Sam Harris on The argument from scripture
Harris argues that scripture is a transparently human product and that treating it as divine revelation has been one of the most dangerous errors in human history.
Harris's treatment of scripture in The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation is among the most uncompromising in the atheist literature. He does not simply argue that scripture is unreliable or outdated — he argues that taking it seriously as a guide to life is genuinely dangerous. The Bible and the Quran contain explicit endorsements of slavery, genocide, and the subjugation of women, and these are not incidental passages but central to the narrative of God's relationship with humanity.
He is particularly focused on the Quran and its role in motivating contemporary violence, a position that has drawn enormous controversy. Harris argues that Islamic scripture is more consistently martial and supremacist than the Bible, and that mainstream Islamic theology takes its injunctions more literally than mainstream Christianity takes its own. He rejects the claim that jihadist violence is a distortion of Islam, arguing instead that it represents a sincere, textually grounded reading of the source material.
Harris also addresses the epistemological absurdity of treating any ancient text as the final word on morality and metaphysics. The authors of scripture knew nothing of evolution, cosmology, germ theory, or human psychology. They lived in small, tribal societies with no concept of universal human rights. The idea that their writings should constrain modern moral reasoning is, in Harris's view, one of the great obstacles to human progress.
“The Bible, it seems certain, was the work of sand-strewn men and women who thought the earth was flat and for whom a wheelbarrow would have been a breathtaking example of emerging technology.”