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Letter to a Christian Nation

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Another book review.

Those who know me well, know that I am not a religious person. In fact, I’m about as unreligious as they come.

In general, however, I’ve never been against any religion. I see it as a way that people fulfill social, idealistic, and spiritual needs in their lives. If they want to believe that the earth was created as it is today in seven days by a supernatural being seven thousand years ago — or any of the other ideas and themes of their religion — that’s fine with me. (Just don’t teach these religion-based ideas in public schools with my tax money.)

Sam Harris’s Letter

Letter to a Christian NationLately, seeing what’s going on in the world and the political influence of America’s religious conservatives, I’ve begun to doubt whether there’s a positive value to religion in society. No book has helped fuel my doubts more than Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. This tiny, 96-page book was written as a letter to devout Christians, pointing out the inconsistencies in Christian beliefs and how some of these beliefs negatively impact today’s world.

The main gist of Harris’s book is the fact that some policies promoted by Christian politicians and their backers are causing far more harm in good. He cites many examples. The ones that stands out in my mind are those related to sex education and their affect on the population, both home and abroad.

Consider, for instance, the human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV is now the most common sexually transmitted disease in the United States. The virus infects over half the American population and causes nearly five thousand women to die each year from cervical cancer; the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that more than two hundred thousand die worldwide. We now have a vaccine for HPV that appears to be both safe and effective. The vaccine produced 100 percent immunity in the six thousand women who received it as part of a clinical trial. And yet, Christian conservatives in our government have resisted a vaccination program on the grounds that HPV is a valuable impediment to premarital sex. These pious men and women want to preserve cervical cancer as an incentive toward abstinence, even if it sacrifices the lives of thousands of women each year.

He follows this up with some statistics from studies that show how the “abstinence-only” approach to sex education in 30% of American sex education programs simply does not work. American teens may be participating in “virginity pledges” for eighteen months or more, but they’re having oral and anal sex instead. American teenage girls are also four to five times more likely to become pregnant or contract a sexually transmitted disease than teens in the rest of the developed world. Why? Could it be because they weren’t taught about condoms? Or worse yet, because were taught that birth control is “sinful”?

Mr. Harris drives the point home with this statement:

The problem is that Christians like yourself are not principally concerned about teen pregnancy and the spread of disease. That is, you are not worried about the suffering caused by sex; you are worried about sex. As if this fact needed further corroboration, Reginald Finger, an Evangelical member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, recently announced that he would consider opposing an HIV vaccine — thereby condemning millions of men and women to die unnecessarily from AIDS each year — because such a vaccine would encourage premarital sex by making it less risky. This is one of many points on which your religious beliefs become genuinely lethal.

I’ve done some research into this statement about Reginald Finger and, unfortunately, can’t find the New Yorker article where it was made. But you can learn more about his views on this issue on Bionity.com, Wikipedia, Time Magazine, and Dr. Finger’s Web site. It’s clear from these sources that Dr. Finger is very interested in abstinence education, but whether he would oppose an HIV vaccine, as Mr. Harris claims, is extremely difficult to believe. Surely no one would go to that extreme in efforts to stop people from having sex.

More Than Just Sex

Of course, the book isn’t just about the sex education issue. Mr. Harris goes into great detail on a number of other issues, including the Bible as the word of God, morals as defined by the Bible, and the clash between science and religion, including the conflict between evolution and intelligent design. He also writes a bit about atheism and the Christian view that atheists are “evil.”

Mr. Harris presents all of his arguments calmly, with many examples and quotes from the Bible. At no time does he become offensive — he remains quite reasonable throughout. Still, I know that what he has to say will trouble most devout Christians who read it. So although I think he hopes to reach these people, I doubt that he will succeed. Instead, he may reach the more moderate Christians who can look objectively at their beliefs and see how they might cause problems in today’s world.

My Thoughts on Extremists

I agree with much of what Mr. Harris says, but not all of it. He makes some very strong statements near the end of the book about Muslims that I find difficult to believe:

The idea that Islam is a “peaceful religion hijacked by extremists” is a fantasy, and it is now a particularly dangerous fantasy for Muslims to indulge…most Muslims are utterly deranged by their religious faith…

Maybe I’m naive, but I still like to think that most people want to live their lives in peace. So, unlike Mr. Harris, I cannot generalize like this about Muslims — or Christians, for that matter.

I see parallels between members of the Christian and Muslims faiths. Just as there are Christians who make God and the trappings of their religion part of their lives, I believe there are Muslims who do the same with Allah and the trappings of their religion.

Both religions have extremists. In America, we use the politically correct terms “Conservative Christians” or “Evangelical Christians” to describe these people. We also use the term “Radical Muslim” to refer to Muslim extremists. (Funny how we drop political correctness for the Muslims, isn’t it?)

But do these people control either religion? Do they speak for all of their fellow believers? I’d like to think they don’t — that there are reasonable members of both faith that know which parts of the Bible or Koran shouldn’t be taken literally in this modern world.

I Recommend It!

I recommend this book for anyone who is alarmed by the growing power of the religious right in America. It will help arm you with the facts and background information you need to:

  • argue in favor of sex education programs that include birth control information, thus reducing unwanted pregnancies (and their social and economic impacts), abortions, and sexually transmitted disease
  • fight back against the proposed teaching of intelligent design in public schools
  • allow vaccinations to protect your daughter from HPV and, possibly, cervical cancer
  • enable government funding to continue efforts to find cures for AIDS and other diseases — yes, even through the use of stem cells

If you are a true believer, I urge you to consider Mr. Harris’s arguments — and the arguments made by others like him — and look objectively at how your beliefs affect America and the rest of the world. While neither Mr. Harris nor I am saying that you should give up your belief in God and the values of your religion, you need to understand that some of your religious beliefs and values cannot be imposed on others without drastic consequences for all.

Got Something to Add?

June 30, 2014 Update
I’ve finally gotten around to writing up the site comment policy on a regular page (rather than post) on this site. You can find it here: Comment Policy.

I’ll leave the comments open for this post — at least until things start getting out of control. Remember three basic rules:

  • No stating “facts” unless they are facts that can be backed up. (You can link to articles.)
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  • Remember, what you say here really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. So don’t let the discussion get your blood pressure up. It ain’t worth it.

I will delete comments that don’t follow these rules. If you have a problem with this, read my Comment Policy to learn why.

Revenge

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A book review.

Way back when, I subscribed to Bookmarks magazine. It’s a magazine of book reviews for readers of fiction and non-fiction. The subscription was expensive and the content was primarily a regurgitation of reviews in other magazines and newspapers with a summary rating system. There would also be articles about specific reader groups and a featured author or genre or both. Based on what I read in the magazine, I’d choose books I wanted to read. But more often than not, a glowing book review would point me to a hard-to-find book or a book that simply wasn’t up to par.

Product ImageProduct ImageRevenge by Stephen Fry is both of these things. What attracted me to the book was the claim that it was a “modern-day Count of Monte Cristo.” The Count of Monte Cristo is a classic story of revenge, written by Alexandre Dumas in 1844. Dumas, the French author of The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and Man in the Iron Mask, weaves incredible, well written and thought out tales of intrigue, adventure, and even love. The movie and television adaptations of his work offer shallow hints of his complex story lines. The recent Man in the Iron Mask movie staring Leonardo DiCaprio is an example that made me cringe, from the moment Leo uttered the word “Huh?” in his role as King Louis XIV to the revealing of the king’s true father at the end. (Readers of The Man in the Iron Mask know that the story has quite a different ending and is, in fact, the final book of the musketeers trilogy.)

In any case, The Count of Monte Cristo is one of my very favorite books. I’ve read it two or three times, which is no small chore, considering its length and the writing style. So when a modern day version of the same tale appeared in Bookmarks with good reviews, I immediately put it on my reading list.

It took about two years to track down a copy of Revenge. (Remember, there’s no real book store here in Wickenburg and the local library doesn’t read Bookmarks. It wasn’t very high on my Amazon.com wish list, either.) I finished it on Saturday.

To understand how I rate books, you need to understand my “can’t put it down” test. These days, I read before bedtime. In most cases, I’m horizontal, propped up with a pillow with reading glasses perched on my nose. One light is on. I’m tired; it’s the end of a long day and I’ve been up since 5 or 6 AM. Most books I read these days can engage me for a dozen or so pages before I’m ready to pass out. But a good book can actually keep me awake and reading long after Mike has shut off the television, come to bed, and begun to snore. (For the record, he doesn’t snore all the time or any more than I do.)

Revenge started out a bit worse than usual. It was one of the books that I start and then put aside while I work on another one. It was well-written, but not very entertaining. The “setup” — which is where the author introduces a protagonist that you can feel real sympathy for as well as antagonists you really want to hate — was too long and drawn out. I put it down for about two weeks.

I finally got back to it when I took it to Howard Mesa. The wind was howling up there all weekend, making it very unpleasant to be outside. There’s no television there and Mike had a lot of work to do that I couldn’t help him with. So I picked up Revenge and finished it up.

I found Fry’s writing style perfectly fine. In my mind, when you can read a book without frowning at the way sentences are written or dialog is composed, the writer has pulled you in. In those books, the author has stepped back, out of the picture, and you’re just reading an account of what happened to his characters. Stephen Fry did a great job of stepping back, letting the reader get the story without interference from awkward constructions, idiotic dialog, etc. (One of my main complaints about The DaVinci Code was Dan Brown’s awful writing skills.)

That’s not to say that the story didn’t have its faults. My main problem with the book was the way it finished up — far too quickly. In The Count of Monte Cristo, main character Edmond orchestrates a complex revenge scheme that gives his betrayers what they deserve. It almost goes exactly according to plan — in other words, there was still some suspense near the end of the book. In Revenge, main character Ned begins to plot his revenge 2/3 of the way through the book, leaving only 1/3 of the book’s pages to complete it. There’s no complex scheming; he’s simply put himself into a position to extract revenge at his leisure. While I don’t want to spoil the ending for those who may want to read the book, I will say that it’s too quick and easy. While Ned doesn’t get everything he wanted, he also loses the sympathy of the reader by the cruelness of his revenge on some characters. In contrast, at no point in The Count of Monte Cristo do I feel that Edmond has stepped over the line. And while I don’t have the book in front of me now to consult, I’m pretty sure that at least half the book’s pages are devoted to his plotting and the manipulation of his characters before the final “gotchas.”

Revenge, of course, is one several age-old plot basics that can be found in books, movies, and television dramas. Dumas did it best. Fry tried and, in doing so, may have exposed a few people to Dumas’s work. But if you have to choose between the two to take along on a journey or relaxing weekend, leave Fry behind and take the classic. It’s a far better work.

As for Bookmarks — I let my subscription slide. Frankly, its self-promotional content urging readers to buy subscriptions for their local libraries was annoying me. I had also begun to suspect that many of the lesser-known titles the magazine highly recommended were planted there by the books’ publishers. (If I wanted to read advertisements for books, I’d browse the New York Times Book Review.) Coupled with the high subscription price, I decided it just wasn’t worth it.

Besides, I already have a pile of books to get through. I don’t need anymore recommendations!

Marie Antoinette, the Movie

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Don’t waste your time.

Marie AntoinetteOn Saturday, after a long day on my feet as a volunteer for the Land of the Sun Endurance Ride here in Wickenburg, I found myself in front of the television. I flipped to one of the movie channels just as Marie Antoinette was beginning and decided to give it a try.

I like movies with historical value. I feel as if I can learn while being entertained. And I don’t think anyone can argue that the costumes and sets in the movie were magnificent and probably true to life.

Unfortunately, that’s where the movie’s appeal to me ended.

The movie is long and rambling and takes forever to make and complete a point. For example, the movie suggests that Marie and Louis did not consummate their marriage for more than 4 years — until after he became King, in fact. While this might be an interesting point, it dominated the plot for at least 45 minutes of the movie. One soon gets tired of seeing Marie in bed alone as the signal to viewers that she went yet another night without getting any.

Throughout the movie, I kept waiting to see when the political unrest of the people would make itself known to Marie or the ill-fated members of the French nobility. Is it possible that these people really had no clue about what was going on outside their palaces?

A serious problem with the movie was its soundtrack. While the director and composer are true to the time with the classical music played during Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette’s wedding dance, for example, the rest of the movie is a mix of classical and what I can only describe as European pop. Watching dancers at an 18th century masked ball, wearing period costumes and dancing period dances while modern pop music blared was weird, to say the least. It also took away from the seriousness of the movie, making it seem as if the Director was making light of the whole thing. The soundtrack was inappropriate for the subject matter.

I can’t comment on the acting because although the characters were somewhat believable, I don’t think any of the actors were outstanding. There was very little dialog. One cornball scene shows Marie, fully attired in one of her beautiful dresses, stretched out in happiness in a field of grass and flowers. It’s the scene right after she’s finally had sex with her husband. She’s happy. Oddly enough, it reminded me of the scene in Caddyshack where the girlfriend (Maggie) is dancing on the golf course at night because she knows she’s not pregnant.

While the director, Sofia Coppola, may have wanted to paint a more human picture of Marie, she certainly didn’t do much to create audience sympathy for her character. Coppola’s Marie was a party girl who ate and drank and shopped and played almost non-stop. History tells us that the people of France were being taxed to the point of starvation in many cases, yet the French nobility were living it up in sheltered isolation. Yet no where in the movie — at least not up to the point where I gave up on it after 90 minutes of boredom — is any of that shown. It’s a truly one-sided view of that time in history, a view through the eyes of an immature and spoiled woman.

I admit that I didn’t see the end. Mike joined me about halfway through and he’d already seen it. At one point, I asked him if anything interesting happens. He said no, just more of the same until the screen goes black. I’d seen enough, so I turned it off.

What got me to watch it at all was the rating in the Dish Network info box: three out of four stars. If I’d rated it, it probably would have gotten 1-1/2 stars.