Prologue
A university student arrives home and informs his parents that, after reading a popular atheist’s book, he has renounced his family’s faith. His mother, particularly, is shattered by the news. The father struggles to engage his son in dialogue, but to no avail. The deepening grief causes them to distance themselves from their son. When the game of silence does not work, the mother is plunged further into depression and despair. The grandparents become involved, watching in anguish as beliefs that have been held dear in the family for generations crumble. Before long, this family that was once close and peaceable is now broken and hostile. Abusive words between mother and son are exchanged with increasing frequency and intensity, and the siblings blame their brother’s new strident atheism for the rift in the family. After one long night of arguing with her son, pleading unsuccessfully with him to reconsider his position, the mother takes an overdose of prescription medication and ends her life, unable to accept what she interprets to be the destruction of her family
Although this particular scenario is imaginary I suspect that in some measure similar scenes have played out more than a few times since the publication of Sam Harris’s bestselling Letter to a Christian Nation. It is quite possible that many a young man or woman, stirred by the passion and intent of Harris’s book, has repudiated the values intrinsically bound up in the belief in God held dear by parents and ancestors long before them.
In 2005, Harris, a doctoral student at Stanford, published the first of two books that are absolutely and unabashedly hostile to all religions—but particularly to the Christian faith. It is time for us as Americans, Harris states in these books, to outgrow our religious beliefs. His unvarnished hatred for things religious is embellished with strong language and illustrations designed to convince the world that Christians in particular really are buffoons or imbeciles for believing in God. I have always found it fascinating how relativists who say they love the idea of tolerance ultimately reveal themselves to be among the most bigoted. So Harris writes to “America” but in fact to the whole world, telling us that science has the answers to our questions about life and that religion is the bane of existence.
But why do I begin to address a work as serious-minded as that of Harris with an imaginary scene like the one above? Because realities that are far from imaginary are enveloped in this story and I wonder what Harris would say to those possibilities.
He may argue that the grief his book may cause families such as this one is justified and even necessary sometimes if the young student in the story and others like him are going to stop believing and living a lie. Does this sound familiar? He may well justify any amount of grief to any number of people because of an insistence that the value of his “truth” is greater than the destruction of a family. But to do so raises a huge question, doesn’t it? If in the microcosm of this one little episode Harris were to justify the devastation he has caused for the sake of what he sees as the truth, why does he deny God the same justification for allowing suffering in all of the intricacies and possibilities of a lifetime?
Harris’s biggest complaint against God is that so much suffering is experienced by humanity in the name of God’s sovereignty and goodness; yet in his own little world he would, I suspect, turn a blind eye to any incidental pain in order to freely proclaim “liberation” from “falsehood.” In a recent interview Bethany Saltman suggested that Harris may have gone too far in some of the things he has said. But he responded by saying that if he had a magic wand with which to eradicate either religion or rape, he would choose to eradicate religion. This strains credulity. I simply pray that none of those he loves are ever raped and come to him for solace. Evidently while belief in his atheism is worth any price, religious belief is too costly.
This duplicity is only the tip of the iceberg in Harris’s belabored tirade against religion. With Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and a few others, he is calling for the banishment of all religious belief. “Away with this nonsense” is their battle cry! In return, they promise a world of new hope and unlimited horizons—once we have shed this delusion of God. I have news for them—news to the contrary. The reality is that the emptiness that results from the loss of the transcendent is stark and devastating, both philosophically and existentially.
On the first day of a lectureship I gave recently at Oxford University, the Oxford newspaper carried the story of the suicide of the student body president of an area college. After my lecture at the town hall that morning, I cannot begin to tell you the number of students who came to me to say that suicide is something they have toyed with.
In my travels across the globe, I have found this scenario to be conspicuous among our youth in universities everywhere as these institutions deliver meaninglessness in large doses. On campus after campus, in culture after culture, I have listened for hours to intellectuals, young and old, who testify to a deep-seated emptiness. Young, honest minds seek answers and meaning. No amount of philosophizing about a world without God brings hope. After three decades of covering every continent and delivering scores of university lectures, I have seen that this sense of alienation and meaninglessness is the principal malady of young minds. Academic degree after degree has not removed the haunting specter of the pointlessness of existence in a random universe. This deep malady of the soul will not be cured by writings such as Harris’s. The momentary euphoria that may initially accompany a proclamation of liberation soon fades, and one finds oneself in the vise-like grip of despair in a life without ultimate purpose. A naturalistic framework offers no remedy for the sense of suffocation that ensues.
I am writing The End of Reason to tell young men and women — all who ask the hard questions about the meaning of life—that atheism is bankrupt for answers. The emperor has no clothes, and through his verbal magic Harris is trying hard to cover him up.
It may seem odd that I’m writing a letter to you in response to a man whose letter you may or may not have read. You may not wish to waste your time reading his book, but this response is intended to expose the systemic contradictions of his worldview and his cursory knowledge of other religions, which he has wielded with dangerous self-confidence. His book, like many books in America, has succeeded more because of its controversial nature than because of any real substance.
I also want to try to bridge the huge chasm that separates hostile atheists from those of us who believe in the Christ of the Scriptures and in the provision made in our Constitution and culture for those who wish to investigate the claims of any major religion and evaluate its truth or falsehood. The truth is, Harris’s view rejects the very worldview that shaped the United States of America. His is a mind-set that, if it had been dominant at the time of America’s emergence, would have never allowed for the formation of this nation. Thankfully, the America that was founded affirmed, implicitly or explicitly, our worldview while also allowing room for his. His America would ban our belief, leaving room only for the sovereignty of his materialistic or matter-driven vision of all human existence. Such is the demagoguery of his strident atheism.
With that said, let me get on with my letter to you. I begin my response to Harris with a humorous story, because I am quite sure the intensity of the text will increase as the letter unfolds.