So I've been trying to get some thoughts together on The Atheism, and I decided to pick up a few books by The Atheists, for quotes and context and such.
I just read Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. The phrase that kept popping into my mind was this:
Sam Harris, you stupid idiot.
I'm not particularly proud of this reaction, and I know he's not a stupid idiot, but that's the how it was.
I had to keep reminding myself of some other essay Harris wrote, the name of which escapes me, where he displayed a capacity for nuance and reflection. He's a smart man. But there is no nuance in Letter to a Christian Nation. It's as bluntly reductive as any fundamentalist tract. It seemed like I could hardly turn a page without finding a gross oversimplification. This isn't by itself a problem. What else can you expect from an eighty-page polemic? Of course it would take a longer book to present these arguments more seriously.
What was really disappointing is that it's not even a good polemic, by the standards of the genre. Where are the devastating aphorisms? The sharply calibrated witticisms? The splendidly grotesque literary caricatures? I only smiled when he quoted abler stylists. All we get here is earnest moralizing.
Say what you will about Christopher Hitchens; at least he knows how to deploy properly an anecdote.
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