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Whistle Stopper - Letter to a Christian Nation (Vintage)
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List Price: $11.00
Our Price: $5.68
Your Save: $ 5.32 ( 48% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Vintage
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 277.3083
EAN: 9780307278777
ISBN: 0307278778
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 144
Publication Date: 2008-01-08
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: 2008-01-08
Studio: Vintage
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Written by an apparently proud bigot.
Comment: Yes, let's defame those stinkin' Christians! They have to be discredited so we can take away their rights and get them out of society so they won't bother nice, decent atheists with their crazed zealous notions about trying to help their fellow man avoid damnation.
That's basically the gist of this book. If the author wasn't a little man of even littler importance, this repugnant work could be to militant atheists what Mein Kampf was to National Socialists. This book certainly has a similar slanted, propagandistic, delegitimize-those-we-don't-like approach to things.
We're supposed to be better in this country than books like this.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not an Impressive Work at All
Comment: I was not at all impressed with this little book. Yes, the author did make several valid points, but virtually none of those good points, need to contradict the true teachings of G-d's Torah (Old Testament). Most of the time, the author was either vague, or simply showed his ignorance, distorting what G-d and His Torah are all about. If Sam Harris is genuinely interested in the truth, he should consult his local competent Orthodox Rabbi, who would be able to easily refute just about any and every point that this author thinks he made.
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Summary: Holy Moley
Comment: A must read for all Americans with more than a few brain cells. Sam Harris stakes out how crazy our society is for putting so much effort, stock, and energy, into Christian religious beliefs, and how such an enterprise is bad for all of us. Any objective assessment demonstrates that Christian beliefs are a hodge- podge of stories, than in any other context should have as much relevance to society as fairy tails. However so many, who subscribe to these beliefs, force their cherry picked standards from bibles they have not read, from codes that are clearly man- made, in a way that is antithetical to a democratic society. Sam wants Christians to wake up and take a rational look at themselves and lays out the case that they have no more legitimacy to impose their fantastical delusions upon America than any other religious belief system. This little book is a clarion call for everyone who is sick of the Christian right forcing their agenda onto the public discourse.
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Summary: What???????????
Comment: When this book starts to out-sell the Bible, then I'll say there is some creedance in it. But until then, this is just another soured individual unsuccessfully trying to topple the truth in the Bible. This book will be relegated to the bargin bin in a year.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Live and Let Live
Comment: Mr. Harris makes a very important point very effectively. At our nation's founding, a great many of the people had a consciousness of how important it was not to deny the freedom of conscience to anyone. The history of Europe and Christianity is full of the oppression, persecution, and brutal violence of people who disagreed on what God commanded people to kill for. Through the slaughter of heretics and blasphemers by mobs, inquisitions, and culminating in the horror of the conflict between the Reformation movement of Protestants and the Counter-Reformation of Catholics that covered the continent with blood and whose violence still continues, people had grown weary of the fight and come here to escape from the dictates of established churches. When we got here, we began making the same mistake all over again, as when the Hartford Baptists were prevented from worshipping by the Episcopalian authorities of the locally established church. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison together with a coalition of followers of non-established churches, including Baptists, Methodists, Quakers, and Unitarians, among others, set down in the Constitution and laws that the government wasn't to meddle in religious affairs, and established a tradition that our nation would protect the freedom of conscience of all. This book re-asserts this tradition and clearly opposes the current efforts of Fundamentalist Christians to impose their values and beliefs on everyone else. His arguments should persuade all but the most fanatic and pious that we're better off without a national religion and need to find another way to educate our children not to harm others than to smack it into their heads with Bibles and telling them that Christian charity extends only to those Christians that have been government-approved.
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Editorial Reviews:
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From the new afterword by the author:
Humanity has had a long fascination with blood sacrifice. In fact, it has been by no means uncommon for a child to be born into this world only to be patiently and lovingly reared by religious maniacs, who believe that the best way to keep the sun on its course or to ensure a rich harvest is to lead him by tender hand into a field or to a mountaintop and bury, butcher, or burn him alive as offering to an invisible God. The notion that Jesus Christ died for our sins and that his death constitutes a successful propitiation of a “loving” God is a direct and undisguised inheritance of the superstitious bloodletting that has plagued bewildered people throughout history. . .
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