The End of Faith – a book review

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, by Sam Harris, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004.

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At the library in the suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia, where I live, there are at least four copies of this title.  All are constantly on loan.  Finally, several weeks after putting on a hold, I was able to check-out a copy. 

I wanted to read it after discovering its premise while browsing in a book store – our reluctance to discuss the perniciousness of religious faith can no longer be supported.

That this should sound so… shocking indicates one of the author’s primary points.  “On this subject, liberals and conservatives have reached a rare consensus: religious beliefs are simply beyond the scope of rational discourse.”

Harris graduated in philosophy from Stanford University and is completing his doctorate in neuroscience.  This book won the 2005 PEN Award for Non-Fiction.  Philosophically, he is a rationalist, but not a materialist or reductionist.  He acknowledges the importance of the spiritual.

My own bias, before I outline the book’s arguments, is that of an agnostic Buddhist-Taoist Transcendentalist pagan.  I was brought up, for awhile, in one of the more obscure Christian sects.  Friends and people I respect have taken refuge in religious faiths of one sort or another.

Harris outlines two major reasons why religious faith is sheltered from criticism.

1) Most people believe that people get good things from religious belief, and

2) Many believe that terrible things done in the name of religion are the products not of faith but of greed, hatred, and fear for which religious belief is the best remedy.

His thesis is that the sheer irrationality of religious belief outweighs the imagined good; the good is there without requiring that Jesus was born of a virgin or that the Koran is the word of God.

He says these unsubstantiated beliefs about the world and technology do not mix well.  Somebody with a nuclear bomb or a novel strain of a virulent disease who lives with categories like the blessed and the damned or believers and non-believers is truly dangerous.

The unfortunate truth for religious moderates is that they are always in a weak position within their faith to oppose more fundamentalist forces, whether in Christianity, Islam, Hinduism or other religions.  The fundamentalists are fierce in their faith, and their holy texts support them.

The central tenet of every religious tradition is that all others are repositories of error, Harris says.  Once a person really believes that certain ideas lead to eternal happiness or to its opposite, “he cannot tolerate the possibility that the people he loves might be led astray by the blandishments of unbelievers.”

Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance or indifference, Harris contends. The religious texts themselves are unequivocal and unquestionable within the framework of faith.

“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 knew what we were talking about.”

He goes on: “Unless the core dogmas of faith are called into question – i.e., that we know there is a God, and that we know what he wants from us, religious moderation has nothing to offer.”

Harris cites many recent conflicts with religious differences at or near the core: Palestine (Jews vs. Muslims), Balkans (Orthodox Serbians vs. Catholic Croatians), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese Buddhists vs. Tamil Hindus), Sudan (Muslims vs. Christians and animists).  This is only to mention a few, unfortunately.

“Give people divergent, irreconcilable, and untestable notions about what happens after death, and then oblige them to live together with limited resources. …There is something that most Americans share with Osama bin Laden, the nineteen hijackers and much of the Muslim world.  We, too, cherish the idea that certain fantastic propositions can be believed without evidence.”

He notes that the dimension in which Muslim extremists are extreme is in their faith.  Faith is the mother of hatred here, as it is wherever people define their moral identities in religious terms.  The only important difference between Muslims and non-Muslims is that the latter have not proclaimed their faith in Allah, and in Mohammed as his prophet.

The Koran obliges its most devoted believers to make war on unbelievers, and Islam does not distinguish between religious and civil authority.

Harris adds that Islam is not alone here: Many people believe that magic words like Jesus, Allah, Ram make the difference between eternal torment and eternal bliss.  Many of us occasionally find it necessary to murder other human beings for using the wrong magic words, or the right ones for the wrong reasons.

“The belief that certain books were written by God (who, for reasons difficult to fathom, made Shakespeare a far better writer than himself) leaves us powerless to address the most potent source of human conflict, past and present.”

He suggests a couple of thought experiments.  Imagine a world in which generations of human beings came to believe that certain films were made by God.  Or that specific software was coded by him.

Another is to see how much Christian derived culture partakes of this kind of irrationality: substitute your favorite Olympian for “God” whenever the word appears in public discourse.  For instance, when US President George Bush addresses the National Prayer Breakfast, he might as well say: “Behind all of life and all history there is a dedication and a purpose, set by the hand of a just and faithful Zeus.”

Harris is strong about how imperative it is to speak plainly about the absurdity of our religious beliefs.

However, to strengthen his argument about religious faith, he finds it necessary to downplay other factors in such arenas as the Muslim conflict with the West.  There are obvious economic, social, and politicial reasons which come into play.  Harris is distressingly naive about the role of U.S. hegemony and economic imperialism in provoking many peoples of the world, not just Muslims.

But it cannot be denied that because each new generation of children is taught that religious propositions need not be justified in the way that all others must, civilization is still besieged by the armies of the preposterous.

“Tell a devout Christian that … frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else. … Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever.”

I have to agree: “The world is ablaze with bad ideas. … Nothing is more sacred than the facts.”

And finally: “The test for reasonableness is obvious: anyone who wants to know how the world is, whether in physical or spiritual terms, will be open to new evidence.”

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