A Challenge

A couple of AMAZING books I've read lately: Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, by Carl Sagan; and Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris.

I cannot fathom how someone could read these books (especially the latter) and continue to believe in the god of the Bible. Its a little startling to think about. The reason, the common sense, the insight, foresight, and overall scope of these books cuts through the nonsense of traditional religious belief, as well as the typical religious narrowmindedness, like a knife.

If someone walked up to you and said a single book would cause you to seriously question or completely abandon your faith in the god of the Bible, would you read that book?

I'm a big fan of this sort of awakening. Some of my earliest thoughts of any sort of philosophical nature had to do Nazi Germany. How could an entire nation allow the Hollocaust to take place? The question wasn't just an emotional reaction to the horrors of the hollocaust. It was an attempt to understand how millions of people could share a set of beliefs so morrally abhorrent and patently flawed. Only one thing was absolutely certain-that so many people could be so wrong.

If only the minds of Germans weren't so fully captive to Hitler and German nationalist propaganda. If only someone could break through the mental and emotional chains that enslaved Germans during those years. If only myths were dispelled, false idols destroyed, propaganda seen for what it was. If only the people could be set free.

Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation has the power to clear the fog of religious belief, and explain in detail what precisely is wrong with continuing to ally yourself with and support the various religions of the day. This is the most important point that becomes very clear when you read the book. The problem is not just religious fundamentalism, it is the ordinary religious belief of ordinary people that continues to allow immense suffering in the world and provides shelter/justification for further dangerous developements of a more fundamental kind.

Here's a great quote from the book:

"Religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are not--that is, when they have nothing to do with suffering or its alleviation. Indeed, religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral--that is, when pressing these concerns inflicts unnecessary and appalling suffering on innocent human beings. This explains why Christians like yourself expend more "moral" energy opposing abortion that fighting genocide. It explains why you are more concerned about human embryos than about the lifesaving promise of stem-cell research. And it explains why you can preach against condom use in sub-Saharan Africa while millions die from Aids here each year.
You believe that your religious concerns about sex, in all their tiresome immensity, have something to do with morality. And yet, your efforts to constrain the sexual behavior of consenting adults--and even to discourage your own sons and daughters from having premarital sex--are almost never geared toward the relief of human suffering. In fact, relieving suffering seems to rank rather low on your list of priorities. Your principle concern appears to be that the creator of the universe will take offense at something people do while naked. This prudery of yours contributes daily to the surplus of huma misery"

The book is only 113 pages and costs $11 at your local book store. My challenge is the same one religious leaders pose to nonbelievers: Read this book completely and see if you come away unchanged.