Reddit reviews Letter to a Christian Nation

No. Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation summarizes my thoughts on religion.

Since then, he's become a concern troll.

Can I suggest some reading? Wait, I'm a librarian of course I can.

Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless

Letter to a Christian Nation

Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language

Pay particular attention to the part about Straw Men in the last book.

I came to atheism late in life. It was a strange thing for me, there was no story to tell like there is for those who suddenly find Jesus. I just woke up one morning and realized that not only did I not believe in God, I hadn't believed in quite some time. I always explain it like having a beach house and every year the ocean washes a little of the beach away. One day, you wake up, go out on the porch and realize there's no longer a beach -- the water is lapping at your back deck. When did the beach cease to exist? It's hard to say, even if you went and looked at the beach every morning, which you probably didn't. You just know there isn't a beach anymore and it's time for new plans.

Since I came to it so late in life, I got to look it from a much more adult perspective and got to really understand it. Hopefully, I can help you understand your son.

1. First, understand that atheism isn't really a religion, though many try to classify it that way. You don't need a word that describes your disbelief in Santa Claus, the Chupacabra, or any other number of mystical beasts. However, because religion is so pervasive in our society, we need a word to explain that we don't believe the accepted narrative.
   
   That said, we're kind of all over the place. Some of us kind of disbelieve a little, like my girlfriend. She really wants to believe there's a God of some sort, and she tries continually to find evidence. I'm a little more strong in my atheism, I don't believe there's a God and I've stopped looking for Him. I'd be perfectly happy with a God worth worshipping, but I'm living my life as if there is no God. Others are more militant, and some are out to convert others. But there's no universal string that ties us together other than our lack of belief. We're as different as any other general subset of the population. You might as well ask what people who like Chinese food believe in.
   
   Because of that, you're not going to find the Tabula Rasa you're seeking. It doesn't exist. We don't have a holy book. We don't even have real tribal leaders. I can recommend some reading, though. I highly recommend Richard Dawkins as a primer, and in particular, I found The God Delusion to be really helpful in understanding my atheism. Before that, I was really uncomfortable with the label "atheist" and preferred the less loaded term of agnostic. However, after reading that book, I found that atheist really was accurate and it didn't have to mean "complete and absolute knowledge of the non-existance of God" or even "I hate religion".
   
   Dawkins doesn't suffer fools lightly and he can be sharp at times, but he generally wants people to understand and is trying to talk to all audiences, not just the already converted. Authors like Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris can be fun to read for someone who has already acknowledged their atheism, but they are preaching to the choir and their books pull no punches. They aren't going to convert anyone. I highly suggest staying away unless you want to be angry.
   
   
2. Almost all of us go through this phase. It's part of the reason why r/atheism is kind of considered a circle-jerk around here and why people generally don't stay very long. It's a very confusing time when you're newly atheist. You really don't know what you believe, only that you know you don't believe what you did before. I would say it's very similar to going through a divorce and you can expect a lot of acting out. There's a part of you that's bitter because you feel you've wasted some part of your life chasing something that doesn't exist. You've been lied to and that hurts. You probably denied yourself certain pleasures because you believed them to be sinful and that makes you angry because those opportunities are gone now. Quite frankly, some of it is just reveling in the blasphemy you were prohibited from engaging in before.
   
   However, there are some of us that are legitimately upset and angry. Many of us lose family members over our atheism. My mother has disowned me because of it, and that's not uncommon. All of us lose friends over it. Some of us lose jobs or won't be promoted because we're perceived as not moral. A friend of mine has told me that while he likes my company, he could never hire or work for an atheist because he doesn't trust them. For all the talk of religious persecution, try walking around just one day as a vocally out atheist. There's a reason why the majority of us are silent and only talk openly about it in safe places such as this.
   
   Your son is probably looking up anti-religious articles and books and such because it's the easiest way for him to find confirmation of his disbelief. A lot of the anti-religious stuff he's posting is probably helping him understand why he stopped believing the way he did. Understand that he may be going through a period where he hates religion, but it's not that he's anti-God. It's very difficult to be against something you don't believe in, and this includes the devil. He may well be anti-religion and that may or may not pass. Atheists often find that religion seems to do a lot of evil in the world (terrorism, hateful laws, justification for immoral acts such as slavery) and that can be painful to witness.
   
   If it's any consolation, I find myself fascinated by religious objects and I tend to collect them. My bookshelf is filled with religious texts and I have many representations of religious beings in my apartment. I find it incredibly interesting the power that someone can ascribe to a mere object or idea.
   
   
3. Understand that atheism isn't a lack of moral character. This is one of the first misconceptions that I find that the religious have. When you believe that your moral character derives from a holy text, it's hard to understand how you could derive it absent that text or one similar to it. But that's not true, and you do it every day. There are moral judgements you must make every day that your religious text cannot help you decide. There are moral judgements you make that your religious text would mislead you about. For one, you would never condone slavery, yet your Bible tells you exactly how to treat your slaves and which people are ok to keep as slaves. You don't need your Bible to tell you that slavery is wrong. I don't need my Bible to tell me that stealing is wrong. I know that I would hate it if someone stole from me, and therefore, I do not steal from others.
   
   If anything, I feel more moral and more obligated to be moral now that I'm an atheist. I know that sounds odd, but please hear me out. I feel this is the only life I get. This is the only life you get, and the world as it is today is the only world we get to experience. Because there is no better place, I want to make sure I leave this world better than I found it. I want to leave you with a life that is as good as it could have been while still living a life that is equally good for me. I suspect your son feels the same way, because moral people are moral without religion.
   
   I know you want to reach your son and teach him good values and good morals and how to make good decisions, and quite frankly, it is your obligation to do so. However, you will have a harder task because you can no longer argue from authority. You're right that you can't say, "do this because God says so." It won't matter to him any more than "do this because Santa will love you" would matter to you. No one could point to Christmas stories or point out that bad kids get coal because you don't believe and you've seen plenty of bad kids who didn't get coal at all. Instead, you'll have to make logical arguments about why things are bad. For instance, you don't want him to have sex. That's probably unrealistic, because studies show that kids have sex whether they are religious or not. We are simply built to have sex when we hit adolescence and our bodies compel us to do it. Abstinence worked fine when we all got married at 15, but it works much less so now that we're waiting until our late 20's. Instead, explain that people can legitimately be hurt by sex when its done for amoral reasons. Explain that at his age, he doesn't have the experience to understand the complex feelings and emotions that go into it. He probably won't understand that, so you'll also have to council him that if he is going to do it, here are many ways to do it safely so that he doesn't end up with a kid. Explain that having a child at a very young age requires tremendous sacrifice and is emotionally and financially difficult. Doing it when you are not prepared likely means that many of his dreams will be unachieveable.
   
   Of course, this doesn't help you if you think premarital sex is sinful. He is going to have a different idea about that and there's not a good logical argument that can be made. However, you can make sure that his decision to have sex doesn't result in terrible consequences. That's kind of how you'll have to frame everything from now on.

Would you be singing the same tune if, instead of a bible in every hotel, there was a Koran or A Letter to a Christian Nation? Would you still be calling for respect?

I would really encourage you to read a small book by Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation.