The End of Faith

Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason
By Sam Harris
Published by Norton & co, New York, 2005
Free Press, UK

Reviewed by Christopher Titmuss

Page 129. Chapter on The Problem with Islam.
“In such a situation [if an Islamist regime…ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry] the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own. Needless to say this would be an unthinkable crime – as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day – but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe.”

Page 28, 29 Chapter on Reason in Exile
“To see that our problem is with Islam itself, and not merely with “terrorism,” we need only to ask ourselves why Muslims terrorists do what do…. They believe in the literal truth of the Koran.”

Page 93, Chapter on The Shadow of God
“The gravity of Jewish suffering over the ages, culminating in the Holocaust, makes it almost impossible to entertain any suggestion that Jews might have brought their troubles upon themselves. This is, however, in a rather narrow sense, the truth.”

I looked forward to reading this book that a dharma friend encouraged me to review. The book has received glowing reviews from the rabbis of reason in the Western media, including The Independent and The Guardian newspapers in Britain, the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle and The Economist, as well as the book receiving the winner of the prestigious Pen Award for non-fiction. Some Buddhist teachers and senior practitioners have also read the book.

There is certainly a necessity to explore the relationship between religion and reason, religion and terror, beliefs and science. In his book, Sam Harris, has written a vigorous and brutal rebuttal of religion with Islam serving as his prime target for condemnation. He looks at religion through the eyes of an American citizen, conditioned by the government/corporate/media standpoints, US training in Western philosophy and doctoral studies in neuroscience. His saving grace appears to be contact with Buddhist retreats and teachings from the East. Up until page 204, when he explores the significance of Eastern teachings, the book appears to have been written by a hardcore, secular fundamentalist – an articulate anti-religionist showing the same kind of prejudice as someone stereotyping people of colour.

There are approximately 100 pages out of 352 pages referring to the Koran. How many references to The Torah, the five books of Moses, held sacred by people of Jewish faith? Only one. That single reference appears on page 296 in the footnotes concerning the meaning of a Hebrew word. There is no reference in The End of Faith to circumcision, a religious commandment carried out on a seven-day old boy (Gen. 17:10-14 and Lev. 12:3). The covenant for mutilation was originally made with Abraham. It is the first commandment specific to the Jews, and circumcision is still routinely carried out on nearly all young US citizens. Nor does the book refer to the common view of Christianity, Judaism and Islam that human beings have souls but animals do not – a view that permits imprisonment of animals (zoos, circuses, sports, factory farms), and condones hundreds of millions of animal experiments worldwide by scientists). Overall, Buddhism and Hinduism get off lightly at every level compared to the three main monotheistic religions.

There is no real examination of the American based, born-again Christian movement that exercises much influence on the foreign policy of the White House, especially in the Middle East. This powerful and wealthy movement is fervently pro-Israel, believes in The Rapture (that born again Christians will be suddenly swept up in a single moment into Heaven) and that the United Nations is the anti-Christ. These evangelical Christians also believe we are near to Armageddon as God’s plan for a global showdown between good and evil that will start in Israel, the coming of the Messiah and the Final Judgement by God at the end of the world after the resurrection of the dead.

Sam Harris devoutly believes that religion is primarily responsible for the suffering in the world (not human behaviour, not stereotyping of people, not violent views, not the dualism of us and them, not prejudice, not dehumanising of people and their faith, not clinging to beliefs, not use of science and reason to wage war by the State or organisation, not the ideology of the Nation State, not the sickness of capitalism or political authoritarianism).

Certainly religion needs urgently to engage in deep soul searching, draw on far more deeply on the power of love, hospitality, generosity and selfless service, as well as the power to transform lives. There is also an urgent need for discourse to try to comprehend the hearts and minds of believers in religion and reason. The best of science has a legitimate perspective on Truth, but so does religion, awareness, art, love, meditation and consciousness altering experiences.

However, again and again, Harris slips into crude generalisations and jaundiced reasoning that undermine his argument to the point that he loses credibility.

“Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them (page 52-53) … Certain beliefs place their adherents beyond the reach of every peaceful means of persuasion, while inspiring them to commit acts of extraordinary violence against others..”

Here Harris shares the same view as fundamentalist Muslims. Fanatical Muslims know that after 9/11, more than 90% of the US population supported the war against Afghanistan, and the majority of US citizens still support the daily violence upon parts of the Islamic world. Terror feeds terror.

I recall a close associate of the Buddha saying to the Buddha that nobody in the world had the wisdom of the Buddha. The Buddha replied: “I didn’t know that you had met everybody.” Sam Harris needs to live among countless welcoming and forgiving Muslims in the Arab world, spend time with Jews in Israel working to heal suffering – a core tenet of their faith - and experience in every corner of the world the selfless love of Christians, many of whom have never converted anybody to their faith.

In numerous places, Sam Harris has quoted from religious texts to support his condemnation of religion. Here are a few quotes from The End of Faith. Readers can make their own mind up whether these statements are true or not, and decide for themselves whether to conclude, as I do, that such statements show the author’s tendency to slide into a demonization of religion.

Page 13
“…most of the people in this world believe that the Creator of the Universe has written a book.”

Page 28
. “Insofar as a person is observant of the doctrine of Islam – that is, insofar as he really believes it – he will pose a problem for us (Americans).”

Page 14
“…the very ideal of religious tolerance … is one of the principal forces driving us towards the abyss.”

Page 14.
“We can no longer ignore the fact that billions of our neighbors believe in the metaphysics of martyrdom, or in the literal truth of the Book of Revelation, or in any of the other fantastical notions that have lurked in the minds of the faithful for millennia – because our neighbours are now armed with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons”

Page 92
“Anti-Semitism is as integral to Church doctrine as the flying buttress is to a Gothic cathedral….”

Page 143
“For it [pacifism] seems to me to be a deeply immoral position…”

Page 143
“What we euphemistically describe as ‘collateral damage’ in times of war is the direct result of limitations in the power and precision of our technology… [If] we had possessed perfect weapons… there is no reason to think that he [President George Bush] would have sanctioned the injury or death of a single human being.”

(Reviewer’s note: Has nobody informed the US President – or Sam Harris - that USA, UK or Israel has launched bombs, including cluster bombs, missiles launched from air, land and sea, tank attacks on cities and villages have killed and maimed more than 100,000 innocent men, woman and children in four Muslim countries, namely Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, in the past five years? This level of so-called ‘collateral damage’ indicates a deliberately destructive use of technology, not simply its lack of precision. There seems to be an Anglo-American ‘jihad’ upon Islam.

There are probably more men, women and children, inspired by their faith, per population, engaged in non-violent demonstrations in Palestine than anywhere else in the world - on a single issue (to end the occupation). Harris regards total commitment to non-violence as ‘immoral’. In Nablus, Palestine, I have met with ‘families of the martyrs’ – those who have suffered through injury, mutilation, arrests, assassinations, shellings, bombings and suicides. I have stayed up half the night listening to their heart-rending stories.

I have been left wondering at how relatively few acts of suicidal revenge there are. On average about eight Palestinians per year have become suicide bombers since 1994, out of a population of more than three millions Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. Since the year 2000, 4217 Palestinians, including 779 Palestinian children have been killed, 30,174 maimed or wounded, 8600 men and women stay imprisoned and perhaps 10% per cent of the population traumatised by the military occupation. More than 85% of suicide bombers have lost loved ones, mostly family members. These bombers have left Israeli families experiencing the same grief. While needing to take care with making universal moral judgements to support war or pacifism, many of us who have directly witnessed violence find it abhorrent, no matter what the means.

Political militants from more than 30 countries have used suicide bombings in the last decade around the world. The Koran explicitly forbids suicide – a different view than the Buddha. In the Nablus meeting, I have told the Palestinians that I do not support the throwing of a single stone at an Israeli soldier, let alone keeping open the option of Sam Harris of a nuclear first strike on the Middle East. Unwavering dialogue and liberation from terror inflicted by the nation state and by the organisation is the way forward.

Has Sam Harris ever sat down and listened to the voices of oppressed Muslims? No. If he had, he would surely have written a different book.

Sam Harris then goes on to advocate a ‘truly rational approach…with ‘an open mind…in favour of free and vigorous inquiry.” He does point out deep concerns that thoughtful people have about religion, and that is to his credit, but he despises religion and instead worships technology and reason. He falls into the trap of believing that people of faith are the infidels. It’s much more complicated than that.

The author believes that “Science will not remain mute on spiritual and ethical questions for long” and believes that ‘we can see the first stirrings among psychologists and neuroscientists of what may one day become a genuinely rational approach to these matters…” (p43). It is an optimistic thought but somehow I can’t imagine that when this great day comes we will all be dancing in the streets.

OK, we throw away all religious books, become converts to the beliefs of contemporary science, accept the earth is actually four billion years old, uphold the Big Bang Theory, DNA and evolutionary theory of struggle of all species, and meditate, supported with rationality. Will peace and harmony reign on the world? Will everybody suddenly receive food, clothing, shelter and medicine? Will our belief in science stop consumerism, addictions and despair? Will it stop the depression, fear, violence, murders, self mutilation and suicides in our secular, self obsessed and science based society?

The world’s religions will still be with us until the end of time, staring us in the face, with all their rational and irrational beliefs. Religion and reason, faith and science serve far too much as a backdrop to our perceptions. Sacred books and religious traditions stand void of significance until we give them attention and make something of them – for better or worse. We need non-dual wisdom in this world, not submission to religion or science.

Trapped in libraries of knowledge in universities, spellbound by thought, and cut off from the real world, those who demonise religion seem unable to come to terms with the fact that religion is here to stay; neither Communism of the Russian or Chinese variety that banned religion and based itself on scientific materialism, nor Fascism that replaced the crucifix in school classrooms with a photograph of Hitler, nor the ideology of Pol Pot that attempted to exterminate Buddhism in Cambodia, nor Western science, nor capitalism, nor globalisation, nor this era of Western ‘enlightenment’ has made any inroads to destroy people’s beliefs, trust and experience in something greater than themselves. Religion is here to stay and so is political reasoning.

Despite the nonsense, naivety and dangerous claims to be found in religious books, and in the variety of religious forms, religion holds a deep, somewhat inexplicable appeal to millions upon millions of people. There is a bizarre attachment to certainty in humanity - and religion offers it - and it does carry real danger –– but so do our political leaders. Sam Harris simply doesn’t understand people of faith.

Despite his contact with the Buddhist tradition, Harris has sadly ignored the Buddha’s core teachings on looking into the truth of one’s experience, and opted instead to support the stereotypes of people’s faith. On August 17, 2006, the USA Today daily newspaper reported that 39% of US citizens felt at least “some prejudice” against Muslims and favoured the suggestion for Muslims in the USA to “carry a special ID” as a means of preventing terrorist attacks in the USA. In a letter to the newspaper, one reader said she was “absolutely horrified” at such figures from the poll. It reminded her of Nazi Germany. Sadly, this book feeds such fears.

The author finds fault with the French philosopher, Jean Baudrillard (page 138), Mahatma Gandhi (page 202), Noam Chomsky (page 140), Arundhati Roy (27-28), and unwavering commitment to non-violence (page 199). He selects a piece from their vast array of writings to show their “wayward thinking,” as he refers to Chomsky.

In the closing chapter (Experiments in Consciousness), Sam Harris turns his attention to the search for happiness, the spiritual tradition of inner change, the power of consciousness and meditation. Here he makes numerous excellent points that deserve wider attention and exploration. On these themes, he seems more grounded though he believes that such experiments need to be conducted in a “rational manner.” But who determines what is rational?

Harris writes (page 219): “A vast literature on meditation suggests that negative social emotions such as hatred, envy and spite both proceed from and ramify our dualistic perception of the world.”

So don’t delay, Mr. Harris. Stop reading your newspapers. End your belief in second hand knowledge. Meditate. Meditate. Meditate. Then go and live with our brothers and sisters in the Muslim world so you can find a way out of your obsessively dualistic perceptions against Islam and other religions. I hope you will one day employ your considerable writing skills to write a book on the same theme with love, compassion and wise analysis at the heart of it.