In this chapter Sam Harris basically tells me that most people believe in religion because others told them to, and also that religion uses fear to govern humanity, the fear of hell or whatever they believe the ultimate punishment is ( see the following).
"Religion is based... mainly on fear... fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand,” Sam Harris
Based on the previous quote and other statements Harris believes religion leads directly to cruelty, I simply ask what exactly his definition of cruelty is. Obviously one of his major criticisms of religion is this chapter is this cruelty it creates yet in a later chapter he has an entire section on reasons he advocates torture in certain judiciary cases. That is jumping ahead a bit, but I believe that in this case a broad look at his case shows a bit of hypocrisy in this section.
Harris also adds to his case on faith in Holy documents with no backing but faith. Once again noting that fear comes into play, I don’t totally discount the fact that I am afraid to go to Hell, but its only one of a vast amount of reasons I consider myself a Christian. Also, whether they believe it is possible I would love to find one person that would not be afraid of the notion of burning for all eternity.
Matthew Grabiak
Monday, September 24, 2007
Chapter One
The End of Faith begins with a speculative story on how a suicide bomber’s last day might go, and how his family might celebrate in response to their son having killed himself and dozens of others. He uses this opening to stress the dangers of blind faith in religion, and states that our beliefs, “are leading us, inexorably, to kill one another.” I can partially agree with him in that extremist Muslims believe that killing themselves and taking the lives of no Muslims will send them to heaven, yet other religions and other sections of Islam do not preach anything of the kind. Harris does begin to focus on the dangers posed by extremist groups but he then equally attacks moderation of religion by basically saying that religious violence can not be opposed through the use of religious moderation.
In his critique on religious moderation, Harris quotes two passages from the book of Deuteronomy
"...you must kill him, your hand must strike the first blow in putting him to death and the hands of the rest of the people following. You must stone him to death, since he has tried to divert you from Yahweh your God..." (Deuteronomy 13: 7-11)
“Whatever I am now commanding you, you must keep and observe, adding nothing to it, taking nothing away”(Deuteronomy 13:1)
he uses them to say that basically all the bible is not know by the general masses, and that, “only by ignoring such barbarisms that the Good Book can be reconciled with life in the modern world.” However, Harris doesn’t take into account the fact that Christians don’t hold to Old Testament standards like this one, as Christ revised them in the New Testament, therefore this claim of having to ignore certain passages to make the Bible apply to the modern world is truly unsupported.
Harris also goes on to call for an end to acceptance and respect for other belief systems of a competing nature, all of which he believes are equally improvable based on lack of evidence. To me it seems that the idea of belief in something based on faith and not empirical evidence just blows Harris’ mind. To use the numbers he presents against him, that 35% of Americans believe the Bible is the literal word of God and another 45% believe it was inspired by him, is a testament that faith exists in extremely high numbers and that the small number representing radical factions of religion or the small number representing complete critics of all religions is simply not enough to overturn the enduring believers.
Matthew Grabiak
In his critique on religious moderation, Harris quotes two passages from the book of Deuteronomy
"...you must kill him, your hand must strike the first blow in putting him to death and the hands of the rest of the people following. You must stone him to death, since he has tried to divert you from Yahweh your God..." (Deuteronomy 13: 7-11)
“Whatever I am now commanding you, you must keep and observe, adding nothing to it, taking nothing away”(Deuteronomy 13:1)
he uses them to say that basically all the bible is not know by the general masses, and that, “only by ignoring such barbarisms that the Good Book can be reconciled with life in the modern world.” However, Harris doesn’t take into account the fact that Christians don’t hold to Old Testament standards like this one, as Christ revised them in the New Testament, therefore this claim of having to ignore certain passages to make the Bible apply to the modern world is truly unsupported.
Harris also goes on to call for an end to acceptance and respect for other belief systems of a competing nature, all of which he believes are equally improvable based on lack of evidence. To me it seems that the idea of belief in something based on faith and not empirical evidence just blows Harris’ mind. To use the numbers he presents against him, that 35% of Americans believe the Bible is the literal word of God and another 45% believe it was inspired by him, is a testament that faith exists in extremely high numbers and that the small number representing radical factions of religion or the small number representing complete critics of all religions is simply not enough to overturn the enduring believers.
Matthew Grabiak
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