Douglas Wilson writes this playful little book as a response to Sam Harris and his work “Letter To A Christian Nation”. Wilson, to his credit, writes with a style reminiscent of G.K Chesterton. There is a lightheartedness that keeps his writing lively and yet the seriousness of the whole work cannot be denied. This book- while little- has a lot of heart. Drawing on various other scholars such as the indomitable C.S. Lewis, Alvin Plantinga and even shades of Greg Bahnsen he makes a compelling case for those who lauded Harris’s work to reconsider. All that glitters is not gold. While Harris seems to make a lot of sense, a critical mind soon shows up the flaws.
Again and again Wilson pulls Harris up for, as Chesterton would say, “undermining his own mines”. The problem with naturalism, is that it is self refuting and inconsistent. Harris, while claiming life has no ultimate purpose or meaning then proceeds to pursue a meaningful life, with the sole purpose of ridding the world of religion. Wilson points out that if life is truly an accident, as Harris assumes, then there can be no grounds for absolute morality, yet Harris is adamant that religion, particularly the Christian variant is absolutely wrong. If all views are relative then Harris has no grounds for criticising Christianity, it is (on that basis) equally valid with any other worldview. Harris’s criticism is thereby invalidated. Harris tries to have his cake and eat it too- but Wilson just doesn’t let Harris get away with it. Wilson takes issue quoting Harris at various points and makes an excellent job of critiquing his logic.On the view of materialism then, there is no real difference between Mother Theresa and HItler or Pol Pot. Harris, while attempting to claim the moral high ground by adopting the materialist worldview has totally undermined any objective morality by which to clobber Christianity.
By claiming the materialist view Harris has undermined not just human freedom but thinking and logic as well. and Wilson unrelentingly reminds him of that reality - to his chagrin. Wilson does a valiant job of calling Harris to account for the reality that were materialism true, then Harris could not appeal to an absolute morality, he could not appeal to logic, he, could not, without smuggling in the assumption of transcendence even be free, especially not free to think, free to exercise logic.. To use Cornelius van Til’s analogy, Sam Harris is like the child who slaps the Father in the face, which he would have no power to do if he was not at the same time sitting in the Fathers lap.
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