Will Faith Destroy Us
All?
The
world would be a better, safer place for everyone if we
all gave up religion, which is all fanatical superstition. This is especially true of
Christianity, which led to the Holocaust and sexual repression and stuff, and Islam,
which produces
terrorism. Judaism
is also pretty bad in
principle, but it hasnt done as much harm.
Or so Im informed by a new book by
Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
(published by Norton). He studied philosophy at Stanford and is now working on a
doctorate in neuroscience. He seems to support the War on Terror and he
doesnt seem to care for Noam Chomsky.
Harris calls hopefully for an end of
faith, but he doesnt really think its going to happen in the near
future. In fact he fears that the end of civilization itself may occur before
we wise up about religion. And it will be religion that destroys us, of course.
This is very much a young mans
book, naively apocalyptic and urgently trying to save the world. Harris tells us he
started writing it on September 12, 2001, which, youll recall, followed shortly
after September 11, 2001, and the reader gathers he hasnt calmed down yet.
He finds atheism an exciting new idea, when of course by now its rather
quaint.
Communism was an exciting new idea not
so long ago atheistic, rational, scientific, and all that but
Harris hardly mentions it. Why not? If youre going to harp on the
lethal potential of religion, you should spare a chapter for the lethal
actuality of atheistic ideologies. But Harris is too preoccupied with the horrors of the
Middle Ages to notice the horrors of more recent history. To read him, youd
think the popes had killed more people than Stalin.
![[Breaker quote: An atheists apocalypse]](2005breakers/050329.gif) But
Harris takes care of communism by dismissing it as little more than a political
religion. Well, if atheistic communism counts as a form of religion, religion
doesnt stand much of a chance of winning this argument, does it? Nothing can
shake Harriss own faith, which is that a world of atheists would be a lot more
sane than the world as we know it. This belief can hardly claim to be empirically
verified. The history of the twentieth century suggests otherwise.
Naturally, the book comes warmly blurbed
by the usual suspects the philosopher Peter Singer and the lawyer Alan
Dershowitz, who says it demonstrates how faith ... threatens our
very existence. Among the menaces Dershowitz sees is the secular
fanaticism of Noam Chomsky. Not him again!
By the way, poor Noam Chomsky. What a
reputation hes gotten. I first heard of him in the Sixties, when a professor of
mine mentioned that he was both a genius in his field (linguistics) and a prominent
critic of the Vietnam War. After reading a few of his books, I met him and found not the
ferocious customer Id expected, but a man youd have a pleasant chat
with in the faculty lounge. Now hes a threat to civilization?
Anyway, people do get the strangest ideas,
especially about other peoples ideas. If you press hard enough, almost any
idea, even the Pythagorean theorem, can appear dangerous. Harris
never explains just whats dangerous about the Sermon on the Mount, but I
suppose that kind of thinking led to the Holocaust. Or maybe it led to Alan Dershowitz,
which is alarming enough.
One thing I learned in college is that a
sharp philosophy major can prove just about anything. Harriss book illustrates
this well. Religious faith may soon lead to the end of civilization itself?
Well, I can remember when people were saying the same thing about Elvis Presley,
and I still cant swear they didnt have a point. With all due respect to
Elvis, only time will tell.
The expression leads to should be
used sparingly. Identifying historical causes is hard enough; predicting them is
harder. In the real world, anything can lead to anything. Karl Marx sits in a library
formulating the labor theory of value, and a few generations later millions of Russians
are freezing in labor camps. Physicists discover the latent energy of the atom, and
Harry Truman puts this idea to work in Hiroshima. And dont even get me
started on Pythagoras.
Joseph Sobran
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