Status Updates From Letter to a Christian Nation

DNF. I could.not.stand this nasty whiny diatribe. And for the record, I'm agnostic.

Harris says that the historical roots of Nazism and the holocaust were Christian and therefore that religion is at least partly to blame for the holocaust (although it was also rooted in social Darwinist ideas). If this mode of argument is legitimate, how does he respond to Christians who say that modern secular ethics grew, and could only have grown, from the fertile soil of Christian civilisation? What's his point?

Or what about virtue ethics, which since the time of Aristotle has been one of the main ethical strands running through all secular thought? Pain and pleasure matter to virtue ethicists, but they're not the only nor even the most important concerns. Sam's view--Benthamite utilitarianism--didn't become popular among atheists until fairly recently. What's obvious to Sam isn't obvious even to his fellow atheists!

Sam is a terrible moral philosopher. For an ethicist who's made it his life's work to preach the good news of secular moral realism, he does an absolutely terrible job defending and explaining it. Instead of arguments, he makes assertions signposted with words and phrases like 'clearly' and 'need only be'. He says that secular ethics necessarily concerns itself with pain and pleasure--but what then of deep ecology?

> Political correctness and the fear of racism have made many Europeans reluctant to oppose the terrifying commitments of the [Muslim] extremists in their midst. With a few exceptions, the only public figures who have had the courage to speak honestly about the threat that Islam now poses to European society seem to be fascists.
This feels like a product of the zeitgeist of 2006, yet surprisingly relevant in 2026.