The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions

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AT THE beginning of his Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris writes that his fiercest and most “disturbed” critics are Christians who are “deeply, even murderously, intolerant of criticism.” It would seem that a good many of those intolerant critics have been sending Harris biblical verses supporting their intolerance. Now, I count myself among Harris’s warmest detractors. When he remarks that he has been dumbstruck by Christian and Moslem intellectual commitments, I believe the word has met the man. But here it is, an inconvenient fact: I am a secular Jew. My religious education did not take. I can barely remember a word of Hebrew. I cannot pray. I have spent more years than I care to remember in studying mathematics and writing about the sciences. Yet the book that follows is in some sense a defense of religious thought and sentiment. Biblical verses are the least of it.

A defense is needed because none has been forthcoming. The discussion has been ceded to men who regard religious belief with frivolous contempt. Their books have in recent years poured from every press, and although differing widely in their style, they are identical in their message: Because scientific theories are true, religious beliefs must be false. Harris has conveyed the point by entitling an essay “Science Must Destroy Religion.” His call to jihad cannot be long delayed.

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