The End of Faith by Sam Harris
Buy now: Amazon (paperback), Amazon Kindle
Reviews: Chris Lehmann in Reason Magazine
This was the first of the “new atheist” books, although Harris does not use the term atheist anywhere throughout the book, and does not identify himself as an atheist. In the book, Harris looks at the dangers and perils of “faith” in religious doctrine. Harris takes on Islam and makes a long case for how the doctrines of Islam are an important factor in the current manifestations of radical Islamic terrorism. He also looks at the obsession of religious Christians with issues such as stem cell research and gay rights based on religious doctrine.
This is a great book (although I don’t agree with everything in it). Similar books include The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens. Dawkins focuses more on ontological arguments against God, but Dawkins shows less insight than Harris in grading the levels of various dangers — Harris is pretty clear that Islam today poses a substantially greater threat to society than Christianity does, while Dawkins seems decidedly equivocal on the matter, making what seem to be careless comparisons between the Christian Right in the United States and the Taliban.
My main beef with Harris is that he does not draw a sufficiently clear distinction between religious violence motivated by a sense of group identity and political considerations and religious violence where specific contents of religious doctrine play an important role.
