With the title of this post, I have in mind prominent secularist Sam Harris and his book “Letter To A Christian Nation.” Letter to a Christian Nation is a 2006 book by Sam Harris, written in response to feedback he received following the publication of his first book The End of Faith. The book is written in the form of an open letter to a Christian in the United States. Harris states that his aim is “to demolish the intellectual and moral pretensions of Christianity in its most committed forms.”
My letter here isn’t meant to demolish anything, but to ask Christian parents to view the short video below and ask themselves if they can see their own Christian faith with the same disinterested objectivity they see the silliness of voodoo faith and rituals? This is the challenge of the “Outsider Test For Faith,” put forward most famously by secular activist John Loftus.
My question for Christian parents, or really any religious parent, is can you watch the video, and then see your own faith the way secular people see your faith?
Beginning to see religion through the eyes of a secular person is like coming to see one of those gestalt hidden images – hidden at first – but once you see it you can’t “un-see” it. This is what the ancient Greeks meant by truth, “un-covering (a-letheia, un-hiding).”
get Loftus’ provocative book here