Letter to an Atheist by Michael Patrick Leahy

Excerpt from Letter to an Atheist

Chapter One

A Fair Argument, not a Quarrel

One of the most insidious myths of the modern era is the belief that atheists and agnostics are smarter and more intellectually honest than believing Christians. This myth is one of the central pillars of the atheist attack on Christianity set forward in Sam Harris’ recent book , Letter to a Christian Nation . The author, a much celebrated leader of the atheist movement, states that his book is an attempt to “demolish the intellectual and moral pretensions of Christianity in its most committed forms.”

Harris reminds me of the businessman who begins each business transaction by asserting the importance of his Christian faith. More often than not, his assertion is an attempt to inoculate himself from the future unethical actions he intends to take. Similarly, Harris’ assertion of superior rationality over believing Christians is an attempt to inoculate himself from the myriad errors in logic and fact contained in his book. In this letter I will expose these errors as they relate to the characterization of the Christian faith. This shall be a positive, reason-based argument, not a negative, emotion-based quarrel.

I seek not to convert Mr. Harris to Christianity. That is a matter of faith, and cannot be forced upon anyone. Should he at some point come to share this faith, I will be pleased to welcome him. But for now, I simply want to disabuse him of certain statements which are not only incorrect, but are also positively injurious to those of us who practice the Christian faith.

I do, however, seek to establish common ground with Mr. Harris in one critical area in which we are in agreement—the extraordinarily serious threat to Western Civilization posed by the fanatic elements of Islam. While Harris does a good job of identifying the seriousness of the threat to our way of life from fanatical Islam, he fails miserably in offering anything but the most simplistic and impractical solutions to that threat. End all belief in religion, he argues, and the human desire for violence will also end. If only everyone on earth were an atheist like Sam Harris, he argues, all this religiously inspired violence would end.

Mr. Harris is correct in asserting that the world today is engulfed in a defining struggle between the forces of enlightened progress and those of backward hatred. But he is confused as to who belongs on which side. Christians of all sorts are on the side of enlightened progress. Fanatical Muslims are on the side of backward hatred. He is so intent on making his case against Christians that along the way he loses track of the most important virtue he claims to respect—intellectual honesty. He is equally intent on demonstrating that Islam is by its nature so completely unhinged, so incapable of reason, that it can contemplate only the complete destruction of its opponents that he fails to consider the possibility that reason can exist within Islam. Granted, the possibility seems remote in light of the constant news of terrorist attacks by fanatic Muslims, but to fail to acknowledge the potential for co-existence entailed in the Islamic tradition of ijtihad suggests that the open-minded Mr. Harris is completely closed to any possibility but the complete annihilation of the Islamic religion.

I have three main complaints with Mr. Harris’ book:

First, he is intellectually dishonest. He makes factually incorrect statements, unsubstantiated assertions, and invalid assumptions throughout his slim 91-page book. The scope of this intellectual dishonesty is as breathtaking as the unquestioning faith placed in his assertions by the atheistic acolytes who fawn over his flawed work. Second, in arguing that “the primary purpose of [his] book is to arm secularists in our society, who believe that religion should be kept out of public policy against their opponents on the Christian Right,” he is advocating a limitation on the rights of Christians as citizens. Christians are entitled to the same rights of free speech and participation in the political process as any other citizens. It’s an odd world Harris wants to create—one in which a country founded by Christians seeking freedom of religion would prohibit Christians from referencing their beliefs in forums of public policy. In his earlier work, Harris advocated a sort of conversational intolerance in which people would not be allowed to make statements that were not accompanied by some sort of quantifiable evidence. The standard for such evidence would apparently be set by Harris himself, which leads one to the conclusion that this is simply Harris’ way of limiting freedom of speech for those with whom he disagrees. This is not merely a troubling thought. It is a positively frightening thought. Third, he attributes the failings of flawed individuals who may be Christians in name only to an underlying failing of Christianity itself.

So begins Letter to an Atheist....

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