Quite Random

Reply to a Christian

Since the publication of my first book, The End of Faith, I have received thousands of letters and e-mails from religious believers insisting that I am wrong not to believe in God. Invariably, the most unpleasant of these communications have come from Christians. This is ironic, as Christians generally believe that no faith imparts the virtues of love and forgiveness more effectively than their own. Please accept this for what it is: the testimony of a man who is in a position to observe how people behave when their faith is challenged. Many who claim to have been transformed by Christ’s love are deeply, even murderously, intolerant of criticism. While you may ascribe this to human nature, it is clear that the hatred these people feel comes directly from the Bible. How do I know this? Because the most deranged of my correspondents always cite chapter and verse.

Link: Council for Secular Humanism

This piece by Sam Harris mostly makes perfect sense, though the argument about the inability of the Bible to predict the arrival of the Internet is a little wide of the mark. The problem is, pieces like this don’t persuade anyone. They don’t persuade atheists because atheists don’t need persuading and agreed with it in the first place, and they don’t persuade Christians because they won’t be persuaded. Christians often see atheists as being sick, immoral people who are struggling to deny the god-shaped hole in their lives, just as most atheists simply cannot understand how Christians, or any faith groups, can subscribe to such lunacy.