The End of Faith - Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, by Sam Harris

Thanks to constant repetition from wishful thinking among politicians eager to keep a lid on latent sectarian tensions, it has become a popular saying that Islam is a religion of peace.  That this belief system bears any responsibility for the atrocities carried out in its name is not a popular view. Nor is it a widely held view, particularly in the United States, that faith and undue respect for it are dangerous. However, some prominent authors and public figures, not connected with Ground Zero mosque-fearing xenophobic right, are presenting an alternative view that deserves attention in an age of prolific weapons of mass destruction.  Sam Harris is one such author.

The End of Faith was published in 2004 but remains relevant.  It references some current events, so this work will not remain timely for very long without updates.  It exposes an ugly side of faith which makes the reader question the state of denial in which many in the west seem to be living, not just on the left but also on the right of the political spectrum.

Of the "big three" religions, the Abrahamic ones, Islam is the youngest.  It is going through the same growing pains that Judaism and later Christianity went through when their proponents felt the need to back up the threat of dire consequences in the afterlife with dire consequences in this life for anyone who didn't accept its doctrines as absolute truth.  The difference this time is that Islam is going through its adolescent hissy fit in an age when weapons are so advanced that one no longer needs the resources of a state or empire to cause large loss of life.  As Harris so eloquently puts it, "It is as though a portal in time has been opened, and fourteenth century hordes are pouring into our world. Unfortunately, they are armed with twenty-first-century weapons."

An examination of the Koran reveals an extensive list of quotations that explicitly call for violence against the infidel.  This is not an isolated paragraph in a now-discredited chapter of the Koran that nobody takes seriously anymore, like the bloody horror story that is Leviticus in Judeo-Christian scripture.  The entire Koran is riddled with them and there are very few contradictory statements that a more conscientious Muslim could cling to in order to justify a more peaceful or tolerant approach to non-Muslims.  Harris quotes these calls to arms, and deliberately lets them run on for five pages to the point of tediousness, just to emphasize their abundance.

Many of Harris' readers will also have read other contemporary advocates of the so-called new atheism. The other big hitters of non belief, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, each have their own viewpoint on which they base their arguments.  Dawkins comes at it from the evolutionary biologist's angle, highlighting the beauty of the process of natural selection and the sheer redundancy of religion as a means of explaining natural phenomena.  Hitchens draws upon his considerable experience as a reporter in the world's trouble spots and his in-depth knowledge of what has happened in the far reaches of the world away from the lenses of twenty-four hour news channels to expand on his philosophy.

Harris comes at it from the viewpoint of someone with a PhD in philosophy and The End of Faith certainly reads like it.  He goes into some of the deeper elements of his subject, and some readers will probably find it easier to follow if they have this book in one hand and Wikipedia in the other.

The second part of the book delves deeply into the finer points of philosophy, praising Eastern religions for getting it right by focusing more on mysticism and meditation, activities that have their basis in actual human experience.  This is contrasted favorably with the approach of the Abrahamic religions that instead claim to have the answers to everything.  The Eastern approach is to focus on a never ending search for the truth, a far healthier way of thinking that is more in line with secular thinking and is more compatible with scientific curiosity.

The points are well made when Harris finally gets to them, but in the meantime there are long passages which leave the reader wondering what the relevance is and whether or not one is any better informed after having read some of the more vague generalities.  "Look at this book as a physical object.  You are aware of it as an appearance in consciousness.  You may feel that your consciousness is one thing -- it is whatever illuminates your world from some point behind your eyes, perhaps -- and the book is another."  Quite.

At times it can get so deep that it is hard to see where he is going with the points he is making, but it is worth persevering because he ends up coming back to the central theme at regular intervals in each chapter, just in time and in such a way that helps everything to make sense.

The book's ending creeps up on the reader for the most unexpected reasons.  Flip over at the end of a chapter and suddenly you're in the Epilogue.  After the short Epilogue is a series of notes and the bibliography, which between them take a hundred pages.  The notes in themselves are interesting to sift through as a collection of bite-sized nuggets of information. Perhaps Harris wanted to make sure he was making a watertight case and decided to go overboard with citations. Or maybe he was still in the habit of building a defensible case for every point after getting his doctorate.

Either way, this work is a challenge to religious liberals and conservatives who, each for their own reasons, might find themselves inadvertently defending the politically correct conditions in which dangerous and murderous religious fanaticism can thrive. If we allow violent extremists to create the conditions in which their beliefs cannot be challenged either for fear of retribution or a misguided respect for faith-based reasoning, civilization could find itself retreating from the advance of barbarism.