God Is Not Great

I came to Christopher Hitchens’ famously irreligious book quite late, having already read similarly themed work by Dennett (Breaking the Spell), Harris (The End of Faith; Letter to a Christian Nation) and Dawkins (The Blind Watchmaker; I’ve not read The God Delusion, but I’ll probably get around to it one day). The argument being made, more or less, in these books is that there is no place in the modern world where dogmatic belief systems are more beneficial than humanism and rationalism, and that in many cases they do active harm more often than good.

The End of Faith

When a reviewer describes Sam Harris’s debut as “pugilistic”, he’s probably thinking about statements like this:

“Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.”

Letter to a Christian Nation

He addresses You, directly and personally, and although he doesn’t know your name he does know what you think. Written in response to a deluge of pro-biblical retortions to his previous book, The End of Faith, Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation is very short and pointedly sharp – A Challenge to the Faith of America.