Provisional
Truth | Book Reviews | June 2006
The End of Faith :
Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason
by
Sam Harris, August 2004
  Sam Harris, now completing a
doctorate in neuroscience, offers a well-researched warning to the world
of the ill-effects of religious fundamentalism – of any stripe – in an
era of weapons of mass destruction.
Harris' potentially bleak view of
the future of the human race centers on how religious extremism sets the
stage for a potential disaster should unaccounted former Soviet Union
atomic warheads, or other chemical and biological weapons, ever fall
into the hands of those willing to use them in an effort to turn
back the calendar a millennium or two.
The unfortunate conclusion to this well-written book
is that the world's religions are irreconcilable, principally the
sky-god Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and are
following what may become a destructive course of irrational
violence that jeopardizes the future of humans as a species.
Our
technical advances in the art of war have finally rendered our religious
differences – and hence our religious beliefs – antithetical to
our survival,” Harris writes. “We can no longer ignore the fact that
billions of our neighbors believe in the metaphysics of martyrdom, or in
the literal truth of the book of Revelation, or of any of the other
fantastical notions that have lurked in the minds of the faithful for
millennia – because our neighbors are now armed with chemical,
biological and nuclear weapons.”
No equivocation in these pages - Sam Harris
straightforwardly outlines how the mutual incompatibility of these
faiths cannot be bridged by a growing movement of ecumenism and
tolerance of all faiths.
Quite the contrary, Harris argues. The increase
in religious tolerance only fuels the extremists in the fringe
elements of the faiths to step up their campaigns of violence as the
preferred method of "converting" their misguided brethren.
Harris argues that a growing worldwide ecumenical
movement of religious toleration and moderation, far from soothing the
fringe elements of extremism, actually exacerbates a tenuous global
situation by providing religious fundamentalists with an excuse to use
whatever means necessary to justify their goal of religious purity. And
Harris is not referring here only to Islam as even Jesus spoke of
spitting out the “lukewarm” as not being worthy of the Kingdom of God
(Rev. 3:16, New American Standard version).
To Harris, it is horrifying that fringe groups of
fundamentalist Islamists who increasingly resort to the
“death-to-infidels” mentality that results in almost daily news footage
of carnage and destruction may yet obtain and use weapons of mass
destruction, but it should be equally horrifying that many
fundamentalist Christians today live in expectation of the end of the
world in their lifetimes,
convinced that growing religious-based and economic conflicts, the rise
of terrorism, and ecological and natural disasters portend the beginning
of the end.
And when one of the hottest recent works of fiction is
the “Left Behind” series authored by Tim La Haye and Jerry B. Jenkins,
selling more than 62 million copies, apparently quite a few expectantly
believe this will happen soon. Regrettably, according to Harris, as
nearly all extremist religious dogmas each insist on being observed as
the one true faith there is very little wiggle room when
humankind possesses the ability to eradicate itself from the planet.
Not surprisingly, Harris' long-term required solution
is to end the practice of all faiths in favor of reasoned
discourse among peoples of the world, lest a monumental and
catastrophic religious war - Armageddon? of course - dramatically
reduce the world's population and make a large portion of the planet
uninhabitable for those who survive.
What Others Are Saying About
The End of Faith
at
Amazon.com.
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