The End of Faith

I finally got around to finishing Sam Harris’s book “The End of Faith.” Harris’s fundamental hypothesis is that religion is an anachronism that the human race, given the continued proliferation of nuclear weapons, can no longer afford.

His primary concern is with Islam to which he devotes all of chapter four entitled “The Problem with Islam.” Harris contends that the West is “at war with Islam” and that, regardless of what the politicians would like us to think, this isn’t a case of “an otherwise peaceful religion that has been ‘hijacked’” but rather we are “at war with precisely the vision of life that is prescribed to all Muslims in the Koran.”

To Harris a “future in which Islam and the West do not stand on the brink of mutual annihilation is a future in which most Muslims have learned to ignore most of their canon.”

This is strong stuff. I guess that it’s unnecessary to state that Harris doesn’t believe that religion should be accorded a special measure of respect simply because it’s religion.

Where Harris can scare the daylights out of you is when he contends that a cold war with Islam, similar to that between the West and the old Soviet Union, would be impossible since death and destruction are no deterrent to people with an eye on Paradise in the next world rather then living long and prosperous lives in this world.

Harris also contends that democracy wouldn’t be an answer because these people would probably vote in a theocracy given the chance.

I agree with Harris’s basic hypothesis but I have to give more thought to his position on Islam. If you agree with Harris then you have to believe that the so-called Islamic Leaders are as willing to die as they convince the flock to be, yet, I don’t see any of them strapping bombs onto themselves. They were the ones handing out plastic keys, made in Taiwan, to children about to clear mines with their bodies and telling them the keys would open the gates to Paradise. However they didn’t keep any keys and blow themselves up clearing a mine now did they? I think there is more than a little hypocrisy here.

I do agree that religion shouldn’t be respected simply because it’s religion and Harris is probably right that given a choice, at least at the moment, democracy in the Islamic world would collapse into theocracy. So I guess our best bet would be a strong secular dictator like, oh say, Saddam Hussein?

Along with Harris’s primary hypothesis are a number of other related but somewhat independent positions.

Harris is at odds with Noam Chomsky because he accuses Chomsky of ignoring the idea of intent. Harris gets into this discussion in a chapter related to the ethics of so-called “collateral damage” and torture.

I’m not so sure I can give Harris 100% of my support here. While I agree intent matters, or more generally motives matter, there are times when the price is to high to pay. Harris’s position on things like “collateral damage” and, shall we say, strong interrogation techniques, strikes me as coming dangerously close to “the end justifies the means.” Should we ever accept that then we’ve already lost.

Harris is in favor of legalizing and regulating recreational drugs rather than spending billions trying to enforce unenforceable laws. He specifically mentions marijuana but other than that doesn’t identify which drugs he’s talking about.

To my mind the legalization and regulation of recreational drugs is highly dependent upon which drugs. Marijuana certainly and perhaps cocaine but I would draw the line at meth and heroin I think.

At the outer fringes of the book Harris devotes a whole chapter to spirituality and mysticism which sort of had my left eyebrow arched. He also says that there “seems to be a body of data attesting to the reality of psychic phenomena, much of which has been ignored by mainstream science.”

In support of his “psychic phenomena” statement Harris has an endnote referencing books by Dean Radin of the Parapsychological Association and Rupert Sheldrake of “Telephone Telepathy” fame.

For a man who spends a lot of time saying one shouldn’t accept things without adequate evidence I find his “psychic phenomena” statements puzzling. While I agree that one should keep an open mind and consider the evidence, I think Harris is way off base when he implies that there is any reputable evidence “attesting to the reality of psychic phenomena.”

Certainly I’m not aware of anything that either Radin or Sheldrake have come up with that comes even close to what would be considered reputable scientific evidence. I suspect that James Randi would be terribly upset with you Sam.

I think that The End of Faith would have made an excellent theoretical paper focusing on his primary hypothesis but Harris really didn’t have enough for a book, even one that ended up being one third endnotes, bibliography and index.

The key here however is the attack on religion. The idea that this is somehow impolite and should be avoided in polite company Harris flings out the window and stands shoulder to shoulder with Richard Dawkins. I also agree with Harris that either we figure out a way to eliminate religion or religion will lead to the elimination of us.