He never ...

[hortysir]

you could've pointed this out to me, Sister

now i gotta go back to the beginning and catch up...

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it's only been running for over 2 years lol I'm sorry, I shoulda' let you know!

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Atheist Belief - Letter to a Christian Nation
Although Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris is a statement of atheist belief, a credible Christian response should start with the admission that many intelligent theists and atheists share several incontrovertible views. First, we agree that we cannot both be right about the tenets of Christianity. We also agree that “to be a true Christian is to believe that all other faiths are mistaken, and profoundly so.” Further, we agree that either God exists, or He doesn’t. In short, the fundamental laws of logic, like the law of non-contradiction, apply to all of us, regardless of our belief system or worldview. Areas of agreement certainly exist between us. However, we also have many areas of disagreement. One of the most glaring of these lies with the presumption that “every devout Muslim has the same reasons for being a Muslim that [i] have for being a Christian.” Your assumption leads you to believe that it is valid to compare Islam with Christianity. You state that “Muslims are not making claims about reality that can be corroborated,” and imply the same about Christianity, yet your latter assumption is mistaken.

Throughout your Letter to a Christian Nation you express your fears of religion as the “Root of All Evil” in the world. In your opinion freedom from religion, or should I say The End of Faith, would almost certainly entail freedom from terrorism and most wars. In both your books, you list numerous worldwide conflicts between faith-based warring factions. Yet you address your letter to American Christians. Do you see American Christians at war with other faiths? Are protestant Christians killing Roman Catholics in the United States due to doctrinal differences? Do you see American Christians diverting air traffic toward buildings in the Middle East? Perhaps you should have addressed your Letter to radical Muslims, although we both know it wouldn’t sell in the Middle East and a market that comprises less than 1% of Americans would hardly warrant such an edition here in the States.

Atheist Belief – The Question of Morality
You state that “questions of morality are questions about happiness and suffering. This is why you and I do not have moral obligations toward rocks.” I would suggest that questions of morality spread way beyond the confines you have placed upon them. In a sense, we even have moral obligations toward rocks. Don’t we have moral obligations toward sustaining the resources of our earth? Most atheists would say we do. In fact, and this may surprise you, so would most Christians. Theologians include the responsibility of caring for the earth and the environment in what we call the creation mandate.

The orthodox Christian perspective deems it morally proper to express concern over civil rights abuses in other countries and try to aid those countries in bringing such inhumane activity to an end. A president, who grounds his morality in the teachings of Jesus Christ, could not ignore the cruelty reflected in the crimes against humanity that Saddam Hussein inflicted upon his own people. I reside in a city with a high percentage of military personnel. Support for President George W. Bush and the Iraq War started out strong. It has since waned only due to the inability of Americans to clearly see a resolution to the situation in Iraq. Nevertheless, the Christians I’ve spoken to in our Armed Forces have made a firm commitment to attain stability in Iraq prior to the significant troop withdrawal needed to end the war. A liberal Epicurean or Utilitarian perspective (as I will address later in this book) warrants no real concern over abuses occurring in foreign lands. Both perspectives revert back to the logic that what is best for the individual or local group should prevail and ultimately ignores the needs of outsiders.

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Old Testament Law – Does it still Apply?
When it comes to the Old Testament Law, you make the unwarranted assumption that many of the Old Testament laws continue to bind Christians today. If true, shouldn’t we have heard of instances where Christians acted upon these laws? Wouldn’t home schooling moms kill children frequently for talking back to them? Wouldn’t Andrea Yates, who drowned her five children in Texas in 2001, have considered first an appeal to Leviticus rather than an insanity plea? The only place where these laws apply within today’s culture is within certain Jewish sects, who contend that the Halakha (Jewish religious law) along with its 613 Commandments, including many of the ones you cited, should still require strict obedience. Among the vast majority of modern American Jews a person only binds himself to the Halakha by his own volition, a choice few actually make. Even among Orthodox and Haredi Jews, the most conservative segments of Judaism, the death penalty has been done away with since the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD.

In describing these Old Testament laws and their penalties, ostensibly to affirm their validity in American Christianity, you make it a point to cite references to the New Testament as well. However your citations from Matthew 15:4-7 and Mark 7:9-13 refer only to instances when Jesus alludes to the same Old Testament laws. Both gospel writers explicated the same incident. Jesus spoke to a group of Jewish Pharisees who had already relaxed the penalties of the Old Testament law by rationalizing away the need to care for their parents in their old age. He showed them the hypocrisy of allowing their followers to ignore their obligations to their parents so as to contribute to the Temple. And yes, Jesus actually supported the Law by His words. You confirm this as well by quoting Matthew, which I will repeat here.
I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. - Matthew 5:18-20
However, your quote failed to include the critical verse that preceded these words.
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. - Matthew 5:17
Woven into this one verse we discover the sine qua non ... the summum bonum of the Christian faith. Jesus’ purpose here on earth was to fulfill the law, not only by living in total obedience to the law, but also by paying the penalty incurred by everyone who has ever lived or will ever live, who are drawn to place their trust in Him. Paul wrote, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” Jesus was the only person who could unequivocally make such a claim.

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Doctrine of Original Sin – A Matter of Genetics?
As we examine the Christian doctrine of original sin, I am sure you will disagree with Paul’s statement, since you limit your view of morality to those actions that promote happiness or ease human suffering. Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion asks “What kind of ethical philosophy is it that condemns every child, even before it is born, to inherit the sin of a remote ancestor?” I suspect you’d ask much the same question. What I find interesting about Dawkins’ query is his apparent incognizance of the concepts it entails. Notice his use of the word “inherit.” While primarily applied to the field of genetics, I don’t find its use inappropriate here. We are not all born with the burden of Adam’s specific sin pressing down upon us. Rather, we are each born with an inherent tendency toward sinful behavior; a sense of selfishness that yields a desire to promote our own personal happiness. Contrary to always being morally virtuous, most of us would categorize such behavior as sinful at times, even if only in the sense that, in the process, we may cause suffering to others. From the moment of our birth, we exhibit selfish behavior. But, you may argue, don’t all babies disturb their mothers by crying in order to be fed? Isn’t this behavior morally neutral? Isn’t this simply a necessity that assures our survival? Yes, yet this same tendency toward selfishness, that assures our survival past infancy, causes one child to hurt another simply to obtain a coveted toy. Suddenly, what originally simply promoted our personal happiness has become a means by which we promote human suffering.

Does this mean we have original sin built into our genetic makeup? I’d suggest that since the time of Adam’s fall, it has been. Remember, almost 98% of the DNA in the human genome geneticists still classify as “junk DNA,” which may imply a purely structural function or an encoding function that has not yet been identified. Does this mean that we may eventually isolate a single “sin gene”? Perhaps, but for theological reasons, I suspect not. More likely, the “sin trait” has been encrypted within the entire genome, more complex than even a supergene. However, what would better fit the definition of Richard Dawkins’ “selfish gene” than a gene for selfishness? A gene that causes an organism to seek its own best interests (i.e. selfishness), even to the point of causing other humans to suffer (i.e. sin), would certainly qualify as a “fit” gene. According to natural selection, such a gene will never be eradicated from the human gene pool.

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Doctrine of Original Sin – Morality
Richard Dawkins suggests that morality has a Darwinian origin. While evolution has endowed us all with selfish genes, this does not imply a selfish organism, selfish group, or selfish species. He suggests that four types of altruism have evolved via natural selection. Reciprocal altruism he defines as the 'you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours' type. Kin altruism causes related individuals to 'care for their own.' Third, he presents the altruism that arises when one individual desires to attain a reputation for kindness and generosity. And finally, there is the authentic advertising an individual gains from being conspicuously generous. Of course, Dawkins fails to recognize that none of these examples of "morality" represent classical selfless altruism. In each case, the altruist has a vested self-interest in the action, a self-serving motive. While both you and Dawkins claim that Christians only do good because they believe God is watching everything they do, the atheist version of morality implies that we only do good when there is something "in it for us." Goodness for “goodness' sake” seems a rare commodity in the human species. It’s a wonder Santa ever delivers anything but coal!

Promoting one’s own happiness and easing human suffering do not always overlap. Granted, if we act altruistically and ease human suffering by helping hurricane victims, this action will likely bring us a sense of personal happiness and accomplishment. However, often times we promote our own happiness at the expense of others. Let’s look at another statement you made: “Consider the ratio of salaries paid to top-tier CEOs and those paid to the same firms’ average employees: in Britain it is 24:1; in France, 15:1; in Sweden, 13:1; in the United States, where 80 percent of the population expects to be called before God on Judgment Day, it is 475:1.” Once again you’ve adopted the logical fallacy of equivocation and used statistics to your own ends. The New York Review of Books article you cited leaves out the adjectival phrase “where 80 percent of the population expects to be called before God on Judgment Day.” The religious affiliations of the American population had nothing whatsoever to do with top-tier CEOs’ elections to those positions. Christian values may help someone get elected to political office, but they will have little effect on a CEO making it up the corporate ladder. The number of individuals who comprise that small, select group of CEOs of major companies in America is likely so small that it represents merely a fraction of one percent of even American atheists. The amount of time and energy one has to spend to achieve such a high level position often leaves little time for anything else, like, for instance, religious observance, and frequently causes a bit of human suffering along the way. Do we all inherit original sin? Absolutely. Does this mean that we have no capacity to do good? No, only that we do not have the capacity to only do good; we must also sin.

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Teachings of Jesus – The Purpose of the Old Testament Law
The teachings of Jesus include an examination of the Old Testament Law. Specifically, Jesus taught His contemporaries that God created the Law for their benefit. Human beings were not designed to be self-sufficient and live in a state of anarchy. If you prefer, human beings did not evolve to be autonomous. The Law intended to reflect the holiness of God and to strongly impress upon humanity the sort of behavior He deemed moral. As an omniscient God, He knew it wouldn’t take long for leniency to ensue. Yet it remained for Him to show mankind that a failure in even one small area of the law equaled a failure in all areas. If all of us today adhered completely to the moral law, as prescribed by God, we could all attain the greatest possible level of personal happiness. Of course, this will never happen on earth as we know it.

Theologians sometimes use Latin terms to express ideas, as do scientists. Theologians would define the state of mankind after Adam’s fall as non posse non peccare (i.e. not able not to sin). The sinfulness passed down through the gene pool of all mankind affects us all. However, in heaven we will become non posse peccare (i.e. not able to sin). Will this occur by a divine restructuring of our genetic material? Perhaps. It is reasonable to consider that, if God exists, He could omnipotently adapt individual components of His creation. However, the most visible means by which he changes individuals and adapts them for heaven, theologians call the process of sanctification. Marked by a consistent upward climb, like a graph of the growth in stock prices of a growing company, the believer has an increasing passion to live in obedience to God. Failure will occur as part of the growth process, like the occasional dips on a growing stock chart, but repentance will follow, along with the strength to carry on

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The teachings of Jesus left no doubt that under the Law the penalty for sin is death. Paul spelled out the relationship between the Law and sin in his letter to the Romans.

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned—for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. - Romans 5:12-13

During Old Testament times, the Law became necessary to curtail the curiosity and sin nature of God’s people that God knew would result in their misery. In the New Testament, the Law points the way to forgiveness and salvation from the penalty of sin. Paul explains this a little further in Romans.

But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. - Romans 5:20-21

Every man, woman and child alive is born a slave to sin, due to the inheritance of a sin nature. However, the only person capable of overcoming death, Jesus Christ, paid the penalty for that sin as our substitute. While the crucifixion may seem barbaric to you, it was born on the shoulders of God himself. This means that God not only created and enacted the Law; He sent His Son to bear the punishment for our crimes (even if we perceive them as mere peccadilloes), entirely in our place. Christians understand this as Christ’s atonement for our sins. He willingly paid the penalty we rightfully should have paid ourselves. Richard Dawkins finds this doctrine of the atonement sado-masochistic and repellant. Yet the atonement forms the core of the Christian concept of grace. This initial act of grace on Jesus’ part promises us forgiveness of sin and opens the door to a new life of grace. Henceforth we find ourselves no longer slaves to sin. As Paul says,

Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? - Romans 6:16

But we can define grace as so much more than mere forgiveness of sins. It also provides an entrance into a life in which God actively participates. God, through the Holy Spirit, works in the lives of believers to empower them toward living sanctified lives that reflect the moral teachings of Jesus. No one can truly understand this aspect of the Christian faith short of personal experience.

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Is there evidence for the Christian faith? You often refer to the irrationality of people of faith who believe based upon insufficient evidence. Referring to Christains, you state, “you feel that you are in a position to judge that Jesus is the Son of God, that the Golden Rule is the height of moral wisdom, and that the Bible is not itself brimming with lies. You are using your own moral intuitions to authenticate the wisdom of the Bible.” If our moral intuitions and feelings formed the sum total of our evidences in support of Christianity, I would agree that such a faith lacked rational coherence. This resembles the faith of Mormon missionaries who ask you to read from the Book of Mormon until you obtain a sense of warmth and peace that assures you of its truth. This “burning in the bosom” must provide the best evidence the Book of Mormon has going for it, since scientific and archaeological evidence certainly doesn’t support its claims. Allegedly, Joseph Smith found the text for the Book of Mormon inscribed on gold plates buried near a hill named Cumorah in upstate New York. Even though Palmyra, NY residents hold a Hill Cumorah Pageant every summer, no archaeological evidence has confirmed the location of such a hill. Nothing has ever been found that substantiates the description of the events at Cumorah described by Brigham Young in his Journal of Discourses.

When Joseph got the plates, the angel instructed him to carry them back to the hill Cumorah, which he did. Oliver says that when Joseph and Oliver went there, the hill opened, and they walked into a cave, in which there was a large and spacious room. He says he did not think, at the time, whether they had the light of the sun or artificial light; but that it was just as light as day. They laid the plates on a table; it was a large table that stood in the room. Under this table there was a pile of plates as much as two feet high, and there were altogether in this room more plates than probably many wagon loads; they were piled up in the corners and along the walls.

You assume that the Christian faith is a “blind leap” into a world filled with contradictions and unwarranted assertions. You seem to think that Christianity’s only redemptive quality lies in its ability to make us feel good about ourselves. This is patently false. The historicity of Christianity has both archaeological and historical support. Let us examine briefly just the recently discovered archaeological and historical evidence.

In November of 1990, archaeologists recovered the bones of Caiaphas, high priest from 18-37 AD, from an ossuary in Jerusalem. The front of the ossuary was beautifully adorned and an inscription on two sides bore the name Yusef bar Caifa in Hebrew. Soldiers took Jesus to Caiaphas the high priest upon his arrest. We find the account of this incident in Matthew 26.

The pool of Siloam, originally thought to have been discovered in the early 1900s, received new interest in late 2004. A sewer crew uncovered stone steps about 200 yards from the original pool that piqued the interest of archaeologists. The pool had historic significance as a public bath to allow washing before entrance into the Temple, but for years, people have wondered how the original small and narrow pool might have served this purpose. The newly found pool measures 225 ft. along one side, forming a rectangle with tiered steps leading into it. Biblically, the pool served as the site where Jesus’ healed a man blind since birth.

I would also like to mention several other noteable archaeological discoveries. The beginnings of David’s Palace have been found in Jerusalem. (2 Chronicles 8:11) While digging in Gath, the home of the Philistine warrior Goliath, archaeologists have uncovered a shard of pottery inscribed with two Proto-Semitic renderings of the name “Goliath.” (1 Samuel 17:4) In Megiddo, in Northern Israel, while extending an Israeli prison, workers uncovered a beautiful mosaic floor bearing the inscription “built in honor of Jesus Christ the God.” Discoveries such as these provide support for the accuracy of the biblical texts as historical narratives and also attest to the existence of Jesus and the prevailing view of his divinity among early Christians.

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Most intellectual atheists do not struggle with Christianty over this sort of evidence. Nevertheless, it is important for the reader to note that such evidence does exist. You would classify this sort of evidence as “soft” science. Instead, the majority of atheists reject Christian claims that appeal to the supernatural as utterly implausible. When it comes to “hard” scientific evidence for these sorts of claims, Christianity has admittedly fallen short. However, that shouldn’t surprise us when individuals with a Christian worldview are routinely passed over for research professorships at major colleges and universities. Atheism has surreptitiously infiltrated our higher educational system. This past year, Dr. Francis Beckwith of Baylor University almost lost a tenure track position in Philosophy, specifically due to his Christian worldview. When major universities seek applicants for positions in the “hard” sciences, they don’t favor applicants who espouse a Christian worldview. Each department forms a search committee composed of members of that department, most of whom have never seriously considered Christian truth claims. This might explain why membership in the National Academy of Sciences is 93 percent atheist, as you point out. Christians are subconsciously dissuaded from hard science majors unless they attend a Christian Liberal Arts college. I went through just this sort of struggle twenty-five years ago at a major secular university. While working on my Masters Degree, I was fortunate to have an advisor who respected my opinions and supported my right to disagree with him. Had I been at another school, where my views were ridiculed, rather than respected, I may have left the sciences altogether. I might add that this man always worked on Christmas day, but took the day off for Darwin’s birthday. We represented two completely opposing viewpoints yet found it possible to work together in harmony.