By the way, for those who are thinking about reading The End of Faith, here are the first ten pages.

http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/chapter-one/

geo wrote:By the way, for those who haven't committed yet to read The End of Faith, here are the first ten pages.

http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/chapter-one/

Is the entire book available online at no cost?

stahrwe wrote:

geo wrote:By the way, for those who haven't committed yet to read The End of Faith, here are the first ten pages.

http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/chapter-one/

Is the entire book available online at no cost?

By God, no. What a charlatan. He's actually charging money for the book he wrote.

How about your What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? Available online at no cost?

geo wrote:

stahrwe wrote:

geo wrote:By the way, for those who haven't committed yet to read The End of Faith, here are the first ten pages.

http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/chapter-one/

Is the entire book available online at no cost?

By God, no. What a charlatan. He's actually charging money for the book he wrote.

How about your What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? Available online at no cost?

I have no desire to add to SH's income by purchasing his book new. Nor do I want to increase his book rating by purchasing a used copy. And I really am not interested in even incrementally increasing his circulation figures by borrowing a copy from the library.

Harris' attack (too strong a word?) on moderates is a point that seems to distinguish him from other critics of religion, who mainly target the most devout. Being of a moderate temperament myself, I resist his thinking here, but concede that his argument can't just be dismissed. It does seem to be true that moderates will have a hard time condemning crazies because the crazies are still, for all their misguidedness, part of the flock. And to condemn them might bring moderates a little too close for their own comfort to an examination of the core beliefs of the faith. Unlike johnson, I don't think that moderates generally do examine their religion much; they don't want to look at the wider picture of the effects faith can have.

Harris doesn't respect moderates because they've become moderates only by ignoring parts of their own scriptures. He views this as a dishonesty, I believe. But I think that Harris shows himself to be what Robert Wright called a scriptural determinist. That is, whatever is written in the holy books determines belief. Sounds logical, but Wright points out that it doesn't work that way "on the ground," which is actually always shifting in terms of what scriptures will be highlighted and which will be left to molder. A lack of consistency with scripture is precisely what we want to see.

So I think moderates overall have a good effect, just for being moderates. It may be true that they don't do much in terms of influencing the bad elements, but then again they probably have more of a chance to do this than do people who can't stomach religion. The change that will come will be incremental and it will be helped along if we engage religious people across the spectrum, not just castigate them, as geo said.

Harris says that it will take more than building schools and hospitals to defeat radicalism, but he doesn't say explicitly what that 'more' is. Does he really believe in measures such as these, or does he feel that the only viable road is confrontation? Sure, religion often compels behavior, but Harris may see that influence as more intransigent that it actually is. Reportedly, the Saudis have have success in deprogramming their radical terrorists.

I agree that the writing is near-brilliant, a rhetorical tour de force. I also see Harris as offering a strong positive vision, not just tearing something down. This is good, but the drawback is a certain utopian quality I see in him, which for me, as a moderate, is a red flag. We'll have arrived in a new promised land when everyone takes a rational view of the big questions, I see him as implying. But this reign of rationality will never happen, and instead we're going to have to settle for co-existence with religion.

Let's look at what Publisher's Weekly (hardly a bastion of Christian fundamentalism) said about The End of Faith.

From Publishers Weekly
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 naïve 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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. As posted on Amazon.com

Instead of relying on my memories of a book I read over four years ago, I'll copy what I said in this forum's discussion of Chapter 1.

I agree with some of the author's broader concepts, but those are generally ideas that I've encountered previously. Religion has been, and continues to be, a net negative in the world, because religious persecution and warfare outweigh its benefits. With so many mutually inconsistent religions out there, it's difficult to comprehend why so many people believe that theirs is the one that's correct.

However, Harris often goes too far, oversimplifies things, and makes inaccurate statements. Many of you, especially mal4mac (welcome to the group!), have mentioned my strongest objections. I'll bring up some other points.

Harris's attack on religious moderates was rather dubious. People's religious beliefs, and other beliefs for that matter, are generally an incoherent mixture of traditional structures, modern concepts, personal experiences, and gut reactions. It's totally reasonable for someone to accept certain religious dogmas while dismissing others, picking and choosing the portions of the holy books and traditions to accept.

Since Harris is such a vigilant atheist, it's surprising when he claims that "there also seems to be a data attesting to the reality of psychic phenomena...". Unlike Harris, I'm as skeptical of the paranormal as I am of religion.

And the book got worse in later chapters.

I want to suggest through quotations from the first chapter that Harris doesn’t view religion in such black-and-white terms. Most significantly, he takes a more positive view of spirituality than do the other well known atheist writers. He even uses the term “spiritual truths.” Indeed, for those others the word “spirituality” seems to be something of an embarrassment. Harris, of course, has delved deeply into the religion of the mind coming out of the East. That dovetails with his advanced study of neuroscience.

First, note that it is “faith-based religion” that he believes needs to “slide into obsolescence” (14). This statement doesn’t rule out continuance of important aspects of religion.

“Of course, people of faith fall on a continuum: some draw solace and inspiration from a specific spiritual tradition, and yet remain fully committed to tolerance and diversity, while others would burn the earth to cinders if it would put an end to heresy. There are, in other words, religious moderates and religious extremists, and their various passions and projects should not be confused" (14). As we've noted, however, the moderates themselves are no reason for Harris to rejoice.

“This is not to say that the deepest concerns of the faithful, whether moderate or extreme, are trivial or even misguided. There is no denying that most of us have emotional and spiritual needs that are now addressed—however obliquely and at a terrible price—by mainstream religion. And these are needs that a mere understanding of our world, scientific or otherwise, will never fulfill. There is clearly a sacred dimension to our existence, and coming to terms with it could well be the highest purpose of human life. But we will find that it requires no faith in untestable propositions—Jesus was born of a virgin; the Koran is the word of God—for us to do this” (16).

“Needless to say, many Muslims are basically rational and tolerant of others” (28).

“There is, of course, much that is wise and consoling and beautiful in our religious books. But words of consolation and beauty abound in the pages of Shakespeare, Virgil, and Homer as well” (35).

“Our religious traditions attest to a range of spiritual experiences that are real and significant and entirely worthy of our investigation, both personally and scientifically” (43)

“It is time we realized that we need not be unreasonable to suffuse our lives with love, compassion, ecstasy, and awe; nor must we renounce all forms of spirituality or mysticism to be on good terms with reason” (43).

I think a weakness of the thinking of atheists is that they often appear to assume that to remove religion will free up humans to become the self-fulfilling, happy, and moral animals they were meant to be before religion got a hold of them. But that result won't happen naturally; it takes a deliberate approach to achieve it, and Harris appreciates that.

DWill wrote:First, note that it is “faith-based religion” that he believes needs to “slide into obsolescence” (14). This statement doesn’t rule out continuance of important aspects of religion.

I finished Ch. 1 and I agree that Harris makes a good case but doesn't quite convince that religious moderates are the problem. He argues that moderates provide the very infrastructure for extremism to exist. However, I would argue that moderates are the first step away from extremism. The move away from religious extremism is likely a gradual process and it may be that moderates are leading the way. I wonder if the evidence backs this up.

I was flipping through a book at the UNC Chapel Hill bookstore the other day. The book was Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment by Phil Zuckerman. Here's a description of the book:

Sociologist Zuckerman spent a year in Scandinavia seeking to understand how Denmark and Sweden became probably the least religious countries in the world, and possibly in the history of the world. While many people, especially Christian conservatives, argue that godless societies devolve into lawlessness and immorality, Denmark and Sweden enjoy strong economies, low crime rates, high standards of living and social equality. Zuckerman interviewed 150 Danes and Swedes, and extended transcripts from some of those interviews provide the book's most interesting and revealing moments. What emerges is a portrait of a people unconcerned and even incurious about questions of faith, God and life's meaning.

In the few pages I skimmed through, I was struck by how indifferent and nonjudgmental the Danes and Swedes were towards religion. Religion simply doesn't play a significant role in their lives. I can imagine this as a gradual progression away from the kind of religious fervor we see in the United States, more and more people falling away from religion. And this appears to be exactly what is happening now.

Actually, Harris' book reminds me a lot of Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason in that he makes an open-and-shut case against the revealed religions. In particular, Harris argues against the absurd notion that various "holy" texts were authored by the Creator of the universe. And again, Harris makes a very strong case, but with respect to the role of moderates, I think he's missing at least part of the bigger picture.

Sam Harris wrote:It is time we admitted, from kings and presidents on down, that there is no evidence that any of our books was authored by the Creator of the universe. The Bible, it seems certain, was the work of sand-strewn men and women who thought the earth was flat and for whom a wheelbarrow would have been a breathtaking example of emerging technology. To rely on such a document as the basis for our worldview-however heroic the efforts of redactors- is to repudiate two thousand years of civilizing insights that the human mind has only just begun to inscribe upon itself through secular politics and scientific culture. We will see that the greatest problem confronting civilization is not merely religious extremism: rather, it is the larger set of cultural and intellectual accommodations we have made to faith itself.

It is clear that a strong rift existed between the Pharisees and Alexander Jannaeus. The rival Sadducees were avid supporters of Jannaeus. The Pharisaic opposition to Jannaeus continued with his marriage to his brother’s widow, which was forbidden by Torah law. Furthermore, Jannaeus established himself as a ruler concerned mainly with conquests rather than his religious obligations.

One year during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, Alexander Jannaeus, while officiating as the High Priest (Kohen Gadol) at the Temple in Jerusalem, demonstrated his support of the Sadducees by denying the law of the water libation. The crowd responded with shock at his mockery and showed their displeasure by pelting Alexander with the etrogim (citrons/like a lemon) that they were holding in their hands. Unwittingly, the crowd had played right into Alexander's hands. He had intended to incite the people to riot and his soldiers fell upon the crowd at his command. The soldiers slew more than 6,000 people in the Temple courtyard.

This incident during Tabernacles was a major factor leading up to the Judean Civil War by igniting popular opponents of Jannaeus. A Qumran document sheds further light on another opponent of Jannaeus. The scroll 4Q390 was written by an adversary of Jannaeus seeking popular support to overthrow the Hasmonean King. The author called for an end to the dispute between Jannaeus and the Pharisees. According to the author, the only acceptable solution was an end to the Hasmonean Priesthood and secular control. This opposition culminated in the Judean Civil War which resulted in more than 50,000 dead. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Jannaeus

What are we to make of the Jew on Jew violence? Was it religious or political?
I suppose Sam Harris would point to it as another example of religion's danger. He would be wrong as usual.