Is it really fair for one who does not accept Jesus to suffer in Hell forever?

Several authors...have set the pace for a new look at this question by dismantling the old-fashioned conception of Hell as a place of flesh being seared on sizzling grids, of torture devices and of extreme physical pain. In contrast Miller argues -- even apparently without recognition of the Biblical world as an honor and shame society -- that the components of eternal punishment in the Bible are shame and disgrace. Let's now look at some of his primary points and relate them to our own arguments:

* The 'logic' of hell in the bible is surprisingly simple: You receive back the treatment/effects you gave other agents (including God and yourself) with some kind of multiplier effect. [The bible is full of images of this reciprocity concept: reaping what you sow, being paid back, suffering loss as you had despoiled others, unkindness for unkindness shown, apathy for apathy rendered, 'eye for an eye', proportional judgment, etc] This is suited as well to what we have said of honor debts and shame as a response. You dishonor God; you receive dishonor in return. Appropriately your required response is to acknowledge your own need -- in effect, giving up your "honor" -- by admitting that you need God's help to pay the debt.

C. S. Lewis wrote a book titled The Great Divorce in which Hell is depicted as a microscopic world that is smaller than a piece of dirt in heaven (though inhabitants do not realize this except by a special "bus trip" to heaven). Within that microscopic world, people constantly get tired of the company of others and move themselves farther and farther out into the "boondocks" away from others. Napoleon is presented as having done this, and two modern travelers who go to his house arrive to find him pacing back and forth muttering over his failures, for which he blames everyone else. Lewis, we think, was on to something here, even though he did not mention an honor-shame dialectic. The person who is ashamed cannot come into the presence of God, but would indeed be driven away from it by the very nature of the dialectic, seeking to get as far away from the presence of the greatest glory and honor as possible. Literally speaking, "Hell" would be a life on the lam -- always trying to get yourself further and further from God's holiness, but because God is omnipresent, and because in Him all things move and have their being, never being able to succeed.

An analogy I once used for my Skeptical friend Kyle Gerkin may help: God is like a magnet, and the "polarity" of sinners is all wrong.

* Miller cites sources indicating that the torment of hell is relational in nature and involves banishment from heaven. A source says, though again apparently without knowledge of the Biblical world as agonistic: Mental and physical anguish result from the sorrow and shame of the judgment of being forever relationally excluded from God, heaven, and so forth.

In this sense, someone with greater sins has more to "be ashamed of" than someone with lesser sins. Thus the lesser sinner may perhaps be able to withstand God's omnipresence to a greater degree than a greater sinner; to put it another way, the person who has greater sins finds themselves to run harder, more often, and farther than the person with lesser sins.

* Biblical passages support our thesis: Daniel 12:2 speaks not of everlasting pain, but of disgrace and everlasting contempt. The "weeping and gnashing of teeth" associated with punishment verses "describes a reaction of persons who have been publicly shamed or dishonored" (Malina and Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary, 76, emphasis added). Miller says of the passage in Luke, of the beggar Lazarus and the rich man: [The rich man's] "quality of life" is equated to the quality of life that the beggar Lazarus had during his lifetime (e.g. lack of getting all of his basic needs met in community). Note that a beggar was a person of the lowest social status, and therefore one of the most "shamed" individuals.

We may relate this point to that of the doctrine of theosis. Those who belong to God will grow in His grace; but those who reject him will never grow. Like Lewis' Napoleon, this will no doubt be a frustrating and shameful experience; especially if you can look through the window, so to speak, and see others growing. But it will not involve physical pain.

* A reader asked this question: I gathered from your response to Pendragon that the Jeffery Dahmer, who apparently repented before that unfortunate encounter with a mop handle, would be in the "nosebleed section" in heaven. Why would that be if Christ suffered the shame for everyone who is saved? I think the answer here relates to the concept of rewards in heaven as opposed to salvation. The rewards will be rewards of honor; obviously someone like Dahmer isn't going to have a lot of rewards, and nor would an Adolf Hitler who repented on his deathbed. So yes, to say they will be in the "nosebleed section" of heaven would be accurate.

So in conclusion on this tangent: The data would indicate that the primary focus of eternal punishment is the denial of the honor accorded to those who reject God's offer of salvation, and who bear themselves the shame and disgrace Jesus took in their stead. Therefore there is no inequality in the "suffering" -- these persons have denied God His ascribed honor; they are denied in turn the honor that is given to human beings, who are created with the intent that they live forever in God's service, reigning with Christ and serving him. They choose rather the shame and disgrace of serving their own interests; they are also shamed in accordance with their deeds (i.e., Hitler obviously has more to be "ashamed of" than, say, a robber baron). By denying their ascribed place in the collective identity of humanity, they are placed outside the boundaries, exactly as they desire to be and to the extent that their deeds demanded.

Now Mr. Harris, knowing your work as I do I don't expect you to present any sort of informed answer to this understanding. Since you are not interested in the truth, you will only make some excuse such as, "Other Christians disagree, so this is more proof that Christianity is false." If so, I would point out to you that the scientific community is hardly united on each and every point, yet I am sure you would not take this as evidence that science is false. If you will, please try to actually engage interpretations and understandings rather than taking the "lazy way out".

You say, The fact that my continuous and public rejection of Christianity does not worry me in the least should suggest to you just how inadequate I think your reasons for being a Christian are. (4) I wouldn't doubt that. However, the fact that you manifest such primitive knowledge of Christianity means that I am not worried in the least about your rejection.

I will say little of your points concerning religious "liberals" and "moderates" since I am neither by your definition (4-5). You are certainly right about the dichotomy that exists between our two positions and the consequences for whoever is in error.

Rather more naive is your statement that "every devout Muslim has the same reasons for being a Muslim that you have for being a Christian." (6) Oh, really? May I ask what exactly you think those "reasons" are and how you arrive at the conclusion that they are the "same" (presumably, you mean, in quality, since it is silly to say that a Christian uses "Mohammed did X" as a reason for being a Christian). You don't explain any of these "reasons," and I certainly do not see you offering any survey of, or answers, to Muslim (or Christian) scholars or apologists. May I ask if in fact you have done any research concerning evidences for these or ANY religious systems? Have you in fact composed an argument promoting the "theft theory" for the body of Jesus? Have you indeed gone through the Koran showing it errs? Have you shown indeed that Moses did not exist as Jews claim? What exactly have you done? As far as can be told, virtually nothing -- Letter, which is supposed to be your best foot forward on this account, is a mere 84 pages, and there are works by literally hundreds of religious scholars -- all far more qualified than you -- that you don't seem to have addressed. By chance, it isn't that you are simply reaching an arrogant conclusion about your own qualifications and knowledge, is it?

For your information, I am not a Muslim because I have considered arguments for and against Islam and arrived at a rational decision. If you have the nerve, you may wish to check with such sources as the Answering Islam (answering-islam.org) website, so that you may see that there is more to the matter than simply saying from your armchair, "gee, they have reasons too just like you do" or just waving off other people's systems of beliefs as "absurd" (6) without giving any form of argument. That is the method of the bigoted and the lazy who do not have the wherewithal to do any real arguing against truth claims. Is that what you are, Mr. Harris? A lazy bigot?

By the same token, to be fair, Muslims have apologists who have indeed taken the time to fulfill the burden you put on them to prove their beliefs are valid, and it speaks for itself that unlike Answering Islam and others, you feel that it is simply enough to arrogantly dismiss them with a mere word, "absurd" and say that that are "simply not making claims about reality that can be corroborated". The same could be done to you and your beliefs with just as much validity. And it is just as well for me to say, to use your own words (7):

The truth is, you know exactly what it is like to be a Muslims with respect to the beliefs of an atheist. Isn't it obvious that atheists are fooling themselves? Isn't it obvious that anyone who thinks the universe was a cosmic accident has not considered the universe critically? Isn't it obvious that the doctrine of atheism represents a near-perfect barrier to honest inquiry? Yes, these things are obvious.

No, actually, they are not. What is obvious is that you are using sound bites as a substitute for informed argument. The fact is that you are not equipped in any way to answer the truth claims of ANY religion -- Muslim, Christian, or otherwise.

As you continue your "you believe" recitation, you are spot on until you say, "You believe that...[the Bible's] contents have stood the test of time so well that it must have been divinely inspired." (7-8) I do? Perhaps this sort of argument is made in Chick tracts, but it isn't made by Christian academia. I suppose (especially given your association with Brian Flemming's film) that I can now fairly say to you as an atheist, "You believe that Jesus didn't exist, that Mithra was a source for the life of Jesus, and that Nazareth didn't exist." Maybe you do believe all this (in which case, you are even less worthy an opponent than I think). Maybe you don't. But in any event, it seems evident that your "you believe" list could stand a little broader data sample. One wonders if your knowledge of Christians extends only as far as what you watched on TBN last week.

And finally, we get to see you at work with Biblical "exegesis". I use the word loosely because it is apparent from your use of the Bible that to you "exegesis" means "putting an X on a picture of Jesus". In attempting to criticize the moral teachings of the Bible, did it not at least occur to you that they were written to a specific context? And that the modern reader is expected to be a proper disciple, to know the meanings in their contexts, and determine the application for themselves? Is this too hard for you?

Let's look at how you abuse the Bible's teachings. You refer to Proverbs as saying children should be beaten with a rod. The first error you make is in assuming that a proverb is a universal. Do you KNOW what a proverb is, Mr. Harris? Wisdom and proverbial literature was a leading genre of the Ancient Near East. Much of the OT, and parts of the NT, fall into this category. (One of the best-known examples outside the Bible is the Egyptian Wisdom of Amenemope.) Wisdom literature was (and still is!) characterized by language of exclusivity. This is partially attributable to the fact that wisdom/proverbial literature was intended to be short, pithy, and easily memorized. Our modern literature of this type --- for example, the maxims in Poor Richard's Almanac --- can be described similarly. The wisdom genre has changed little over the years from a functional perspective.

Because of these characteristics of proverbial and wisdom literature, the genre has a high rhetorical function and cannot be read as though it were absolute. Much of what is written in the OT, and a good deal in the NT, is subject to these constraints. So for you to say that Proverbs is "straightforward" in advising the use of a rod for discipline is simply idiotic. Material in the Bible that belongs in the proverbial/wisdom genre cannot be read absolutely and used to claim error.

Now this brings up the question you no doubt also wish to implicitly ask, as to whether a beating with a rod is even a fair punishment, ever. Well, let me ask you a question, Mr. Harris, you, as you live in an air-conditioned housing unit, eat three full, healthy meals a day and have vast amounts of leisure time at your disposal: Do you know what it is like to live in a world where anarchy and chaos were constant threats, where life could be stolen from you at any moment? Ancient people did. As a creampuff society, we have lost the realization that for the ancients, education wasn't simply a matter of teaching times tables so we can get a job selling timeshares: Education was a matter of survival, of ensuring that what there was of civilization did not slip over that fine line from order into chaos. Thus all of the Ancient Near Eastern wisdom literature is filled with pithy sayings like this one you cite from Proverbs, along the lines of, "A student's back is his ear." Even as today students had to be taught to want to learn -- the only differences are that the options for distraction have become more diversified (i.e., video games, versus, i.e., trips to the prostitute's house), and most of us aren't perceptive enough to see through our society's complexity to know that chaos is just as possible here and now. We don't see a reason to associate severity with education, but if we wait long enough and have enough school shootings, perhaps we will.

So you fail to contextualize Proverbs, and thus err. Now let us consider your next error. You refer to stoning people to death for things like heresy and adultery (8-9). Allow me to explain a few things to you that you are obviously unaware of.

The laws of the Old Testament fall into three categories. First, some laws are universal moral laws. This includes do not steal, do not kill, and others. Some of these are laws that even you agree should be obeyed today, and we will not discuss them further.

Second, some laws are cultural universals. By this we mean laws geared to Israel's culture that have a universal moral law behind them. As an example, Deut. 22:8-9 states, When you build a new house, make a parapet around your roof so that you may not bring the guilt of bloodshed on your house if someone falls from the roof. An ill-informed person like you may say that one would be hard-pressed to find home builders who follow this rule. But actually they do follow the modern equivalent. In ancient Israel, the flat roof of a house would be used for many purposes, such as sleeping, household chores, and entertaining. These chores included drying and storage of produce; even today the roof is used for such things in modern Arab nations. We don't use our roof the same way -- the modern equivalent is a balcony. Our builders certainly do make sure that they follow the point of this rule.

Finally, there are ceremonial laws: Instructions for building the Ark of the Covenant, for example, are definitely in this, as are sacrificial laws and dietary laws.

Put simply, you err in your assumption that every single bit of the legal strictures of the Bible are of the first sort: Universal morals. They are not. The Old Testament law is embodied in the book of Deuteronomy. (You cite other books, but the same laws are repeated in Deuteronomy.) The book of Deuteronomy is laid out in the form of an ancient treaty between a king and his vassals. It is in essence a contract between God and Israel. They "signed on" and agreed to enforce the penalties.

Modern Christians believe that we now have a new covenant or contract between Christ and the individual and the believer. The sins are paid for by Christ's blood, and he takes on the punishment for the transgression of those who break God's law and accept his payment. The old covenant and our enmity with it is now abolished (Ephesians 2:15).

Our new contract, so to speak, does not contain specifications of enforcement -- that is now considered God's domain, with regard to each individual, on the basis of the new covenant terms. God will judge and punish moral crimes of the sort that are not prohibited by law, not men. Put another way, you are looking at the terms of a contract that was declared null and void some time ago. Christians have no mandate to execute persons who work on the Sabbath. (It is an open question indeed whether God requires observance of a Sabbath today, but that is beside the point of this letter and your claims.) Only those who signed on to the covenant of Deuteronomy did. Your claim that the Bible demands that we must now stone people to death is simply paranoid, misinformed nonsense.

I realize that you quote -- in ignorance -- Matthew 5:18-19 (10) as some sort of evidence that Jesus would expect us today to stone people who violate the Sabbath, and so on. This simply shows that you do not know how to exegete Matthew 5:18-19 properly: You fail to differentiate between law and judicial penalty. Judicial penalties are not "commandments".

Moving on, I find your appeal to allegedly peaceful religions like Jainism a curious one, for several reasons. First, if we wish to pursue that sort of fallacy, then it is fair to point out (just as readily) that your system -- atheism -- has been responsible for widespread torture, death, and atrocity in atheist regimes like Cuba, China, North Korea, and the former Soviet Union. Second, it is curious that you would cite Jainism's teaching to not do harm, while at the same time listing George Smith's rather amateurish volume, Atheism: The Case Against God, as a source. Smith was quite adamant that passages like Matthew 5:39-41 were poor moral sense, for "such precepts require the obliteration of one's capacity to distinguish the good from the evil." Taking them just as badly out of context, perhaps, one might say the same of the Jainist teachings you cite. May I ask indeed if there is any pleasing atheists?

You mention only briefly the Inquisition and that the teachings of the Bible are "muddled and self-contradictory." [11] Not that you provide any examples, but as it happens, you are once again ignorant: It was not inability to get a clear message from the Bible that allowed the Inquisition. Indeed I wonder just how much you know about the Inquisition, for I am accustomed to atheists who claim that it killed millions of people -- more than the number who actually lived in most countries in Europe at the time.

Since you seem to be very adept at not discussing specifics, allow us to enlighten you somewhat using credentialed historians of the Inquisition as sources. Oddly none of these historians seems to think that the Inquisition was enabled by "muddled and self-contradictory" Bible passages, but rather, conclude that the Inquisition was an honest attempt to implement a particular view (not against a contrary one).

Why was there an Inquisition? Stalcup asks the honest question, "How could the leaders of the church reconcile the terror and destruction wrought by the Inquisition with the doctrine of mercy taught by Christ?" The answer she gives is a familiar one -- one we have also seen given in answer to such questions as, "Why would a God of love order the Canaanites exterminated?" or "Why does Proverbs teach corporal punishment?" Eventually different forms of the Inquisition grew up in different places for different reasons. But in terms of why it started, the simple answer is that the Inquisition was seen as an instrument of social survival.

Stalcup notes that the Catholic Church (CC) in the Dark Ages "was the one stable institution that provided leadership and order" and quotes historian Bernard Hamilton as saying that "as the sole vehicle of a more civilized tradition in a barbarous world" the CC "became involved in social and political activities which formed no part of its essential mission, but which it alone was qualified to discharge." With the exception of a few Jews and Muslims, all people in Western Europe depended on the CC for meaning and survival. Any undermining of this social construct was a threat to the physical, mental, and spiritual well-being of the whole. (Kamen likewise says of the Spanish variation, "It fulfilled a role...that no other institution fulfilled." [K82])

In this light, enter Catharism -- a heresy from the east that taught a spiritual dualism (which made Satan the creator of the material world, and in a reversal of Mormonism, argued that Satan made man, and that God pitied man and gave him a soul!), poverty, vegetarianism, honesty, and abstention. Not a bad mix of principles at the end, but they also managed to nab the Jim Bakkers of the CC of that day and used it as a bludgeon, to the point of calling the CC a tool of Satan "designed to trick Christians into thinking that they had obtained salvation." The Cathars also refused to swear oaths of loyalty, "a stance that had the potential to undermine the authority of both the Catholic Church and the secular government."

By now the average Skeptic is saying, "Why didn't they just leave the Cathars alone?" If the Cathars had left things alone themselves, that may indeed have been the result. But their work was the moral equivalent in that day not of merely protest, but of laying bombs under the Capitol building. As in OT cases we have no perception of how seriously Cathar actions undermined the social order and threatened to cut the links of the chain of survival, as well as (from that view) security in eternal life. The society of this time did not yet have the leisure to allow such powerful dissent and yet still be able to survive. The Inquisition's actions would be excessive today because we have the leisure to tolerate dissent with no threat to our survival -- not as yet, at any rate. As European society progressed, there indeed came to be less threat of heretics undermining corporate survival, so naturally the Inquisition process died out.

As time passed and as the Cathars disappeared, the Inquisition spread to other countries and acquired other targets, including, in Spain, Jews and Muslims who had professed to convert, but secretly had not (the former in some cases being denounced by other Jews! -- and being targeted not for religious reasons per se, but for social reasons. In Germany it targeted a sect called the Waldenses, and pantheists. Beyond this point we will delve no further into the Inquisition's many manifestations outside of Spain, as it becomes complex enough to write entire books; it is enough to know that the roots of the Inquisition were not as simple as the Skeptics would care to paint it.

Whence the "inquiz" of the Inquisition? Pope Innocent III did try to be nice at first, sending Cistercian monks to the region of France in 1198 where Catharism was getting a foothold. Their mission was to preach to the populace and identify the leaders of the heresy. Obviously one had to "ask around" to find the leaders, hence the "inquis-" in the Inquisition, Part 1.

Catharism made the "inquis-" part a little hard, however. You would no doubt guess that the average Joe wasn't too keen on abstention, poverty, and vegetables, so most "believers" didn't take the official, saving rite to join Catharism until they were on their deathbeds. Meanwhile they still also participated in normal CC services. This made it difficult to discern between almost all Cathars and non-Cathars, so that the movement was more insidious in its spread than it appeared, and also gave the religious officials a tough moral choice, since they considered themselves to be responsible before God for the spiritual well-being of their flock, "answerable before God for the souls" of all in their charge.

Ironically enough it was the Cathars, not the CC, who struck the first mortal blow in 1208 when a local noble assassinated one of Innocent's special representatives. Innocent, more than a little peeved, began the Albigensian Crusade and for 20 years scoured the land for Cathars. The common people, however, helped the leading Cathars escape or protected them; at the same time, the Crusade evolved into a political battle that Innocent lost control of. Thus a new tactic was developed -- the official "Inquisition" established in 1215. (A similar act helped turn popular sentiment towards the Spanish Inquisition when Christianized Jews assassinated one of the Inquisitors in a cathedral, engendering a reaction one might compare to sentiment against Arabic peoples after the 9/11 bombing.)

What was the process? The simple form was that Christians (or in Spain at one point, Jews) were required to "seek out heretics and deliver them to a special church tribunal for trial." Those convicted would be excommunicated, then handed over to secular authorities for punishment, which was usually "banishment and the confiscation of their property." [18] Note well, not execution, but a punishment that would remove them from the social order they were threatening, though in Spain, execution by burning did become a normal sentence for the unrepentant.

Over the next 25 years the Inquisition worked in France, and followed a typical procedure which was also roughly followed in Spain:

1. One or more inquisitors arrived at a town or village and preached against the heresy.

2. They offered a grace period of 7 to 30 days for heretics to recant and receive a "relatively light penance." At the same time citizens were ordered to turn in any known heretics; refusal to comply would result in excommunication -- again, disconnection from the social order, an appropriate reply to one who would assist in undermining the social order upon which everyone's lives depended.

As might be expected, some people abused this system and reported the nosy neighbor (with the loud goat who brayed at 3 AM) as a heretic, just to try and get rid of them. Kamen notes examples of witnesses using the Inquisition to "pay off old scores". The Inquisitors of course didn't use modern legal safeguards, and did accept testimony from others uncritically in a way that would make modern legal experts blanch, but that was the norm for jurisprudence even in secular realms of the day, and still is in some countries. Kamen writes of the Spanish variation: "Judicially, the Inquisition was neither better nor worse than the secular courts," but did hurt itself in the publicity department by not making public its methods. Fear was the product not just of the authority figures, but of one's own neighbors: "The fear generated by the tribunal...usually had its origins in social disharmony." In this light people reported all manner of odd things as "crimes" (i.e., in 1492 in Spain, "not knowing the creed, or eating meat in Lent, were taken as signs of Judaism"; later in the 1560s, eating meat on forbidden days was taken as a sign of Lutheranism!) and testified to alleged offenses some 30 or even 50 years in the past. Blame Christianity? No, blame human nature and incompetence.

3. Blame also eons before the advent of a working legal system. After the grace period anyone suspected of heresy was brought before a tribunal and asked to confess. If the confession did not match what had been reported about them by others, they went to prison where they were advised to think it over. The same was done to those who protested their innocence. Following this various methods were used to gain a confession, including intense interrogations, pleas from family members, and at the extreme end, starvation and torture. Blame Christianity? No -- this was the modus operandi for ancient legal systems as far back as Rome, differing only in specifics of application: "To some degree, the Inquisition's use of torture mirrored a trend in the secular judicial system -- during the twelfth century, the courts of Europe started to revive the old Roman legal procedures, including the application of torture to extract confessions." [Emphasis added.] Some of this came from Justinian's code, which was in turn derived from earlier pagan law. The CC moreover believed that the eternal soul's fate was of more importance than the body -- which runs as a match to what we have observed elsewhere that the short-term destruction of peoples like the Amalekites and Canaanites are understandable in light of the long-term goals of social survival for people as a whole. To the Inquisitors, a few moments of pain on earth was a necessary price for saving someone from eternal torment. Skeptics may claim that their priorities were wrong, but they can't fault them as much for their motives (though again, system abuses in plenty also took place).

4. Once a confession was made, punishment ranged from fasting and prayer (the equal to writing "I will not be a heretic" 100 times) to a brief imprisonment. Those who had committed serious crimes were given life imprisonment (perhaps such as the one who assassinated Innocent's rep). Execution was reserved "for unrepentant or relapsed heretics" under a view that heresy was a form of treason against eternal security. The description given by Strayer and Munro sounds just right from any work by Malina and Rohrbaugh or Crenshaw on survival of society in the ANE or Greco-Roman world:

Heretics destroyed the bonds of society by weakening the basic authority on which all institutions rested; their mere existence brought down the vengeance of heaven on the regions in which they lived. Heresy was a disease which had to be wiped out; the heretic must either be cured or destroyed.

The regular reader will recognize that this very description could have described the Roman attitude towards Christianity as a superstition which broke down loyalty to the Roman gods who kept the world in order. This is not a Christian issue, but a social survival issue and a pattern followed by societies to preserve themselves -- until they reach our stage, where a fall is much harder to envision.

What About the Torture? The shame of the Inquisition is the use of torture, and we need not explore the details, but here, human nature trumped and caused the worst of the problems. Torturers were only allowed to torture a prisoner once but got around the rule by "suspending" a torture session until the next day to continue it. On the other hand, compared to methods used by the secular penal system of the day -- which included being burned alive for counterfeiting and execution for thievery, and later being disemboweled or boiled to death -- the Inquisition wasn't as serious a threat to health and well-being as its secular counterparts. One of its more odious practices was posthumously denouncing persons, publicly burning their exhumed remains, and confiscating their property, leaving their family -- even if they were not heretics -- destitute. Imprisonment may well have been the most cruel of the Inquisition's penalties: Like in all ancient jails, cells were cramped and unlit, so that prisoners at times could neither lie down nor stand; only a "very tiny minority" [67] of persons withstood such treatment for months or even (up to 30) years without "confessing". [71] (On the other hand, in the Spanish variation, the prisons of the Inquisition were generally -- not always -- better than those of the secular courts, so that, for example, a friar "made some heretical statements simply in order to be transferred from the prison he was in to that of the Inquisition.")

It is worth noting that there are examples of the church officials wanting to be lenient, and mobs, fearing this leniency, breaking into a prison where Cathars were held and taking matters into their own hands, killing the Cathars themselves! Strayer identifies this as an example of the "feelings of fear and hatred among the mass of the people because [the Cathars] dissociated themselves completely from all the values on which society was based." [41] For a parallel consider Sosthenes the synagogue ruler being beaten, and yes, Joseph Smith! However, where Catharism originally spread in France, the sympathies of the people were with the Cathars. This extreme of "solutions" by the people made it necessary for the church to take responsibility for instituting a uniform solution. The mixed response "was not a situation the Church could responsibly allow to continue."

Kamen reports that the threat of the Spanish Inquisition has been particularly overblown. Without minimizing the atrocities that were committed, it is nevertheless a fact that many Skeptical sites (relying at times on Helen Ellerbee, a notoriously unreliable source) frame the Spanish Inquisition particularly as one might elsewhere frame Mao's Great Leap Forward. Kamen notes that, "Taking into account all the tribunals of Spain up to about 1530, it is unlikely that more than two thousand people were executed for heresy by the Inquisition....for most of its existence that Inquisition was far from being a juggernaut of death either in intention or in capability." By Kamen's estimate, for example, "it would seem that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries fewer than three people a year were executed in the whole of the Spanish monarchy from Sicily to Peru, certainly a lower rate than in any provincial court of justice in Spain or anywhere else in Europe." This was weighted against people of Jewish and Muslim origin, but let it never be said that the numbers themselves are anything to be flabbergasted about. It is also notable that the impetus for the Inquisition in Spain came first not from the church, but from the king and queen of Spain who asked for an Inquisition to be conducted.

Statistically, over the life of the Spanish Inquisition and in spite of spurts of major use, torture was "used infrequently" and only in cases of heresy; despite possible claims of Skeptics, there was not enough sophistication in the Inquisitors to use torture for the purpose of brainwashing. "A comparison with the cruelty and mutilation common in secular tribunals shows the Inquisition in a relatively favourable light. This in conjunction with the usually good level of prison conditions makes it clear that the tribunal had little interest in cruelty and often attempted to temper justice with mercy." One may as well credit Christianity for making the Inquisition less severe than it would have been had it been conducted by secular authorities addressing the same social fears and concerns! Prison sentences were often not literally observed; a "life sentence" could amount to only 10 years of incarceration and the term could be served at home, in a monastery, or in a hospital when prison space was limited. Kamen also notes that (despite Skeptical desires to see every Spaniard as cowering in fear awaiting a knock at the door from Torquemada himself!) that "over long periods of time and substantial areas of the country, [the Inquisition] quite simply did nothing." "In many Christian communities throughout Spain where internal discord was low and public solidarity high, fear of the Inquisition was virtually absent." A priest in Urgell, Spain in 1632 said that "he didn't recognise the Inquisition and didn't give a fig for it" -- and the Inquisition was "unable to take any action against him, nor indeed was it able to impose its authority on the people of that diocese." Resistance was not a matter of fighting off the Pope's armies, but of public cooperation: "Because the information available to inquisitors came not from their own investigations but almost exclusively from members of the public, it was in effect the public that dictated the forms of inquisitorial justice....where [ordinary people] refused to cooperate the tribunal was impotent and incapable of inspiring fear."

So, in conclusion: Blame Christianity for the Inquisition? Hardly. Blame human nature, yet again, which humanists are so proud of, and blame also a propaganda machine that was so effective that "even today it is difficult to separate fact from fiction."

One wonders, Mr. Harris, if you actually know of any of this. I very much doubt it. It looks rather like you are merely repeating standard canards about the Inquisition learned from non-credible sources. But at any rate, even if you are right, the record of your system of belief (again, if we wish to pursue fallacy) is much worse.

You seem to think you have a trump card when you say cite the likes of Luther saying that heretics, etc. should be executed, and then say we may read the Bible differently, but "isn't it amazing that you have succeeded in discerning the true teachings of Christianity, while the most influential thinkers in the history of your faith failed?" (12) Well, to put it bluntly, NO. If you were more than a hack you would certainly realize that there is no shortage of criticisms of "influential thinkers" like Luther, Calvin, Aquinas, etc. in Christian literature. You would also be aware that no one expects someone living in medieval Germany, like Luther, to have a full grip on the concept of Ancient Near Eastern suzerainty treaties. The more pointed question is, "Isn't it amazing that you, Sam Harris, are so ignorantly indifferent to finding out the truth that you merely noted (but did not quote) statements from the likes of Luther on burning heretics, and thought that represented the 'last word' on exegeting Scripture, when there are literally hundreds of scholars who have written on the same texts today?" Would you have patience with someone who tried to refute one of your theories about neuroscience by quoting the statement of a contemporary of Isaac Newton?

An even more apparent flaw in your approach is that you seem to think merely citing passages like John 15:6 with no explanation (13) automatically proves bad morality in the Bible. You present no actual argument showing this, you merely present and assume -- this is what I call "argument by outrage" (if you like Latin phrases, call it argumentum ad cerebrosus and it runs more or less like this:

1. You find some event or passage in the Biblical text that you personally find morally offensive.
2. You merely recounts this passage or event in such a way as to imply that by itself, the event or passage is enough of a moral outrage that there can be no argument or counter to it.

   Or as Glenn Miller has put it, similarly:

   ....an individual's personal moral intuitions, if they run counter to moral intuitions of other experts and peers, may need further analysis and qualification, before they could function plausibly in constructing a logical argument of God's non-existence.

   In other words, the argument that I THINK someone might make about this might look like the following:

   1. The biblical God CANNOT commit any unjust act (Authority: theological tradition)
   2. God ordered the killing of children (Authority: biblical text)
   3. The killing of children can never be a 'just' act, regardless of competing ethical demands in a given situation. (Authority: someone's personal moral intuition)
   4. God, therefore, ordered an 'unjust act'. (authority: substitution of terms)
   5. The ordering of an 'unjust act' is itself an 'unjust act' (authority: not sure--this is somewhat controversial in ethical theory, but I will grant it here for the purposes of illustration)
   6. The biblical God, therefore, committed an unjust act. (authority: substitution of terms)
   7. Therefore, the biblical God CAN commit an unjust act. (authority: from the actual to the possible)

Mr. Harris, simply stating outrage is not a sufficient form of argument. It is merely a substitute for true argument, with the intention to win over the prospective convert by means of tugging on their heartstrings like an orchestral harp. If the reader finds the God of the Bible cruel, unjust, bloodthirsty, etc., as you do, then that is your own personal problem. What must be done -- but I have still not seen done by you -- is an analysis proving that a given action/directive by God was indeed unfair and/or cruel. No doubt the reason I have not seen you do this is that you are not actually informed enough to make such judgments. Your tendency is simply to assume, "the punishment is undeserved, and can never be justified." Such naivete amounts to all that can be gotten from you. Again as Miller tells us:

But notice the problem--the whole thing stands or falls on the accuracy of the personal moral intuition in Step 3. It there is no reason to believe it applies WITHOUT EXCEPTION, then our attempt at constructing a hard contradiction this way fails....This, of course, puts the ball back in the individual's court to do one of two things: (1) show that these exceptions do NOT hold... or (2) show that although there ARE legitimate exceptions, there could not be any valid exceptions that would be operative in our biblical case.

But in any event, someone would still have much, much work to do, to be able to even offer the 'it is a contradiction' position as an argument. Without such work, this objection is simple assertion, unsubstantiated opinion (e.g, 'hunch'?), or emotional statement.

To make your "argument by outrage" more than just an emotional spin-doctoring, you must do more than simply throw quotes around. Mere statement of data on a broad level argues for nothing; a moral hierarchy must be examined and established. Take these two statements:

• Hitler exterminated 6 million Jews.
• Blethkorp exterminated 6 million Refrons.

We are rightly filled with moral outrage at the first one. But why? The obvious reason is that we know about Hitler and we know about his Master race schemes; we know about his attempt to seize power; we know from the data that he was morally wrong. The core of your "argument by outrage" is to take something like the second item, however, and shake out the "least common denominator" so that the moral equivalency is made to seem to be the same. However, what if we start defining out the second one so that:

1. "Blekthorp" is the leader of the Harlanian race, a peaceful people who only wish to be left alone.
2. The "Refrons" are a predatory and parasitical race -- say like Star Trek's Borg -- whose only goal is to assimilate others into their culture or destroy those they consider inferior.

Now that we have the context, whence is the "argument by outrage"? I have chosen a clearly extreme illustration, but between these extremes of black and white lie shades of gray which are a combination of black and white. We would suppose that you would agree that the Harlanians have a right to defend themselves. If the Refrons refuse to give up -- are willing to fight to the last to achieve their goal -- is it a moral outrage that the Harlanians exterminated 6 million of them? How indeed if the total population of Refrons was somewhere around 70 billion and executing 6 million was the only way to get the Refrons to decide that the cost of conquest was too high? Lest you think this a fanciful idea, consider the key parallels to the arguments over whether or not to drop a nuclear bomb on Japan.

One final irony, Mr. Harris. You seem rather pleased by the use of nonviolent protest as a form of social chance, but as we will see in the next letter, you condemn the New Testament for commending slaves to obedience. Such is your ignorance of the social world of the Bible that you fail to recognize that such NT admonitions are an ancient mode of the very sort of non-violent protest and undermining of the social system that Gandhi and King taught! But we will expose that aspect of your lack of education next time. For now, please, if you will, present some actual arguments -- not merely unexplained quotes or references. If indeed you are capable of such. And please, learn something both about history (the Inquisition in particular) and about Biblical interpretation.

Sincerely,

J. P. Holding

November 3, 2006

Dear Mr. Harris,

Today I'd like to talk to you about your lack of education on the topic of slavery (15-19).

In all seriousness, Mr. Harris, has your education in this matter gone past simply slapping open a Bible, seeing the word "slave," and immediately allowing visions of Kunte Kinte to run through your head?

Please allow us to educate you, with the detailed research provided by a friend of mine at http://www.christian-thinktank.com/qnoslave.html -- as it seems you need it badly. The following are some relevant excerpts in terms of what you offered in your book. Naturally if you respond, we expect you to do the same level of study as we have -- or else, allow us to trump your views on neuroscience simply because we flipped open a copy of The Children's Pop Up Book of Neurosurgery and check a Wikipedia article. I will add comments in italics to what my friend has written.