43% 57% +14%

Lebanon 73% 39% -34% Pakistan 33% 25% -8% Indonesia 27% 15% -12%

Turkey 13% 14% +1% Morocco 40% 13% -27%

OVERALL AVERAGE: -11%

Did atheism make considerable inroads in those three years to account for that change?

Hardly. The major change was an additional three years had passed since the October 7, 2001

United States invasion of Afghanistan under Operation Enduring Freedom. We should

remember the context that Harris’ cited poll was taken within one year of a major US military

incursion into a Muslim country. Support for terrorism actually dropped off rather quickly given

that significant event.

Anyone who believes Harris’ fantasy that support for suicide bombings comes from no

source outside the Koran, should note that in a survey taken in March 2004 in Pakistan,

following the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq, support for suicide bombings jumped from pre-

Iraq War 33% in 2002 to 41% in 2004 post-invasion before settling back to 25% two years after

the invasion. A similar bump followed by decline occurred in Turkey, the only other country

surveyed in 2004.227 Was there some special edition of the Koran released in 2003 that

supports Harris’ assertion? Of course not. What did happen in 2003 that logically correlates

with the increased support for suicide bombings is the US invaded a second Muslim country

within two years of invading Afghanistan.

Regarding the perception of threat to Islam, when Muslim respondents were asked

whether attacks against civilians were “rarely, sometimes, often justified”, 52% of respondents

who agreed there were serious threats to Islam agreed terrorism was justified while only 36%

who saw no serious threats to Islam felt such measures were justifiable. Furthermore, 54% who

reported an unfavorable view of the US, justified such attacks while only 32% who had a

favorable view of the US found attacks justified.

Granted, it is disconcerting that even among Muslims who feel Islam is not under threat

and share a favorable view of the US, a minority would still justify terrorism. However, when we

see the huge increase in support for terrorism among Muslims who also feel threatened by US

foreign policy, Harris’ suggestion the entire problem can be delineated by citing chapter and

verse from the Koran begins to seem rather naïve.

It has been said, “People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.” Before

suggesting all of Islam should be eradicated because some of its members advocate attacking

civilians, we should consider what that says of the US which intentionally target Japanese

civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in August 1945 with atomic bombs under the

justification of warfare. Conservatively speaking, the US killed 225,000 Japanese civilians

including women, children and the elderly.228 The interesting fact is how support among

Americans has changed so dramatically from when Americans believed we were at war.

According to a Gallup poll taken August 10, 1945 during the height of the war, an overwhelming

85% approved of dropping atomic bombs on civilian Japanese cities. Only 10% disapproved.229

When that same poll was repeated in July 2005 while the US was at peace only a bit over half

of Americans (57%) approved and 38% disapproved. It is interesting to note while Harris

suggests Islam should be eliminated because 53% of Muslims approved of violence against

civilians in a poll taken while US military forces were actively fighting in Afghanistan230, 57% of

Americans still approve of targeting civilian populations in Japan 69 years after the war has

ended. There are more Americans who justify bombing civilian cities seven decades after all

hostilities with Japan have ceased than there are Muslims who justify attacks on civilians while

the US has ongoing military campaigns in Muslim countries. When the US was under attack,

more Americans felt justified dropping atomic bombs on Japanese cities (85%) then the worst of

the worst-of-the-worst of terrorists cited by Harris justify terrorism (82% in Lebanon).231

It is also interesting to note that 30% of Protestants and Catholics opposed the

bombing.232 While I could not find any poll showing the exact percentage of atheists who

favored bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, simple math tell us if 30% of religious Americans

opposed it, at least some atheist Americans had to support the atomic bombing of civilian

Japanese cities in order to reach an overall 85% approval.

Even more telling is a 2010 Gallup poll that found Muslims were significantly more likely

to condemn targeting civilians than atheists. When asked, “Some people think that for the

military to target and kill civilians is sometimes justified, while others think that kind of violence is

never justified. Which is your opinion?”, and given options of “Never” and “Sometimes”

(“Depends” was accepted only when respondents suggested it), 78% of Muslims said it was

“Never” justified to target and kill civilians while only 56% of atheists said killing civilians was

never justified.233

If that result has you scratching your head, pay close attention to how the question is

worded. A different Gallop poll found the level of support for attacks on civilians change

dramatically when one word is changed in the question – the word “military”. When asked

whether military attacks on civilians is justified, 49% of Americans agree it is sometimes

justified. This is higher than any country in the world, including all Muslim countries. However,

when the wording is changed to whether individual attacks on civilians is sometimes justified,

the percentage of Americans who find it sometimes justified drops my more than half to 22%.234

In other words, the exact same acts against civilians by the military are more than twice as likely

to be justified by Americans than if those acts were undertaken by individuals.

When a US drone strike killed 17 Yemen civilians with no terrorist affiliation on

December 16, 2013 because the US mistakenly targeted their wedding convoy, that is

dismissed as “collateral damage”.235 If a terrorist kills 17 people on a bus, however, Harris

opens his book with the story as justification of why Islam must be eradicated. More

outrageously, if the extend family of the innocent Yemen victims killed by the US drone harbor

rage and bitterness toward America for killing their innocent loved ones, according to Harris it

must be because of the Koran and their anger only serves as further evidence of what is wrong

with Islam.

Looking at disparities on support within the same country for attacks on civilians by the

military verses attacks by civilians illuminates an interesting pattern. The stronger the nations’

military, the more likely its citizens will view military attacks on civilians as sometimes

acceptable. The weaker their military, and thus more likely individuals must fight for their

country, the more likely people from that country will approve individual attacks on civilians while

condemning the same kind of attacks by military personnel. We have already seen the US

dichotomy of 49% approval of military civilian acts verses 22% approval when individuals act the

same way. Israel is second highest on the list with 43% approving of attacks on civilians by its

top notch military but only 16% sometimes approving of attacks on civilians by individuals. In

the United Kingdom, with its strong military, 33% of the populace believe military attacks on

civilians are sometimes justified but, once again, this figure drops in half for support of individual

attacks on civilians (15%).

Suddenly Harris’ statistic that Lebanon has the highest approval rate of suicide bombing

takes on a whole new perspective. Citizens of Israel which has the military power to attack

Lebanon without impunity (and has indeed done so), show large support of their military if it kills

citizens while condemning individuals who do the same.236 Citizens of Lebanon which has no

significant military with which to challenge Israel, not surprisingly have one of the highest

disapproval rates of military actions against civilians while, as Harris points out, having the

highest approval rate of suicide bombings.

The takeaway is profound. Nations approve of the way they fight their battles. It would

appear a country’s propensity to approve individual terror attacks has more to do with whether it

has a strong military capable of fighting its battles than what religious books its citizens do or do

not read.

In no form or fashion am I justifying Islamic acts of terror against civilians simply

because every other American approves of occasional military attacks on civilians or because a

majority of American supported terrorizing the Japanese into surrender by targeting two civilian

cities with atomic bombs. Two wrongs do not make a right. I am merely observing how, by

Harris’ extreme logic, America herself should be eradicated. If Harris’ bold claim that any

ideology which could lead as many as 82% of its adherents to justify targeting civilians must be

eradicated from the face of the Earth is correct, by that same claim, America does not deserve

to exist because our patriotism led 85% of our population to justify bombing Japanese women

and children when we were attacked. Before advocating the extremist view that any group or

ideology must be eradicated, it would be wise, not to mention eye-opening, to measure

ourselves according that same standard. It reminds me of something a wise man once said,

“Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see will enough to deal with the

speck in your friend’s eye.” His name was Jesus (Matt. 7:5).

A true story may illustrate the point better than statistics. One many people will be

familiar with is 2013 war film Lone Survivor staring Mark Wahlberg based on a true story from

the book of the same name. The book and film tell the story of a four-man SEAL

reconnaissance and surveillance team tasked to track Taliban leader Ahmad Shah during

Operation Red Wings. The team is discovered by an elderly shepherd and two teenage goat

herders. After a heated debate, the team decides they will receive backlash if they kill the three

unarmed herders so they release them but that leads to an ambush by numerically superior

Taliban forces. Three SEALS, Murphy, Axelson, and Dietz are killed in the ambush, only sniper

Marcus Luttrell survives the onslaught. Unable to walk from shrapnel in his legs, Luttrell

crawled seven miles to a local Pashtun village where he is taken in by Mohammed Gulab who

treats his injuries and sends a mountain man to the nearest American air base to alert military

forces of Luttrell’s location.

Up to that point, the movie is historically accurate with only minor Hollywood

embellishments.237 The first major liberty director Peter Berg takes with the story is the

aftermath of Luttrell’s arrival at the Pashtun village. In the movie, the village is assaulted by

Taliban soldiers. The outcome looks bleak for our US SEAL hero until America helicopters

arrive in the nick of time to repel the Taliban assault. While it makes for a dramatic save-the-

day movie ending, the firefight never actually happened. In reality, the Taliban fighters were

outnumbered by the villagers and had no intentions of attacking the village.238 By altering the

historical accuracy, Berg conveys the significant misimpression that Afghanistan is overrun by

radical extremists Muslims indiscriminately massacring people and chanting “death to America”

while a peaceful minority helplessly watch. Although such propaganda readily serves Harris’

purpose, it is the opposite of the truth. In reality, the Taliban had tried unsuccessfully to sneak

into the village and capture Luttrell in secret because they were in the minority and lacked the

sufficient strength for an outright assault.

While I can understand Berg’s desire for a “big finish” movie ending, it is disappointing

that even in the end credits he attributes Mohammad Gulab and the villagers’ help exclusively to

“Pashtunwali” and neglects to mention these villagers were Muslims.239 I suppose a war movie

needs really defined enemies that the audience loves to hate. Apparently Berg felt it just would

not do to have Muslims sheltering an American soldier, treating his wounds, nursing him back to

health and aiding in his return to his unit. Letting the audience know it was Muslims sheltering

and caring for the American would erode the “Us vs. Them” mindset that would stir the emotions

of his audience.

The meaning of “Pashtunwali”, a non-written ethical code, may be interpreted as “the

code of life” or simply as “the way of the Pashtuns”.240 A close parallel would be “southern

hospitality”. You could, by comparison, say Abolitionist helped slaves escape the Antebellum

South out of southern hospitality and, technically, you would not be wrong, but if you used

“southern hospitality” as euphemism in lieu of acknowledging the Abolition movement and its

primarily religious rootse, you would be using labels deceptively. Berg’s acknowledgement of

the assistance of the “good” Pashtuns against the “bad” Muslims certainly obscured the fact that

the Pashtuns are themselves Muslims.

Berg’s final comment before the movie credits is, “These brave men and women [the

Pashtun people] still thrive today in the harsh mountains of Afghanistan and their fight against

the Taliban continues…” Once again… yes, sort of but… no, it is not quite so black-and-white,

us-vs-them as people like Berg and Harris try to portray it. The Pashtuns are not merely some

pro-American group resisting the Taliban. They also make up the majority of the Taliban.241 In

other words, Pashtun Muslims both fought against American soldiers in the Taliban and

sheltered American soldier Marcus Luttrell from the Taliban. Here we start to see where Harris’

radical oversimplification of “Muslim bad. Atheist good” really breaks down. The Muslims who

sheltered Luttrell read the same Koran as the Muslims that attacked him. Once we understand

the facts, Harris’ proposition that religion is the root of all evil looks increasingly absurd and we

can understand the need to look further to find the cause of terrorism.


PERFECT WEAPONS

There are so many errors with Harris’ argument it is hard to know where to begin. For

starters, none less than fellow atheist Christopher Hitchens disagrees with Harris’

representation that the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant attack was merely good intentions polluted

by faulty military intelligence. Describing the attack for Salon News, Hitchens says, “he [Clinton]

acted with caprice and brutality and with a complete disregard for international law.”242 Hitchens

goes on to point out the attack “coincidentally” occurred on the night Monica Lewinsky returned

to the grand jury and conveniently deflected media attention away the President’s sex scandal.

Harris is right that “intentions are everything”, but he is unrealistic about how altruistic he

portrays America’s intentions.243

While Harris raises a valid point asking his readers to consider what it would look like if

Muslim Extremists got their hands on a nuclear weapon, he conveniently omits to ask what it

would look like if an atheist dictator like Kim Jong-un did the same. In this case no imagination

is required because Kim Jong-un has removed all speculation for us by hiring a computer

animation team to turn his vision for America’s future into a video which was posted on North

Korea’s official government website.244 The video begins benignly with the image of a sleeping

young North Korean man with an elevator music soundtrack of the pop anthem “We Are the

World”. It quickly transitions to the image of a rocket launch followed by images of missiles

raining down on what appears to be New York city setting fire to high rise buildings in scenes

reminiscent of the 9/11 attacks. Over images of black smoke billowing, the Korean language

captions say, “It seems that he nest of wickedness is ablaze”.

e The Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery which boasted Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine among its members was the first recognized organization for abolitionist in the United States. Seventeen of its twenty-four initial members were either Quakers or member of the Religious Society of Friends.

Kim Jong-un perfectly illustrates the flaw in Harris’ logic that someone could not be a

threat to civilization “unless a person believes some rather incredible things about this

universe—in particular, about what happens after death.”245 Jong-un has the same views about

death as Harris but it does nothing to thwart his annihilating bent. He needs no dogma of

celestial virgins to inspire him to violence. Neither did atheist leader Soviet premier Nikita

Khrushchev when he issued his famous invective “We will bury you!” to Western ambassadors

in Moscow. Khrushchev found nothing in his atheism to deter his hatred of America.

It seems to me that Harris’ statements like someone needs belief in “incredible

things…about what happens after death” to commit atrocities could only lead to a New York

Times© best seller book in a country where people believe E!© and People magazine are “news”

sources of the caliber of CNN© and Newsweek© magazine. For anyone who spends as much

time keeping up with current events as they do “Keeping up with the Kardashians”, a myriad of

examples that refute Harris’ premise immediately come to mind ranging from atheist Timothy

McVeigh, mastermind of the Oklahoma City bombing, the second deadliest terror attack on

American soil, to atheist Jeffrey Dahmer who committed crimes that would never cross Osama

bin Laden’s mind. Harris must be counting on a good deal of public ignorance of the “Who’s

Who” of atheism when he makes such absurd statements.

“But Jong-un does not want to attack America because of his atheism,” is the standard

response. This completely misses the point, however. Harris advocates the elimination of

religion as the cure-all. There is no reason to believe that economic and political improvements

would remedy anything, claims Harris.246 While Khrushchev, McVeigh, Dahmer and a host of

other atheist demonstrates how atheists can be every bit as dangerous to humanity, Jong-un in

particular is an example of an atheist leading an economically depressed country with the

irrational indifference to mutual retaliation that kept the Cold War from turning into nuclear

annihilation which Harris claims can only come from religion. No religion is required, nor is the

absence of religion any guarantee of peace. In the end, Harris’ perfect weapons theory shows

nothing more than the danger of perfect weapons falling into the hands of despots, regardless

whether those despots are religious or irreligious.

If the right Muslims had “perfect” weapons, the entire Gulf War including almost 18,000

US coalition casualties may have been avoided. The 1991 Shiite uprising in Iraq which even

Harris admits “surely ranks among the most unethical and consequential foreign policy

blunders” of America247, could have succeeded in deposing Saddam Hussein without a drop of

American blood if the rebellion merely had better weapons. At the height of their revolt, Hussein

lost control over 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces.248 Within the first two weeks of the revolt, most of

Iraq’s cities had fallen to rebel forces. The rebellion failed in large part because the rebels had

little heavy weapons and few surface-to-air missiles which made them almost defenseless

against Hussein’s helicopter gunships,249 and also because Hussein’s loyalist forces had and

used Sarin nerve gas as well as mustard gas.250

Iraqi Muslims took up arms, not against American soldiers but to depose an evil, brutal

dictator. Hussein had attempted the genocide of the Kurds three years prior in 1988, killing all

men from the age of about 13 to 70 that he could, in part by using chemical weapons. It is

estimated that up to 182,000 were killed during his Anfal Campaign.251 The elements of a brutal

dictator attempting the genocide of a minority group who fought back against overwhelming

numerical odds is reminiscent of the Warsaw ghetto uprising in April to May of 1943 where

about 750 Jews were able for almost a month to fight off German troops rounding up Jews to

send to extermination camps but eventually succumbed to superior fire power and numbers.

The tragedy of the 1991 uprising was not weapons in Muslim hands. The problem was the

“perfect” weapons were in the wrong Muslim hands. If the right Muslims had weapons, the

entire Iraq War may have been avoided. Granted we have no guarantee the resulting

government would have been any better than Hussein’s regime but merely assuming the Kurds

would have been equally despotic is a guilty till proven innocent argument.


WHAT CAN WE DO?

When reading Harris, I noticed he will argue any position to make his point including

arguing both sides of opposing views. For example, in chapter 1 Harris writes a lengthy section

on “The myth of ‘moderation’ in religion” where he plainly states, “it [moderate religion] offers no

bulwark against religious extremism and religious violence.”252 He goes on to argue to even

moderate religion is bad because it shelters extremist religious from accusation. Therefore

religion, even in moderation, needs to be eliminated.

Then three chapters later Harris writes, “The fate of civilization lies largely in the hands

of ‘moderate’ Muslims.”, and says, “to be palatable to Muslims, [reform] must also appear to

come from Muslims themselves.”253 Yet these moderate Muslims who hold the fate of

civilization in their hands are the very moderates he previously argued for eliminating. This kind

of talking out of both sides of one’s mouth baffles me. Which Sam Harris should I believe, the

Sam Harris arguing we need religious moderates or the Sam Harris arguing to eliminate

religious moderates?

This flip-flopping between “we need them” and “we need to eliminate them” seems to

betray his underlying assumption that religion in any form needs to go away and shows his

willingness to advance any argument to support that, even arguments that are self-

contradictory.


DOES TERRORISM REQUIRE RELIGION?

In closing my critique on Harris’ chapter about Islam, I would like to examine his premise

that terrorism requires religion. According to the Oxford English dictionary, the first known use

of the word “terrorist” was describing the non-religious supporters of the Jacobins in the French

Revolution “who advocated repression and violence in pursuit of the principles of democracy

and equality.”254 The word comes to us from the French terroriste since the first terrorists were

a French political movement.

The second most deadly terrorist attack on American soil was the April 1995 Oklahoma

City Bombing that killed 168 people and injured more than 680 others.255 Agnostic terrorist

Timothy McVeigh needed no false belief in celestial virgins to inspire his politically motivated

attack. Contrary to Harris’ claim that someone needs incredible beliefs about what happens

after death to commit acts of terror256, McVeigh questioned whether there was any afterlife at all

and reckoned if there was then he would probably spend it in hell for his actions. In a letter he

wrote to the Buffalo News, McVeigh stated he would “improvise, adapt and overcome if it turned

out there was an afterlife.”, and “If I’m going to hell, I’m gonna have a lot of company.”257

Harris fails to notice there were no kamikaze attacks at Pearl Harbor nor does he seem

to grasp the reason why. According to U.S. Naval War College Analysis, the Japanese did not

invent the tactic until they had sustained such heavy loses that they could no longer put together

a large number of fleet carriers with well-trained aircrews.258 Also newer U.S. made planes like

the F6F Hellcat and F4U Corsair were beginning to outnumber and outclass Japan’s fighter

planes making traditional warfare increasingly difficult. 259 It was in desperation, not religious

fervor, that Japanese Vice Admiral Takijiro Onishi, declared to 201st Flying Group headquarters,

“I don’t think there would be any other certain way to carry out the operation [to hold the

Philippines], than to put a 250 kg bomb on a Zero and let it crash into a U.S. carrier in order to

disable her for a week.” Commander Tamai initially rejected the proposal but eventually decided

“there was no choice but to carry out the suicide mission.”260 The pilots who flew the missions

expected no reward in the afterlife. Rather they were motivated by extreme nationalism

believing their death would pay the debt they owed their country and show the love they had for

the families, friends, and emperor.261 This extreme nationalism was programmed into the

Japanese mindset not by imams or priests but through the nation’s school system. The Imperial

Rescript on Education in place since 1890 required students to ritually recite an oath to offer

themselves “courageously to the State” as well as to protect the Imperial family.262

This pattern of not resorting to combat tactics of self-sacrifice until the point of

desperation was repeated in Germany. It is largely unknown that Germany had its own

“kamikazes”, the Leonidas Squadron. Just like Japanese Commander Tamai, Hitler was initially

against the idea of self-sacrifice and did not see the war situation as being dire enough to

require such extreme measures. However, he eventually agreed to allow Fieseler Fi 103R

airplanes to be converted to flying bombs.263 The 2000 pound bombs added so much weight

that the aircraft could only carry enough fuel to reach its intended target. The unit was formed

too late to make a significant contribution to the war but Selbstopfereinsätze (“self-sacrifice

missions”) were carried out by Leonidas pilots April 17-20, 1945 to take out bridges over the

Oder River in a last ditch effort to stop the Soviet advance in the Battle for Berlin.

The Japanese and Germans had radically different philosophies and world views. The

common element was feelings of desperation led to drastic measures but only once all other

options seemed exhausted.

I have already sighted research indicating links between issues like poverty, foreign

policy, education, access to information and other causes of terrorism but Omar’s story puts a

human face on statistics. I met Omar May 2, 2009 at the Mohammed V International Airport in

Casablanca, Morocco. I had arrived exceptionally early for my flight. I was alone and bored

sitting in a café outside security so I struck up a conversation with one of the only people in the

terminal who had English words on his t-shirt. Omar’s story was riveting. He was an American

born Arab who had served with distinction in the US military during the Iraq War and was

involved in fierce combat in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He was a true American war hero but

since then had abandoned America and now resided in Casablanca. He was there that morning

to pick up a friend. When I queried him why he had permanently renounced America, he said

he wanted nothing to do with a country that asked him, a devout Muslim, to kill other Muslims on

the justification of securing weapons of mass destruction that were never there in the first place

but merely a figment of imagination drawn from bad military intelligence. “My government made

me kill people over imaginary weapons”, Omar told me with disgust.

According to Sam Harris, people like Omar do not exist. In Harris’ mind, no one could

hate America unless inspired to do so by the Koran. The funny thing about that is in my nearly

hour long talk with Omar were he laid out in a calm, clear, logical manner numerous complaints

he had about George W. Bush, American foreign policy, the breakdown of the American family

and his other reasons for abandoning America, at no point in the conversation did he ever make

a single reference to the Koran.

THE DANGER OF ATHEISM

What is the harm in criticizing religion? Even if we acknowledge the myriads of terrorists

throughout history who had no religious motive, it could still be argued convincing someone

celestial virgins do not await them in the afterlife if they blow themselves up on a crowded bus

can only be good thing. However, if religion is not the root cause of terrorism, then time and

effort invested in attacking religion is wasted on attacking something other than the issues

capable of fixing the problem.

Therein lies the danger of Harris’ argument. If the root problem is political, economic,

and social, which the evidence clearly seems to suggest is the case, then Harris is drawing

attention away from the issues that could actually fix the problem and causing people to refocus

on, at best, band-aide “solutions” that do not address the root causes. For example, if U.S.

foreign policy is a major contributing factor, as the Pew Research demonstratively shows,

Harris’ ideology would be cancer in Washington. Congressmen who heed the wisdom in

Fair/Shepherd’s Studies in Conflict & Terrorism may end up buying into Harris’ alternative

suggestion that even more economic isolation and military intervention is needed. There is no

reason to stop and assess the consequences of our intervention if the Koran alone is the

problem. The problem is either Fair & Shepherd are wrong or Harris is wrong and all available

evidence seems to suggest pursuing the wrong course of action will only make matters worse.

Is Harris wrong? Even his strongest supporters should be able to recognize he is, at the

very least, partially wrong. How would the elimination of religion had made any difference in the

Oklahoma City Bombing? McVeigh had no religious motive, no assistance from any religious

organization, and no psychological enablement from a skewed view of the afterlife. Religion

indisputably had no causal relationship to the actions of terrorist like McVeigh and Adam Lanza.

At best, Harris’ model that religion is the source of terrorism is significantly incomplete.

There is a clear and significant difference in the 9/11 attack and the Oklahoma City

Bombing in that Timothy McVeigh hoped to live through the bombing and not get caught

afterwards.f McVeigh hoped to pull off the bombing anonymously. The presence of security

cameras that it made reasonably sure he would be caught would have foiled his plan. On the

other hand, a few million less copies of the Koran in circulation would not have made a bit of

difference.

The problem with Harris’ argument is that it does not differentiate or even acknowledge

different kinds of terrorism. There is a significant difference in the psyche of McVeigh and the

9/11 bombers. While understanding the differences may not offer comfort to the loved ones of

the victims of April 19, 1995 and September 11, 2001, it is important if we are to have any hope

of preventing such attacks in the future. If we merely lump them together under one category of

“terrorists” and blur the distinctions as Harris does then we risk failing to understand their

motivations and thereby fail to recognize possible future deterrents.

Harris’ suggestion the problem is nothing but religion offers zero useful contribution

toward thwarting non-religious terrorism and draws attention away from real, viable solutions to

“religious” terrorism by focusing on non-root causes. For that reason the proliferation of Harris’

ideology is every bit as dangerous as anything in the Koran.

TERRORISM VS. MURDER-SUICIDE: WHICH IS THE GREATER THREAT?

If Harris merely suggested we should make all reasonable efforts to convince people 72

celestial virgins do not await them in the next life if they die taking the lives of those around

them, I would wholeheartedly agree. However, Harris goes way too far in suggesting the entire

elimination of religion, even moderate religion. He focuses exclusively on the negative impact of

one particular view of the afterlife but, in my opinion, fails to explore or even consider the

positive impact of belief in heaven and hell.

As I just mentioned, Harris nowhere differentiates forms of terrorism. McVeigh exhibited

one form – a use of violence without resorting to self-sacrifice. The 9/11 hijacks exhibited

another form of terrorism – a suicide-murder. The 9/11 perpetrator’s goal was to hurt other

people and they were willing to hurt themselves to accomplish that goal. A third form of

terrorism is a murder-suicide. In a murder-suicide, the perpetrator primarily wants to hurt

himself but he uses harm upon others to accomplish his own demise. An example is the

growing phenomenon of “suicide by cop”. Such incidents only started to appear in news

accounts from 1981 and in scientific journals since 1985264. The perpetrators want to die and

killing a police officer(s) is a means to that end. In a suicide-murder (à la 9/11) someone

commits suicide in order to murder people. In a murder-suicide (à la suicide by cop), someone

either murders others in order to affect their own death or, they deem murder to be viable

subsequently to having deciding to commit suicide because the consequences become

irrelevant to them.

As previously mentioned the word terrorism has been with us since roughly 1795 but

murder-suicide, having only appeared within the last thirty or so years, is not nearly as well

known or understood. However, it has the potential to supplant “traditional” terrorism as the

f McVeigh used the alias "Robert Kling" when he rented the Ryder Truck containing the bomb so that it could not be traced back to him. He was identified by an FBI sketch drawn from the rental company employee’s recollection of the renter’s appearance.

greatest threat to our well-being. The impact of murder-suicide is hard to understate. While

there is no national tracking system, medical studies into the phenomenon estimate it causes

between 1,000 to 1,500 deaths per year in the US alone265. By those numbers, an estimated

16,250 deaths have been caused by murder-suicide in the US since the 9/11 suicide-murder

attacks claimed 2,977 victims.

Further obscuring the nature and magnitude of the problem is the tremendous difficultly

differentiating between a murder-suicide and a murder followed by a suicide. Sergeant Rick

Parent did his Ph.D. thesis on identifying the differences in murderers who become suicidal only

when in danger of being caught and incarcerated verses perpetrators who first decide to commit

suicide then subsequently decide in light of that decision that murdering someone like an

estranged spouse suddenly begins to make sense and can even be an effective way to cause

their own death266. A widely known example of murder followed by suicide would be Brynn

Omdahl who shot her husband, famous comedian, actor and Saturday Night Live alumni Phil

Hartman, in his sleep after an argument while she was intoxicated and high on cocaine. She

left the scene, talked with a friend about the crime, and only committed suicide after she

sobered up and realized the police were coming to arrest her. By contrast, Sahel Kazemi,

mistress of NFL quarterback Steve McNair, went to his house in sound mind for the purpose of

murdering him with a preconceived plan of killing herself thereafter. After shooting him four

times in his sleep, she immediately sat down next to him and shot herself in the temple in a

manner that would cause her dead body to fall into his lap.267

In researching murder-suicide cases, Milton Rosenbaum discovered the perpetrators

were vastly different than homicide alone cases. He found murder-suicide perpetrators were

highly depressed, while other murderers were not generally depressed268. In the U.S. the

overwhelming number of cases are male-on-female269 and around one-third of partner

homicides end in the suicide of the perpetrator.

A shocking example of such male-on-female murder-suicide was the 1988 death of

American child actress Judith Barsi who appeared on shows like Cheers, Punky Brewster,

Remington Steele, Growing Pains, The Love Boat and movie Jaws: The Revenge among

numerous other appearances. Judith’s father, Jozepf Barsi, grew up in Communist Hungary

where he was indoctrinated with Stalin’s atheism under the political and economic programs of

Matyas Rakosi, who described himself as “Stalin’s best pupil”270 and saw to the dissemination of

communist ideology in schools and universities271. Jozepf fled Hungary after the 1956 Soviet

invasion, eventually settling in California where he met and married Maria Virovacz, herself a

Hungarian immigrant escaping the Soviet occupation.

By the time she entered fourth grade, their daughter, Judith, was earning an estimated

$100,000 a year while Jozepf remained an unemployed plumber. He was an abusive alcoholic

who was paranoid Maria and Judith would leave him. He made numerous threats of cutting

their throats as well as burning down the house if they did not return home after filming. After

breaking down before her agent during a singing audition for the movie All Dogs Go to Heaven,

Judith was taken to a child psychologist who reported Judith’s abuse to Child Protective

Services. The investigation was dropped after Maria assured the case worker she intended to

divorce Jozepf.

With his wife leaving him and taking the child-star that was their sole income earner,

Jozepf became despondent and decided to commit suicide. Demonstrating his premeditated

mindset, he told his brother-in-law, "If the family life is gone, then life is not worth living."272

Having decided to die himself, on July 25, 1988, he shot little Judith in the head while she was

sleeping in her room, then shot Maria. After burning the bodies, he shot himself in head.

Obviously Jozepf did not murder his daughter and wife because he was indoctrinated

with atheism under a Soviet regime. He killed them because he was depressed and somehow

blamed them for his depression. The question is what impact did Jozepf’s view of the afterlife

have in enabling his actions. 273 What difference would it make if he believed he would stand

before almighty God and give account for murdering his family? How much easier would it be to

pull the trigger on his daughter and wife, if Jozepf’s worldview made him believe there was no

justice beyond this Earth? He knew he was never going to have to answer to a human court.

No one but God could judge him.

These are the questions that Harris never addresses when he suggests that belief in an

afterlife enables people to commit atrocities. While he relentlessly hammers the idea that belief

in blessings in a life to come may motivate someone to take a life, he fails to address the closely

related problem that for depressed people who have decided to take their own life, belief in the

finality of death and no possibility of future judgment is sufficient motivation to first take the lives

of anyone they deemed responsible for bringing them to the end of their rope.

The phenomenon of murder-suicide was unheard of before the post-enlightenment

erosion of religion’s influence. The phrase “suicide by cop” for example, does not appear before

1981 and does not become common until the early 2000’s. The idea of a suicidal person first

killing those they deem responsible for their misery did not take root until church teachings on

the afterlife were challenged and people increasingly began to question that they would face

judgment in a future life.

Coming back to suicide-murder terrorism, while it seems logical that convincing some

Muslims they are not going to heaven if they sacrifice themselves to Allah in a suicide-murder

would decrease casualties, Harris argument goes much further for eliminating all religion. This

would also include eliminating potentially useful restraints on murder-suicide. Most Christians

believe suicide alone is sufficient to keep them out of heaven let alone taking someone else’s

life in the process.274 Not harming others or yourself when despondent is very clear tenant of

Christianity with heaven and hell at stake.

With 38,364 suicides every year275 verses 207 terror attacks in the U.S. in a whole

decade276, is the best resolution to terrorism, to convince tens of thousands of suicidal people

there is no future consequence for taking their revenge “on the way out”? During the period

from 2001 to 2011 that saw 207 terrorist attacks in the US, just under 384,000 Americans

committed suicide. Statistically a majority of those 384,000 had some view of God, heaven, and

hell which influenced them to exit the world quietly rather than at the yoke of an airplane cockpit

taking others with them.

In most of those suicides, religious views have a positive, restraining effect. For

example, sadly I personally knew two airline pilots who were former co-workers and friends who

have committed suicide since 9/11, one because of a failed romantic relationship, another

because of persecution from co-workers over what they perceived to be his failure in negotiating

a fair senior list integration in the recent AirTran/Southwest airlines merger. Both are great

examples of suicidal people who could easily blame and target someone(s) around them for

making them suicidal. However, in neither case did killing themselves at the yoke of their

aircraft in order to harm others ever even cross their mind and their religious beliefs were largely

to credit. The total elimination of religion Harris advocates would remove those restraints.

When I researched suicide statistics, I was amazed by the number of posts from people

who are seriously considering suicide but have stopped to ask whether doing so means they will

go to hell. It is almost impossible to quantify the positive restraining effect of religion although

the fact it has some effect seems beyond doubt. However, asking the husband who shot his

wife then himself, “Why did you do it?” is difficult for obvious reasons. Were we fortunate

enough to find a handful who unintentionally survived their suicide attempt, it would be truly

fascinating to poll them on their view of the afterlife. I feel reasonably confident such research

would expose Harris’ proposal is one of “let’s jump out of the frying pan into the fire”. It seems

at the very least possible, if not downright probable, that the erosion of religion, if it had any

effect on reducing coordinated terror attacks at all, would simultaneously lead to an increase in

isolated acts of suicidal people seeking retribution through murder-suicide.

An astute reader might say this is only a pragmatic argument. Even if belief in God

deters people from “suicide by cop” or prevents spouses from killing each other in fear of divine

justice, that does not mean heaven or hell is real. Of course, the same is true of Harris’

argument though. Harris’ argument that religious faith enables Muslims to commit atrocities is

strictly a pragmatic argument that we would be better off without Islam. It says nothing about

whether the religion is true.

WEST OF EDEN

Harris again resorts to a Begging the Question fallacy when he talks about prophecy.

When he asserts it was dangerous for Ronald Reagan to consider foreign policy decisions

through the lens of Biblical prophecy, Harris offers no meaningful evidence to disprove prophecy

except a cherry-picking argument at one of the more obscure and difficult prophecies in Isaiah

7:14 which we already discussed. He merely assumes prophecies never come true and argues

as-if his premise was true. This is another example wherein I find him merely preaching to the

atheist choir. There is not even an attempt to mount a convincing argument for anyone who

does not already agree with him.

To decide whether Harris’ premise that Biblical prophecy has no place in politics is true,

we must ask whether there is any evidence Biblical prophecy has ever come true. The

prophecies about Jesus give us a falsifiable litmus test. Have prophecies ever proved right in

the past?

Some skeptics have suggested the contention that Old Testament prophecy was fulfilled

in Jesus is nothing more than Christians twisting vague Old Testament passages to make them

apply to Jesus after the fact. However, a number of secular scholars who do not believe Jesus

was divine and/or do not believe in the supernatural at all and therefore have no confirmation

bias, have noted that first century Jews clearly understood Old Testament texts predicted a

Messiah and expected his imminent arrival.

For example, Enlightenment philosopher Herman Reimarus who was a Deist that denied

the supernatural origin of Christianity, came to the conclusion Jesus was a failed Messiah

impersonator who accidentally got himself killed.277 Charles Hennell in An Inquiry Concerning

the Origin of Christianity claims Jesus was only human, the son of a member of the Essene

religious order who used him as a pawn. They orchestrated the events that led to his

crucifixion, after which they took him down from the cross comatosed yet not dead and

resuscitated Him in order to claim Old Testament prophecy had been fulfilled. Most recently

former Catholic Priest turned skeptical New Testament scholar, Dominic Crossan, noted

member of the “Jesus Seminar” group that challenges the authenticity of roughly three-fourths

of the Gospel teachings traditionally attributed to Jesus, has written extensively about how

Messianic prophecies affected Jesus’ view of himself.278

The common theme among these and other secular scholars, none of whom believe

Jesus was divine, was that first century Jews clearly understood Old Testament passages were

prophecies of a coming Messiah. Whether Jesus tried to take that role on himself, was tricked

into it by the Essenes, or the role was projected upon him by those around him, the core that all

these non-religious scholars agree upon is the Jews had a very clear picture of who the

Messiah would be based on Old Testament prophecy.

It has further been suggested that Jesus was simply aware of Old Testament prophecy

and acted to “fulfil” them in order to claim to be the Messiah. True, of the nearly 300 prophecies

about Jesus in the Old Testament there are some he could voluntary self-fulfill such as that the

Messiah would teach in parables (Ps. 78:2) or ride into Jerusalem on a donkey (Zech. 9:9).

However this suggestion falls flat when we consider all the prophecies no one could self-fulfill

like where he would be born (Micah 5:2), who his ancestors were (Isaiah 11:1; Jeremiah 23:5),

that kings would bring him gifts while he was still an infant in a crib (Ps. 72:1) or that strangers

would gamble for his clothes while he was nailed immobile to a cross (Ps. 22:18).

Looking at only 21 of the nearly 300 Old Testament prophecies, it is readily obvious that

they are much too specific to be fulfilled by chance:

1. His family tree would be:

1) Abraham – Gen. 22:18, Gen. 12:2,3

2) Isaac – Gen. 21:12

3) Jacob – Num. 24:17

4) Judah (one of the 12 tribes of Israel) – Gen. 49:10, Mic. 5:2

5) family of Jesse (one family out of that entire tribe) – Isa. 11:1; 1:10

6) house of David (one of Jesse’s eight sons) – Jer. 23:5

2. He would be born in Bethlehem – Mic. 5:2

3. He would be presented with gifts from kings – Ps. 72:10

4. His birth would be accompanied by a mass execution of children – Jer. 31:15

5. His ministry would begin in Galilee – Isa. 9:1

6. He would perform miracles – Isa. 35:5, 6

7. He would be betrayed by a friend – Ps. 41:9

8. Thirty pieces of silver would be the price for his betrayal – Zec. 11:12

9. That same money would later be thrown onto the floor of the temple – Zec. 11:13

10. He would be forsaken by his own disciples – Zec. 13:7

11. He would be accused by false witnesses – Ps. 35:11

12. He would be struck and spit upon – Isa. 50:6

13. His hands and feet would be pierced – Zec. 12:10

14. He would be executed among thieves – Isa. 53:12

15. He would be rejected by the Jewish people – Isa. 53:3

16. People would gamble for his garments – Ps. 22:18

17. He would be offered gall and vinegar for thirst while being crucified – Ps. 69:21

18. None of his bones would be broken during his execution – Ps. 34:20

19. His side would be pierced – Zec. 12:10

20. The land would be covered in darkness at noon at his death – Amos 8:9

21. He would be buried in a rich man’s tomb – Isa. 53:9

The above list is just the tip of the iceberg. The huge number of prophecies Jesus fulfilled is a

logical, rational explanation of how Christianity spread so rapidly because the objection to the

improbability of the resurrection was countered with the argument it was miraculously foretold.

Of course, the New Atheists maintains no explanation was required for the rapid spread of

Christianity. They simply assert everyone in first century Palestine was credulous boobs all too

willing to gullibly believe stories of miracles and resurrections. Jesus’ resurrection did not need

to be foretold to make it plausible. The first century Palestinian simpletons would simply believe

anything. However, as we saw in depth in chapter two, this position is simply not historically

tenable. Miracle accounts were met with exactly the kind of skepticism we would expect to hear

in 21st century America such as Celsus dismissing them as magic tricks.279

Starting with his first sermon, Peter claimed the events transpiring were fulfilment of

specific Old Testament prophecies. His sermons are full of statements such as “What you see

was predicted long ago by the prophet Joel…” (Acts 2:16 NLT), “King David said this about

Jesus…” (Acts 2:25 NLT), and “this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the

prophets…” (Acts 3:18 NIV). The prophecies are such common knowledge that Peter can

merely presume his audience is familiar with them and see how they were fulfilled in Jesus.

That the disciples and first Christians clearly saw that Jesus had fulfilled prophecy is

highlighted by how Paul explained Christianity to Gentile audiences verses to Jewish ones.

When Paul was in a non-Jewish area like Athens were the audience would not be familiar with

Old Testament prophecies, Paul used illustrations drawn from their culture. In Athens, for

example, Paul refers to an altar the citizens had made for an “unknown god” and suggests

Jesus could be that unknown god (Acts 17).

However, any time Paul speaks with a Jewish audience, he immediately brings up the

link with Old Testament prophecy. Why? In Paul’s assessment, the connection is so obvious

that it is the best way to convince his Jewish audience Jesus was in fact the expected Messiah.

In Thessalonica, for example, “as was Paul’s custom, he went to the synagogue service, and for

three Sabbaths in a row he used the [Old Testament] scripture to reason with the people. He

explained the prophecies and proved that the Messiah must suffer and rise from the dead. He

said, ‘This Jesus I’m telling you about is the Messiah.’” (Acts 17: 2-3 NLT) Paul believed if

people looked at the link between Old Testament prophecy and Jesus, they would recognize

Jesus did in fact fulfill Old Testament prophecy. Paul was right, tens of thousands of people

could see the link.

When I seriously investigated non-supernatural explanations of how Jesus could fulfill so

many prophecies such as the theory prophecy was simply vague enough that someone was

bound to fulfill it, none of these explanations seem to stand up to careful scrutiny. The

possibility they were fulfilled because they were supernaturally directed seems the most

probable explanation unless someone holds an a priori assumption of materialism which rules of

the supernatural. However, to simply reject them based on preconceived notions is hardly

honest inquiry.

It goes without saying that if hundreds of prophecies were already fulfilled in the past,

that it was not, as Harris suggests, dangerous for Reagan to consider them in regards to foreign

policy regarding the Middle East. I have laid out a detailed argument why prophecies appear to

have been fulfilled. Harris offers no evidence whatsoever to the contrary.


THE ETERNAL LEGISLATOR

Harris’ suggestion that criminals’ actions come from bad genes, bad parents, or bad luck

sounds like an echo of Bertrand Russell, “A man who is suffering from plague has to be

imprisoned until he is cured, although nobody thinks him wicked. The same thing should be

done with a man who suffers from a propensity to commit forgery; but there should be no more

idea of guilt in the one case than in the other.”280 I have already addressed this in the chapter

on Russell’s book so I will simply refer back to that. In short though, this logic, to me, defies

common sense. I simply cannot believe someone who steals a little old lady’s life savings and

leaves her destitute by forging her signature is no morally different than someone who has

caught the flu. It seems to me that humans are free moral agents. A worldview that can explain

this phenomenon is to be favored. A worldview that denies that reality is suspicious.


THE WAR ON SIN

THE GOD OF MEDICINCE

It is not readily clear how or why Harris thinks religion is responsible for anti-drug laws

since drugs are not mentioned anywhere in the Bible. Reading several of the top search results

for “What does the Bible say about drugs”, the most often cited verse is 1 Corinthians 6:19

which talks about our bodies being temples of the Holy Spirit and therefore we should do

nothing that harms ourselves. However, this comes down to nothing more than the perception

whether drugs are addictive and harmful or not which is the same basis as Harris’ argument.

I disagree that drugs are as harmless as Harris claims. The mission of the federal-

government research organization, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), is to “lead the

nation in bringing the power of science to bear on drug abuse and addition.”281 Dr. Alan

Leshner, NIDA Director, has publically stated “known drug-abuse related health problems and

resulting lost productivity alone cost our society more than $33 billion each year” and “NIDA

research has shown that almost every drug of abuse harms some tissue or organ.”282 That is a

medical opinion, not a religious one.

Different readers will have different opinions. It should be noted, however, that my

concern is exactly the same as Harris, namely whether drugs do or do not hurt people. I use

precisely the same process as Harris to arrive at my own opinion on legalizing drugs. Ergo, I

am baffled how he sees religion is problematic on the issue.

On all of these issues -- drugs, stem cell research, sexuality, sex education, etc. -- Harris

is yet again making a Begging the Question argument were he merely assumes his premise and

argues as-if he has proved it. He assumes there is no God therefore he questions any laws or

policies based on that worldview but he does not even attempt to prove his premise that there is

no God. Instead, he only argues that the idea of God results in a lot of bad results such as laws

against marijuana.

Logically, this argument is as fallacious as stating, “My father is a terrible man, therefore

my father does not exist.” If the results of believing in God were as bad as Harris portrays them,

that does not mean God does not exist anymore than acknowledging my father’s flaws would

negate his existence. Just because God does not conform to all the attributes Harris might

desire of him, it is non sequitur to claim he therefore does not exist.

The Bible actually says nothing about oral sex. It turns out God is not quite the cosmic

buzz kill Harris alleges. But supposing God was a Debbie-downer on fellatio, hypothetically, if

God did have some bizarre hang up with oral sex, would that make the slightest bearing on

whether God exists? Of course not. My father would not cease to exist simply because he

though oral sex was disgusting.

Yet again I find Harris’ argument spurious. God either does or does not exist. If God’s

fingerprints are discernable anywhere in the universe, cosmology, design, morality, the origin of

life and history are areas one would look at to make a rational decision on the matter. What

person of sound mind having made a conclusion based on that evidence would throw the issue

back into question upon learning there was a verse in the Bible that forbid oral sex (if there were

such a verse)? How does God’s opinion on oral sex have one iota of bearing on whether or not

he exists?


A SCIENCE OF GOOD AND EVIL

Harris makes the traditional atheist assertion that we can observe morality practiced

even in nature, noting that monkeys will undergo extraordinary privations to avoid causing harm

to another member of their species. However, he refutes himself later in the chapter by pointing

out orangutans, along with dolphins, chimpanzees, and other animals, practice rape.283 He

stops short of mentioning gorillas violently driving off other males of their own species and

practicing infanticide against children of other males. He is making a moral truth claim allegedly

supported by nature, in this case that undergoing hardship for one’s species is morally superior

to forced copulation and infanticide. However, the claim that the former is good while the latter

is bad is obviously based on more than observation of nature because it fails to address why he

deems the behavior of monkeys morally superior to gorillas. The underlying question still

remains why is altruism (which incidentally happens to be found among monkeys) morally

superior to rape (which incidentally happens to found among orangutans). Ergo he is still

appealing to a standard outside of nature; the spurious field trip with monkeys adds nothing.

Far from being insurmountable, the problem of theodicy is actually a bigger challenge

within the atheist worldview than it is for theists. Why does Harris believe there is evil for which

God must give account? In the atheist worldview, according to Dawkins, “The universe we

observe has…no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless, indifference.”284 To

raise an objection about evil presupposes the existence of the very God one faults for not

addressing it. The argument requires someone to sit in God’s lap to slap his face. I refer back

to the discussion in Russell’s chapter near page Error! Bookmark not defined..


MORAL COMMUNITIES

Anytime truth meets falsehood people are invariably divided into factions that accept or

reject it. For example, the decline of alchemy yielding to the influence of chemistry was not a

clean transition. Although modern science began emphasized quantitative experimentation as

early as the 17th century, alchemy still flourished for some two hundred years. As late as 1781,

James Price claimed to have produced a powder that could transmute mercury into silver or

gold.285 During those two hundred years, science was divided into communities that agreed and

disagreed with alchemy. The division did not mean science had failed; it simply meant one

group was wrong.

However, when we see division in religion, Harris immediately jumps to the conclusion

religion is therefore dysfunctional and must be eliminated. This startling oversimplification

completely ignores the possibility that division is precisely what we should expect if one or more

groups offer contrarian models that are incorrect. The presence of bad religion does not

invalidate all religion any more than the presence of bad science invalidates all science.

Regarding Harris’ statement that people are inherently indifferent when groups who

“can’t see the unique wisdom and sanctity of my religion” are mistreated, this is patently false.

Contrary to Harris claim religion creates more groups, Christianity actually unites diverse moral

communities in solidarity. Christianity teaches divergent and often hostile groups like Gentiles

and Jews, slaves and freemen, men and women, poor and rich are all equals under Christ (Gal.

3:28; Col. 3:11).

Two separate and sometimes hostile moral communities are the wealthy and poor.

Social issues like wealth inequality caused the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011-2012

were protest posters like “We are the 99%” emphasized the social division between the wealthy

and the poor in America. Christianity tackles such divisive social issues head-on. Counter-

culturally, James told Christians not to show special preference for the wealthy (James 2:2-4),

people who followed Jesus gave half their possession to the poor and paid back ill-gotten gains

four times over (Luke 19:8) and there were no needy person in the church because the

believers voluntarily pooled their possession (Acts 4:32-35).

Those who choose not to participate in the unification of Christianity are still subject to

good will. Christians are called upon to not judge people outside the church (1 Cor. 5:12); be

hard workers and therefore not needing to depend on others so that Christians will be respected

(1 Thes. 5:11-12), and church leaders are required not only to have a good reputation with the

faith community but with outsiders as well (1 Tim. 3:7).

One example among dozens which refute Harris’ claim that religious communities care

not only for their own but also for those who “can’t see the unique wisdom” of their religion is

World Vision International. World Vision is an evangelical Christian humanitarian aid

organization, one of the largest relief and development organizations in the world with a budget

approaching $3 billion dollars. Its programs and services are provided without regard to race,

ethnic origin, gender or religion.286 In terms of budget, services, and international reach, World

Vision closely resembles the American Red Cross287 which the American Atheists endorse for

disaster relief on their website.288 It seems the “flaw” of World Vision is simply being Christian.

Billions of dollars donated predominantly by Christians going toward emergency relief,

education, health care, economic development and social justice to people of other faiths or no

faith show the absurdity of Harris’ suggestion of indifference to the suffering of other groups.

Even Islam which Harris criticizes most severally has demonstrated its ability to care for

other moral communities. In November 2012, I walked through the facilities of Suleymaniye

Mosque formerly used as a hospital, soup kitchen, and school. During Istanbul’s tougher

economic times, the mosque fed over 1,000 of the city’s poor everyday with no distinction

between Muslims, Christians, and Jews.289

Harris narrative that faith leads to indifference to suffering of other moral communities is

patently absurd.


THE DEMON OF RELATIVISM

I agree 100%. Harris is in a very small minority of atheist who get this. Well put Sam.


INTUITION, ETHICS, SELF-INTEREST, HAPPINES AND OTHER TOPICS

For starters, I find it borderline comical that the example Harris chooses to demonstrate

the efficacy of his moral system is its sufficiency to condemn “honor” killings. Measuring your

ethical system by the standard of Sharia law is like someone bragging that they can bench

press more than their grandmother. Does anyone serious believe grandma is the best

representative of the religion’s heaving lifting capacity for explaining ethics? Caricaturing Sharia

law as the best ethics religion has to offer is yet another example of how the New Atheists like

Harris revel in representing the fringe as the center and the extreme as the norm. Even in Islam

itself there is widespread denunciation. According to a report by the Pew Forum on Religion

and Public Life based on 38,000 face-to-face interviews, less than half of Muslims wanted

Sharia law in 13 of the 38 Middle-East, African and Asian countries surveyed,290 a fact which

becomes even more remarkable when taking into account Muslims in moderate countries like

America, England, France, and Brazil were not surveyed. Of course, no Christian, no Jew, no

Buddhist, Hindu or any other religion advocates such ethics. Harris takes a religion that

accounts for less than one in four religious people291 then takes the worst-of-their-worst beliefs

which is widely condemned even within their religion, and uses that as his “proof”. This is a

perfect example of the Texas Sharpshooter logical fallacy – ignoring large blocks of data while

stressing only certain data which supports your conclusion. The name comes from a joke about

a Texan who fires some shots at the side of a barn, then paints a target centered on the biggest

cluster of hits and claims to be a sharpshooter. Harris has not demonstrated a superior ethical

system any more than the Texan has hit a bull’s-eye.

If Harris want to demonstrate the preeminence of his ethical system, why not tackle what

it says about a fellow who volunteers at the homeless shelter but only because he seeks to

impress the female volunteers so he can sleep with them, not because of any compassion for

the homeless or weigh in on whether it was ethical of German Luther pastor Dietrich

Bonhoeffer’s to attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler.292 I was decidedly underwhelmed that

Harris has arrived at a god-less ethical system sufficient to condemn killing girls who have been

raped. I too condemn such acts. Yet again, Harris offered me nothing but more preaching to

the atheist choir.

When attempting to assess whether I was being open-minded to Harris’ argument, I

could not help but notice that his model is not only criticized by theists but also conflicts with

atheist thinkers like Nietzsche and Russell. As we saw in chapter three, Nietzsche believed the

rational implication of Darwinism is that man is merely the highest form of beast so hunger and

sexual lust better explain his actions than seeking the furthermost of human flourishing. 293 He

felt evil, tyranny, and terrible things do as much to strengthen men294 as actions of extravagant

generosity. 295 You could say he advocated the slogan “No Pain. No Gain.” long before it

became a catchphrase on Nike© merchandize. He did not see all men as equals but rather felt

subservience was the natural condition of the vast majority of humanity. 296 In fact, he felt it

actually a necessity to have some enemies297 as this prevents us from carrying out our baser

instincts upon our own herd. 298 Russell agreed with Nietzsche that evolution has made it such

that we cannot make claims on behalf of men that are any different than those which are made

of animals and that man is merely a part of nature. 299

Nietzsche thought the way people like Harris view the nature of mankind was

fundamentally flawed. He would argue Harris’ view is naïve and destined to fail due to man’s

nature. On the other hand, while Russell shared Nietzsche’s view that evil is illusionary, he did

advocated a view similar to Harris that we should live a life “inspired by love”. Unlike Harris

though, he was abundantly clear this morality was not absolute, could not be proved “right”, and

was merely his personal opinion.300 He would not, as Harris does, pretend it was anything more

than that. Both Nietzsche and Russell believed the prevailing atheist idea that morality is

nothing more than herd instinct. 301 The bottom line being these two atheists among others who

are exempt from confirmation bias or motivated reasoning would challenge Harris’ premise. It is

not merely Christian apologists who see major flaws in Harris’ argument.

I agree with Russell that Harris’ suggestion of seeking the maximum of human

flourishing is a personal opinion, not the absolute Harris strenuously claims. As an opinion, I do

not find it completely without merit (as Nietzsche would) but do find Harris’ definition of love is

inadequately defined compared, for example, to what Dr. Leo Buscaglia writes on the subject.

While teaching at USC, Dr. Leo Buscaglia was moved by a student’s suicide to

contemplate human disconnectedness and, on the basis of those reflections, began a class at

USC he called Love 1A. His first book was simply titled LOVE. Other books that followed

included Loving Each Other, Because I Am Human and Born for Love. All of his titles were Best

Sellers; five were once on the New York Times Best Sellers List simultaneously.302 Suffice it to

say the man knew a thing or two about love. Perhaps Buscaglia’s most famous quote is, “I feel

very strongly that the opposite of love is not hate -- it's apathy. It's not giving a damn. If

somebody hates me, they must "feel" something ... or they couldn't possibly hate.”303

Harris’ aphorism “love is more conducive to happiness, both to our own and that of

others, than hate”304 sounds great but ultimately presents a false dichotomy between love and

hate because no one is seriously advocating building an ethical system built on hate, except

perhaps Star Trek sci-fi junkies who are overly fixated on mythical Klingon culture. The Muslim

who spends his day assembling improvised explosive devices in a clandestine Iraq warehouse

still tucks his daughter in at night and reads her a bedtime story. Even Nietzsche who wrote

about man’s animal instincts never advocated actively trying to harm people; he merely

accepted suffering as part of life and was thus ambivalent to eradicating it. What Harris needs

to address is the problem of love verses apathy. In saying love is better than hate; he says

nothing that is not common knowledge.

In the real world, true love – the elevation of a loved one’s well-being above our own

selfishness – often involves sacrifice. Every memorial day we celebrate the sacrifice of people

who loved their families, their country, and freedom enough to sacrifice their lives in battle

protecting those things we hold most dead. Furthermore, pretty much any parent can attest

they were unaware just how selfish they were until they had children and someone else’s needs

had to come first. Even Harris acknowledges “love entails the loss, at least to some degree, our

utter self-absorption.”305 Given that love is sacrifice, even by Harris’ own admission, the

question left unanswered by Harris’ proposal is who I have a duty to love? A parent will work a

second job if necessary to make sure their child does not go to bed hungry but what is their

obligation to a starving child in Africa who has not eaten in days? That parent does not hate the

poor, starving African child; they can genuinely love all children. However, when it comes down

to demonstrating love, do they have a moral obligation to work overtime if necessary to send a

donation to World Vision or the Red Cross to feed a starving child? Harris says, “The happiness

and suffering of others must matter to us.”,306 but that is only the tip of iceberg since there is a

wide chasm between intellectual ascent and physical action.

Harris seems to be suggesting “Starbucks© ethics” – ideas that work better in an

intellectual discussion over coffee than in the real world. In the real world, the happiness of one

group frequently comes at the expense of another. The United States accounts for only 5% of

the world population307 yet has roughly 1/3 of the wealth on the planet.308 According to BBC

news, the average wage in the United States (and the UK) is $37,000 a year or $154 per

working day. Meanwhile, more than a third of the world’s population lives on less than $2 a

day.309 Clearly redistributing the wealth would have a tremendous impact on global happiness

and suffering.

What would that look like? I live in an average American suburb. We paid just under the

Orlando median home price for our house. On our average street, two doors down, David has

two classic cars that he races in vintage road rallies. Doug, next door, has a Harley. John

across the street has a car for each person in his family including his two teenagers and Mike

has a small but impressive ski boat. What would it realistically take to end child labor in

Tajikistan or provide electricity and running water to millions in Cambodia where people have a

life expectancy of 44 years?310 A 20% increase in the US tax rate earmarked exclusive for

foreign aid to end world poverty, hunger, and illiteracy would raise about 3 trillion dollars

annually.311 That would create a lot of happiness in the form of freeing children from forced

child labor to get an education, providing households with basic human needs like electricity and

running water, and preventing millions of children from going to bed hungry. Like most

expressions of profound love, it would not be without “sacrifice”. With 20% higher taxes David

probably could not afford two vintage MG sports cars. He might have to sell them for a Mazda

Miata and use his daily drive for weekend SCCA© racing. John’s teenagers might have to share

one car, Mike may only be able to afford a jet ski for his watersports and Doug, gasp, might

have to sell the Harley. However, could anyone realistically claim such relatively small

sacrifices from Americans would not do disproportionally more good toward maximizing the

overall well-being of sentient creatures?

What would maximize overall human well-being is quite easy to visualize. The claim I

should implement such a plan is a whole other thing. It is one thing to say we should

conceptually care about human well-beings (one would have to be diabolical to disagree) but

the claim we have a moral duty to act upon it at the expense of self-sacrifice is something else

entirely. Harris’ model fails to make this distinction nor does he acknowledge he can justify the

former but not the latter. For example, at the individual level, Harris’ model might adequately

convince someone that providing a starving child three meals a day would go further toward

maximizing overall human well-being than getting a second big screen TV for their home.

However, that does not supply sufficient explanation why they have any moral obligation to

therefore send that $1000 to the Red Cross instead, even if they do not feel like it. Saying an

act would maximize human flourishing is completely different than the claim I should therefore

do it. Harris can only claim sacrificial giving will lead to more personal satisfaction than self-

centeredness but he cannot claim people who disagree with him are “wrong” by any objective

standard.

It seems to me this is where Harris’ suggestion breaks down. His model simply cannot

bridge the gap between would and should. The gap is substantial because it is the juncture

where Harris quietly and subtly shifts from a utilitarian argument to a deontological one. When

Harris says, “whatever a person’s current level of happiness is, his condition will be generally

improved by his becoming yet more loving and compassionate.”,312 that is a strictly utilitarian

argument that the outcome of love and compassion is happiness, therefore people should be

loving and compassionate. It is an argument backwards from the end result. What about those

people who do not experience that end result though? What then does Harris’ system have to

offer those who have found the cost of that love and compassion does not bring them a

proportional measure of happiness? What happens when Doug decides owning a Harley

makes him happier than the knowledge a boy has escaped child labor in Tajikistan or Mike

decides his ski boat brings him more satisfaction than knowing someone in Cambodia now has

running water?

Harris claims to be offering an absolute moral basis that is independent of cultural

norms, but in the end Harris’ atheism offers no basis to say Doug and Mike should be more

concerned about the maximum of human well-being even if it means personal sacrifice. Should

is a deontological proposition which takes over where Harris’ utilitarian argument fails at the

point where Doug and Mike do not experience the “generally improved” happiness Harris

promises those who subscribe to his system. “Should” and “ought” statements require someone

to whom we owe such obligation which Harris cannot supply.

Harris claims that ethics “simply is a certain way, independent of our thoughts”,313 which

is a maxim he arrived at by “intuition” but this turns out to only be a fancy way of saying “in his

opinion”. If Americans believe ethics are more about the happiness and well-being of their

family, friends and possibly country than it is about maximizing the overall well-being of

humanity as a whole (as indeed millions of Americans do), Harris might say those people are

“selfish” but he cannot say they are “wrong”. After all, in Darwinism the selfish-gene is the one

that reproduces and metaphorically lives on.

On the subject of pacifism, I agree with Harris that we cannot afford to be pacifist.

Where I rightly take Harris to task is his continuous, gross distortion of facts when he says

things like “millions of Muslims” would like to see us live “life under the Taliban”.314 Whether it

malicious deceit or gross negligence in fact checking, I simply cannot understand how someone

can be so far off the truth or, for that matter, what publisher would allow such lies to go to print.

The actual number of Taliban members, depending on which source you pick ranging from The

London Times quoting UK Major General Richard Barrons (36,000)315, the McClatchy group of

40 non-partisan journalist who are a Washing DC watchdog group (11,000)316, or US

government figures (45,000)317, is less than 50,000 insurgents. Harris’ is patently and absurdly

misleading to speak of “millions of Muslims” wanting us to live under the Taliban. I gave him the

benefit of the doubt, even checking to see if he misspoke and meant al-Qaeda. It turns out they

are several magnitudes smaller with as few as 2,500 fighters in Iraq according to USA Today318

up to a maximum of 20,000 fighters in Syria according to al-Qaeda leader Abu Mohammed al-

Joulani speaking to Aljazeera.319

Harrison sells a Hollywood-ised fictional view of Islam like the movie Lone Survivor

where hordes of Taliban overrun peaceful Muslim villages when the reality is the small Taliban

minority did not dare attack the peaceful Pashtun Muslim majority. I would highly recommend

hearing the true account in Mohammad Gulab’s own words from his 60 Minutes interview with

Anderson Cooper.g It puts a real face on an average Afghan Muslim villager verses Harris’

fictionalized caricature.

As I write this, the al-Qaeda breakoff group ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) are

poised to invade Baghdad. According to Harris this is the face of Islam. Harris seems to

overlook that even al-Qaeda itself has denounced ISIS320 and that the nearly 4 million peaceful

Muslim residents of Baghdad have requested United States assistance to eliminate ISIS which

g http://www.historyvshollywood.com/video/marcus-luttrell-60-minutes-interview/

only numbers in the thousands.321 Harris is right there are “millions of Muslims” involved, he

merely inverts reality. In reality there are millions of Muslims who oppose the thousands of

extremists in groups like ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban. The truth is the exact opposite of how

Harris portrays it. If it takes this kind of deceit for Harris to make his point, his point must be

inherently flawed.


EXPERIMENTS IN CONSCIOUSNESS

Of all the best surprise endings of any book I have read, the most shocking revelation of

all may well be finding out Sam Harris, one of the Four Horsemen of the Atheist Apocalypse, is

actually a Buddhist hiding in atheist clothes. Of course, Harris himself denies it. On his website

SamHarris.org he states, “While I consider Buddhism to be almost unique among the world’s

religions as a repository of contemplative wisdom, I do not consider myself a Buddhist.” He

claims his criticism of Buddhism has been published in the article “Killing the Buddha”.

However, the article is actually not at all critical of Buddhism. It speaks of Buddhism

uncovering “genuine truths about the mind and the phenomenal world – truths like emptiness,

selflessness, and impermanence”.322 The only criticism Harris offers is against the claim these

truths are exclusive to Buddhism. In the editors of the Shambhala Sun Buddhist magazine

summary of his article, they say Harris “criticism” amounts to the claim that Buddhist “practices

would benefit more people if they were not presented as a religion.”323 It appears Harris

ascribes to a Buddhist worldview lock, stock, and barrel. He is only not a Buddhist in the sense

he claims “Buddhism is not a religion”. In other words, Harris is not a Buddhist as much as I am

not a Christian if I claim, “I believe in Jesus, the resurrection, and the Bible but I am not a

Christian because I do not believe Christianity is a religion.” Harris’ claim makes as much sense

to me as someone claiming they are a capitalist who believes the government should own all

businesses and control production and distribution for the good of the community as a whole. If

you believe all the tenants of socialism, you are a socialist, regardless of how you want to

rebrand it. If someone believes all the tenants of Buddhism, they are a Buddhist. Ultimately,

the reader must decide for them self whether to believe Harris’ advocacy of Buddhist ideology or

his verbal denial of Buddhism, in other words decide based upon his words or his actions

because they are self-contradictory.

Eckhart Tolle immediately comes to mind. The multiple New York Times best-selling

author was listed by the Watkins Review as the most spiritually influential person in the world,

ranking him more influential than the Dalai Lama.324 In his best seller, The Power of Now,

despite quoting Buddhist sayings325, conversations with a Buddhist monk326 and Buddhist

texts,327 Tolle claims to be a “teacher who is not aligned with any particular religion or

tradition.”328 However, what he calls “the now” very suspiciously parallels the Buddhist doctrine

of “nirvana” in more or less the fashion of someone who starts a religion based on a man who

died by crucifixion in first century Palestine and is reported to have risen from the dead but his

name was not Jesus and the religion is not Christianity. Wink wink. Tolle has good reason to

hijack Buddhist ideology while simultaneously distancing himself from Buddhism by substituting

his own terms because this makes him the sole authority on the spirituality he peddles instead

of just one Buddhist voice among thousands. No wonder he topped the Oprah Winfrey book

club’s best sellers of the past decade with 3.4 million copies sold of just one of his books.329

Harris similarly offers a “de-branded” Buddhism with a bit more intellectual lagniappe.

The notion Harris is a bonafide atheist comes into question when we compare his claims side-

by-side with Tolle’s writing. Whether Tolle actually is or is not a closet Buddhist is open to

interpretation. That Tolle is not an atheist is without doubt. See if you can tell which of these

statements came from the atheist and which came from the Buddhist/spiritualist:

We spend our lives telling ourselves the story of past and future, while the reality

of the present goes largely unexplored.

The more you focus on time – past and future – the more you miss…the most

precious thing there is.

Negative social emotions such as hatred, envy, and spite both proceed from and

ramify our dualistic perception of the world.

You need to go on to the next step, where those negative emotions are not

created anymore.

Meditation is less a matter of suppressing thoughts than of breaking our

identification with them.

There are many ways to create a gap in the incessant stream of thought. This is

what meditation is all about.

Break the spell of thought, and the duality of subject and object will vanish.

In being, subject and object merge into one.

Personal transformation, or indeed liberation from the illusion of the self, seems

to have been thought too much to ask.

Free from the illusion that you are nothing more than your physical body and your

mind. This illusion of the self…is the core error.

The place of consciousness in the natural world is very much an open question.

Consciousness seems to be subject to a process of development, but this is due

to our limited perception.

Sights, sounds, sensations, thoughts, moods, etc. – whatever they are at the

level of the brain, are merely expressions of consciousness at the level of our

experience.

Plants, animals, humans – all are expressions of consciousness in varying

degrees, consciousness manifesting as form.

Every human being experiences the duality of subject and object in some

measure, and most of us feel it powerfully nearly every moment of our lives.

This deeper reality can be felt every moment as the invisible inner body.

The majority of readers will not be able to tell which statements came from the (supposed)

atheist and which from the (Buddhist?) spiritualist author. I dare say even if I told you every

other statement came from Harris, it would still be quite difficult to determine which is the

“atheist” position.

More than any other atheist, Harris demonstrates the viability of spiritual beliefs. He

says mysticism can be objective because the experiences can be dialogued about “just as

athletes can communicate effectively about the pleasures of sport.”330 However, if

communicating about experiencing oneness with the universe through meditation makes it

objective because the experiences are similar then it is completely non sequitur for Harris to

assert millions of Christians who have had similar experiences while praying to a personal God

which they dialogue about afterwards is not equivalent objective “proof” of that reality.

Harris quotes Padmasambhava, known as the “Second Buddha”, in a passage

describing “pure observing” despite the fact there is not “anyone being there who is the

observer” and claiming awareness is not “a single entity” while simultaneously not being “a

multiplicity of things”, and insists this self-contradictory Mumbo Jumbo “is a rigorously empirical

document”.331 If that qualifies as empirical statement then surely the statement, “In the

beginning God created the heavens” (Gen 1:1) is at least every bit empirical (if not much more

so) in that it corresponds much closer with what cosmology tells about the creation of the

universe than observer-less observers and things that are neither singular nor plural.

Most importantly, one of the Four Horsemen of the Atheist Apocalypse candidly

admitting “the truth is that we simply do not know what happens after death” and “the idea that

brains produce consciousness is little more than an article of faith among scientist at present,

and there are reasons to believe the methods of science will be insufficient to either prove or

disprove it.",332 would seem to indicate the subject is far more open than hardcore atheists like

Richard Dawkins or Peter Boghossian would allow.

Of course, Dawkins and Boghossian will merely say Harris is wrong. They would, of

course, claim annihilation of consciousness after death is a foregone conclusion. However, this

does not negate the fact that a very critical, evolution believing, Ph.D. credentialed, atheist

scientist who shares almost every other belief about the universe, evolution, God, Satan,

heaven, hell, miracles, and other spiritual subjects they hold is open to conscious existence

after death and spiritually transcendent experiences. Moreover, he arrived at the beliefs not on

basis of even a scrap of scripture but upon logic and reason. It would seem spiritual beliefs

cannot be as inherently irrational as the hardcore New Atheist allege when an atheist scientist of

Harris’ notoriety believes at least some of them are true.

Summary

One fascinating aspect about Harris that makes him unique among the New Atheists

is his frequent references to his own spirituality both in this book and in debates. Says

Harris, “There is clearly a sacred dimension to our existence, and coming to terms with it

could well be the highest purpose of human life.”333 He goes on, “We cannot live by reason

alone.”, and “It is time we realized that we need not be unreasonable to suffuse our lives

with love, compassion, ecstasy, and awe; nor must we renounce all forms of spirituality or

mysticism to be on good terms with reason.”334 I find his spirituality both fascinating and

perplexing that he could be so open to spiritual experiences yet not a Christian but he says,

“it [the sacred dimension] requires no faith in untestable propositions—Jesus was born of a

virgin”.335

The main issue I have with Harris’ writing is, like Dawkins, he comes across as

preaching to the atheist choir to sell books rather than engaging in sincere dialogue. While

Harris’ assertions that we should not form our beliefs on the authority of the Pope might

inspire his atheist fan base, the vast majority of Christians who already think that are left

asking, “And?....” because Harris has not said anything meaningful to those who are not

already on his bandwagon. I do not expect this book would convince many atheists to

reconsider their worldview but I believe that at the very least I have done a decent job

explaining why nothing being written on the atheist side carries any traction with believers

or even agnostics.

Unlike Richard Dawkins who is willing to tackle Theists’ biggest challenges such as

Thomas Aquinas’ proofs, irreducible complexity, the moral argument, and dualism vs.

monism, Harris is not even willing to defend his own position. For example, he raises the

significant mind-body problem as a subordinate clause in a sentence about another topic

and does not even attempt to offer a solution to this serious problem for materialists.

Atheists who are not open-minded enough to read Theists’ books such as Frank Turek’s I

Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist would not be aware of atheism’s major obstacles

unless they deduce them by their own contemplation since Harris is not forthcoming about

atheism’s weak links.

Harris is solely on the offensive but his attacks miss their mark. One example is his

assertion that moderation in religion is worse than no religion at all. I simply find it

incredibly naïve for him to even suggest that a white, atheist professor living in a

comfortable American suburb is in a better position to influence a Muslim extremist living

in a cave outside Kandahar than his own flesh and blood relatives living nearby who

believe the same Koran but see no sanction within it for violence. While there is no

tangible evidence that Harris criticism of Islam has produced any positive change in the

Middle East, it has created at least enough additional hostility that Harris now travels with

body guards.336 Not that we should ever back down to bullying but rather we should

evaluate any approach be it attacking Islam with words, Muslims with drones, or seeking

peace through moderation based on its results, and the results of Harris’ approach appear

to merely be more hostility. In this sense, Harris could learn from Bertrand Russell who

observed that condemning sex merely makes people all the more interested in it. 337

I sternly take Harris to task for advocating killing people due to their beliefs. I find

the suggestion of executing people solely based on their thoughts on par with the actions of

the Catholic Inquisitors of whom he is so critical. In Harris’ own words, “To my knowledge,

the man [Ayman al-Zawahiri] hasn’t killed anyone personally”, however Harris advocates it

would be ethical to drop a bomb on him because, “he is likely to get a lot of innocent people

killed because of what he and his followers believe about jihad, martyrdom, the ascendency

of Islam, etc.”338 Harris is willing to deem someone guilty and worthy of death based on

thoughtcrime. Think about it. Despite admitting knowing of no actual crime the man has

committed, Harris deems him worthy of death because of what he thinks about God.

Personally, I find the USA justified in bombing Ayman al-Zawahiri as a pre-emptive

measure if credible evidence demonstrates he is planning an attack to kill US citizens en

masse. However, this is justified only on the basis of the man’s actions and only when

preventing them are impossible through capture. The exact same justification warrants the

arrest of the Polish scientist who planned to detonate a four-ton car bomb outside Poland’s

parliament while the president and prime minister were inside, or, if his plot was not

discovered until he was en route to the Parliament building with the car bomb, shooting

him on a sparsely populated road before he could transport the bomb into a more crowded

area of Krakow.339 The justification for capturing and/or killing him is not that he was a

scientist or what he thought about God or science but rather his actions attempting to harm

people.

This would be the first issue I would press Harris to clarify in a debate because if he

is merely claiming al-Zawahiri’s execution is warranted due to crimes against humanity,

then Harris’ argument for religious intolerance is just a house of cards if we are only talking

about justice for crime regardless who commits it, be it a Muslim extremist or a Polish

scientist. In that case, Harris says nothing different than any theist by suggesting people

who plot to kill other people should be thwarted whenever possible. However, if he is truly

advocating the legitimacy of killing al-Zawahiri because of, in Harris’ own words, “what he

and his followers believe” then Harris is advocating the very thoughtcrime justification of

20th century totalitarian regimes such as Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, and Cambodia

under the Khmer Rouge for executing and imprisoning millions of citizens. It also goes

without saying, if Harris does hold belief alone is sufficient grounds to kill someone, then

Harris is every bit as culpable as the Catholic Inquisitor he denounces at length.

Harris truly had a good chance of winning me over to his way of thinking in chapter

four, “The Problem with Islam” because I agree Islam does have significant problems. For

example, compared to Christianity, the Koran proceeds the wrong way. By this I mean, the

difficult passages of the Old Testament chronologically precede the peaceful New

Testament. The Old Testament predicted its own replacement (Jer. 31:33) and the New

Testament identifies itself as that replacement (Heb. 10:16). Jesus himself acknowledged

the Old Testament was less than ideal because God was accommodating Israel’s primitive

morality (Matt. 19:8) and set the bar at Israel being morally better than their Ancient Near

East neighbors. Thus there is no inconsistency with saying that beating criminals with up

to 40 lashes (Deut. 15:1-3) is not good by modern standards but was a radical

improvement over Egyptian law that required 100 lashes minimum for crimes as petty as

perjury and libel.340 While hard core atheists may be reluctant to acknowledge the Mosaic

Law was an improvement in its context of the Ancient Near East, it is virtually impossible to

not acknowledge that, at the very least, the progression from Old Testament to New is a

move in the right direction.

The problem for Islam is the Koran moves the wrong way. The Meccan Suras, the

chronologically earlier chapters of the Koran before Muhammad and his followers moved

from Mecca to Medina are predominantly peaceful. By contrast, the Medina Suras written

after Muhammad rose to power, contain the vast majority of the “sword” verses quoted by

Harris. Combined with the Islamic doctrine of abrogation that later revelation is the lens

for interpreting older revelation, this presents a real problem for Islam.341

Now that is an actual problem with Islam that Sam can use for his next book. Thus

far, however, Harris omits real problems like these to instead portray a highly caricatured

portrait of Islam which depicts the fringe as the center and the radical as the norm. Harris

argues a grossly oversimplified position that the Koran is the sole cause of terrorism and

completely ignores strong evidence of political, social, and economic factors. Granted it is

not unusual for people to reach different conclusions when they look at different data.

What really exposes Harris’ strong personal biases, however, is when Fair and Shepherd

analyze the same 2002 Pew Research data in a secular analysis for a non-religious purpose

and reach radically different conclusions.

Harris is far too forgiving of US atrocities, not in the eyes of some theist author but

according to fellow atheist Christopher Hitchens, in relation to how overly critical his is of

Islam’s failures. By overly critical, I mean that his justification for eliminating religion is so

broad that by the same argument even America does not deserve to exist. However, the

kind of crimes for which he would quickly acquit America or even the Soviet Union, he

simultaneously demands religion must give answer for them.

I do not merely find his assessment of terrorism wrong, I believe his assessment is

downright dangerous akin to someone who talks a patient out of chemotherapy that would

save their life from cancer by persuading them to take herbs and/or acupuncture in lieu of

lifesaving treatment. If he merely suggested the Koran had a role in facilitating terror in

addition to the political, economic, and social causes, it would be an argument meriting

consideration. Instead, his radical and overly simplistic “religion is the source of all evil”

proposition draws attention away from real causes at a time when American cannot afford

such diversion.

The majority of Harris’ arguments commit the logical fallacy of Begging the Question

because he assume his premise then argues as-if it were true without ever attempting to

prove his assertion. Among other topics, he commits this fallacy when he condemns the

danger of considering eschatology in politics without ever seriously attempting to prove

Christian claims that hundreds of prophecies were fulfilled by Jesus is false.h If hundreds of

prophecies have already been fulfilled that would be a good, rational reason for considering

the remaining prophecies. Harris never seriously explores the topic. He glibly ignores the

evidence and proceeds as-if his premise were true.

He does the same thing on the subjects of laws about sex, drugs, stem-cell research

and with the topic of sex education. He argues the effect of belief in God is harmful in these

areas but arguing from effects is spurious as it has no bearing on whether God exists, just

like my father did not cease to exist when he forbade me to have premarital sex in his

house.

Harris is unique in that he claims to have an absolute ethic without God based upon

the precept “To treat others ethically is to act out of concern for their happiness and

suffering.”,342 which he apparently arrives at intuitively. However, further analysis reveals

this is “Starbucks© ethics” because there is a world of difference between intellectually

ascent to it over coffee verses real world implementation. Despite claiming to not be a

pragmatist, Harris offers a strictly utilitarian justification for his proposed moral system

that those who follow it will experience “generally improved” conditions.343 Such

justification by the end result is contrary to the very nature of an absolute ethic which

creates a moral obligation regardless of the final outcome. For people who do not

experience his promised improved conditions, however, Harris has no basis for why they

should or ought to remain committed to the model that is not increasing their happiness.

Thus it becomes clear there is nothing absolute about Harris’ system after all.

Harris’ gross distortion that 35,000 Taliban insurgents amounts to “millions of

Muslims” who want to see us under Taliban rule is so patently false, whether it is malicious

deceit or gross negligence, either way it seriously undermines his credibility. Of course,

this does not mean atheism is wrong or there is a God. However, once I caught errors like

this and therefore began to do more fact checking, argument after argument came down

like a house of cards built on the gullibility of an atheist fan base willing to accept anything

Harris claims without serious analysis of the evidence.

I realize there are thousands of Christians who unquestioningly accept dogmatism

solely on the authority of pastors or priests. Reading the New Atheists, however, opened

my eyes to how much dogmatism there is in atheism. Granted it was easy to find humanists

like David Boulton who calls out Harris for “oversimplification, exaggerations and

elusions”,344 but the fact that atheists bought over a quarter of a million copies of The End of

h Instead he cherry-picks one of the most enigmatic prophecies, Isaiah 7:14, and hangs his entire argument on this lone example while completely ignoring hundreds of clearer examples.

Faith shows how readily skeptics are to accept atheist-dogmatism without serious

consideration of evidence.

The fact one atheist would engage in such misinformation (Richard Dawkins’

dubious handling of history is also enough to make William Durant roll over in his grave)

says nothing about the truth of atheism. For someone unfamiliar with history and having a

confirmation bias towards atheism, they might reinforce positions already held. However,

for someone who was on the fence these gross distortions of history and misleading

caricatures of religion do not remotely constitute reasonable arguments for accepting

atheism. I believe I have successfully explained why anyone who possess an open-mind

and a willingness to fact check would find no convincing argument for atheism in Harris’

book.

In fact, for an agnostic Harris actually opens the door for some spiritual beliefs

including continued conscious existence after death and that the “roiling mysteries” of the

world can be experienced through mysticism as well as science.345 While Harris stops far,

far short of endorsing theism or even deism, it is a significant concession that spirituality

can be arrived at by an evolution believing, Ph.D. credentialed, atheist scientist without

referencing one scrap of divine revelation. The very little Harris does concede is still much

more than Dawkins who claims, “there is only one kind of stuff in the universe and it is

physical.”346 Never the less, if Harris is right then the conversation at least starts on the

foundation spiritual truths are possible and we merely need to differentiate which claims

are legitimate verses those that are false.

While there is a lot of overlap between the New Atheists, it is a reasonable

observation to say Harris primarily builds his argument upon (distorting) history and the

effects of religion. For an atheist argument built primarily upon science, we turn to

Dawkins in the next chapter.

Harris’ Key Concepts

Key Concepts Source Evidence Offered

People commit acts of terror in the name of religion

Russell A hypothetical example of a young man blowing up a bus

“Certainty about the next life is simply incompatible with tolerance in this one.”

Harris “Religious faith perpetuates man’s inhumanity to man.”

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

Russell A less inconceivable report like a Colorado forest fire can be believed on the basis of a respectable anchorman who stands much to lose by lying.

Communism is a religion. Russell Lysenko’s faulty biology was embraced over Mendelian genetics by fiat of the Soviet government who shielded Lysenko from criticism.

Religious moderates retreat from scriptural literalism.

Harris We do not stone our daughter who comes back from yoga class talking about Krishna.

Religious moderation, “offers no bulwark against religion extremism and religious violence.”

Harris None offered

Religious claims upon the territory of Kashmir have led to over one million pointless deaths.

Harris None offered. (He spends a few pages describing atrocities there but never establishes exactly how religion was causal)

Naturalism has real philosophical problem with how materialist can trust any of their thoughts.

Harris None offered. He glazes past the subject in half a sentence.

Beliefs must have correspondence with reality.

Harris “The house is full of termites” and “Muhammad ascended to heaven on a winged horse” are not equivalent beliefs.

Belief in God is just wishful thinking. Feuerbach A wife who chooses to believe her husband is faithful despite evidence to the contrary because it makes her feel good.

When extraordinary beliefs are rare we call them “delusional”. When they are common we call them “religious”.

Harris Compare the belief that God will reward a man with 72 virgins if he kills a score of Jewish teenagers versus some who believes creatures from Alpha Centauri are speaking through his hairdryer.

The Bible can be used to justify atrocities like the Inquisition.

Harris Verses in Deuteronomy command Israel to kill heretics.

The Catholic Church has committed atrocities. Harris The Inquisition, witch trials, persecution of Jews

The Catholic Church was complicit with Hitler’s genocide.

Harris The Catholic Church opened its genealogical records to the Nazis and never excommunicated Hitler.

Isaiah never prophesied Jesus’ virgin birth. Harris The Hebrew word alma means “young woman” not “virgin”.

Religion, not external factors, is the cause of terrorism.

Harris “The world is filled with poor, uneducated, and exploited people who do not commit acts of terrorism.”

A disturbing amount of Muslims think violence against civilian targets is justified.

Harris Pew Center study of 12 predominantly Muslim countries which found 53% on average justified violence against civilians.

The difference between civilians killed by Muslims verses Americans is due to imperfect

Harris Intentionally killing a child to affect its parents is “terrorism” but accidentally killing a child

weapons. while trying to kill a child murder is “collateral damage”.

Biblical eschatology intruding into modern politics is dangerous.

Harris Britain’s Balfour Declaration of 1917. US policy toward Israel.

Crime comes from bad genes or bad parents. Russell None offered

Belief in God results in irrational laws about sex, drugs, and stem cell research.

Russell/ Harris

Laws against oral sex, marijuana use, and stem-cell research

The problem of theodicy is insurmountable Russell God acts capricious, petulant, and cruel in the Bible.

Religion creates moral communities that are indifferent to the suffering of other communities.

Harris None offered. He gives Nazi troops indifference to Jews as an example of community indifference but gives no examples were religion is involved.

To say something is “natural” does not mean it is “good”.

Harris “Nature has not adapted us to do anything more than breed.”

Ethics are absolute not cultural. Harris Ethics is like literacy. Not learning how to read is not another style of literacy. It is a failure of literacy.

“To treat others ethically is to act out of concern for their happiness and suffering.”

Harris “Honor killings” are not really honorable at all, they are a failure of love and therefore a failure of ethics.

“Millions of Muslims around the world” would like to see us living under the Taliban.

Harris None offered

“I do not consider myself a Buddhist” Harris His article “Killing the Buddha” wherein he (allegedly) criticizes Buddhism.

Replies and Rebuttals to Harris’ key concepts

Arguments for Atheism/Against God Rebuttal

People commit acts of terror in the name of religion. Cherry Picking fallacy (a.k.a. Fallacy of Incomplete Evidence). Fails to adequately consider political, economic, personal motivations, and mental illness. If just being religious is the sole cause, why has the Pope never blown himself up?

“Certainty about the next life is simply incompatible with tolerance in this one.”

Agreed. If Harris was not so certain annihilation of body and mind awaits us in the “next life”, he would not be so intolerant of religion in this one.

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

Based on an a priori belief that materialism explains everything which is ipso facto an article of faith itself since it is not based on empirical observation.

Communism is a religion (based on the Soviet government selectively choosing which scientists they supported and censured)

Non-sequitur logical fallacy. The U.S. government poured $500 million tax dollars into now defunct Solyndra while simultaneously denying grants for other forms of research. By Harris’ standards, this makes our government a religion.

Religious moderates retreat from scriptural literalism.

The Mosaic Law Harris cites always had a finite expiration date (Jer. 31). There is no “retreat”; Harris simply does not understand why the Old Testament is called “old”.

Religious moderation, “offers no bulwark against religion extremism and religious violence.”

Incredibly naïve to suggest a white, western atheist is better equipped to influence an Arab Muslim in Kandahar than his own family who believes the same Koran yet finds no justification in it for violence.

Religious claims upon the territory of Kashmir have led to over one million pointless deaths.

The real source of the conflict was the oppression of the majority by a minority. Such behavior is sufficient to cause violence even without religion.

Naturalism has real philosophical problem with how materialist can trust any of their thoughts.

Agreed. Furthermore, I note Harris does not even attempt to offer a solution to this serious problem within materialism.

Beliefs must have correspondence with reality. Agreed. However, he commits logical fallacy of Begging the Question, arguing as-if belief in God does not correspond with reality without ever first establishing that God does not exist.

Belief in God is just wishful thinking. Wanting something does not mean the object does not exist (i.e. thirst does not disprove water). Atheists have the same problem (i.e. wishing for moral autonomy).

When extraordinary beliefs are rare we call them “delusional”. When they are common we call them “religious”.

The public mirror atheists’ beliefs on other issues they deem probably (alien life) and improbable (Elvis lives). Since people seem to be rational about everything else, perhaps they are not as irrational about religion as the New Atheists think.

The Bible can be used to justify atrocities like the Inquisition.

A tree can be used to make a Stradivarius violin or a battering ram to attack a castle. How people use (or misuse) it does not make the tree good (or evil)

The Catholic Church has committed atrocities. Agreed, but so has America even with separation of church and state. Also atheist countries like the Soviet Union and China have committed atrocities that make the Catholic Church look like…well…saints.

The Catholic Church was complicit with Hitler’s genocide.

Historically false. Even if Harris was accurate, handing an armed robber your wallet does not make you “complicit” with the crime.

Isaiah never prophesied Jesus’ virgin birth. Alma can mean “virgin”, it is used to describe virgins elsewhere in Old Testament and the context of Isaiah favors the same interpretation there.

Religion, not external factors, is the cause of terrorism.

Comparing a world map of poverty and exploitation with a map of terrorist attacks shows near 100% geographic correlation. Also, Harris drastically oversimplifies reasons why other poor groups remain peaceful.

A disturbing amount of Muslims think violence against civilian targets is justified.

An even larger percentage of Americans (57% vs 53%) believe dropping atomic bombs on civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was justified. That is 7 decades after the war. 85% justified it during the war.

The difference between civilians killed by Muslims verses Americans is due to imperfect weapons.

If atheist dictator Kim Jong-Un had better weapons a lot more people would die. Even other atheists acknowledge many US atrocities cannot be dismissed due to imperfect weapon technology.

Biblical eschatology intruding into modern politics is dangerous.

Begging the Question Fallacy. The assertion is true if Biblical eschatology is wrong. However, Harris never seriously attempts to prove this. Also, Jesus appears to have fulfilled a significant number of prophecies.

Crime comes from bad genes or bad parents. If true, you could not say murder was any worse than forgery when both are merely the result of genes and/or parenting.

Belief in God results in irrational laws about sex, drugs, and stem cell research.

Begging the Question Fallacy. He assumes God does not exist therefore such laws should not either however he never proves his premise that God does not exist. Also, the Bible actually never prohibits oral sex or drug use.

The problem of theodicy is insurmountable Agreed, it is insurmountable for atheism. In asking what is wrong with the world, we have already presumed the existence of a moral standard which the world falls short of.

Religion creates moral communities that are indifferent to the suffering of other communities

Christianity teaches the equality of numerous diverse moral communities in Christ (Gal. 3:28; Col. 3:11). World Vision is one of numerous faith groups providing aid to people without regard to race, gender or religion.

To say something is “natural” does not mean it is “good”. “Nature has not adapted us to do anything more than breed.”

Agreed. It is a very simple concept which seams lost on Richard Dawkins.

Ethics are absolute not cultural Agreed. Why is Harris the only atheist who seems to get it?

“To treat others ethically is to act out of concern for Agreed, but intellectual ascent is quite different from

their happiness and suffering.” physical action. Acting on this entails sacrifice and Harris fails to define why we ought to make such sacrifices.

“Millions of Muslims around the world” would like to see us living under the Taliban.

Actually, according to The London Times, the true number appears closer to 36,000. Makes you question what else Harris miss-portrays.

“I do not consider myself a Buddhist” He can consider himself whatever he wants but the ideology espoused by Harris is undifferentiable from Buddhist doctrine.

Notes

1 http://archive.today/JjPR7 2 http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/webexclusives/2007/May/070507.html 3 http://rationalist.org.uk/855 4 http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2007/06/07/how-well-are-the-atheist-books-selling/ 5 Sunday Book Review, 2005-07. New York Times. 6 http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Faith-Religion-Terror-ebook/dp/B000VUCIZE 7 http://www.newsweek.com/rationalist-sam-harris-believes-god-73859 8 Ibid. 9 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004 10 http://rationalist.org.uk/855 11 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/25/AR2006102501998_pf.html 12 Harris, S.; Sheth, S. A.; Cohen, M. S. (2008). "Functional neuroimaging of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty".

Annals of Neurology 13 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSBaAT6WPmk, comment occurs at 1:00 14 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 129 15 Ibid., p. 53 16 http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/may/07/comment.religion 17 http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-controversy2 18 http://www.samharris.org/about 19 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 13 20 Ibid., p. 14 21 Ibid., p. 13 22 Ibid., p. 15 23 Ibid., p. 17 24 Ibid., p. 19 25 Ibid., p. 21 26 Ibid., p. 21 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., p. 26 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid., p. 41 31 http://www.philosophynews.com/post/2012/05/15/An-Analysis-of-Sam-Harris-Free-Will.aspx 32 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004,, p. 50 33 Ibid., p. 63 34 Ibid., p. 62 35 Ibid., p. 65 36 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSBaAT6WPmk, comment occurs at 1:00 37 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 76 38 Ibid., p. 75 39 Ibid., p. 76 40 Ibid., p. 78 41 Ibid., p. 78 42 Ibid., p. 79 43 Ibid., p 82 44 Ibid., p. 83 45 Ibid., p. 95 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid., p. 100 48 Ibid., p. 102 49 Ibid., p. 103 50 Ibid., p. 104 51 Ibid., p. 106

52 Ibid., p. 123 53 Ibid., p. 108 54 Ibid., p. 109 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid., p. 133 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid., p. 134 60 Ibid., p. 111 61 Ibid., p. 115 62 Ibid., p. 125 63 http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq16.html 64 Oates, Sarah. Terrorism, Elections, and Democracy: Political Campaigns in the United States, Great Britain,

and Russia, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, p. 101 65 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 147 66 http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/if-a-drone-strike-hit-an-american-wedding-wed-

ground-our-fleet/282373/ 67 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shifa_pharmaceutical_factory 68 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 151 69 Ibid. 70 Ibid., p. 152 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid., p. 153 73 Ibid. 74 Ibid., p. 157 75 Ibid., p. 168 76 Ibid., p. 170 77 Ibid., p. 172 78 Ibid., p. 171 79 Ibid., p. 173 80 Ibid., p. 176 81 Ibid., p. 180 82 Ibid., p. 182 83 Ibid., p. 183 84 Ibid., p. 185 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid., p. 186 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid., p. 190 91 Ibid., p. 191 92 Ibid. 93 Ibid., p. 198 94 Ibid., p. 199 95 Ibid., p. 203 96 Ibid., p. 208 97 Ibid., p. 209 98 Ibid., p. 210 99 Ibid., p. 211 100 Ibid., p. 212 101 Ibid., p. 214 102 Ibid. 103 Ibid.

104 Ibid., p. 215 105 Ibid. 106 Ibid. 107 Ibid., p. 207 108 Ibid., p. 217 109 Ibid. 110 Ibid., p. 218 111 Ibid., p. 219 112 Ibid.., p. 220 113 Ibid. 114 Ibid., p. 221 115 http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/06/07/worlds-muslim-population-more-widespread-than-

you-might-think/ 116 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents,_January%E2%80%93June_2013 117 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/world/africa/22sidi.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&src=twrhp 118 http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/bouazizi-has-become-a-tunisian-protest-symbol 119 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 13 120 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chenpeng_Village_Primary_School_stabbing 121 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religions_by_country 122 http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/03/17/140317fa_fact_solomon?currentPage=all 123 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting#Perpetrator 124 http://www.politico.com/story/2013/12/newtown-shooting-police-file-101561.html 125 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/nyregion/adam-lanza-an-enigma-who-is-now-identified-as-a-

mass-killer.html?smid=tw-share&pagewanted=all&_r=0 126 http://www.livescience.com/16585-psychopaths-speech-language.html 127 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents,_January%E2%80%93June_2013 128 http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/06/07/worlds-muslim-population-more-widespread-than-

you-might-think/ 129 http://www.livescience.com/16585-psychopaths-speech-language.html 130 https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2122.html#xx 131 Roth, Martha T. Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997 132 Lorton, David. The Treatment of Criminals in Ancient Egypt. Leiden: Brill, 1977 133 Tetlow, Elisabeth Meirer. Women, Crime and Punishment in Ancient Law and Society. New York: Continuum,

2004. 134 Wright, Christopher J. H. Old Testament Ethics for the People of God. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004,

p. 310 135 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/16/us/16beliefs.html?_r=3& 136 Bose, Sumantra (2005), Kashmir: roots of conflict, paths to peace, Harvard University Press. Pp. 307 137 Ibid. 138 http://rationalist.org.uk/855 139 Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. New York: Harper Collins. 1952 140 McGrath Alister. The Dawkins Delusion. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007, p. 34 141 http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/dec/23/84-percent-world-population-has-

faith-third-are-ch/ 142 https://www.google.com/#q=how+many+christians+in+the+world 143 Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion, New York: Bantam Press, 2006, p. 98 144 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/21/alien-poll_n_3473852.html 145 https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2122.html#xx 146 http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-kings-popularity-constant/ 147 Ibid., p. 74 148 Only LDS linguists accept the existence of any language or character set known as "reformed Egyptian" as

described in Mormon tradition. The only example of reformed Egyptian extant is the "Caractors Document", also known as the "Anthon Transcript", a paper written by Smith with examples of what he

stated to be "reformed Egyptian" characters. See (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Egyptian) for details and references.

149 https://www.lds.org/topics/book-of-mormon-translation 150 Standard language references such as Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds., The World's Writing

Systems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) (990 pages); David Crystal, The Cambridge

Encyclopedia of Language (Cambridge University Press, 1997); and Roger D. Woodard, ed., The Cambridge

Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages (Cambridge University Press, 2004) (1162 pages) contain no reference to "reformed Egyptian." "Reformed Egyptian" is also ignored in Andrew Robinson, Lost

Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts (New York: McGraw Hill, 2002), although it is mentioned in Stephen Williams, Fantastic Archaeology: The Wild Side of North American Prehistory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991). On their website, Bad Archaeology, two British archaeologists, Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews and Dames Doeser, say "The only writing systems to have been recognised in the Americas are those used by the Maya and the Aztecs, neither of which resembles Egyptian hieroglyphs, although Joseph Smith, the founder of the religion, produced a scrap of papyrus containing hieroglyphs he claimed to be a Reformed Egyptian text written by the Patriarch Abraham."

151 Bruce, F. F. The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1943, p. 10

152 http://www.livescience.com/27244-the-world-s-catholic-population-infographic.html 153 http://www.pewforum.org/2011/12/19/global-christianity-exec/ 154 http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/respub/survey.html 155 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 77 156 Dickson, John. The Christ Files: How Historians Know What They Know About Jesus. Grand Rapids, MI:

Zondervan, 2005 157 http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-12521.html 158 Ibid. 159http://www.alexandrmen.ru/english/demokratizatsia/Father_Aleksandr_Men_and_the_Struggle_to_Recov

er_Russia.html 160 Paul Froese. Forced Secularization in Soviet Russia: Why an Atheistic Monopoly Failed. Journal for the

Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Mar., 2004), pp. 35-50 161 http://icl.nd.edu/assets/84231/the_demographics_of_christian_martyrdom_todd_johnson.pdf 162 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition#cite_note-81 163 H. Kamen, Inkwizycja Hiszpańska, Warszawa 2005, p. 62; and H. Rawlings, The Spanish Inquisition,

Blackwell Publishing 2004, p. 15. 164 Father Arseny. Priest, Prisoner, Spiritual Father. St Vladimir's Seminary Press. Introduction pg. vi - 1 165 Adrian Cioroianu, Pe umerii lui Marx. O introducere în istoria comunismului românesc ("On the Shoulders of

Marx. An Incursion into the History of Romanian Communism"), Editura Curtea Veche, Bucharest, 2005 166 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/25/AR2006112500783.html 167 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 18 168 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch 169 http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-controversy2 170 http://rationalist.org.uk/855 171 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 64 172 http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/laborctr/child_labor/about/us_history.html 173 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States#Removals_and_reservations 174 Osborn, William M. (2001). The Wild Frontier: Atrocities During The American-Indian War from Jamestown

Colony to Wounded Knee. Garden City, NY: Random House. 175 http://viewmixed.com/top-7-us-massacres-in-history/1890/4 176 http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1920womensvote.html 177 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-

American_Civil_Rights_Movement_%281954%E2%80%9368%29#Race_riots.2C_1963.E2.80.9370 178 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 95 179 Ibid., p. 94

180J.A.L. Lee, A Lexical Study of the Septuagint Version of the Pentateuch (Septuagint and Cognate Studies, 14.

Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983; Reprint SBL, 2006) also http://jewishroots.net/library/prophecy/isaiah/isaiah-7-14/the-meaning-of-almah.html

181 Dines, Jennifer M. The Septuagint. London: T&T Clark, 2004 182 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septuagint#History 183 Lee, J.A.L. A Lexical Study of the Septuagint Version of the Pentateuch. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983 184 Stromberg, Jake. An Introduction to the Study of Isaiah. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011. 185 Bruce, F. F. Israel and the Nations. IVP Academic, 1998. 186 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 95 187 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almah 188 Buksbazen, Victor. The Prophet Isaiah. Publisher and year unknown 189 Alan Bullock; Hitler: a Study in Tyranny; Harper Perennial Edition 1991

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reich_concordat 190

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=hEwbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=nEsEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5458,3898091&dq=fritz-gerlich&hl=en

191 Evans, Richard. The Third Reich in Power. New York: Penguin Group. 2005 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_persecution_of_the_Catholic_Church_in_Germany

192 Lewy, Guenter. The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, 1964, Weidenfield and Nicholson 193 Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Secker & Warburg: London, 1960, p. 240 194 Ibid. 195 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_persecution_of_the_Catholic_Church_in_Germany 196 John S. Conway; The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933-1945; Regent College Publishing 197 Shirer, William L., Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. Simon and Schuster, 1990 198 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_persecution_of_the_Catholic_Church_in_Germany 199 Courtois, Stéphane; Kramer, Mark (1999). The Black Book of Communism. Harvard University Press. 200 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mit_brennender_Sorge 201 http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_14031937_mit-

brennender-sorge_en.html 202 Coppa, Frank. The Papacy, the Jews, and the Holocaust. CUA Press. 2006 203 Duffy, Eemon. Saints and Sinners, a History of the Popes. Yale University Press. 1997, p. 343 204 Bokenkotter, Thomas. A Concise History of the Catholic Church. Doubleday. 2004, p. 389-392 205 Falconi, Carlo. The Popes in the Twentieth Century. Deltrinelle Editore. 1997, p. 230 206 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mit_brennender_Sorge 207 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 106 208 Ibid., p 72 209 Ibid., p. 109 210 Ibid., p. 132 211 Harris, Sam. The Moral Landscape. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010, p. 206 212 http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/06/07/worlds-muslim-population-more-widespread-than-

you-might-think/ 213 Zakaria, Fareed. The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad. New York: W. W. Norton

& Company, 2003, p. 138. 214 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents,_January%E2%80%93June_2013 215 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 126 216 http://www.pewglobal.org/2006/05/23/where-terrorism-finds-support-in-the-muslim-world/ 217 Ibid. 218 http://carnegieendowment.org/experts/?fa=435 219 http://carnegieendowment.org/2009/10/22/who-are-taliban/161#why 220 http://relooney.fatcow.com/SI_Expeditionary/Fair_18.pdf 221 Ibid., p. 52 222 Ibid., p. 109 223 Ibid., p. 151

224 Ibid., p. 152 225 Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. New York: First Mariner Books, 2006, p. 92 226 http://www.pewglobal.org/2006/05/23/where-terrorism-finds-support-in-the-muslim-world/ 227 Ibid. 228 http://www.aasc.ucla.edu/cab/200708230009.html 229 http://www.gallup.com/poll/17677/majority-supports-use-atomic-bomb-japan-wwii.aspx 230 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 126

53% is the average rate of support for suicide bombings among the 12 countries he cites 231 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 126 232 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/04/hiroshima-nagasaki-atom-b_n_251108.html 233 http://www.gallup.com/poll/148763/muslim-americans-no-justification-violence.aspx 234 http://www.gallup.com/poll/157067/views-violence.aspx#4 235 http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/if-a-drone-strike-hit-an-american-wedding-wed-

ground-our-fleet/282373/ 236 Ibid. 237 http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/lone-survivor.php 238 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Survivor_%28film%29#Historical_accuracy 239 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pashtun_people#Religion

“The overwhelming majority of Pashtuns follow Sunni Islam, belonging to the Hanafi school of thought.” 240

http://books.google.com/books?id=fl8cd15sc7wC&lpg=PP1&dq=inauthor%3A%22Erinn%20Banting%22&pg=PA14#v=onepage&q&f=false

241 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pashtun_people 242 http://www.salon.com/1998/09/23/news_114/ 243 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 147 244 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKffGOHLPOo 245 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 137 246 Ibid., p. 134 247 Ibid., p. 132 248 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2888989.stm 249 http://www.appgkurdistan.org.uk/?p=116 250http://www.alternet.org/story/49864/how_george_h.w._bush_helped_saddam_hussein_prevent_an_iraqi_

uprising 251 http://history1900s.about.com/od/saddamhussein/a/husseincrimes.htm 252 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 20 253 Ibid., p. 152 254 http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/terrorist 255 http://www.webcitation.org/5wovK3hIw 256 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 137 257 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jun/11/mcveigh.usa4 258 U.S. Naval War College Analysis, p.1; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, pp.416–430. 259 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze#Recruitment 260 http://www.japan-101.com/history/kamikaze.htm 261 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze#Recruitment 262 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Rescript_on_Education 263 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonidas_Squadron 264 Zandt, Clinton R. "Suicide by Cop." National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. 265 http://www.vpc.org/studies/amroul2006.pdf 266 Parent, Richard 2004. "Aspects of Police Use of Deadly Force In North America - The Phenomenon of

Victim-Precipitated Homicide," Ph.D. thesis, Simon Fraser University. 267 http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090708/NEWS03/90708043?nclick_check=1 268 http://www.scribd.com/doc/2298087/psychology-of-murder-suicide 269 Warren-Gordon, Kiesha, Bryan Byers, Stephen Brodt, Melissa Wartak, and Brian Biskupski. "Murder

Followed by Suicide: A Newspaper Surveillance Study Using the New York Times Index WARREN-

GORDON ET AL. MURDER FOLLOWED by SUICIDE." Journal of Forensic Sciences. Blackwell Publishing Limited. 2010

270 Matthews, John P. C. , Explosion: The Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Hippocrene Books, 2007, p. 93-4 271 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Republic_of_Hungary#cite_note-matthews93-14 272 http://articles.latimes.com/1988-08-07/local/me-382_1_child-abuse 273 Note: “what impact did Jozepf’s view of the afterlife have in enabling his actions” is literally my question. I

could not locate any decisive evidence of Jozeph’s religious views. I deem it probably that he was an atheist due to the indoctrination he received in atheism in Hungary which I know of first-hand from my own family’s history. My point is how the kind of circumstances he went through can lead people to such behavior.

274 http://www.barr-family.com/godsword/suicide.htm The only poll I found was “straw” at best but, for what little its worth, the vast majority were unsure of the

final disposition of a suicidal soul and 66% who did respond said the person would not go to heaven. 275 http://rt.com/usa/us-suicides-crisis-cdc-report-761/ 276 http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/apr/17/four-decades-us-terror-attacks-listed-since-

1970#data 277 Schweitzer, Albert. The Quest of the Historical Jesus. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 2005, p. 13-26 278 Crossan, Dominic. The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, New York: Harper

Collins, 1991 279 Dickson, John. The Christ Files: How Historians Known What They Know About Jesus. Grand Rapids,

Michigan: Zondervan, 2005, p. 36 280 Russell, Bertrand. Why I am Not a Christian, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957, p. 41 281 http://www.drugabuse.gov/about-nida 282 http://archives.drugabuse.gov/NIDA_Notes/NNVol15N1/DirRepVol15N1.html 283 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 185 284 Dawkins, Richard. River Out of Eden. New York: Basic Books, 1995 285 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy#The_decline_of_European_alchemy 286 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Vision_International#Activities 287 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Red_Cross 288 http://atheists.org/relief 289 Inman, Nick. D&K Eyewitness Travel: Istanbul. New York: Dorling Kindersley Limited. 2007, p. 90 290 http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/05/01/study-where-do-muslims-really-stand-on-shariah-law/ 291 http://www.pewforum.org/2012/12/18/global-religious-landscape-exec/ 292 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer 293 Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil, New York: Random House, 1989, p. 38-39 294 Ibid., p. 54 295 Ibid., p. 48 296 Ibid., p. 73-76 297 Ibid., p. 206 298 Ibid., p. 203 299 Russell, Bertrand. Why I am Not a Christian, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957, p. 38, 48 300 Ibid., p. 56 301Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil, New York: Random House, 1989, p. 112-113, 115

For Russell’s view see his article “Can Religion Solve Our Troubles” published in the Stockholm newspaper in November 1954 wherein he argues there are two basis for morality, religious dogma and social utility.

302 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Buscaglia 303 http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/l/leobuscagl150293.html 304 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 187 305 Ibid., p. 189 306 Ibid., p. 185 307

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth#mediaviewer/File:World_distributionofwealth_GDP_and_population_by_region.gif

308

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth#mediaviewer/File:Wdpiechartexchangerates2000.gif

309 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17512040 310 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Cambodia#Population_2 311 Based on extrapolation from http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD. wherin the World

Bank estimated USA GDP for 2012 and http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/breakdown showing income tax revenue for 2014.

312 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 191 313 Ibid., p. 180 314 Ibid., p. 203 315

https://login.thetimes.co.uk/?gotoUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thetimes.co.uk%2Ftto%2Fnews%2Fworld%2F

316 http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/09/10/52244/911-seven-years-later-us-safe.html 317 http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa092801a.htm 318 http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2012/10/09/al-qaeda-iraq/1623297/ 319 http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/12/al-qaeda-leader-syria-speaks-al-jazeera-

20131218155917935989.html 320 http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/12/world/meast/who-is-the-isis/ 321 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/who-are-isis-the-rise-of-the-islamic-state-in-

iraq-and-the-levant-9541421.html 322

http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=2903&Itemid=244&limit=1&limitstart=1

323 Ibid. 324 http://www.watkinsbooks.com/review/top10-people-on-spiritual-power-list 325 Tolle, Eckhart. The Power of Now. Vancouver, Canada: Namaste Publishing, 1999, p. 200 326 Ibid., p. 187 327 Ibid., p. 137 328 Ibid., p. 235 329 http://cnsnews.com/news/article/eckhart-tolle-tops-winfrey-sales-list 330 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 220 331 Ibid., p. 217 332 Ibid., p. 208 333 Ibid, p. 16 334 Ibid., p. 43 335 Ibid., p. 16 336 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/16/us/16beliefs.html?_r=3& 337 Russell, Bertrand. Why I am Not a Christian, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957, p. 28 338 http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-controversy2 339 http://news.uk.msn.com/world/scientist-held-over-terror-plot 340 Lorton, David. The Treatment of Criminals in Ancient Egypt. Leiden: Brill, 1977 341 http://sheikyermami.com/the-principle-of-abrogation-in-the-quran/ 342 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 186 343 Ibid., p. 191 344 http://rationalist.org.uk/855 345 Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p.221 346 Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion, New York: Bantam Press, 2006, p. 34

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