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

by Sam Harris

Overview

"The End of Faith articulates the dangers and absurdities of organized religion so fiercely and so fearlessly that I felt relieved as I read it, vindicated....Harris writes what a sizable number of us think, but few are willing to say."—Natalie Angier, New York Times
In 'The End of Faith', Sam Harris delivers a startling analysis of the clash between reason and religion in the modern world. He offers a vivid, historical tour of our willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs—even when these beliefs inspire the worst human atrocities. While warning against the encroachment of organized religion into world politics, Harris draws on insights from neuroscience, philosophy, and Eastern mysticism to deliver a call for a truly modern foundation for ethics and spirituality that is both secular and humanistic. Winner of the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393327656
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/17/2005
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	21,384
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

SAM HARRIS received his degree in philosophy from Stanford University. He is now completing his doctorate in neuroscience. Visit his Web site at www.samharris.org.

Table of Contents

1	Reason in exile	11
2	The nature of belief	50
3	In the shadow of God	80
4	The problem with Islam	108
5	West of Eden	153
6	A science of good and evil	170
7	Experiments in consciousness	204

What People are Saying About This

"While one might dispute some of the claims and arguments presented by Harris, the need for a wakeup call to religious liberals is right on the mark."
---Joseph C. Hough Jr., president of Union Theological Seminary, New York

"A must read for all rational people."
---Alan Dershowitz, professor of law at Harvard University

Editorial Reviews

A genuinely frightening book.... Read Sam Harris and wake up.

Richard Dawkins - The Guardian

Sam Harris launches a sustained nuclear assault.... A brave, pugilistic attempt to demolish the walls that currently insulate religious people from criticism.... Badly needed.

Johann Hari - The Independent

This book will strike a chord with anyone who has ever pondered the irrationality of religious faith.... Even Mr. Harris's critics will have to concede the force of an analysis which roams so far and wide, from the persecution of the Cathars to the composition of George Bush's cabinet.

The Economist

This is an important book.... Harris writes what a sizable number of us think, but few are willing to say.
”

Natalie Angier - New York Times Book Review

A radical attack on the most sacred of liberal precepts—the notion of tolerance.... An eminently sensible rallying cry for a more ruthless secularisation of society.

Stephanie Merritt - The Observer

Shows how the perfect tyranny of religious and secular totalitarianism demonizes imperfect democracies such as the United States and Israel. A must read for all rational people.

Alan Dershowitz

[Harris's] brief accounts of intuition, and of the notion of a 'moral community,' are as good as anything I have read on these topics.

John Derbyshire - New York Sun

… The End of Faith articulates the dangers and absurdities of organized religion so fiercely and so fearlessly that I felt relieved as I read it, vindicated, almost personally understood. Sam Harris presents major religious systems like Judaism, Christianity and Islam as forms of socially sanctioned lunacy, their fundamental tenets and rituals irrational, archaic and, important when it comes to matters of humanity's long-term survival, mutually incompatible. A doctoral candidate in neuroscience at the University of California, Los Angeles, Harris writes what a sizable number of us think, but few are willing to say in contemporary America.
— The New York Times

Natalie Angier

In this sometimes simplistic and misguided book, Harris calls for the end of religious faith in the modern world. Not only does such faith lack a rational base, he argues, but even the urge for religious toleration allows a too-easy acceptance of the motives of religious fundamentalists. Religious faith, according to Harris, requires its adherents to cling irrationally to mythic stories of ideal paradisiacal worlds (heaven and hell) that provide alternatives to their own everyday worlds. Moreover, innumerable acts of violence, he argues, can be attributed to a religious faith that clings uncritically to one set of dogmas or another. Very simply, religion is a form of terrorism for Harris. Predictably, he argues that a rational and scientific view-one that relies on the power of empirical evidence to support knowledge and understanding-should replace religious faith. We no longer need gods to make laws for us when we can sensibly make them for ourselves. But Harris overstates his case by misunderstanding religious faith, as when he makes the audaciously na ve statement that "mysticism is a rational enterprise; religion is not." As William James ably demonstrated, mysticism is far from a rational enterprise, while religion might often require rationality in order to function properly. On balance, Harris's book generalizes so much about both religion and reason that it is ineffectual. (June) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Harris, who is currently completing a doctorate in neuroscience, pulls no punches in this forcefully presented call to reject all forms of religious faith. Viewing religious irrationality and fundamentalism as both the immediate source of terrorism and also the source of much of the evil that has taken place throughout history, Harris proposes turning away from religion entirely and living on the basis of reason. Drawing on insights from Eastern philosophy and neuroscience, he suggests using meditation to achieve a state of consciousness that is nondualistic. While Harris's arguments are attention-grabbing and carefully presented, readers might get the sense that much of this has been stated before —his plea for rejecting religion in light of the violence it inspires is reminiscent of the Enlightenment's call for religious tolerance and the primacy of reason. Still, it is rare in this postmodern age to read a book by someone so vigorously defending rational thought, especially from a unique neuroscientific perspective. Recommended for academic libraries.-John Jaeger, Dallas Baptist Univ. Lib. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

In a debut certain to anger anyone who is not an atheist, the author argues that religious faith is the root of all evil. Sacred books, Harris declares, are either sacred or not; religious adherents must therefore either believe everything in them or question everything. People cannot, he continues, assert that the virgin birth is true because it is in the Bible and simultaneously decline to murder their children for apostasy, as Deuteronomy prescribes. Harris believes the most dangerous religion today is Islam and quotes several pages of passages from the Koran to illustrate his contention that it is manifestly not a religion of peace and tolerance. But he is an equal-opportunity opponent, so he also assails, in phrases that coruscate with sarcasm, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and by extension all the world's religions. They are medieval at best, he declares. And anti-intellectual, requiring believers to accept without question notions that they would summarily reject in all other arenas of life. How would we react, he wonders, if President Bush replaced the word "God" with "Apollo" in his public comments? There really is no difference, states Harris. He begins his treatise by showing how religious faith trumps rationality, proceeds to a disquisition on belief itself, glances at the Inquisition and the Holocaust (to show religion run amok), gnaws on the problems in the Middle East, attacks religious objections to stem-cell research, drug use, and sexual privacy, considers how ethics may thrive in a nonreligious world, and ends with a dense discussion of consciousness, much of which he ought to have consigned to the lengthy and often discursive endnotes. In many ways this is acourageous analysis whose theses will deeply trouble readers who choose to think about them rather than summarily reject them. But Harris's discussion of ethics sometimes reads like an undergraduate essay-the probable parent of his arguments. Provocative is too pale a word.

Kirkus Reviews