A recent Post-Gazette Forum article, Sam Harris' "Atheists Battle an Almighty Prejudice" (Jan. 14) provided interesting insights into why he and similar thinkers suffer from a variety of myths about atheists. Ironically, the essay also 1) provided examples of similarities shared by "believers" and "nonbelievers" and 2) perpetuated myths about Christians.

Henry A. Huffman, a retired professor of character education and a former assistant superintendent of Mt. Lebanon schools, is a volunteer lay chaplain at the Allegheny County Jail (hhuffman@pulsenet.com).

Mr. Harris' arguments suggested that atheists are indeed people of profound faith. Their faith is rooted in reason, scientific method and empiricism. Many of us believers see those qualities as consistent with our faith, which is rooted in the God of Abraham. Mr. Harris and similar thinkers are people of faith to the extent that they accept the premise that "supernatural" phenomena are actually natural phenomena that science hasn't been able to explain, or explain with the certainty required by empirical standards. Their faith leads them to conclude that all phenomena will ultimately surrender to the power of human reason and the scientific method.

I admire the depth of their faith at the same time that I lament their castigation of mine. While Mr. Harris seeks to correct myths about atheists, he knowingly or unknowingly contributes to myths about Christians and members of other faith traditions.

I'm not sure what he means when he writes that our Scriptures "have been written under the direction of an omniscient deity." Like many of my Christian brothers and sisters, I do not believe that God dictated everything that is part of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. I see Scripture as humanity's account of its experiences with God. I find God-given truth among the poetry, literature, history, prophecies, gospels, etc. written by a variety of human authors. I have to use my God-given intelligence to sort out what I will make of seeming contradictions like the doctrine of justification by faith as described by Paul and the judgment that will be passed on the works of my life as described by John in Revelations.

I know that the early church fathers had a number of decisions to make about what would be and wouldn't be included in the New Testament, and I entertain the possibility that they may have been more attentive to social and cultural forces than the leading of the Holy Spirit in their selection of the gospels and other New Testament content. That statement already puts me at odds with many, if not a majority of my fellow Christians -- point being that Christianity is no more a monolith of identical believers than is atheism.

Many Christians do not treat the Bible as a science text for making claims "about cosmology, chemistry and biology that no scientist knows," as Mr. Harris claims. For us, Scripture provides moral guidance, responses to universal questions, contradictions that challenge our powers of reasoning and our comfort. Scripture from that perspective does not provide the final absolute statement on every issue of morality but rather guides behavior in social contexts markedly different from those of the first century. Like atheists, we "decide what is good in our good books" (especially the Bible) "by recourse to moral intuitions" (the leading of the Holy Spirit to some of us).

Some of us believe that the life of Christ provides a basis for taking our sense of social justice, for example, to a higher plane, one that argues against the conditions that existed at the time of his execution. Slavery, the role of women in faith communities, the observance of the Sabbath, dietary laws and the deification of emperors illustrate just a few of the social and cultural conditions that people of faith have challenged. And many of us believe that there are current social problems that have yet to be resolved using the teachings of Christ. The parable of the Good Samaritan should challenge us to find ways of ensuring adequate health care for all.

A good friend who is an agnostic or atheist observed that the values and principles that I had cited in a recent conversation with him were ones that he embraced. He inquired, then, what was the difference between him, a nonbeliever, and me, a believer. I observed that we certainly had a different view of the future and that, in times of trouble and confusion, I had a resource to turn to that he didn't.

While many of us believe in an afterlife that is better than our current one, we are more concerned about the present than the future, about living a life that is faithful to freely chosen moral principles derived from our faith journey than a desire to obtain a reward for right living or to avoid eternal punishment for a life focused on self.

Like atheists, many believers agree that "our relationships with those we love are meaningful now; they need not last forever to be made so." People of faith do struggle with the concept of an afterlife. A friend who had cared for her World War II-decorated husband until his demise from Alzheimer's asked me once, "What if all that we have believed about the future turns out to be an enormous lie?"

The care she provided her husband reflected the self-sacrificing love that the life of Christ modeled for me. Her question addressed my own thoughts about future possibilities. I responded that if our understanding of an afterlife should prove to be myth, I still cannot imagine a better way of having lived this life than following the example and teaching of Jesus Christ.