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The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason Posters
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List Price: $13.95Amazon.com's Price: $11.16 You Save: $2.79 (20%)Prices subject to change.
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 200
EAN: 9780393327656
ISBN: 0393327655
Label: W. W. Norton
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 224
Publication Date: October 10, 2005
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Sales Rank: 2674
Studio: W. W. Norton
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
An impassioned plea for reason in a world divided by faith.
This important and timely book delivers a startling analysis of the clash of faith and reason in today's world. Harris offers a vivid historical tour of mankind's willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs, even when those beliefs are used to justify harmful behavior and sometimes-heinous crimes. He asserts that in the shadow of weapons of mass destruction, we can no longer tolerate views that pit one true god against another. Most controversially, he argues that we cannot afford moderate lip service to religion—an accommodation that only blinds us to the real perils of fundamentalism. While warning against the encroachment of organized religion into world politics, Harris also draws on new evidence from neuroscience and insights from philosophy to explore spirituality as a biological, brain-based need. He calls on us to invoke that need in taking a secular humanistic approach to solving the problems of this world.
Natalie Angier wrote in the New York Times: "The End of Faith articulates the dangers and absurdities of organized religion so fiercely and so fearlessly that I felt relieved as I read it, vindicated….Harris writes what a sizable number of us think, but few are willing to say."
Amazon.com Review:
Sam Harris cranks out blunt, hard-hitting chapters to make his case for why faith itself is the most dangerous element of modern life. And if the devil's in the details, then you'll find Satan waiting at the back of the book in the very substantial notes section where Harris saves his more esoteric discussions to avoid sidetracking the urgency of his message.
Interestingly, Harris is not just focused on debunking religious faith, though he makes his compelling arguments with verve and intellectual clarity. The End of Faith is also a bit of a philosophical Swiss Army knife. Once he has presented his arguments on why, in an age of Weapons of Mass Destruction, belief is now a hazard of great proportions, he focuses on proposing alternate approaches to the mysteries of life. Harris recognizes the truth of the human condition, that we fear death, and we often crave "something more" we cannot easily define, and which is not met by accumulating more material possessions. But by attempting to provide the cure for the ills it defines, the book bites off a bit more than it can comfortably chew in its modest page count (however the rich Bibliography provides more than enough background for an intrigued reader to follow up for months on any particular strand of the author' musings.)
Harris' heart is not as much in the latter chapters, though, but in presenting his main premise. Simply stated, any belief system that speaks with assurance about the hereafter has the potential to place far less value on the here and now. And thus the corollary -- when death is simply a door translating us from one existence to another, it loses its sting and finality. Harris pointedly asks us to consider that those who do not fear death for themselves, and who also revere ancient scriptures instructing them to mete it out generously to others, may soon have these weapons in their own hands. If thoughts along the same line haunt you, this is your book.--Ed Dobeas
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
As others have said, this book suffers from the "destroy the village in order to save it" mentality that mirrors the attitudes of Harris' religious adversaries. He can rationalize his reverse intolerance any way he likes, but that's what it is.
Like it or not, we secular humanists gain nothing by adopting the narrow tactics of religious extremists in responding to them. One makes common cause with one's ideological opponents as best one can---and sometimes that can't be done when the ... Read More
Rating:  -
This is probably one of the worst books ever written on the subject of atheisim and the end of religious faith. Harris should be taken to task on a number of issues, one, which cannot be overlooked, is his simplistic view on torture as necessary to secure vital information...Has Harris not been paying attention to the Iraq War in particular Abu Ghirab? Has he not read anything by Chalmers Johnson-someone who is more experinced than he is-on the subject of torture and information.
The ... Read More
Rating:  -
Often bracketed with "The God Delusion", this is a better book, though fuzzy, loosely argued and (I'm guessing) hastily written. At least Harris is intelligent and open-minded enough to see the rationale of Buddhist spiritual practice: one more intuitive leap and he might understand what religion, the Sacred, has meant to the majority of the human race.
Shame he wastes so much space on fashionable but silly anti-Muslim tirades. The reader should try going through and replacing the word ... Read More
Rating: -
Although he doesn't say so, Harris appears to be an atheist, most certainly in the sense that he does not believe in any traditional gods although towards the end of this book he seems to ascribe to the mysticism of consciousness in a manner consistent with eastern Buddhism. However Harris seems to assert a physical understanding of that phenomenon but maybe open to a naturalistic possibility of something more than just this life. What he is vehemently opposed to is the idea that ancient religions of ... Read More
Rating: -
What I liked most about this book was the discuss on religious moderates. I once was a devout believer who took serious everything in the bible , it was quite an experience. The deeper my devolution grew the more difficult it became to live in the real world. I began to see satan in everything; education was evil because they taught evolution which contracted the bible; pop culture values demeaned the traditionalist lifestyle and even my parents rejected strict conformity to christianity. I struggled ... Read More
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