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peterwainaina's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
usersavvy's review against another edition
4.0
Sam Harris's new stuff is better, this was a bit cynical. Still wish all religious people would read it
grace2age's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
2.0
A STRANGE FUNDAMENTALIST BOOK DECRYING FUNDAMENTALISM
While I have great respect for Sam Harris as a person, and as a thinker, this was an extremely frustrating and disappointing read.
It is obvious that, as well-read as I’m sure Harris is, he knows virtually nothing about the topic of faith. He certainly grasps fundamentalism reasonably well, and I agree with most of his observations about that.
But his grasp of human spirituality itself, of the way human beings from the beginning of time have thought about and understood faith, god, and the role of faith in the lives of hundreds of millions of people throughout history, is bush-league. I am not nearly as smart a person as Sam Harris, and frankly, I think I could’ve written much of this book in college.
If Harris actually understood fundamentalism thoroughly, he would have quickly seen how this book, itself, is a perfect example of it.
Harris needed to read Karen Armstrong’s book The Case for God, which is not an apologetic, but a history of the development of our ideas about God, as a primer, before even thinking about writing a book like The End of Faith.
I will continue as a great fan of his, but ironically, this book that made him famous is far from his best thinking.
While I have great respect for Sam Harris as a person, and as a thinker, this was an extremely frustrating and disappointing read.
It is obvious that, as well-read as I’m sure Harris is, he knows virtually nothing about the topic of faith. He certainly grasps fundamentalism reasonably well, and I agree with most of his observations about that.
But his grasp of human spirituality itself, of the way human beings from the beginning of time have thought about and understood faith, god, and the role of faith in the lives of hundreds of millions of people throughout history, is bush-league. I am not nearly as smart a person as Sam Harris, and frankly, I think I could’ve written much of this book in college.
If Harris actually understood fundamentalism thoroughly, he would have quickly seen how this book, itself, is a perfect example of it.
Harris needed to read Karen Armstrong’s book The Case for God, which is not an apologetic, but a history of the development of our ideas about God, as a primer, before even thinking about writing a book like The End of Faith.
I will continue as a great fan of his, but ironically, this book that made him famous is far from his best thinking.
teokajlibroj's review against another edition
2.0
Disappointing. Harris focuses too much on easy targets. We all know that the Taliban and the Inquisition are bad. But not all believers are fanatics or evangelicals, even if they are technically the only true believers. I also found his philosophical musings difficult to follow and a bit pointless.
cjrmusic's review against another edition
challenging
dark
medium-paced
2.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Islamophobia
vaibhav_tripathi's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
tense
fast-paced
4.0
stefaniejane's review against another edition
2.0
I wanted to like this book as much as I was lead to think I would. Many things in the text are solid, but the audiobook rendered some of the vitriol a bit too tedious. Not sure if I would feel the same with a physical copy... probably would skip the Islam chapter either way. Having not read this as my first atheistic text, I didn't see it as changing my worldview or framework etc-- there are other works in a similar vein that I prefer more.
tiarala's review against another edition
4.0
Preaching-to-the-choir books are always hard to review. Harris's reasoning outlines the ways that learning organized religion's role throughout history has formed my loss of traditional Christian faith and my personal alternative faith. Unlike Harris, I see much value in faith for some, but like him I understand that it's a relatively easy jump from faith as a personal belief to faith-based terror or authoritarianism. I enjoyed the philosophical bend to this book — reason vs. faith — and it's been a good read to balance my reading about Jesus of Nazareth and other faiths.
jasperburns's review against another edition
5.0
View my best reviews and a collection of mental models at jasperburns.blog.
nikshelby's review against another edition
4.0
Sam Harris' "The End of Faith," is brilliant, fascinating, and compelling.
>>> "If religious war is ever to become unthinkable for us, in the way that slavery and cannibalism seem poised too, it will be a matter of our having dispensed with the dogma of faith. If our tribalism is ever to give way to an extended moral identity, our religious beliefs can no longer be sheltered from the tides of genuine inquiry and genuine criticism. It is time we realized that to presume knowledge where one has only pious hope is a species of evil. Wherever conviction grows in inverse proportion to its justification, we have lost the very basis for human cooperation. Where we have reason for what we believe, we have no need of faith; where we have no reasons, we have lost both our connection to the world and to one another. People who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of our societies, not in our halls of power. The only thing we should respect in a person’s faith is his desire for a better life in this world; we need never have respected his certainty that one awaits him in the next."
>>> "Man is manifestly not the measure of all things. This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name. The consciousness that animates us is itself central to this mystery and ground for any experience we may wish to call “spiritual.” No myth needs to be embraced for us to commune with the profundity of our circumstance. No personal God need be worshipped for us to live in awe at the beauty and immensity of creation. No tribal fictions need be rehearsed for us to realize, one fine day, that we do, in fact, love our neighbors, that our happiness is inextricable from their own, and that our interdependence demands that people everywhere be given the opportunity to flourish. The days of our religious identities are clearly numbered. Whether the days of civilization itself are numbered would seem to depend, rather to much, on how soon we realize this."
>>> "If, as I contend, all that is good in religion can be had elsewhere - if, for instance, ethical and spiritual experience can be cultivated and talked about without our claiming to know things we manifestly do not know - then all the rest of our religious activity represents, at best, a massive waste of time and energy. Think of all the good things human beings will not do in this world tomorrow because they believe that their most pressing task is to build another church or mosque, or to enforce some ancient dietary practice, or to print volumes upon volumes of exegesis on the disordered thinking of ignorant men. How many hours of human labor will be devoured, today, by an imaginary God?
...I'm not suggesting that the value of every human action should be measured in terms of productivity. Indeed, much of what we do would wither under such an analysis. But we should still recognize what a fathomless sink for human resources (both financial and attentional) organized religion is...
But the problem of religion is not merely that it competes for time and resources...even the most docile forms of Christianity currently present insuperable obstacles to AIDS prevention and family planning the developing world, to medical research, and to the development of a rational drug policy - and these contributions to human misery alone constitute some of the most appalling failures of reasonableness in any age."
>>> "If religious war is ever to become unthinkable for us, in the way that slavery and cannibalism seem poised too, it will be a matter of our having dispensed with the dogma of faith. If our tribalism is ever to give way to an extended moral identity, our religious beliefs can no longer be sheltered from the tides of genuine inquiry and genuine criticism. It is time we realized that to presume knowledge where one has only pious hope is a species of evil. Wherever conviction grows in inverse proportion to its justification, we have lost the very basis for human cooperation. Where we have reason for what we believe, we have no need of faith; where we have no reasons, we have lost both our connection to the world and to one another. People who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of our societies, not in our halls of power. The only thing we should respect in a person’s faith is his desire for a better life in this world; we need never have respected his certainty that one awaits him in the next."
>>> "Man is manifestly not the measure of all things. This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name. The consciousness that animates us is itself central to this mystery and ground for any experience we may wish to call “spiritual.” No myth needs to be embraced for us to commune with the profundity of our circumstance. No personal God need be worshipped for us to live in awe at the beauty and immensity of creation. No tribal fictions need be rehearsed for us to realize, one fine day, that we do, in fact, love our neighbors, that our happiness is inextricable from their own, and that our interdependence demands that people everywhere be given the opportunity to flourish. The days of our religious identities are clearly numbered. Whether the days of civilization itself are numbered would seem to depend, rather to much, on how soon we realize this."
>>> "If, as I contend, all that is good in religion can be had elsewhere - if, for instance, ethical and spiritual experience can be cultivated and talked about without our claiming to know things we manifestly do not know - then all the rest of our religious activity represents, at best, a massive waste of time and energy. Think of all the good things human beings will not do in this world tomorrow because they believe that their most pressing task is to build another church or mosque, or to enforce some ancient dietary practice, or to print volumes upon volumes of exegesis on the disordered thinking of ignorant men. How many hours of human labor will be devoured, today, by an imaginary God?
...I'm not suggesting that the value of every human action should be measured in terms of productivity. Indeed, much of what we do would wither under such an analysis. But we should still recognize what a fathomless sink for human resources (both financial and attentional) organized religion is...
But the problem of religion is not merely that it competes for time and resources...even the most docile forms of Christianity currently present insuperable obstacles to AIDS prevention and family planning the developing world, to medical research, and to the development of a rational drug policy - and these contributions to human misery alone constitute some of the most appalling failures of reasonableness in any age."