This is most definitely a book you’ll either love or hate, because whether or not you’ll end up agreeing with Harris you’ll still be moved by his words. For good or bad.
The End of Faith is quite likely the most brutal and in-your-face criticism of religious faith I’ve ever read, and one thing is for sure: Harris is VERY convinced that the monotheistic faiths and their followers are our version of Mordor and its evil creatures determined to ruin the world as we know it. More or less every single page of the book contains one or more sneers (some of them quite funny, too) aimed at the insanity in believing ancient scriptures and ideas that cannot be proven empirically nor discussed rationally. In Harris’ universe, this world of ours will face utter ruin any day now, and the religions – especially Christianity, Judaism, and Islam – are all to blame.
But how about his way of arguing? Does that hold? Well, not really, because even though he admits that religious faith can be a good and positive thing for people, he still focuses on the evil that they do, and according to him, even the most benign and peace-loving believer is a threat to the world. Sure, it would be both ignorant and stupid to ignore the fact that the three religions and their writings contain numerous parts about violence, death, and human suffering (the God of the Old Testament is, after all, one of the cruellest ones ever), but something as complex and nuanced as religion and religious faith must be put in their proper contexts and approached from all sorts of different angles. Or in other words, one can never get a good understanding of them by only focusing on their evil sides.
But this is exactly what Harris does in his book. Still, I found myself enjoying it tremendously since I shared many of his ideas even before I read it. Reviewing a book should be done using an objective approach, and thus I’m very biased. Sorry about that.
It doesn’t come as much of a surprise that thousands upon thousands of people all over the world hate Harris’ guts, because I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that paints such a negative, horrible picture of everything religious in the world. After its initial publication a few years back Harris’ received tons of letters from readers – where some loved him and some despised him – and in this version a new afterword has been added where some of the questions the first edition raised are answered. This short section is perhaps the most interesting one in the whole book, because here you’ll find questions and answers to some of the things that you as a reader are likely to have come up with during the course of your reading.
This book will make you think, and I recommend a visit to http://www.samharris.org where you can share your thoughts with some of the other readers. Or simply tell Harris that he’s full of it. I’m sure he appreciates both types of feedback.
So what can I say? I’m a sucker for this book, even though I’m aware of its flaws. I never vote, I’m not even American, but if Harris ever chooses to run for President I’ll nonetheless try to find a way to vote for him.
The review has taken from here
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