Quote:Maybe Harris should have made it clear he was talking about 2 of the 3 MAJOR faiths that are influencing the world of yesterday and today. And not only that...but he might have done better to emphasize that it is the extremes of these faiths that presents the real problems of a faith based existence.Yes indeed! Harris should have limited his over broad crusade against faith to specifics. But I am more convinced than ever that Harris has erred in his judgement on Islam. There are too many other factors and other major religions were once as hard core as Islam is currently but they reformed their belief based on society and technology and scientific discovery (to a limited extent) to the point that they were no longer overtly dangerous. If anything, Sam Harris has done the complete opposite he set out to do from this reader's perspective. Before I read End of Faith, I had suspcions that Islam might be a major driving force in terrorism. Now it seems it is just manipulated and used as a justification. Political and Religious leaders now have the ball in their court, but they are playing into the hands of the terrorists. This has more at issue with social organization and the bad aspects of religion and governence becoming too involved. My biggest conclusion after reading Harris is that our founding father's did an amazing thing when they stipulated no state sponsored religion could be legal and the judicial precendent of seperation is one of the most important ideologies ever created. This has less to do with a specific religion than it has to do with the sociological implications of group think and political and social marriage with religion.Quote:Perhaps...but I am more concerned about those faiths and religions that are making my life difficult to live and killing or hurting others for being who they are.I think you should be less worried about the people's faith and religion and more worried with the socio-political justifications used by the select few extremists who seek to further their cause through religious justification and manipulation. Religion is only the justiciation, the sacred text manipulated to read in their favor to justify. Without that religion or sacred text, these whack jobs would find other reasons to kill people to further their own ideology and belief.