While warning against the encroachment of organized religion into world politics, Harris also draws on new evidence from neuroscience and insights from philosophy to explore spirituality as a biological, brain-based need. He calls on us to invoke that need in taking a secular humanistic approach to solving the problems of this world.
His writing has been published in over fifteen languages. Harris is cofounder and CEO of Project Reason, a nonprofit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. Please visit his website at SamHarris. Tell us what you like and we'll recommend books you'll love. Sign up and get a free ebook! Read by Brian Emerson. The book does have the verve and personal engagement that is rare.
The End of Faith has a pithy prose style that might distract you from lamenting the end of logical rigor. I'm going to be brief. The End of Faith by Sam Harris is a landmark book for me.
It blew my mind when I first read it. Now, it doesn't feel as good as the short and sharp Letter To A Christian Nation, and has less great moments than the slow starting The Moral Landscape.
The End Of Faith opened my eyes to reviews and reviewing possibilities. It gave me an insight into writing quickly, with as much original thought and fluidity of prose as I am able to muster. It influenced my writing most of all books and for that I'm glad.
I couldn't, however read the parts about meditation and Sam Harris's take on mysticism is too contemporary and he doesn't look at the subject through history. I think whatever the imagined or concrete benefits of meditation are, they take up a lot of time, and should only be attempted by people who really need them.
I also didn't get the bits about relativism and pragmatism. Harris's writing was surprisingly muted there and he didn't give any example to clarify his vague texts. Nitpicking apart, this book is still meaningful although now a tad dated by what now, ten years? Seemed that I was reading it for the first time quite recently.
Sam Harris should go back to discussing Christianity as that is his forte and he should update his work. I'll gladly read about the recent events and a revised view and vision of what the present means for the future. Said rant is not about the patently poetic content and its derivatives of the Christian Faith I am listening to the incomparable Vespers of Rachmaninov as I write.
The birth, death, bodily resurrection, and eventual return of the Son of God can be held harmless. But the far more insidious and destructive Christian idea of faith itself cannot. To only slightly simplify: Judaism consists of rules for behaviour; Islam of submissive obedience; Buddhism is a life-practice; Hinduism, a mythological imagination; and Confucianism a suggestive aphoristic wisdom. Only Christianity, by its own definition, is a matter of faith.
But through Christianity's insistence, all these others have come to be called 'faiths,' and considered as if they were competitors for something Christianity calls belief. So Christianity, uniquely, has missionaries whose intention is to instil faith, correct belief, among those unfortunates among whom it is lacking. Nulla salus extra Ecclesiam , There is no salvation outside the Church, is a doctrine that celebrates the two Christian inventions: salvation and faith, which can be used interchangeably as the need arises.
Although Christianity has its many rituals and credal expressions, every Christian knows that these are not the thing called faith. Anyone can perform the ritual or say he creed. But authentic faith is far more basic, more existential. It is an orientation, an attitude perhaps, toward the world. An attitude of Press a Christian hard enough and he or she will be forced to admit that this faith they have is an elemental thing. It can't be defined, divided or described in terms of behaviour, or propositions, or rules, or even psychology.
Faith is a unique category of existence, they will contend, which can only be considered from inside that existence by those who live within it.
Faith is a condition of the soul. Rituals and creeds may be shared, therefore; they are a source of solidarity. But faith is entirely a personal matter. Only an individual knows about his or her faith and, according to some, not even them. Doctrinally in Christianity there is no clear sign, either external or internal, of the one who lives in faith. Consequently, for those who take the matter seriously, faith is a source of constant worry. If those without it are doomed, how could it be otherwise.
One must suspect and inspect oneself continuously for the signs of faith. This drove Martin Luther, among many others, mad. As Sam Harris says, therefore, Christianity is the "perfection of Narcissism. What matters is individual salvation. And the way salvation is to be achieved is not how one behaves externally with the rest of the world, but how one is internally with God.
At most the rest of the world is a mirror upon which the Christian projects his own image in order to assess the quality of his faith - ceaselessly, remorselessly, and ultimately fruitlessly.
Fruitlessly because even he has no clear idea what faith itself might be. Faith is what is absent, 'hope for things unseen' as the Pauline formula has it. With an advertising campaign this effective is it any wonder Max Weber pointed to Christianity as the matrix of capitalism? Faith is therefore terrifying. And it's logical consequence is terrorism.
It is Christianity's insistence upon the equivalence of faith and religion which has infected Islam and Buddhism with the germ of terror it is at this point that Harris and I part company; he may be unaware that Sri Lankan Buddhist monks invented the modern suicide killer, one of whom, Somarama Thero, appropriately became a Christian shortly before his death. The novelty of Christianity was never in the tenets of its faith but in the idea of faith itself. Stories of virginal births, suffering gods, gods in human form, for example, are common in ancient civilisations.
What is distinctive about Christianity is that the elements of these stories became matters of faith not rituals of communal solidarity. Mere acceptance, tolerance, of such content and its ritual are insufficient proof of faith.
Real faith is extreme faith, total faith, or it is nothing. As another Christian doctrine has it: Error has no rights. And for Christians right is might. So, emulating the theological lead of the religious genius St. As if beliefs did not carry their own rationality. Not having beliefs in the Christian sense was somewhat confusing for these opponents therefore.
But the Jews and the emperor-worshippers and the Mithraists and eventually the Muslims soon got into the swing of this faith thing. Christianity transformed religion from interesting, creative, inspiring, diverse poetry about things beyond reason, into a debate about beliefs, then into a commercial competition, and ultimately into repressive violence about faith. Beliefs, as matters of faith, become truths which are immutable and must be fought for.
They, therefore, undermine both politics and science. All in the name of faith. As they say at that border wall of Christian love. Pete Carlton. There are several currents running through The End of Faith , many of which I agree with enthusiastically, some of which I regard with caution, and one or two that I find so strange as to wonder whether Harris wrote the last few chapters while in too.. First, some easy floating down the river. Where does your support for the following graded series fall off?
If you are still nodding after 4 , you agree with Harris and incidentally, me on the main thesis of his book. It has been pointed out for a long time now that religious ideas uniquely get a free pass. Guests on a Sunday morning talk show may strenuously disagree with each other over taxes, who should be president, or which sports team is better, but to say "Bringing up that god of yours again, eh?
You can get away with almost any behavior or opinion if you state that it's a matter of faith. Like many others before him, Harris points out the absurdity and arbitrariness of this situation, and argues that it should change. Religious beliefs should be attacked like other irrationalities; religious stories should not be talked about as if they were true by people who know they could not possibly be true; religion should not shield anyone from criticism.
What is new in this book are two arguments that would raise the stakes. First, rather than patiently waiting for atheism to gain footing in the world, the ascendancy of Islamist power and the machinations of the Christian right make it an urgent matter. Second, religious moderates should be chastened as enablers of fundamentalism.
Harris states "Religious moderates are, in large part, responsible for the religious conflict in our world, because their beliefs provide the context in which scriptural literalism and religious violence can never be adequately opposed". So far, so good. We soon approach some rapids -- Harris sets out on some heavy philosophical terrain about free will and ethics in his trumping up of Islamist terrorism as a force that should command our greatest attention.
I don't think he lacks the ability to engage with these subjects deeply, but he doesn't go deep enough in this book. The authors demonstrate how two people with very different views can find common ground. This important and timely book delivers a startling analysis of the clash of faith and reason in today's world. Sam Harris offers a vivid historical tour of mankind's willingness to suspend reason in favour of religious beliefs, even when those beliefs are used to justify harmful behaviour and sometimes heinous crimes.
He asserts that in the shadow of weapons of mass destruction, we can no longer tolerate views that pit one true god against another. Most controversially, he argues that. Heralded as the exponents of a 'new atheism', critics of religion are highly visible in today's media, and include the household names of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris.
David Fergusson explains their work in its historical perspective, drawing comparisons with earlier forms of atheism. Responding to the critics through conversations on the credibility of religious belief, Darwinism, morality, fundamentalism, and our approach to reading sacred texts, he establishes a compelling case for the practical and theoretical validity of. When you pray, are you talking to a God who exists? Or is God nothing more than your "imaginary friend," like a playmate contrived by a lonely and imaginative child?
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