The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

Courageous to write in this current atmosphere with rise of social conservatives based on "American Christian Values". If you are a Christian or Muslim. You will find this book difficult to stomach. In your face writing. Very direct and Blunt "Theology is an extension of human Ignorance", articulate and easy to read. States his position clearly and argues his point well. This is an attack on Monotheistic Religions - primarily Judeo-Christian religions (Islam, Judaism and Christianity) throughout the world. He makes a compelling case that we cannot grow into a more civilized society unless we shed our primitive and illogical believe systems. Highly recommended reading. I thought his analysis of our illogical religious views and related actions were right on, although I did not agree completely with him on all his points, it stimulated me to think and rethink some of my positions. If you have strong liberal or conservative views, your position will be challenged. He is an independent thinker and he is not going to feed you what you want to hear. This is what a good book should do. Important and relevant book and we need more books like this. Thus the five stars. Loaded with memorable quotes. I found myself re-reading sections and sentences and then close the book and stare in space as I comprehend a new idea. Some of the criticism here in Amazon review is fair. He does come across as an "atheist fundamentalist" as one reviewer wrote. Sam Harris rightly criticizes needless wars in the name of promoting religion, but he seems to promote wars in the name of fighting religion. I find this a bit hypocritical. I am not sure he is any better than the religious zealots he criticizes. Where I take exception and I feel his argument is the weakest, is his that He is too forgiving on the nature of "intent" and war itself as being justified to fight ignorance. In his view, we (the US) at war are more humane than Islam at war because of our "intent". We do not intend to kill innocents (they are collateral), where as Islamic people at war do. I think this is a narrow definition of intent and too forgiving. War by its nature is inhumane regardless of intent. And whether your loved one was killed intentionally or not, it doesn't make it any easier to accept or any more justifiable or make you more rightous. In addition, collateral damage is acceptable as long as it is the other side that is experiencing it. If for example, the Iraqi resistance was able to reach our shores and retaliate, and caused collateral damage of US citizens, then our view of the war and our interest in ending it sooner will rise. So what is the morality of the war? Also, if collateral damage is more humane than targeting civilians intentionally, then no civilian deaths is more humane than collateral damage. We should be rising to the occasion (or evolving) where wars are no longer legitimate. When the US is able to keep its citizenry detached from the reality of the war, it causes prolonged suffering of the other side. Also Harris does not address "cause and effect" and "ends justify the means" foreign policy. Don't we need to be held accountable for our actions? But the US has more at its disposal than military. It is the intent of the US to use its economic might to keep nations in poverty. He does not address this...Recommended reading "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" He leaves the impression that he only reason Islamic terrorists are attacking us is for religious reasons only and they are stuck in the 14th century beyond any sense of reasoning. The Koran is rooted in violence and justifies them attacking us - The infidels. As a result, the only remedy is to wage a war (with justifiable collateral damage) against Islam. I think he goes too far here. The Koran explains their hideous actions, but not their real motives. I think he underestimates there is a real war against the west based on what we do, not what we believe. After all, there are no terrorist attacks in South America, Canada, Japan, Eastern Europe or Australia. Yet they are all Infidels. The US and Western Europe have a long history in the Middle East of occupation, puppet governments, support for Israel, military intervention and oil interests that cannot be discounted as the reason. Now the war in Iraq has given the terrorist more reason to hate us. He gives the impression that the war on terror can only be won militarily through war. I agree the military has a role to play, but it is not enough. He does not adequately address other factors in combination with the military action; cultural change in the Middle East and a change in US foreign policy. Recommended Reading; Imperial Hubris Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror. In place of religion, Harris proposes a Buddhist view of life. He does not go into detail on Buddhism but touches briefly on some of its tenets with regard to reason, logic, our thoughts and consciousness. For the intellectually curious, he may inspire you to learn more about this relatively unknown religion.

I sincerely enjoyed this book, and to a great degree, not only because of the quality of the writing, but because of what it is doing. I got this book as an early atheist and I consider it important in that transition from not-so-sure to "I'm an atheist, without a doubt." Harris' book is fairly comprehensive in many of the things atheists question and criticize about any one religion, especially religiously justified but morally questionable choices. It asked many of the same things I had wondered myself, which made it so appealing to me. It took a lot of my own thoughts and elaborated on them, and it gave me a better understanding, and rationale, for what I thought about God, life, the universe, and everything. You'll see in Harris', Hitchens', or Dawkins' writing that there are many appeals to logic, but Harris places a lot of emphasis on how the brain operates in his arguments. He focuses on how and why people form beliefs, and then uses that to show why religious faith is illogical. Logic plays a central role in his writing, and because of that, his arguments feel much more solid. That is, of course, totally subjective. However, I found it to be that way and is a primary reason I recommend Harris before both Hitchens and Dawkins, though honestly all three are superb. My one criticism is that Harris' writing can appear a bit dreary at times. Hitchens seems more anecdotal, resulting in something a bit more entertaining. Harris' writing sometimes feels like an academic article in a scholarly journal; serious in tone, analytical, etc. He does pepper his writing with various quips and sarcastic statements, which does offer a good chuckle from time to time. I should note that I did not find the book boring. Harris' arguments are strong, well-supported, and substantial in value to any atheist; the critique he makes of faith should be entertainment value enough. This book will focus primarily on Christianity and Islam, and does not stray too far out from those two. If you want a book that focuses on Christianity alone, you'll want to look at Harris' companion to this book, "Letter to a Christian Nation." I have and will continue to recommend this book to anyone looking for good atheist literature. Should anyone read this who is questioning if they are an atheist or not, I would strongly suggest reading this book. It will answer many questions and pose plenty of new ones.

this is a book everyone should read, but it has to be read with caution. harris's approach to faith and religion falls under the rubrics of "abstract" and "logical." in addition he is a faults critic and not a beauties critic. all religions that i am aware of have some positive features - sociological, psychological, artistic (literature, painting, sculpture, architecture, dance and music, etc.) without which human history would be incomparably impoverished. religions are also historically dynamic - theses and antitheses evolving into syntheses - a dynamic clearly evident right from the beginning in israelite "sacred history." in a very simplified understanding, the legalistic tradition with its procrustean penalties and seeming genocides, capital crimes of a trivial nature, focus on minutia (of diet, washing, apparel, etch.) - basically a closed system designed to enforce membership in the community (i.e. thesis), giving rise to the antithesis (a "prophetic office") of a more "universal" dynamic - evident even in the thesis phase where concern for "the stranger among us" is clearly articulated, but then arising as clearly defined opposition and antithesis such as in jonah, job, eccliastes, and the transformation of the national warrior god into the universal creator who in the major prophets warns insistently ( e.g. isaiah 1:10-27) in the very voice of god : "what havei need of all your sacrifices" and then goes on to reject the whole ritual system and religious festival calendar as abhorrent to god when there is rampant corruption and lack of justice in the nation: "though you pray at length i will not listen. your hands are stained with crime wash yourselves clean; put your evil doings away from my sight. Cease to do evil; learn to do good. Devote yourselves to justice: aid the wronged ; uphold the rights of the orphan; defend the cause of the widow." etc. and these early passages lead to the great messianic vision of the "heilgeschichte" culminating in universal values of justice, peace, abundance, liberty etc. for all of mankind (9: 1 ff. "the people that walked in darkness have seen a brilliant light; on those who dwelt in a land of gloom light has dawned"- light of dawn - utopian, indeed, and unrealistic, yet yielding an ideal, a goal, and a foil ,a "golden world"not just for israel but for all mankind against which to see clearly the failures of the actual unjust "leaden world" - i.e. the world of the platonic "becoming" (the leaden, "sub-lunar world") as opposed to the "real world" of the transcendent ideas of goodness, beauty and truth. a similar dynamic is evident in the ancient greek tragedy wherein the immutable and harsh decree of heaven evolves through the movement from thesis (the ruthless decree of fate often based on irrational principles) to antithesis (introducing the judgement of the human polis based on "democratic" principles of reasoned jurisprudence and proportionate, more tempered and merciful "sentencing", then issuing into the synthesis of a general transformation of the principles of jurisprudence away from the inscrutable decrees of fate to enlightened justice mirroring actual changes in the justice system of the polis. a clear example among many still extant is to be found in aeschylus' trllogy "the oresteia" proceeding from the archaic condemnation of orestes for matricide and his being pursued and hounded by the erinyes or harpies to the culmination under the aegis of athena and an as hoc panel of athenian jurors reversing the condemnation of fate, introducing a more nuanced deliberation on the part of the human polis and transforming the erinyes (goddesses of vengeance) into eumenides (goddesses of blessing) as the final verdict of acquittal is delivered in favor of orestes. (see wikipedia oresteia) note all this takes place under religious sanction through the intervention of the tutelary goddess athena, apollo has his say, the erinyes do not just go away, they undergo a religious conversion along with the whole polis and its judicial worldview. all of this parallels the transformation of the ancient israelite particularism into universal norms of justice and mercy guaranteed by the one creator of the one human race, "endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. As for harris's treatment of islam, the problem with his approach seems to be historical - islam arose when the failures of other systems were evident, the "promise" of the covenants - jewish and christian were everywhere unfulfilled in a world full of evil, hatred and war: according to the koran something had clearly gone wrong, i.e. the children and heirs of the promise had evidently rebelled against the promise, and so, though to be pitied, they also had to be ruthlessly chastened as having willfully apostatized from the original adamic covenant, so that in islam the "messianic" ideal is in the arche - such as in the gospel of saint john, in the beginning (i.e. the "arche") the word was with god and the word was god": good news bible" : "before the world was created, the word - "logos" - already existed (i.e. the hagia sophia, the platonic ideal and the messianic promise), he was with god, and he was the same as god. from the very beginning the word was with god. through him god made all things, not one thing in all creation was made without him. the word was the the source of life, and this life brought light to mankind. the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never put it out." of course in islam the word is allah and jesus was one of the greatest "prophets" of allah, but the "arche" is the divinity for all three of the abrahamic religions and there is a movement towards synthesis of which harris seems unwilling to understand as having positive prospectives for the real world. he seems to think that the taliban , isis, terrorism, murder,hatred, death, nihilism, etc.,etc., define islam. but there are major perspectives which he totally ignores, of which i will mention only one - namely, hans kung's major study, "Islam" part of the trilogy on the abrahamic world religions, including the other major tomes on "judaism" and on "christianity." there is much to credit the idea that major thinkers like kung (theologians, philosophers, artists, social critics, in all three traditions are developing "bridges" (he name of one such enterprise at georgetown university) founded on the positive, life-affirming, eternal values and verities which form the conceptual basis of all three religions (despite harris's doggedly contrarian view). one last observation: do not the utopian democratic ideals of "liberty, equality, fraternity" have their origin their "arche" in the messianic ideals of all three abrahamic world religions. perhaps it is more useful not to drum relentlessly, one might say fanatically on the acknowledged tragic realities of world history in its religious dimension and strive instead to rediscover the "arche" in human nature - the original "light" which hopefully the darkness can never put out. mr. harris would do well to reread the two great poems of william blake "the divine image" and "a divine image" which brilliantly encapsulate the dichotomy of good and evil in all things human including the divine,

I like this book a lot. I think I should first give all the reasons I like it. 1. There has never been a book like this. It is one of the most original I have come across. I don't believe anyone has ever written a book attacking monotheism before that wasn't written from an apologetic point of view. If I had to compare it to something, it would be "Why I am not a Christian" by Bertrand Russell, or even "Meditations" by Descartes. The book is extremely well ordered. You can't tell this from the table of contents because the chapter titles are poetic, but it can be broken down as follows with his titles in parenthesis. Chapter 1. Political position regarding monotheism (Reason in Exile) Chapter 2. Philosophical position (The Nature of Belief) Chapter 3. Problematic of Christian History (In the Shadow of God) Chapter 4. (The Problem with Islam) Chapter 5. Christianity and U.S. Politics (West of Eden) Chapter 6. Ethics (A Science of Good and Evil) Chapter 7. Mysticism (Experiments in Consciousness) Harris avoids the kind of Christian discourse known as Apologetics, preferring to get right down to the truth about what religions claim and what that means to the rest of us in light of the dictums of the books cited as infallible by their adherents, especially the Bible and the Koran. Philosophically, the focus of his attack is on religious moderates and the idea that Religions are actually good, and ultimately even help us get along together. It is this focus that makes this book immortal in my estimation. It will be on "Need to Read" lists for many years. Besides being enchanted with the freshness, intelligence and originality of the book, let me mention a couple of omissions which I consider significant. First, there is no discussion of life and death, or a philosophy of life and death. This will have to come from other sources. Since this book is meant to be primarily a wake-up call to atheists, I guess he didn't feel that it was necessary. I'm not talking about proselytization, which this book isn't, anyone shedding the religion of their ancestors will need to confront this question, and a little help may not hurt. Second, he goes light on Judaism. Whether this is due to "Holocaust Guilt" or with being too close to his own background, it does not coincide with the facts. In my own analysis of religion it has been quite clear that the moral turpitude so obvious in the Christian churches (and the reasons why the Christian ideas gained hegemony in Rome so easily, for example) cuts deep into Jewish history and culture as well, and it seems strange that Judaism has been so completely spared by his knife as to be almost beyond mentioning. The second strangeness is his call for a science of mysticism. He's not concerned with New Age mysticism in general as one reader has claimed, he's interested in Tibetan Buddhism, which he feels is the best popular exposition available on "Scientific" Phenomenology. I admit that this idea is not foreign to me. I've often thought of low Buddhism and Zen Buddhism as enlightened philosophies that get to the point a lot faster than most western philosophers, while avoiding dogma. So I naturally feel very comfortable for his call to explore alternatives to religion, what he calls "Scientific Mysticism". Thirdly, after criticizing the Torquemada with all the appropriate harshness you would expect, he goes on to present an argument for reviving torture in order to deal with the contingency of Terroristic Religion. His justification comes from "Collateral Damage", how you would weigh the destructiveness of torturing an innocent person against the destruction caused by firebombing a city, for example. This reasoning is not easy to agree with. Finally, with Samuel Huntington, he is against Islamic Civilization. He buys Huntington's whole argument and sincerely believes we are locked in a fight to the death with Islamicists and the "Islamic Civilization" that nutures them. How this is any any different from an Islamic person viewing Western soldiers as Crusaders nurtured by our "Christian" civilization somehow escapes me. In what way is this any different from the "fight to the death" we just completed with "Godless Communism"? To some of us, it seems a little too convenient that the weapons ovens are now blazing up again just after the Cold War is finally over. His attacks on Relativism and modern Pragmaticism in Chapter 6 are very well reasoned. Personally, I was pleasantly surprised to see that he calls himself a "Realist", since this is how I present myself. So all of this isn't for everyone, and some of this is for someone, etc. Each will have something to dislike, but it will be very hard to find a book as spiritually uplifting as this, which also has been banned at church.

The End of Faith" constitutes a valuable public conversation in that it says much that needs to be said. The style is clear and lucid, the work meticulously sourced. Harris's primary theme involves the need to call the core doctrines of faith into question. Ever the polemicist,he is particularly hard on Muslims, seeming to consider them essentially lost to reason. He states that, "Given what Muslims believe is genuine peace in this world possible? ...I'm afraid that encouraging answers to such questions are hard to come by (p. 137)." He provides copious Koranic quotes condemning the non-believer; quotes that are similar in their hatefulness to those found in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. The misdeeds of murderous Muslim fanatics are well known. They are reprehensible and are and should be actionable. Yet human variability is too great to justify condemning a billion people en masse, no matter their religious persuasion. The vile adherence to Koranic claptrap Muslims espouse must eventually change. After all, Muslims, as Harris acknowledges, were making important contributions to humanity, particularly in the areas of math, astronomy and the preservation of ancient knowledge when Western Civilization was little more than a cesspool of theologically induced ignorance and brutality. Islamists may yet have their own enlightenment, particularly if significant numbers of them attain a sound education in a secular US or elsewhere. Harris seems to insist in circumlocutions that are nothing if not artful that our depredations against Muslims are of little consequence. Even though I view these matters somewhat differently, Harris appears to be a perpetual student of the human condition, a thoughtful person who may see some of these issues differently with the passage of time. And then again I may. With Laser-like accuracy Harris states that that "The degree to which religious ideas still determine (the) government policies...of the United States--presents a grave danger to everyone (p. 153)." Certainly Christians in the United States have much to atone for. As Harris notes, forty percent of George W. Bush's voter support came from fundamentalist Christians. Thus we have a president who describes himself as a "messenger" of God who is doing "the Lord's will." One might more readily expect a Grand Poobah of Pakistan or Nigeria to announce that God is whispering in his ear, an anomaly that almost moves even the rationalist to pray for regime change. One can reasonably argue then, that voters of the fundamentalist Christian persuasion more than any other group visited upon us the tragedy that is Iraq, with its millions dead or wounded and over four million people as refugees. War in the Middle East, after all, is enthusiastically embraced and encouraged by Christian Evangelicals to "usher in the Second Coming of Christ and the final destruction of the Jews (p. 153)." Additionally, we now deficit spending greater than any in the history of humanity (Clap your hands and say thank you, Mister Jesus!). Our military is corrupted by what Air Force vet Mikey Weinstein terms "an evangelical coup in the military." The wall of separation between church and state that was so artfully constructed by the founders, them at most mildly affirmative deists, is tragically undermined. Harris says, "victimless crimes" are outgrowths of faith-based thinking, noting that prohibition and the Drug War began with Christian groups. With no victim, though, he states, there is no crime. One appreciates then the implication that Harris supports the right of people to do that which they wish to do in private. The total absence of magical thinking is likely to be a long time coming, though, and this is true whether it's that of a coven of nude witches dancing around a fire in a moonlit glade beseeching the Goddess or a gaggle of Southern Baptists insisting that those crumbled up saltine crackers are momentarily going to become the neurological, muscle and integumental tissues of Sky Boy Jesus. In the meantime, this reader is left feeling that society is served best by religious pluralism coupled with a high tolerance for harmless eccentricity, this including the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart's fevered rush to a hot sheets motel with a sex worker or Rev. Ted Haggard and his catamite slathering on the K-Y Jelly in preparation for a convivial amphetamine-fueled boy-on-boy Bacchanal. If there was any great lesson in the tragedy of 09.11.01, it is that religion and politics are an explosive and irresponsible combination, one that is eventually paid for in blood. With whatever small flaws it may have, "The End of Faith" makes a good case for this. It is a valuable and well-written work. §

It is ironic that Sam Harris begins his book with a description of a young man bombing a bus in the heart of a city. Though published in 2004, the description appears to fit very well the recent London transit bombings. And this is precisely why this book demands our attention in this time of growing radical, religious fundamentalism of whatever variety. Sam Harris presents as a quiet, thoughtful, reflective person in television interviews and public presentations. His background is in philosophy and he is now completing his doctorate in neuro-science. He presents his analysis of religion in a deliberate, careful, rational manner. Yet the result is powerful. The book his two major themes. The first part is comprised of a critique of the irrational basis of religious faith and the often terrible consequences of these beliefs. This is not a tentative or hesitating criticism. At a time when the negative effects of religion and religious thinking are becoming increasingly visible, this book serves notice that making accommodations to religious thinking serves only to allow it to perpetuate its destructive influence. A belief that killing innocent people is responding to the will of one's God is not an idea to be given credence. And yet it flows directly from religious ideology and scripture. After surveying the current effects of religious beliefs, Harris then explores the nature of belief and how it relates to reason by providing an excellent review of the criteria and process of determining truth--or what in philosophy is called epistemology. Building on this analysis, he then reviews the effect of irrational belief in the history of Christianity with the Inquisition, the Cathar persecution, the witch hunts and finally the Holocaust. His point is that the moderation and toleration that is generally accepted today is not a result of the religious belief itself, but the modulating influence of the Enlightenment and the political separation of church and state that followed. This is followed by a detailed chapter analyzing the rise of radical and violent Islam. But lest we think we are immune from the effect of religious fundamentalism, he points out its current effect over issues such as the Ten Commandments controversy, the role of "faith-based" legislative efforts, the attempt to legislate what had previously been areas of private freedom, the movement to control embryonic stem cell research, and, of course, the abortion debate. Harris is particularly critical of what he calls the "myth of moderation" which flows from the postmodern viewpoint that all ideas are relative and none can be held truer or better than others. Moderates do not want to kill anyone in the name of God, but they want us to keep using the word "God" as though we know what we were talking about. And they do not want anything too critical said about people who really believe in the God of their fathers, because tolerance, perhaps above all else, is sacred. To speak plainly and truthfully about the state of the world--to say, for instance, that the Bible and Koran both contain mountains of life-destroying gibberish--is antithetical to tolerance as moderates currently conceive it. But we can no longer afford the luxury of such political correctness. We must finally recognize the price we are paying to maintain the iconography of our ignorance. The second part of the book is what makes it so significant This is not just another attack on the irrationality of religious faith. Harris acknowledges the legitimacy of the issues that religion attempts to address. What makes one person happier than another? Why is love more conducive to happiness than hate? Why do we generally prefer beauty to ugliness and order to chaos? Why does it feel so good to smile and laugh, and why do these shared experiences generally bring people closer together? Is the ego and illusion, and, if so, what implications does this have for human life? Is there life after death? These are ultimately questions for a mature science of the mind. If we ever develop such a science, most of our religious texts will be no more useful to mystics than they are now to astronomers. First he addresses ethics. What kind of ethics is possible without a faith in a supernatural God? One based in reason and that incorporates our growing knowledge of ourselves at the level of the brain. Where currently there is little consensus on moral issues, a sustained inquiry will force the convergence of various belief systems as it has done in other sciences. Moral relativism will no longer make sense ("we can't really judge the suicide bomber") because we will have developed verifiable criteria for moral and ethical behavior. Harris explores a number of contemporary issues from this perspective including terrorism, torture and pacifism. Furthermore, ethics is intimately connected with spirituality. In the next chapter he reframes the entire arena of spirituality from the religious to the scientific in the newly emerging field of consciousness studies. He is hesitant to use the words spirituality or mysticism because "neither word captures the reasonableness and profundity of the possibility that we must now consider: that there is a form of well-being that supersedes all others, indeed, that transcends the vagaries of experience itself". Specifically he refers to those traditions that identify spirituality with consciousness itself--with the observer of content rather than the content itself, which frees us from the vicissitudes of experience. Our spiritual traditions suggest that we have considerable room here to change our relationship to the contents of consciousness, and thereby to transform our experience of the world. Indeed, a vast literature on human spirituality attests to this. It is also clear that nothing need be believed on insufficient evidence for us to look in this possibility with an open mind. It is tempting to quote whole sections of this final chapter in which Harris rescues spirituality from religion. He explores the nature of consciousness and the various efforts within traditional religions to change the nature of consciousness through sustained introspection and the refinement of attention. He applies this to an analysis of the nature of the self--how it arises, what sustains it and how it can be transcended. He compares Eastern to Western philosophy and religion and questions why the Eastern analysis appears to be so much more sophisticated. And finally he describes meditation as a form of introspection in a section which can serve as a primer to meditative practice. All of this is done from an empirical perspective informed by modern studies of consciousness rather than from religious doctrine. The only lack in this book is the omission of the psychodynamic explanation for faith as originally proposed by Freud and more recently in the book The Psychological Roots of Religious Belief by M.D. Faber. Harris takes a more cultural and societal perspective. Few books describe more clearly the transition to a post-religious era and establish so clearly why it is of such importance. The days of our religious identities are clearly numbered. Whether the days of our civilization itself are numbered would seem to depend, rather too much, on how soon we realize this.

By page 22 of "The End of Faith," the reader is aware that Sam Harris does not feel the least bit conciliatory toward religious worldviews. Moreover, he knows just how and where to insert an intellectual stiletto: "Whatever is true now should be discoverable now....By this measure, the entire project of religion seems perfectly backward." Indeed, religious thinking does seem to have an uncanny knack for being not just wrong, but exactly wrong. For example, it credits the Old Testament god with being merciful, patient, forgiving and wise, although even a cursory reading of Genesis through Numbers shows him to be cruel, petty, vengeful, selfish and embarrassingly ignorant of the cosmos he supposedly designed and constructed. While highlighting this and many other faith-based nonsequiturs, Harris makes an eloquent case for the proposition that religious claims MUST compete with other knowledge about the world on a fair basis -- no automatic allowances for tradition, "sacredness," or other distractions having zero relevance to truth value. He further warns that given the clear and present dangers of fundamentalism, we risk far too much by sacrificing rationality on the altar of political correctness. The book's seven chapters cover the roots and dangers of religious irrationality, the perverseness of faith without reason, the history of religious persecution and internecine vendettas, the particular threat of Islam, the toxicity of church/government mixtures, a scientific approach to morality, and (rather surprisingly) the experimental side of consciousness. In the chapter on Islam, Harris begins with the obligatory mention of (long past) positive contributions from Muslim culture, notably the invention of algebra and translations of the Greek philosophers. But the next 40 pages are devoted to exposing the threatening side of Islamic beliefs and traditions -- even the "moderate" ones. Harris points out that the revered Koran and its lower-ranked companion the hadith (sayings of Muhammad) are liberally stocked with contempt for other religions, death sentences for apostates, eternal suffering for infidels, and the promotion of jihad (religious war) as a duty for all Muslims. He offers statistical evidence that suicide bombing in defense of Islam is endorsed in at least some circumstances by majorities or substantial portions of the populations of 11 of 12 Muslim countries (the lone exception is secular-governed Turkey). The author maintains, with ample evidence, that the usual characterization of radical Islamists as mere hijackers of a peaceful religion is grossly misleading. In fact, he says, "Nothing explains the actions of Muslim extremists...better than the tenets of Islam." Harris's clear and forceful writing style bolsters his step-by-step case for rejecting the vacuous certainties of religious doctrine. In Chapter six he tackles the concept of atheistic morality, which seems to trouble so many people. He keys his outline for scientifically valid ethics to one simple but not widely recognized principle: "...questions of right and wrong are really questions about the happiness and suffering of sentient creatures." By "sentient" he means conscious and able to comprehend different levels of well-being. This plausible and incisive idea immediately clarifies important issues to which religious morality is both dumb and blind: 1. All human and non-human animals have ethical rights. Sentience alone is sufficient to confer moral standing. 2. The objective of shared ethical standards is to improve the condition of living beings, not to avoid the wrath of an imaginary cosmic supervisor. 3. Harmless private behavior is not open to ethical dispute. Harris uses point 1. to illuminate the abortion issue. If sentience confers moral standing, then lack of sentience removes it. Hence it is not rational to equate the ethical rights of one, or two, or a hundred cells with those of a fully-developed person. There is of course a gray area, but it does not (by any sensible standard) reach back to conception. In his sharp (both senses of the word) critique of absolute pacifism, Harris offers on page 202 a very provocative and pithy admonition: "...when your enemy has no scruples, your own scruples become another weapon in his hand." Although I found much to admire in "End of Faith," there were some aspects of it that puzzled me. For instance, on page 16 the author claims that "there is clearly a sacred dimension to our existence." He goes on to say that exploring such a dimension shouldn't require untestable propositions, but the original appeal to sacredness still seems odd. In other places Harris tentatively supports the reality of psychic phenomena (p. 41), suggests a "deeply rational" basis for spirituality (p. 43), and states that his case against blind faith was "written very much in the spirit of a prayer" (pp 48-9). On page 192 he defines spirituality as cultivation of happiness, an interpretation very much at odds with any dictionaries I've encountered. Seventeen pages later he declares that spiritual practice is the investigation of consciousness through introspection. Will the real spirituality please stand up? Finally, on page 208, Harris expresses doubt that the brain produces consciousness, but fails to offer a plausible guess at what does produce it. Despite such reservations, I found "End of Faith" to be a thoughtful work with a cogent and worthwhile theme -- religious claims deserve no special or privileged status among the welter of competing ideas about the universe and our role in it.

Harris has the courage to tell the truth: 1) Bin Laden and his admirers are not on the fringe of Islam, and Islam is not a religion of peace; 2) the modern, democratic West is in a struggle to the death with Islam, whose adherents will not stop until they have imposed a Taliban type dictatorship on the world, and if they have to kill all "infidels" they will do it; 3) we can pretend otherwise and lose this war, or face reality and fight back; 4) pacificism and moral relativism are cowardly responses, and the deconstructionist types are engaged in mental masturbation 5) Christianity and Judaism are also outmoded belief systems that only survive b/c believers can hold inconsistent ideas in their heads, but, then still have enough poisonous beliefs that they encourage adherents to focus on trivial "sins" such as adultery, homosexuality, petty drug abuse, etc., and miss the big picture; 6) Christianity and Judaism are not as virulent today as they were in the Middle Ages b/c of the advances of science, reason, and democracy, that has left the Western religions a matter mostly of going to church on Sunday, then living by factual knowledge the rest of the week, but they still are dangerous; when you consider that Reagan invited Falwell to National Security Council meetings to brief policy makers on the coming Armageddon, and our current president encourages prayer meetings and Bible studies and talks to "his Father," about affairs of state and war; 7) the monotheistic religions are primitive and based on speculation, myth, and tradition, maybe with some psychosis mixed in, reinforced by centuries of oppression that stamped out competing world views (Inquistion; Calvin's torture and murder of Michael Servetus for questioning the doctrine of the Trinity; Henry VIII's torture and murder of a scholar for translating the Bible to English); 8) the three big monotheist religions all claim title to the same little piece of real estate, and all believe they are the one true religion, which accounts for the never ending strife in the Middle East, and 9/11, and such barbarities as decapitating Daniel Pearl, and now there is the imminent risk the Moslem fanatics will get their hands on nuclear weapons; 8) certain Eastern forms of spirituality, particularly Mahayana Buddhism are based in observation and experimentation that 9) engender compassion for all sentient being, and are based on reason, honesty, and love; 10) spirituality is a positive force, if based on reason and ethics as exemplified by the Buddha and his spiritual/intellectual descendants. Most importantly, religion should not be exempt from critical analysis and discourse; if it can't hold up, then it's time for it to go the way of the "knowlege" about anything else in the time the Bible and Koran were written like reading chicken guts. Harris writes beautifully; in one quote he says that the Dalai Lama discussing spirituality with the Pope and, say Jerry Falwell, is comparable to Einstein discussing physics with a bunch of Kalahari bushmen. Harris is trained as a philospher and neuroscientist. The book is highly readable. He includes extensive endnotes with citations for more indepth study. I loved this book. People who like Eckhardt Tolle, the Dalai Lama, Suzuki, and also scientists such as Edward O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins will enjoy it and be stimulated. Christian fundamentalists will love the sections on Islam. Moslems will hate the whole thing.