Critique of Sam Harris’ Letter To A Christian Nation

By: Stephen Allen

In August of 2004, Sam Harris published the book The End of Faith, which expresses his concerns with organized religion and the perceived clash that exists between faith and reason. His book is a best seller and receives much criticism. Two years later, in response to the critics, Letter To A Christian Nation presents an argument for a free and global society that is stripped from its entanglements with religion. Harris tells his Christian audience that his purpose in this letter 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.”¹

Primarily under the gun, for Harris, is the notion of “creation” of the cosmos by God, referred to as Intelligent Design. His argument points out the prominence of pain and suffering and the brokenness of the cosmos implies the lack of a Creator—that “scientific (intellectual) fact”² and evidence to decay is overwhelmingly in favor of “unintelligent design.” In similar fashion, these matters will be the concentrated focus of my critique.

From whatever perspective one approaches the matters of science and religion, it must be done fairly. To be fair, interpretations of both science and religion employ reason and therefore have limits as to their approach to what is true. It would not be fair to ask my pastor to diagnose my pneumonia. It would not be fair for my doctor to prescribe that I read the Psalms to help me with my headaches. Also in consideration is that we are limited in the areas of both science and religion because the nature of man is limited. Human reason has its place in both approaches to truth, but we must admit the limits of it.

The Clash or Science and Religion:

In this section of his letter, Harris begins by citing the National Academy of Science. In brief, “science is a way of knowing about the natural world. It is limited to explaining the natural world through natural causes. Science can say nothing about the supernatural. Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral.” This is the most incriminating bit of the entire discussion. He presents the argument that decay and disorder in the cosmos reasons that there is no God. As we might imagine, he quotes the NAS so that he can disagree with it. He states, “even the NAS has declared the conflict [between Science and Religion] illusory.”³ He feels that the release of this statement was done in “raw terror of the taxpaying mob” from withholding their funds.

Here are two examples of Harris’ argument against religion that demonstrate from science to a biased conclusion—from “intellectual fact” to a rational “theory.” During the stages of development, a human embryo produces a coat of hair, gill sacs, and a tail, which it sheds prior to birth. This anomaly is counter-logic. The illogical nature of the science, he claims, is evidence of unintelligent design. The scientists tell us that some 99% of the once-existing creatures that we’ve encountered have now become extinct.⁴ Harris also claims this to be an argument against intelligent design—claiming that the world as seen by science is one of “redundancy, regressions, and unnecessary complications.”

I would like to point out that in the Christian understanding of a Creator who made the celestial bodies,⁵ we are constantly accumulating more truth as we continue to study the cosmos. A better understanding of the anomalies that present themselves in our solar system can enhance one’s understanding of an intelligent Designer, rather than necessarily argue against one. For example, the name “planet” means “wanderer.” The ancients observed that certain “stars” did not behave as the majority of stars behaved in their positioning. Much later astronomers understood them not to be traveling as stars because they were not starts at all, but other satellites like Earth that were in orbit around the sun. It would have been unfair for Harris to stare into a telescope and see Jupiter moving randomly among the nighttime backdrop of stars and say that this anomaly implies chaos. For scripture points out that “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”⁶

Similarly, science points out that of the eight known planets, two of them rotate clockwise, while earth and the rest rotate counter-clockwise. If our scientific theory of the origin of the solar system is correct, it would present a model of debris that is all traveling outward and spinning in the same direction. If Venus and Uranus do not, we may hypothesize as to the “why,” but we are left with a theory that requires another theory in order to be explained. We have to admit that we are guessing about what contradicts our understanding of the origins of the nature of gravity and the solar system as a mad-spinning spiral of particles that were sent traveling off into the vastness by a collision of heavenly bodies all going in the same direction. Science can attempt to explain the anomalies of Venus and Uranus, but any dogma about it would be unfair.

The current explanation is that there were outside, foreign objects (not from our solar collision) that collided with these two planets, which caused them to spin the other direction. This takes a powerful imagination considering that Uranus is not only rotating a different direction from its neighbors on either side, but that its axis is tilted nearly 90 degrees from its neighbors as well. Why didn’t this hypothetical collision send Uranus wobbling into space, or even more likely, blast it into bits? Instead, a foreign body was able to smack the surface of a planet that is 14.5 times the size of earth in just the precise location with just the right force to stop her from spinning one way, cause her to begin spinning the other way, and (as if from a top-down direction) that same blow (or another) caused the north pole to point nearly directly toward the sun—effecting the orbit of her known 27 satellite moons.

Is it fair to conclude that because we do not understand the contradiction, that our theory of gravity or our theory of the origin of the solar system are impossible, untrue, and need to be tossed out? Or does it merely conclude that the science is incomplete or limited? At the very least, it is inconsistent. If the theory can remain limited and yet trustworthy, then there is no reason to throw out the theory of an intelligent Designer? From the standpoint of ID, it is also fair to conclude that God is more intelligent than man, and maybe some day, we will understand the “why” that the “truth” about Uranus and Venus lies to our minds, therefore, recognizing the limits to both science and faith shows itself to be the most wise position to accept. My position is not agnosticism, mind you, but one of a sober knowledge of what we can know, and not to suggest more by presumption—what is available to us from that which is not.

The dogma must stop where the data stops. To take the data of science into matters of the supernatural is a violation, but what is the nature of the violation? I want to suggest that it is bigotry and arrogance to conclude more than one can fairly conclude. The nature of the fallacy is that human understanding stands only upon his ability to know. If there is anything conclusive about humanity that we can say with certainty, it is that he has not the ability to speak dogmatically about the question “why” solely upon human understanding. In the same way we cannot fully explain any of the planets in our solar system without reference to the star in the middle, it is simply insufficient to speak about the true breadth, depth, and magnitude, of what it means to be a human apart from the center of man’s understanding—the source of all light and energy from which all life flows. If one is not content to find himself only able to see that he does in fact orbit a certain other body, he can attempt to remove himself from that reality, but he cannot do so without interrupting every other aspect of knowing himself, nor can he know himself completely at all. He has to be able to recognize that man may not be autonomous, what is the case with regard to his nature and that of his reality, and not speculate as to the “why.” Both the “believer” and the non-believer must be cautioned here.

The Nature of Pain

Tied up into one confused knot with the science-religion debate is Harris’ inability to reconcile that a good and all-powerful God can exist and be present in the world He has made in view of human suffering. Harris writes, “If God exists, either He can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities, or He does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil.” Now, how I approach this matter is also going to reflect my understanding of the nature of God and the nature of man. My argument will never satisfy his argument because we carry into the discussion our biases. Do we then throw our hands up and walk away? No. Rather, I want to suggest that we approach the heart of the question by recognizing the limits to our ability to understand both the full nature of God and man. Let’s be reasonable about what we’re asking. Is what we’re asking reasonable to ask?

The same principle that we applied to the Science-versus-Religion section can be used here as well. The dogma must stop when the data stops. To speculate is a violation to truth. If I cannot see why God’s nature allows for human misery and suffering does not mean that there is no reason. Harris is not asking to know the nature of a God that allows humans to suffer. He has denied that a God exists because he has demand an explanation to what he was seeing as a contradiction and came up short.

If the planet Venus denies what we know to be true of the nature of gravity, it does not conclude that gravity cannot exist. What it means is that I have misunderstood the full nature of gravity. I am limited in my interpretation of the data. The nature of Harris’ fallacy is that one’s faith must stand upon one’s ability to know rightly. If there is anything conclusive about humanity that we can say with certainty, it is that he has not the ability to stand dogmatically solely upon human understanding. Empirical data is simply insufficient to speak about the true breadth, depth, and magnitude of what it means to be a human. Likewise, religion may not give us the “why” to the question of suffering. In the words of P.A. Sorokin,

Take contemporary science and ask how it defines man. The current answers are that man is a variety of electron-proton complex; or an animal closely related to the ape or monkey; or a reflex mechanism; or a variety of stimulus-response relationships; or a psychoanalytical bag filled either by libido or basic physiological drives; or a mechanism controlled mainly by digestive and economic needs . . . No doubt man is all these things. But do any or all of these conceptions completely explain the essential nature of man? Do they touch his most fundamental properties which make him a creature unique in the world? Most of the definitions which pretend to be especially scientific rarely, if ever, raise such questions. They pass them by.⁷

If we easily and constantly misunderstand the nature of humanity, how much more do we misunderstand Divinity? The believer submits to the higher ways of the Divine and relies not upon his ability to know, but rests in the mystery that it is such, and yet, I may not fully know the why. To demand it to make sense intellectually that anomalies exist in nature, or that God would allow pain into His universe, is to demand more from human reason than science or religion have to offer.