Well I haven't gotten that into knowing who Dawkins is. I do not care for Hitchens which is why I haven't read his book, I don't like him or his writing style. But Harris on the other hand is a different subject. I don't think he should be lumped in there with them, nor should his book. It's very much a book, written in layman's terms, about all religion's equally and their problems. I would recommend it, and have passed it on to several theist friends who liked it, but left Dawkins, which I wasn't nuts about, on the shelf.btaylor2404
If I had to put those four on a hierarchy of most favorable in terms of scholarly work, it would go like this, in descending order:
1. Dennett
2. Dawkins
3. Hitchens
4. Harris
Harris makes absolutely wild claims in his books, where he makes claims that are actually somewhat original to him (most of his arguments are thousands of years old). He demonstrates clear inability to distinguish the importance of the Testaments to Christians, a big must for someone who actually wants to argue with them.
Rather than refer to a scholar from the past centuries, he makes one reference to Tim LaHaye and thirteen references to Hitler Himmler, and Hess, with six pages devoted to Noam Chomsky when explaining exactly what Christians believe. Because, after all, no one is more suited to explain the Christian faith quite so well as an elderly author of pop religious fantasies, a trio of dead Nazis, and a left-wing Jewish linguist.
And it's not just Christianity to which he directs his ignorance. Harris begins The End of Faith by strongly implying that almost all suicide bombers are Muslim. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who are not Muslims but a Marxist liberation front that committed 168 of the 273 suicide bombings that took place between 1980 and 2000, have historically been the leading practitioners of suicide bombing. Harris later tries to cover up his mistake by stating that the Tigers are Hindu, so therefore his point still stands that religion is bad. Nevermind that the Tiger explicitly claim secular status, and this is demonstrated by the recent death of their chief strategist, who was Roman Catholic.
He also blames religion on the deaths of literally "millions" of people in Palestine, the Balkans, Northern Ireland, Kashmir, Sudan, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Caucasus in the past ten years, even though there have been no more than 750,000 deaths in those areas combined in the past 14 years according to The Timor-Leste Commission for Reception, Truth, and Reconciliation. In addition, these numbers also pale in comparison to the 1.5 million deaths in the Red Terror of the atheistic Derg regime.
And where would we be without the argument that religions are inherently intolerant? But considering the fact that Harris lives comfortably and unmolested in a country where 150 million people are very religious, with the other hundred million being a bit more moderate, that's a bit of a weird claim to make.
Which leads me to my next point: Harris literally blames the religious moderates for the actions of the religious extremists, applying the extreme actions of suicide bombings and crusades and so on to all religious people, a logical absurdity that most Kindergarten children know not to make.
He also makes a correlation with Red states and Blue states, as well as their morality. Red States are full of theists and have terrible crime rates, while Blue states don't have many theists and have great moral lifestyIes. Not only is this absolutely absurd (most Democrats are Christians just like Republicans), it's also invoking a "correlation = causation" argument.
I could go on for days at the intellectual bankruptcy of Harris. This just scratches the surface.
Of course, this all talks about The End of Faith and Letters to a Christian Nation, both of which are absurd, but I don't know what book of his you're actually referring to.
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