Lost in Seattle

I was both annoyed and pleased that Sam Harris’ book The End of Faith had almost 300 holds on it in our Seattle Public Library system when I added myself to the list over six months ago. I didn’t really want to wait so long to read it, especially since it’s over three years old now, but I was happy that so many others were still interested in it.

Last week, I finally got my notice that it was available, and I’ve been mostly pleased with it so far. I’ve enjoyed reading Harris’ essays and debates on the web. Harris is less condescending that Richard Dawkins, but no less sharply critical about both the absurdity of religion and the myriad problems that it causes in every society in which it exerts a significant hold on the masses (which is to say nearly all societies).

Harris’ central argument builds upon the issues I wrote about a couple weeks in relation to the “COEXIST” bumper sticker. Religions are inherently intolerant of each other, Harris argues, and religious moderation is a myth.

Harris spends less time that Dawkins on the matter of God’s non-existence; in Harris’ mind, it shouldn’t take more than a few pages to demonstrate that God’s a bankrupt concept and he doesn’t dwell on it. As a result, Harris is able to avoid the most common criticism I’ve heard of Dawkins’ book, which is that Dawkins frequently conflates God and religion. Whether that’s true or if it’s just an empty complaint that allows believers to dismiss Dawkins’ work, it’s refreshing that Harris doesn’t fall into that rhetorical trap and is able to focus his considerable energies and logic more squarely on religion.

Fundamentalists, Harris observes, have not “misinterpreted” their faith as people often argue. They are, on the contrary, the most serious and observant according to the letter of their Book. It is the so-called moderates who have chosen to selectively ignore parts of their faith out of convenience and in order to adapt to modern life.

Religious moderation springs from the fact that even the least educated person among us simply knows more about certain matters than anyone did two thousand years ago — and much of this knowledge is incompatible with scripture…. Such concessions to modernity do not in the least suggest that faith is incompatible with reason, or that our religious traditions are in principle open to new learning; it is just that the utility of ignoring (or “reinterpreting”) certain articles of faith is now overwhelming.

Harris observes that most of what is usually ignored by religious moderates involves astronomy, medicine, physics, geography, etc. Very few religious folks still subscribe to a geocentric conception of the solar system, for example. What remains — what religious folks refer to as “the good parts” — deal with ethics and spiritual experience, areas where human understanding has lagged behind the other sciences. Harris writes:

If we better understood the workings of the human brain, we would undoubtedly discover lawful connections between our states of consciousness, our modes of conduct, and the various ways we use our attention. If we ever develop such a science, most of our religious texts will be no more useful to mystics than they are now to astronomers.

It is on this point that Harris tries to set himself apart from mere bible-bashers. The latter part of “The End of Faith” deals with non-religious ways to achieve the sort of radical transformations of self — insight, happiness, freedom from fear — and strong community building that religious folks believe are only possible by also believing in all kinds of other crap — transubstantiation, virgin births, eternal paradise in the afterlife, etc.

His suggestions involve a radical questioning of the concept of the self, severing the one-to-one relationship of the term “I” with a single physical body — a “selflessness of consciousness.” In the process of discussing this, he journeys briefly into Eastern philosophies and meditation. Unfortunately, this phenomenological voyage is very brief and runs the risk of sounding, at times, somewhat loopy and mystical (at one point, he makes the strange claim that “Mysticism is a rational enterprise.”) But I give Harris props for trying to make something positive out of the inherently negative project of disproving and dismissing religion.

I’ll admit that I haven’t yet read the entire book and that I’ve been skipping around. I haven’t talked much about Harris’ extended analysis of Islam and his argument that that religion — more so that Christianity — explicitly prohibits “moderation” and expressly advocates its own violent spread throughout the world. I have yet to delve into the chapter on ethics entitled “A Science of Good and Evil.” But from what I’ve read so far, I recommend this book to anyone who’s seeking a clearer understanding of why religion is harmful to society and ammunition to question and criticize it.