The End of Faith: Difference between revisions

The End of Faith

Author	Sam Harris
Language	English
Subject	Religion
Publisher	W.W. Norton
Publication date	2004
Publication place	United States
Media type	Hardcover, Paperback
ISBN	ISBN 0-743-26809-1 Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character

The End of Faith (2004) is a book written by Sam Harris, concerning organized religion, the clash between religious faith and rational thought, and the problems of tolerance towards religious fundamentalism.

Harris began writing the book in what he described as a period of "collective grief and stupefaction" following the September 11, 2001 attacks.^[1] The book comprises a wide-ranging criticism of all styles of religious belief.

The book was first published in August 2004, and it was awarded the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction the following year.^[2] The paperback edition was published in October 2005. In the same month it entered the New York Times Best Seller list at number four, and remained on the list for a total of 33 weeks.^[3]

The End of Faith opens with a literary account of a day in the life of a suicide bomber – his last day. In an introductory chapter, Harris calls for an end to respect and tolerance for the competing belief systems of religion, which he describes as being "all equally uncontaminated by evidence". While focusing on the dangers posed by religious extremist groups now armed with weapons of mass destruction, Harris is equally critical of religious moderation, which he describes as "the context in which religious violence can never be adequately opposed."

Harris continues by examining the nature of belief itself, challenging the notion that we can in any sense enjoy freedom of belief – for as he points out, "belief is a fount of action in potentia." Instead he posits that in order to be useful, beliefs must be both logically coherent, and truly representative of the real world. Insofar as religious belief fails to ground itself in empirical evidence, Harris likens religion to a form of mental illness which, he says, "allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy." He argues that there may be "sanity in numbers", but that it is "merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your prayers, while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window."

Harris follows this with a brief survey of Christianity down the ages, examining the Inquisition and the historic persecution of witches and Jews. He contends that, far from being an aberration, the torture of heretics was simply a logical expression of Christian doctrine – one which, he says, was clearly justified by men such as Saint Augustine. Going still further, Harris sees the Holocaust as essentially drawing its inspiration from traditional Christian anti-Semitism. "Knowingly or not," he says, "the Nazis were agents of religion."

Possibly the most controversial aspect of The End of Faith is an uncompromising assessment and criticism of Islam, which Harris describes as being a "cult of death." He infers a clear link between Islamic teaching and terrorist atrocities such as 9/11, something which he backs up with five pages of quotations from the Koran, all extolling the use of violence. He also presents some Pew Research data, showing that significant percentages of Muslims worldwide would justify suicide bombing as a legitimate tactic. In an attack on what he terms "leftist unreason," Harris criticises Noam Chomsky among others for, in his view, displaying an illogical willingness to lay the entire blame for such attitudes upon U.S. foreign policy. ^{[citation needed]}

However, Harris makes an equally strong critique of the role of the Christian right in contemporary America, in influencing such areas as sex and drug policy, stem-cell research, and AIDS prevention in the developing world. In what he sees as a steady drift towards theocracy, Harris strongly criticises leading figures from both the legislature and the judiciary for what he perceives as an unashamed failure to separate church and state in their various domains. "Not only do we still eat the offal of the ancient world," he says, "we are positively smug about it."

Next, Harris goes on to outline what he terms a "science of good and evil" – a rational approach to ethics, which he claims must necessarily be predicated upon questions of human happiness and suffering. He talks about the need to sustain "moral communities," a venture in which he feels that the separate religious moral identities of the "saved" and the "damned" can play no part. But Harris is critical of the stance of moral relativism, and also of what he calls "the false choice of pacifism." In a controversial passage, he compares the ethical questions raised by collateral damage and judicial torture during war. He concludes that collateral damage is more ethically troublesome. "If we are unwilling to torture, we should be unwilling to wage modern war," Harris writes.

Finally, Harris turns to spirituality where he takes his inspiration from the practices of Eastern religion, arguing that as far as Western spirituality is concerned, "we appear to have been standing on the shoulders of dwarfs." He discusses the nature of consciousness, and how our sense of "self" can be made to vanish by employing the techniques of meditation. To support his claims, Harris quotes from Eastern mystics such as Padmasambhava, but he does not admit any supernatural element into his argument – "mysticism is a rational enterprise," he says, "religion is not." He states that it is possible for one's experience of the world to be "radically transformed", but that we must speak about the possibility in "rational terms".

The only angels we need invoke are those of our better nature: reason, honesty, and love. The only demons we must fear are those that lurk inside every human mind: ignorance, hatred, greed, and faith, which is surely the devil's masterpiece.

In a review for Free Inquiry, the editor Tom Flynn alleged that Harris had allowed his argument to become clouded by his personal politics and his use of spiritual language.^[4] Harris later described Flynn's review as "mixed, misleading, and ultimately exasperating."^[5] Another review by David Boulton for New Humanist, also stopped short of a ringing endorsement, describing the book as containing "startling oversimplifications, exaggerations and elisions."^[6]

Writing for The Independent, Johann Hari was largely encouraging but also expressed considerable reservations about Harris's political leanings, and revealed how he "began to choke" while reading the final chapter on spirituality.^[7] Other broadly positive reviews have come from Natalie Angier,^[8] Daniel Blue,^[9] and Stephanie Merritt.^[10] Richard Dawkins has also endorsed the book.^[11]

Critical reviews from Christians have included those by R. Albert Mohler, Jr. for The Christian Post,^[12] and Matthew Simpson for Christianity Today.^[13] Madeleine Bunting, writing in The Guardian, quotes Harris as saying "some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them." Bunting comments, "[t]his sounds like exactly the kind of argument put forward by those who ran the Inquisition."^[14] The paperback edition of The End of Faith, published in 2005, contained a new afterword in which Harris responded to some of the more popular criticisms he has received since publication. Quoting the same passage, theologian Catherine Keller asks, "[c]ould there be a more dangerous proposition than that?" and argues that the "anti-tolerance" it represents would "dismantle" the Jeffersonian wall between church and state.^[15]

Harris's 2006 book, Letter to a Christian Nation, was written as a full response to feedback he received following the publication of The End of Faith.

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