religious scholars. The Post said the book "doesn't drill many new theological wells," but that Harris "might be the first man to be anointed 'Hot Atheist' in Rolling Stone magazine." Jamie Doward of The Observer said Harris "wastes no time taking on his enemy - Christian fundamentalism of the sort that influences President George W. Bush." Writing in an editorial in The Seattle Times, Intelligent Design proponent David Klinghoffer said that Letter to a Christian Nation and Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion were the top two bestselling religious books. However, he went on to say that "... Dawkins and Harris seem unfamiliar with religious tradition as biblical monotheists know it from personal experience and deep study. Frankly, the success of the new atheist faith would be hard to imagine without today's soaring levels of societal religious illiteracy." Writing in The Observer, Stephanie Merritt described Harris as providing "concise anti-religious apologetics," but said that "[h]e does not seem to comprehend the mindset of those he addresses." In The New York Times, Peter Steinfels wrote that Harris's Letter and Dawkins's The God Delusion were receiving criticism "not primarily, it should be pointed out, from the pious, which would hardly be noteworthy, but from avowed atheists as well as scientists and philosophers writing in publications like The New Republic and The New York Review of Books, not known as cells in the vast God-fearing conspiracy." Michael Novak, a Catholic philosopher, wrote in the conservative National Review that "[t]he letter that Harris claims is intended for a Christian nation is in fact wholly uninterested in Christianity on any level, is hugely ignorant, and essentially represents his own love letter to himself, on account of his being superior to the stupid citizens among whom he lives." The New Criterion described Letter as condescending, saying "Harris is too choked on bile, or at best incredulity ('we stand dumbstruck by you,' he says, italics and all) to admit that his addressees are worth speaking with. This is in part because his chosen antagonist is 'Christianity at its most divisive, injurious, and retrograde' even though it's questionable whether anything was ever accomplished by attacking a system at its most 'retrograde.'" Publishers Weekly characterized Letter as "sometimes simplistic and misguided." The review elaborates that "Harris overstates his case by misunderstanding religious faith, as when he makes the audaciously naïve statement that 'mysticism is a rational enterprise; religion is not.'"