Sam Harris - Ten Myths, Truths About Atheism's Apologetics

This essay seeks to respond to Mr. Sam Harris' article Ten Myths, Truths About Atheism (Los Angeles Times, Wednesday, December 27, 2006). In his article, which is enumerated from one to ten, he lists the "myth" and responds with the "truth." Therefore, following his format, we likewise have enumerated the myths and responded to his truth claims.

One ought to appreciate honesty and Sam Harris certainly makes his endgame crystal clear; his goal in life is to bring about the utter obliteration of any and all religions-"faith" based beliefs. Yet, not only beliefs and rituals but the very language used to define and describe them. He writes, "Words like 'God' and 'Allah' must go the way of 'Apollo' and 'Baal,' or they will unmake our world…Faith-based religion must suffer the same slide into obsolescence."1 Sam Harris is against any and all religious expression, the orthodox/fundamentalist and the liberal/moderate. He wrote, "I hope to show that the very ideal of religious tolerance-born of the notion that every human being should be free to believe whatever he wants about God-is one of the principal forces driving us toward the abyss."2

We do not mean to oversimplify Sam Harris but we must point out that, ultimately, what he succeeds in accomplishing with his writing of books and articles and with his lectures and interviews is a non-succinct version of John Lennon's song Imagine: "Imagine there's no heaven, It's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky…And no religion too" and here is the punch line, "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one, I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one." According to this worldview the world will be as one when religious people forsake their beliefs and accept, on dogmatic authority, absolute materialism.

Also note that Sam Harris introduces his myth busting by lamenting the following statistic, "According to a recent Newsweek poll, only 37% of Americans would vote for an otherwise qualified atheist for president." Yet, what is his response? Elsewhere, he looks forward to a time when "making religious certitude look stupid will be exploited, and we'll start laughing at people who believe…We'll laugh at them in a way that will be synonymous with excluding them from our halls of power"3 (emphasis added). Actually, Sam Harris must be thrilled at the progress that atheists are making since a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll conducted in March 2007 has 48% answering "Yes" 48% answering "No" and 4% answering "Don't know/other." Apparently, religious people should not keep atheists from our halls of power but atheists should keep religious people from our halls of power-two wrongs…

1) Atheists believe that life is meaningless.

On the atheist view, life has meaning because we give meaning to life. Yet, the issue is that they must give meaning to life because, according to their worldview, life has no absolute-intrinsic-objective meaning. Life is meaningless and so any meaning they concoct is necessarily self-induced consoling delusion, which is the very thing of which they accuse theists.

Please understand that for the atheist this fact is nothing short of a complement. That is to say, they would take pride in the fact that they do not need a supernatural entity to tell them what the meaning of life is; they are intelligent enough to find their own.

However, there have been atheists who have made their purpose to slaughter millions upon millions of people in order to gain, and maintain, their political power. In such cases how could other atheists condemn such personal prescriptions of meaning? Perhaps the only way would be to borrow from theistic moral systems.

2) Atheism is responsible for the greatest crimes in human history.

Sam Harris makes some interesting points here in making reference to the personality cults and dogmatism that were inherent in regimes such as Hitler's, Stalin's, Mao's and Pol Pot's. He reasonably states, "Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok."

Moreover, he actually blames the brutality of people who were atheists on religion:

"People of faith regularly claim that atheism is responsible for some of the most appalling crimes of the 20th century. Although it is true that the regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were irreligious to varying degrees, they were not especially rational…In many respects, religion was directly culpable even here. Consider the Holocaust: The anti-Semitism that built the Nazi crematoria brick by brick was a direct inheritance from medieval Christianity."4

In his "Myths" essay, he does not bother commenting on the atheistic Communists and blames Christianity for Nazism. Sam Harris is certainly not the first with a superficial enough understanding of Christ's teachings so as to contrive an undeserved association to Nazism. Adolf Hitler stated, "When understanding of the universe has become widespread…Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity."5

Consider the following:

"People often describe the Holocaust as the climax of 2,000 years of Christian mistreatment of Jews. Some invoke the Shoah [Hebrew for catastrophe referring to the Holocaust] as the ultimate reason for Jews not to believe in Jesus. Jewish believer Moishe Rosen challenges that view: 'The phrase '2,000 years of history leading up to the Holocaust' is more than a reference to past prejudice and persecution. It is an indictment against Christianity that misinterprets Christ's message and intent. Anyone who gives credence to such an accusation bestows upon Hitler the power to change theology.'"6

A small sample of the estimated casualties of non-religious wars offered by Mr. Matthew White are:7

First World War8 (1914-18): 15,000,000
Second World War9 (1937-45): 50,000,000
China: Mao Zedong's regime10 (1949-76): 48,250,000
USSR: Stalin's regime11 (1924-53): 20,000,000
Cambodia: Khmer Rouge Regime (1975-79): 1,650,000

These atrocities are made all the worse by the fact that they took place in an era of enlightenment, rational, scientific empiricism and were perpetrated mostly by people who rejected religion/theism and embraced atheism/secularism.

In his 30 Worst Atrocities of the 20th Century Mr. White writes:

"We've got rich countries and poor countries; industrial and agrarian; big and small. We've got people of all colors - white, black, yellow and brown - widely represented among both the slaughterers and the slaughterees. We've got Christians, Moslems, Buddhists and Atheists all butchering one another in the name of their various gods or lack thereof. Among the perpetrators, we've got political leanings of the left, right and middle; some are monarchies; some are dictatorships and some are even democracies."12

Sam Harris fails to account for the fact that the innovators of suicide bombings were Buddhists and Communist. The Buddhists, whose worldview is premised upon atheism, were the Kamikaze (divine wind).13 Buddhists have been engaging in justifying bloody warfare by appealing to their beliefs for centuries.

Zen Master Harada Daiun Sogaku stated:

"If ordered to march: tramp, tramp or shoot: bang, bang. This is the manifestation of the highest wisdom of enlightenment. The unity of Zen and war…extends to the farthest reaches of the holy war now under way."

Sugimoto Goro stated:

"Warriors who sacrifice their lives for the emperor will not die. They will live forever. Truly they should be called gods and Buddhas for whom there is no life or death. Where there is absolute loyalty there is no life or death."

Shaku Soen, who is considered one of the great "fully enlightened" Zen Masters of our time stated:

"I wished to inspire our valiant soldiers with the ennobling thoughts of the Buddha, so as to enable them to die on the battlefield with confidence that the task in which they are engaged is great and noble. I wish to convince them…that this war is not a mere slaughter of their fellow-beings, but that they are combating an evil…an inevitable step toward the final realization of enlightenment."

Rinzai Zen Master Nantembo stated that there was "no bodhisattva practice superior to the compassionate taking of life."

Sawaki Kodo:

"also advocated, as did other Zen teachers, that if killing is done without thinking, in a state of no-mind or no-self, then the act is a expression of enlightenment…in 1935, he testified, 'I was in an absolute sphere, so there was neither affirmation nor negation, neither good nor evil.'"

Josh Baran:

"This total betrayal of compassion did not just take place during World War II. For six hundred years, one Zen Master bragged, the Rinzai school had been engaged in 'enhancing military power.' For centuries, Zen was intimately involved in the way of killing. This is the simple truth.

Other resources on Buddhism:

Josh Baran, Zen Holy War? (Book Review - Written for the Buddhist "Tricycle" Magazine. A shortened version of this piece appeared in the May 1998 issue of the magazine)

Mark Moyar (University of Cambridge), Political Monks: The Militant Buddhist Movement during the Vietnam War ("Modern Asian Studies" [2004], 38: 749-784 Cambridge University Press)

Allan M. Jalon, Meditating on War and Guilt, Zen Says It's Sorry (Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company)

Noah S. Brannen, Soka Gakkai: Japan's Militant Buddhists ("The Journal of Asian Studies," Vol. 29, No. 2 (Feb., 1970), pp. 451-453)

Mike Maikeru Baker, Militant Buddhists: A look at the Ikko-Ikki (The Samurai Archives)

Joseph Grosso, Paradise Lost: The Endless War In Sri Lanka (Counter Currents)

The Communists were: The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam aka Tamil Tigers (established in the 1970s, they have committed 168 suicide bombings between 1980-2000). The Tigers murder innocent civilians in their attacks upon commuter trains, buses, villages, temples and mosques, they recruit child soldiers, assassinate political figures, engage in ethnic cleansing and execution of POWs.14

Sam Harris should also consider that a tremendous number of violent acts have nothing whatsoever to do with religion/theism. Some examples are violence committed in the name of: riches, poverty, territory, material goods/resources, politics, racism, emotions, abortion, sexism, science, rage, jealousy, envy, lust, hopelessness, domestic violence, gangs, freedom, and atheism.

A very important point to make here is that both atheists and theists have engaged in oppression and brutality. However, and we will now speak from a Judeo-Christian perspective and not a generic theistic one, when someone calling themselves a Christian does such things they are condemned by the very beliefs that they claim to uphold. In this case, their violation of these beliefs would prove that they are not what they claim to be-you will know them by their fruits. However, when an atheists does such things who will condemn them and on what basis, on what absolute basis? Not atheism, at least not without borrowing absolute morals from theistic systems.

Note that Sam Harris was responding to the "myth" that claims that "Atheism is responsible for the greatest crimes in human history," which it most certainly has been. But, what he is doing is redefining atheism to the point that, for example, no atheists can be dogmatic (and no atheist can be violent). We deal with this point in the next section. For now, we note that Sam Harris has taken it upon himself to determine what an atheist is and what an atheist is not, what an atheist believes and cannot believe, what they can do and cannot do. Moreover, Sam Harris is not the only atheist who has made such dogmatic pronouncements (see our essays that touch upon these issues here and here). Note that Christopher Orlet has made reference to "A sectarian split among atheists."15 And Jay Lindsay wrote, "Atheists are under attack these days for being too militant, for not just disbelieving in religious faith but for trying to eradicate it. And who's leveling these accusations? Other atheists, it turns out."16 Wikipedia reports, "Some of the strongest criticism of The End of Faith has come from an unexpected quarter - the humanist press." Jean Barker has pointed out that "atheists criticized him for supporting Buddhist meditation."17

In this section we got a very clear glimpse of just how deeply ensconced Sam Harris is in his self-appointment role as arbiter of all things atheistic. Communists were self-proclaimed atheists, they established atheistic governments upon atheistic premises and thereby pushed their atheistic agendas. But Sam Harris has deemed them unworthy of the title "atheist." Yet, those atheists chose to be dogmatic (to use Sam Harris' term) and they chose to form a personality cult (to use Sam Harris' term). Yet, Sam Harris' fundamentalism excludes them from being considered true atheists. Against which absolute atheist standard is he judging them? Who appointed him priest, prophet and Pope of atheism? Elsewhere, Sam Harris also acts as the self-appointer arbiter of all things Buddhist.18

Lastly, we must not miss the greater point being made by Sam Harris as he condemns any and all evil of any sort perpetrated by any one - theist or atheist. He does not provide any absolute moral standard by which to condemn any such actions. Below (in number 10) we will see that he presupposes, without the least bit of neither proof nor attempt at a proof, that moral intuitions are (at some level) hard-wired.

3) Atheism is dogmatic.

Sam Harris denies that atheism is dogmatic.

Dogma is "a belief or set of beliefs that a political, philosophical, or moral group holds to be true."19

Thus, Sam Harris' statement immediately begs the question, "Is that so?" What would his answer be to such a question? "Absolutely"? "Unalterably"? "No true atheist can think otherwise"?

Please understand the point: he is being dogmatic in claiming that atheism is not dogmatic.

Moreover, he states "An atheist is simply a person who has considered this claim, read the books and found the claim to be ridiculous." This, again, is a dogma-like generalization. How does he know that atheists have considered the claims? Read the books? And found them ridiculous? We should not doubt that this is true of some, or even many, atheists but in fact, we have provided examples of atheists who have done no such thing. They were raised by their parents to be atheists, they have never seriously considered, nor read, they simply do not want God to exist. Elsewhere, Sam Harris himself states "I had a very secular upbringing"20 (emphasis added).

4) Atheists think everything in the universe arose by chance.

Sam Harris begins this section with a dogmatic statement, "No one knows why the universe came into being." How does he know this? Perhaps millions of people know, they tell him about it, and he rejects it. But, to be fair, we suppose that he, being an absolutist-materialists, is stating that we cannot run a reproducible experiment or otherwise observe the beginning and its cause. Incidentally, some may deny that he is an absolute materialist since he embraces Buddhist meditation/mysticism but it would seem that, in his view, if psychic phenomena/reincarnation are facts then they are based upon materialistic processes that we, as of yet, do not understand. As Richard Dawkins puts it, "If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope eventually to understand it and embrace it within the natural."

He further states, "it is not entirely clear that we can coherently speak about the 'beginning' or 'creation' of the universe at all, as these ideas invoke the concept of time, and here we are talking about the origin of space-time itself." Understand that atheists will, at this point, assert one of two extremes: they will either avoid the pre Big Bang scenario at all cost or they will retreat into the atheistic supernatural realm, the multi-verse.

Sam Harris presents a paraphrase of Richard Dawkins that is not less than fascinating since it states, "...we know that the diversity and complexity we see in the living world is not a product of mere chance. Evolution is a combination of chance mutation and natural selection." Did you catch that? Sam Harris intends on proving that he, Richard Dawkins, and all atheists, do not believe that everything in the universe arose by chance but he paraphrase Richard Dawkins as stating that everything is, "not a product of mere chance. Evolution is a combination of chance mutation and natural selection." It is not chance but yes chance (and natural selection). Note also that Sam Harris jumped light-years ahead of the issue, he commented on what is already here while not discussing how it got here in the first place. He appears to have missed his own point. Actually, Richard Dawkins' view is that life began by pure chance and then evolved but not by chance because natural selection selects in a nonrandom manner, even though it has no foresight, no goal to which it is aiming its selections.

5) Atheism has no connection to science.

Sam Harris is kind enough to state "it is possible to be a scientist and still believe in God - as some scientists seem to manage it." Yes, "some." What is "some"? Perhaps he should have stated, "Some of the greatest scientists that the world has ever known. In fact, the very ones who established virtually every field of scientific research/methodology." Indeed, elsewhere he does state, "Christians invented physics."21
He then quotes statistics stating that "engagement with scientific thinking tends to erode, rather than support, religious faith_93% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences do not [believe in a personal God]."

What we should ask is, "Why is that?" It may, in part, be due to an absolutists redefinition of science as involving pure materialism/naturalism. Consider the words of Scott C. Todd, Department of Biology, Kansas State University,

"Even if all the data pointed to an intelligent designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic."22

Another possibility may be self-aggrandizement. Please understand that the effect that atheism has on an individual is that it removes any being, anything, higher than themselves. This removal of a higher being also takes other forms. For instance, this is, in part, why atheistic movements, such as Communism, come about. Since there is no God the highest thing is government-the god of this world, if you will. The opiate of the people who giveth and taketh away.

Elsewhere, Sam Harris himself states, "the foundation of all real science, is the very antithesis of religious faith."23 He also wrote an article entitled Science Must Destroy Religion. These are examples of scientific dogmatism by which if the theory conflicts with the evidence one does not change the theory but rather, proclaims that something is wrong with the evidence (for many other examples of this, please see our essay Scientific Cenobites). This brings us to an interesting hypocrisy within atheism's view of science: first they claim that science does not deal with the supernatural but then they claim that science has disproved the existence of the supernatural.

6) Atheists are arrogant.

Here Sam Harris denies that atheists are arrogant yet, judge for yourself if the following statements could be considered are arrogant or not:

"atheists are often among the most intelligent and scientifically literate people in any society," they find religious claims "to be ridiculous," "it is possible to be a scientist and still believe in God - as some scientists seem to manage it," apparently, it is possible to be a scientist and still be ignorant enough to believe in God. He refers to theism as "wishful thinking," "self-deception" and "consoling delusion." Elsewhere, Sam Harris refers to those with whom he disagrees as possessing "encyclopedic ignorance."24 He refers to the "hallowed travesties that still crowd the altar of human ignorance."25 He looks forward to the day when raising one's children according to one’s religious faith will "be broadly recognized as the ludicrous obscenity that it is."26 He refers to Intelligent Design "theorists" (he quotes the word theorists) as "scary religious imbeciles."27 He states that "the Bible and the Koran both contain mountains of life-destroying gibberish."28 He makes reference to "the abject stupidity of religious fundamentalism,"29 and calls their beliefs, "these preposterous things,"30 and further claims that "they are clearly committed to a massive program of self-deception."31 He calls religion in America a "thriving marketplace of ignorance."32 As noted above, he looks forward to a time when "making religious certitude look stupid will be exploited, and we'll start laughing at people who believe_We'll laugh at them in a way that will be synonymous with excluding them from our halls of power."33 He refers to Chris Hedges, whom he describes as a religious moderate, in stating, "I really could not have hoped to find a more lumbering, bellicose, and sanctimonious perpetrator of this obscurantism."34

Richard Dawkins, a fellow militant atheist, refers to, "religious idiots like Bush or those who voted for him."35 He also wrote that Sam Harris' book, The End of Faith, "is one of those books that deserves to replace the Gideon Bible in every hotel room in the land." And what is Sam Harris' own view of his book Letter to a Christian Nation? Apparently, it is an atheist proselytizing tract, "It's a book that a person could simply hand to a member of the religious Right and say, 'What's your answer to this?'"36

Lastly, we point out that, elsewhere, Sam Harris wrote, "'respect' for other faiths, or for the views of unbelievers, is not an attitude that God endorses_the central tenet of every religious tradition is that all others are mere repositories of error or, at best, dangerously incomplete."37 This, coming from atheism, the worldview that believes that they are right and everyone else is wrong. Moreover, this is coming from the same Sam Harris who wrote, "some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them."38

One time atheist, and later Christian scholar, C. S. Lewis wrote:

"If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake. If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth. When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race has always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most; when I became a Christian I was able to take a more liberal view."39

7) Atheists are closed to spiritual experience.

Sam Harris defines "spiritual experience" as "experiencing love, ecstasy, rapture and awe." These he claims are experienced and sought by atheists. But, he claims, "What atheists don't tend to do is make unjustified (and unjustifiable) claims about the nature of reality on the basis of such experiences." The problem is that they do.



Atheists have life experiences upon which they build their worldview. They rely on their authorities to tell them what the facts of life are, what the nature of the universe and life are, what truth is, etc. Apparently unbeknownst to him, Sam Harris comes closer to the truth than he may have realized. Referring to personal betterment, he states, "Do the positive experiences of Christians suggest that Jesus is the sole savior of humanity? Not even remotely - because Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and even atheists regularly have similar experiences." Moreover, he states that knowing whether Jesus wore a beard, was born of a virgin or rose from the dead "are just not the sort of claims that spiritual experience can authenticate."

To be perfectly fair, there are believers who simply state, "I have faith because I believe, I believe because I have faith, I just believe what I believe on faith and I have faith in what I believe," or some such thing. This is not only sad because it is not up to the intellectual standards of atheism but because it is not the manner in which the Bible functions. For instance, regarding the resurrection Paul does not say, "See how you feel about it, pray about it, just believe it," but he points out that, at the time of his writings, eyewitnesses were still alive, "…He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep" (1st Corinthians 15:6). Get the point? Paul is saying go and ask them! Luke did just that (see Luke chapter 1).

8) Atheists believe that there is nothing beyond human life and human understanding.

Sam Harris' response to this "myth" is perhaps the most incoherent of his apologetic. He states, "Atheists are free to admit the limits of human understanding in a way that religious people are not." Yet, is it virtually a tenet of "religious people" that it is precisely because of the limits of human understanding that God has given revelation.

He then speculates about whether there might be "complex life elsewhere in the cosmos." If there is, they might have developed a more sophisticated understanding of the universe than us. If they have done so, then they might be even less impressed by the contents of the Bible and the Quran than atheists are. In other words, he has retreated into the realm of sci-fi wherein extraterrestrials side with atheists-need any more be said?

Lastly, he makes a good old fashioned baseless claim, "the world's religions utterly trivialize the real beauty and immensity of the universe." Not only is this baseless but he does not bother explaining just how they trivialize it.

9) Atheists ignore the fact that religion is extremely beneficial to society.

Interestingly enough, while Sam Harris seeks to debunk the "myth" which states that atheists ignore the fact that religion is extremely beneficial to society, he does just that.

He ignores this fact and instead points out that this benefit fails "to demonstrate the truth of any religious doctrine," which was not the "myth" that he sought to dispel. Sam Harris ends this section by appealing to a myth of atheism's own making which basically states that only atheists have pure motives (see here and here).

10) Atheism provides no basis for morality.

Here Sam Harris, apparently and in his own mind, proves that atheism most certainly does have a basis for morality "moral intuitions that are (at some level) hard-wired in us and that have been refined by thousands of years of thinking about the causes and possibilities of human happiness." Elsewhere, Sam Harris makes reference to "fresh moral imperatives" and "conceptual revolutions."40

First we should ask how he knows this and secondly what it means. What is hard-wired? How did it get hard-wired? When was it hard-wired? Why is it hard-wired? Why should we heed this moral intuition? What happens if we do not heed it? Who administers this moral "law"? If I am hard-wired what happens if I short-circuit? In fact, there are atheists, like Richard Dawkins, who believe that we are just apes, "We are not, then, merely like apes or descended from apes; we are apes."41 Moreover, in his The Descent of Man, p. 180 Charles Darwin wrote, "In a series of forms graduating insensibly from some ape-like creature to man as he now exists, it would be impossible to fix on any definite point when the term 'man' ought to be used."

What is of the utmost importance to note, when an evolutionary concept is appealed to in order to account for hard-wired absolute morals, is that, as Sam Harris does here, what is being told to us is a story. He does not produce one shred of evidence but merely tells us a tale and asks us to believe him that this did occur (based on what, dogmatic authority?). Instead of evidence Sam Harris appeals to time, he appeals, by faith, to a time in the future when his beliefs will be proved true. This is such a common fallacy in atheistic arguments that I have termed it: the fallacy of validation by projection. Elsewhere he writes, "If we better understood the workings of the human brain, we would undoubtedly discover lawful connections between our states of consciousness, our modes of conduct, and the various ways we use our attention. If we ever develop such a science, most of our religious texts will be no more useful to mystics than they now are to astronomers"42 (emphasis added).

When does this moral intuition apply to us and not to our less evolved ancestors? And please do not miss the greater point here: if, as Sam Harris posits, our moral intuition has be undergoing refinement for millennia this intuition is tentative. How do we know when the intuition will change, in its refining process, and bring about different morals? How can Sam Harris condemn any past actions of theists or atheists since they were merely following their moral intuitions, the intuition that was refined to a certain degree? How can he condemn today's actions since our morality is constantly undergoing this refining process? It may changing at this very moment.

Moreover, Sam Harris states that "If a person doesn't already understand that cruelty is wrong, he won't discover this by reading the Bible or the Quran - as these books are bursting with celebrations of cruelty, both human and divine." First we should ask how he knows that that no one can discover that cruelty is wrong by reading the Bible. Again, and again, he is basing his comments on gross generalizations. He does this again in stating, "Whatever is good in scripture - like the golden rule - can be valued for its ethical wisdom without our believing that it was handed down to us by the creator of the universe." But it is precisely theistic systems that have brought us the golden rule, which has influenced millions upon millions of people. What has atheism's moral intuition brought us? "God is dead" just does not seem to be of then same caliber.

1. 1. Sam Harris, The First Ten Pages
   
2. 2. Sam Harris, The First Ten Pages
   
3. 3. Blair Golson, Sam Harris: The Truthdig Interview
   
4. 4. Sam Harris, An Atheist Manifesto
   
5. 5. Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941-1944 (Farrar, Straus and Young, Inc. 1953), published in Britain as Hitler's Table Talk 1941-1944 (Oxford University Press), pp. 49-52
   
6. 6. Complied by Eliyah Gould, Rich Robinson and Ruth Rosen, The Y'shua Challenge. Answers for those who say Jews can't believe in Jesus (San Francisco, CA: A Purple Pomegranate Booklet, Purple Pomegranate Productions), p. 21, quoting Moishe Rosen, "Am Yisrael Chai," Issue 9:4 (1993), p.2
   
7. 7. See Matthew White, Source List and Detailed Death Tolls for the Twentieth Century Hemoclysm and 30 Worst Atrocities of the 20th Century
   
8. 8. "incl. Armenian massacres"
   
9. 9. "Some overlap w/Stalin. Includes Sino-Japanese War and Holocaust. Doesn't incl. post-war German expulsions"
   
10. 10. "incl. famine"
    
11. 11. "incl. WW2-era atrocities"
    
12. 12. Matthew White, 30 Worst Atrocities of the 20th Century
    
13. 13. Josh Baran, Zen Holy War?
    
14. 14. See, Wikipedia's Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
    
15. 15. Christopher Orlet, "True Unbelievers: A sectarian split among atheists," Opinion Journal, Wall Street Journal, USA (May 1, 2007 Opinion)
    
16. 16. Jay Lindsay, "Atheists split on how to not believe," AP, via the Nashua Telegraph, USA (Apr. 21, 2007)
    
17. 17. Jean E. Barker, Taking on Christians' Gospel Truth
    
18. 18. Sam Harris, Killing the Buddha
    
19. 19. Encarta Dictionary
    
20. 20. Steve Paulson, The Disbeliever (an interview with Sam Harris, dated Jul. 07, 2006)
    
21. 21. Sam Harris, Killing the Buddha
    
22. 22. Scott C. Todd, "A View from Kansas on that Evolution Debate," Nature Vol. 401, Sep. 30, 1999, p. 423
    
23. 23. Sam Harris, The Politics of Ignorance
    
24. 24. Sam Harris, The First Ten Pages
    
25. 25. Sam Harris, Science Must Destroy Religion
    
26. 26. Sam Harris, Science Must Destroy Religion
    
27. 27. Sam Harris, The Politics of Ignorance
    
28. 28. Blair Golson, Sam Harris: The Truthdig Interview
    
29. 29. Blair Golson, Sam Harris: The Truthdig Interview
    
30. 30. Blair Golson, Sam Harris: The Truthdig Interview
    
31. 31. Blair Golson, Sam Harris: The Truthdig Interview
    
32. 32. Blair Golson, Sam Harris: The Truthdig Interview
    
33. 33. Blair Golson, Sam Harris: The Truthdig Interview
    
34. 34. Sam Harris, Sam Harris Strikes Back
    
35. 35. Richard Dawkins, in the comments section of Sam Harris' article The Politics of Ignorance
    
36. 36. Blair Golson, Sam Harris: The Truthdig Interview
    
37. 37. Sam Harris, The First Ten Pages
    
38. 38. Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York: Norton, 2004), pp. 52-53
    
39. 39. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1960), p. 29
    
40. 40. Sam Harris, The First Ten Pages
    
41. 41. Richard Dawkins; fellow of New College and lecturer in zoology at the University of Oxford, writing in the Late City Final Edition 4-9-89
    
42. 42. Sam Harris, The First Ten Pages