An Illumination of My End of Faith
Yesterday, I finished keying in the notes I took while reading Sam Harris’s book The End of Faith. The relevance of the book’s content to me can be judged by the fact that my notes ran to 17 single-spaced pages.
I found the book to be one of those rare occasions where the author is expanding and completing my own half-formed thoughts. I found the book to be a tutorial that illuminated my shadowy views of religious beliefs in today’s world, bringing my own beliefs into sharp focus and answering all the many questions I had but had never gotten around to resolving.
As an undergraduate, I wondered how it came about that Christ and Mohammad came to replace Zeus and why the Bible and the Koran were both believed to contain God’s words. God wrote two books? I resolved these questions by realizing that ancient peoples emotional needs were so great that they hungered after assurance that a better life awaited them after death. Christianity and Islam provided books that contained roadmaps to heaven and, since they were God’s own words, arrival was guaranteed.
More recently, I have often wondered why religious faith has not faded in the face of modern knowledge of the universe and vast improvement of the quality of life for most peoples that technology has brought.
Harris argues that “we cannot live by reason alone” (page 43). That is, humans are both rational and emotional. “Death is intolerable to us” so we create a “better life beyond the grave.” This belief is not rational, but it solves one fundamental emotional need.
I think that a second fundamental emotional need that supports religious faith arises from the fact that each human unconsciously realizes that he or she is ultimately alone in the vast universe. To believe there is a God looking out for your personal welfare and to whom you can appeal for help is very comforting.
Religious belief persists because, ultimately, neither knowledge of the nature of things nor technology can address these deepest emotional needs of humans.
Thus, Harris’s appeal to reason will fail and religious beliefs will endure along with their threat to civilization.
Possibly, Harris’s most lasting contribution is that he is one of the very few thinkers who clearly state that Islam and Western liberalism are irreconcilable. That we are at this moment at war with Islam.
“On almost every page, the Koran instructs observant Muslims to despise non-believers.” That “Islam, more than any other religion human beings have devised, has all the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death” (page123).
In this view, Harris is entirely correct, and the sooner all Western governments realize this the better.
I found the book to be one of those rare occasions where the author is expanding and completing my own half-formed thoughts. I found the book to be a tutorial that illuminated my shadowy views of religious beliefs in today’s world, bringing my own beliefs into sharp focus and answering all the many questions I had but had never gotten around to resolving.
As an undergraduate, I wondered how it came about that Christ and Mohammad came to replace Zeus and why the Bible and the Koran were both believed to contain God’s words. God wrote two books? I resolved these questions by realizing that ancient peoples emotional needs were so great that they hungered after assurance that a better life awaited them after death. Christianity and Islam provided books that contained roadmaps to heaven and, since they were God’s own words, arrival was guaranteed.
More recently, I have often wondered why religious faith has not faded in the face of modern knowledge of the universe and vast improvement of the quality of life for most peoples that technology has brought.
Harris argues that “we cannot live by reason alone” (page 43). That is, humans are both rational and emotional. “Death is intolerable to us” so we create a “better life beyond the grave.” This belief is not rational, but it solves one fundamental emotional need.
I think that a second fundamental emotional need that supports religious faith arises from the fact that each human unconsciously realizes that he or she is ultimately alone in the vast universe. To believe there is a God looking out for your personal welfare and to whom you can appeal for help is very comforting.
Religious belief persists because, ultimately, neither knowledge of the nature of things nor technology can address these deepest emotional needs of humans.
Thus, Harris’s appeal to reason will fail and religious beliefs will endure along with their threat to civilization.
Possibly, Harris’s most lasting contribution is that he is one of the very few thinkers who clearly state that Islam and Western liberalism are irreconcilable. That we are at this moment at war with Islam.
“On almost every page, the Koran instructs observant Muslims to despise non-believers.” That “Islam, more than any other religion human beings have devised, has all the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death” (page123).
In this view, Harris is entirely correct, and the sooner all Western governments realize this the better.
posted by Bob Baker at 5:42 AM
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