The End of Faith by Sam Harris
I’ve finished Sam Harris’s The End of Faith unexpectedly early. It stops about 2/3 of the way through the book. The remainder is notes and citations justifying the statements and some of the statements need quite a bit of justifying. It’s a difficult book and a disturbing book. There are also sections where I disagree with the author, but it’s certainly not a foolish book.
Harris argues that religion has ceased to be a foible or eccentricity and now poses a threat to the future of civilisation. That’s a big claim. The bulk of it is down to Islam. Harris sees it as not particularly more violent in theory than Christianity and Judaism. The difference is that Christians and Jews now ignore any bits of the holy texts they don’t like, while mainstream Islam still takes the Koran seriously. The violence inherent in Abrahamic religion wasn’t a huge problem while it was the cause of local slaughters with one tribe moving into a promised land. These days, Harris argues, the same imperative to slaughter the other is balanced with the prospect of nuclear or biological weaponry. It isn’t simply a matter of peaceful coexistence because, to a significant proportion of Muslims, western culture is simply intolerable.
By itself this could read as a screed against Islam, but Harris also tackles Christianity. In the west Harris gives examples of Christianity being imposed on people. One example he gives are American drug laws. Another example are the laws banning non-procreative sex between consenting adults. There may be good reasons for the state to ban such acts, but none have ever been given beyond the bible saying no. The bible is frequently ignored on other matters, so why should this be an issue. This form of ‘morality’ becomes more sinister when it condemns people to die because someone thinks that ‘sex’ is another way of spelling ‘sin’. The problem with this isn’t merely the content of the religious teachings, it’s the act of faith that puts them beyond justification. Fundamentalists are not so much dangerous from their reading of their texts but from their degree of faith.
He also says another cost of faith is that we live with a primitive morality. I’ll need to think more about this. He compares the insight into being that eastern religion has while western religion rarely gets above “If you don’t stop doing that you’ll get a clout”. Removing faith an appeal to authority from ethics would allow ethics to advance in the same way physics did when it was accepted the Bible wasn’t a science textbook. I’m not sure about this, partly because I’m not that well read on eastern philosophy. There would be some dark irony if western religion actually aided the development of science as a means to understand God’s creation but left us with a crippled spirituality.
More problematic is his chapter on torture. He argues that torture can be moral and may be a necessity in the fight against extremists. This deeply concerns me. His position is that we would do this as a rational transaction to prevent greater suffering elsewhere. I’m really going to have to re-read that chapter over again.
Imagine that a known terrorist has planted a large bomb in the heart of a nearby city. This man now sits in your custody. As to the bomb’s location, he will say nothing except the site was chosen to produce maximum loss of life. Give this state of affairs – in particular, given there is enough time to prevent an imminent atrocity – it seems there would be no harm in dusting off the strapado and exposing this unpleasant fellow to a suasion of bygone times.
But what about real life when you don’t know that the person is a terrorist. Harris likens this to collateral damage in a war, but points out that unlike innocent casualties of war, the victims won’t be children. I’m really not convinced by the argument. I’d like to think that I’d crack sooner watching a child being tortured than being tortured myself. If you have an interrogation where time is of the essence then can you now justify the torture of children too? Is sheer revulsion by an idea a substitute for refutation though? How many people have to die before you accept the torture or death of one person? All in all I’d prefer not to think about it, but modern weapons technology might make this kind of arithmetic a reality. Nonetheless I’m vividly aware of the times when people have been massacred for a greater good which later evaporated.
The biggest challenge the book lays down is one that is getting repeated from many places – what does faith bring to life. Jamie Whyte in his book Bad Thoughts has pointed out that no-one has faith in anything demonstrable. No-one for instance has faith that London is the capital of the UK, or that if you jump from a window you’ll fall to the ground. Faith seems only be used for issues that cannot be proved or else are demonstrably false. Harris says that even ardent believers will ditch faith for proof given the opportunity, hence the popularity of medieval relics.
While I wouldn’t agree with everything in the book, it is a well-written piece of non-fiction horror.
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Interesting review, Thanks. And now there’s another book for my every growing “need to read” list.
You make a good point about torture, which raises questions about what purpose a book like this might serve in justifying the current war.
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I liked the review.
The quote regarding torture appears to be a hypothetical, but it is not.
It is more like a scenario from an action movie, wherein it is clear the victim is a terrorist and we demand that good prevails.
The point was made that in reality we do not actually know he is a terrorist, and this makes ALL the difference.
And most tellingly, it ignores that fact that Christians, Jews, and Muslims for the most part ignore those advanced moral demands of peace and charity which ring throughout all their holy writings.
The account of Abrhamic religions by Mr. Harris appears totally ignorant of Midrash or other commentaries of a level higher than that of the middle school playground.
It also assumes that torture works
Continuing Phil’s idea:
My problem with Mr. Harris is that according to his approach, torture will work most of the time.
The use of torture is a moral issue. Harris pretends to set forth a hypothetical moral situation in that of the terrorist.
However, the terrorist is in our custody, we know which city the bomb is in, we know about what time it will detonate, we also know — miraculously — that the bomb is situated to produce a maximum loss of life ! And so on, and so on.
This is a story line from DIE HARD. You can almost see the seconds ticking off the digital clock.
This is not a moral hypothetical. We will always vote for a happy ending for the movie, so will we approve torture most of the time if we follow this type of story-line in moral reasoning.
Another note, I particularly enjoy beating religious people about the ears while cautioning that they are possibly not advanced enough to enjoy the true fruits of civilization: nuclear and biological weaponry !
Sorry if my last post was a bit glib or terse. Its just everything about the example is based on tenuous assumptions and oppertunity should be taken to repeat that at every oppertunity!
In Harris’s defence what you have is a brief account of his argument. I think his position that in these cartoon terms torture might make sense, but we need to think about whether or not it does when there are more unknowns. In various forms it’s also a fairly common thought experiment.
He doesn’t think torture would always work either. Simply that if you know an atrocity is going to take place then would the likely loss of life justify the use of torture? Would the detention of Islamic fundamentalists have made the war on Iraq unnecessary? Harris’s view is that the number of innocents killed or maimed would be less, therefore in numerical terms would targetted torture be better than war?
He argues that his position has been that torture would be wrong, but now with the weaponry that may become available to terrorists, the risk is so great that it may become necessary to revisit how we deal with irrational people. The damage done by a dirty bomb in Washington would probably be much worse than breaking someone’s arms. If torture might lead to information that would stop a massacre then it’s a price we should consider paying.
Personally, I agree that the use of torture is unjustified in the real world because of the uncertainties, but my own feeling of revulsion for it isn’t an argument. My own opinion is that even if you feel the current governments of the USA or UK are justified and responsible in suspending liberties, would you continue wish an alternative goverment to wield the same powers? If the USA moves to the left, or the UK to the right after the next elections would those governments be able to wield power as wisely as Bush or Blair? Thus I feel this kind of action is wrong as it acts to subvert the safeguards that prevent it being misused — if you agree that it is possible to use torture responsibly.
I’m ambivalent about whether the lack of sophisticated theology is a problem in the arguments of Harris (or Dawkins who has the same problem) in dealing with the problem of faith. I agree there are sophisticated methods of interpreting the Bible. I’m simply not convinced that many believers are aware of Midrash, Christian Apologetics or other forms of theological argument. The people attacking embassies, killing doctors or fighting against the use of condoms in the third world probably aren’t justifying their actions on particularly thoughtful interpretations of their holy texts.
It’s a difficult book and a thought-provoking book. Certainly some of it is very good. Eastern religions do tend to come out of it quite well. If I can remember where I’ve put it I’ll lend it you Phil, so you can read it and tell me which bits I got wrong.
Concerning Eastern religions, our familiarity with them comes mainly from educated emigres who are bilingual at least and who have written expositions of their beliefs.
I fully concur that you won’t see the Dalai Lama attacking an embassy anytime soon. But not all buddhists are smiling.
So look at Thomas Merton or Martin Buber or Ar-Rumi to see how the Abrahamic looks into being.
Look at Commentary, not Argument.
I wonder what Gandhi-Ji thought of torture?
I wonder what the Lord Buddha thought of torture?
Do you think Eastern religions are coming out pretty good so we may ignore their moralities as well?
Being pendantic, your sentence
Would the detention of Islamic fundamentalists have made the war on Iraq unnecessary?
perhaps implies a pre war connection between the saddham regeim and islamic fundemenatilsts which wasn’t there perhaps?
Would like to borrow the book from you!
I think paul makes a good point about the pick and mix attitude to aspects of the spirituality of ‘easter releigons’ — it could also be applied to approaches of modern paganism. Mind you I prefer to stick to a critique of the organised releigeon/ tradition that I was bought up with, on the grounds I am most familiar with it and know where the bodies are buried (now tell me about this trinity again .…)