There's an online book group forming around The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (WW Norton, 2004), so I thought I'd add it to my Featured Books queue and post early remarks, sort of an exercise in prereading. The author, according to the blurb on the back cover, is "now completing a doctorate in neuroscience, studying the neural basis of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty." Easy to sense the sort of presuppositions he brings to the inquiry: Science is good, religion is bad, and facts will conform to this view, or else.
Granted, I'm just sizing up the book before diving in, but it helps to know where the guy is coming from. A quick check comes from looking up, in the index, references to "communism," a secular and rabidly anti-religious movement that was responsible for brutalizing millions upon millions of people during the 20th century. Go read The Gulag Archipelago sometime, or even A Day in the Life if you're lazy pressed for time. Anyway, there are three references to communism in the index.
Here's the first, at pages 78-79 of my paperback edition:
[T]he most monstrous crimes against humanity have invariably been inspired by unjustified belief. ... Even where such crimes have been secular, they have required the egregious credulity of entire societies to be brought off. Consider the millions of people who were killed by Stalin and Mao: although these tyrants paid lip service to rationality, communism was little more than a political religion.
Wow — it takes courage to reason that poorly and publish it. He cites two secular, anti-religious tyrants who killed millions as support for his critique of religion? Nazi fascism, too, is somehow depicted as a religious movement: "The anti-Semitism that built the crematoria brick by brick—and that still thrives today—comes to us by way of Christian theology. Knowingly or not, the Nazis were agents of religion" (p. 79).
It gets worse. My edition includes an "Afterword" in which the author responds to some criticisms he received. The first criticism listed is that, "Yes, religion occasionally causes violence, but the greatest crimes of the twentieth century were perpetrated by atheists." That does seem to be a problem with his view that religion is the big problem, doesn't it? He responds (and I'm not making this up, folks): "This is one of the most common criticisms I encounter. It is also the most depressing, as I anticipate and answer it early in the book (p. 79)." Well, I just quoted the material from page 79 to you. The discussion there amounts to nothing more than putting the label "political religion" on the acts of Stalin and Mao. Here's more from page 79:
At the heart of [Communism's] apparatus of repression and terror lurked a rigid ideology, to which generations of men and women were sacrificed. Even though their beliefs did not reach beyond this world, they were both cultic and irrational.
I am underwhelmed by the author's inability to grasp the inadequacy of his own argument even when it is highlighted as a primary criticism.
The second reference to communism is to page 100: "Even explicitly anti-Christian movements, as in the cases of German Nazism and Russian socialism, managed to inherit and enact the doctrinal tolerance of the church." And the third is like unto it, in a footnote at page 242: "While our differences with the North Koreans, for instance, are not explicitly religious, they are a direct consequence of the North Koreans' having grown utterly deranged by their political ideology, their abject worship of their leaders, and their lack of information about the outside world. They are now like a cargo cult armed with nuclear weapons." Somehow if the North Koreans are bad or irrational, that simply must be laid at the doorstep of religion, nevermind that there is precious little of it in North Korea to form the basis of even the weakest causal inference.
Well, so much for a preview. Who knows, maybe the book will surprise me.
Don't hold your breath. I found the most irritating thing about this book is the kind of pseudo-buddhism that he tries to push at the end. Also, if I am not mistaken, he claims that reincarnation has scientific backing (it is just one quick sentance with no sources cited).
I read this book hoping for a good soild atheist rant. Instead he shows a hearty dislike of western religion and an open embrace of eastern religion.
Posted by: christophe | Sep 25, 2006 at 04:19 AM
Dave, I'm on board with The End of Faith reading group and am currently about half way through the book.
It is certainly a stretch to equate all organized religion with evil government ideology and call it even; or to suggest that such evil government ideology sprung from religion, but is Harris's underlying argument so obtuse? The argument that states: that the blind, unquestioning allegiance of followers to an (often charismatic) political leader… that the use of fear and secrecy by leaders to manipulate and control followers… that the intolerance of the group for the “other”… that the belief that the members of the group are somehow elite, or that the ideology of the group is superior to the ideologies of all other groups… is essentially the same toxic worship of the institution/ideology whether it is religion or government?
Harris seems to be particularly critical of religion, because, of the portfolio of “cards” organizations can play to manipulate its followers and/or abuse others, by invoking God, religion has a powerful trump card up its sleeve that government does not. And because God (and all he/she/it entails) is an ultimately unknowable and un-testable phenomenon or idea, a phenomenon that relies more heavily on feelings than logic, it is particularly vulnerable to misuse.
Harris wants to throw the baby (religion) out with the considerably dirty bathwater. This provocative point of view is certainly ripe for criticism, but along the way Harris makes many salient arguments. I hope your pre-read “sizing up” of The End of Faith allows for a balanced reading, and hopefully a balanced review in the future.
Posted by: Matt Thurston | Sep 25, 2006 at 12:38 PM
Christophe,
I haven't reached the so-called appeal-to-pseudo-buddhism part of the book you dislike, but from what I have read, I think it is a stretch to say The End of Faith is "a hearty dislike of western religion and an open embrace of eastern religion."
For example:
The two countries [refering to India and Pakistan] have since fought three official wars, suffered a continuous bloodletting at their shared border, and are now poised to exterminate one another with nuclear weapons simply because they disagree about ”facts” that are every bit as fanciful as the names of Santa’s reindeer.
Doesn't sound like an open embrace of Eastern religion to me.
By the way, what is wrong with Buddhism or pseudo-Buddhism? Why can't Harris applaud what he considers "good religion"? Also, I give Harris credit for recognizing that a spritiual side to life does exist. Many secularists, athiests, and/or rational moderns do not.
Posted by: Matt Thurston | Sep 25, 2006 at 12:50 PM
Sorry to bombard with posts, but a somewhat topical story is developing surrounding a new documentary called "Jesus Camp" ("topical," in the sense that Harris would have a field day with this).
The L.A. Times (today 9/25/06) had a very interesting article called "God's Boot Camp?" you might find intesting. See: http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-et-jesus25sep25,0,7572577.story
The article references a trailer for the movie available at youtube.com that's got Secular Liberals (and, it turns out, many Evangelicals) freaked out. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_EKHK1C2IE
The other clip to watch is the ABC News clip about the doc: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UWIb4FwHPg
There are also interesting clips from the doc. Check out the 2 minute clip of Tory (a girl) who is a fan of Christian Heavy Metal who is concerned about "dancing for God" instead of "dancing for the flesh."
Posted by: Matt Thurston | Sep 25, 2006 at 01:12 PM
If his definition of "religion" is broad enough to include Stalin and Mao, he has water the term down enough to render it essentially meaningless.
One might as well say that violence is caused by "funny thinking" and have done.
Posted by: Seth R. | Sep 25, 2006 at 01:56 PM
Matt, I'll defer responding until I get a chance to read half the book. I'll try hard to find something nice to say about it.
Everyone: FYI, author Sam Harris is the same fellow who wrote the recent LA Times opinion piece entitled "Head-in-the-Sand Liberals," which I complimented in my "I Was Wrong" post last week.
Posted by: Dave | Sep 25, 2006 at 03:15 PM
I'm not sure I would've worded it like Harris (that the Nazis were the "agents" of religion), but it's not a far stretch to say that the Nazis were only continuing the tradition of centuries of religiously influenced anti-Semitism (the primary difference was one of scale and efficiency).
My impression (just completed first two chapters) is that Harris has some excellent points that are worth discussing (e.g. should we be more critical of core religious beliefs in the public sphere), but they sometimes suffer because of how he chooses to present/argue them.
Posted by: John Remy | Sep 26, 2006 at 10:51 AM
FYI, here's a link to an LA Times story profiling the elusive and mysterious Sam Harris. He thinks he's Salman Rushdie. Well, Mr. Harris, I've read his books and you're no Salman Rushdie. [Okay, I've read one of his books. I decided I like him. Glad he's still around.]
Posted by: Dave | Oct 03, 2006 at 04:17 PM