The End of Faith

Sam Harris

Before you read this review, please go order a copy of The End of Faith. For that matter, order multiple copies to give out as Christmas presents (both because you want everyone you know to read this book, and to revel in the irony).

Thank you. Now that you have done so, on to the review.

I find it amusingly ironic that the word I kept coming up with to describe Sam Harris, while mulling over what to say in this review, was "prophet." Harris would probably slap me upside the head himself for making such a claim, especially in light of his thesis here: that the problems the world currently suffers vis-a-vis terrorism (and has suffered throughout history in many forms) is not because of "extremism" or "fundamentalism"-- the problems the world currently suffers spring, fully formed, from religion itself. He then goes on to spend about two hundred pages telling us exactly why he believes this. I can't imagine that the majority of readers who have brains won't be reading this and thinking either "I've been saying this for years" or "I wish I'd thought of this."

Documented in exhaustive (and sometimes excruciating) detail, and using sometimes assailable but always compelling logic, Harris outlines the problems with religion throughout history, and more importantly (perhaps) why religion is even more of a problem today than it is usually. He loses a step in the final chapter, in which he proposes a spiritual alternative to religion, but I'm guessing few people will have as much of a problem with the idea as I did; Harris is not far off when he talks about the comfort of religion for the common man, and it does stand to reason that they'll need something of perceived worth to replace it.

Perhaps even more amusingly ironic is that two of the three blurbs on the back of the book come from prominent religious figures. One wonders if they actually read it, as the book's whole premise is to tell them much of what they've based their lives on is completely illegitimate.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough; it should be on your short shelf of sacred texts with Peele's The Diseasing of America and Howard's The Death of Common Sense. Oh, there I go using religious terms again.