(no subject)
Brian Ritchie
RP #11- Sam Harris
Dewitt
GOSW
Hatemongering or How I Learned to Stop Discussing and Attack Religion
Sam Harris is a smart man. He knows lots of big words and he has a firm grasp on the art of the metaphor. I’m sure he is well educated, but the book is far away from me and I don’t want to see if it lists his credentials. Harris opens up chapter one with an account of a suicide bomber attacking a bus, and although he neglects to divulge the religious beliefs of the boy, he challenges the reader to make an assessment as to what the assumed religion is. Most would say Muslim. It seems that the main point of Harris’s book, The End of Faith, is that religion is nothing more than a way for people to group themselves together and kill one another. He talks about the Crusades, the riots in the late twentieth century between the Palestinians and Jews, and touches on other, widely known instances of religious intolerance. He attacks religion on all fronts, from every angle, analyzing it’s creation, basic tenets of faith, and the actions of believers and concludes that it is a mere construction of the ancients to help understand things in their time and that it has outlived its purpose. He discusses how Islamic hatred of the West is not necessarily because the West is not Muslim; rather it is because a nation of infidels is surpassing their beloved land in all things technological and monetary. Mr. Harris says that it would be better if Osama Bin Laden “merely hated us”. He calls for a revamping of thought to the point where religion is no longer an issue. That religion no longer exists seems to be the end goal in this plan, and that reasonable thought is what should be sought, not imagined deities.
All that being said, I think Sam Harris is wrong. I do not hate him for writing what he has, he is entitled to his opinion. I also agree with much of it. Religion should not be used as an excuse to murder or cajole. The problem I have is the way in which Harris attacks religion throughout the book. He describes faith as something that “should not have survived an elementary education” and attacks the scientific knowledge that Christian scholars had available in the 14th century. First of all, the greatest scientific advances of the last two millennia have occurred in the last 200 years. The fact is that the technology has only recently - as broad as that term is - in the last two centuries and any comparison of knowledge of the natural world between then and now should have that fact taken into account. I think that Harris is a good writer, but instead of insulting faith with such rancor, he could have made much better use of his time by not criticizing in such harsh terms the faiths he obviously abhors, but try to dissect them. He describes their ideals and reasoning in very good terms when he is not being so curmudgeonly, and, again, I agree with much of what he says.
The atrocities that he criticizes for being carried out for religious
RP #11- Sam Harris
Dewitt
GOSW
Hatemongering or How I Learned to Stop Discussing and Attack Religion
Sam Harris is a smart man. He knows lots of big words and he has a firm grasp on the art of the metaphor. I’m sure he is well educated, but the book is far away from me and I don’t want to see if it lists his credentials. Harris opens up chapter one with an account of a suicide bomber attacking a bus, and although he neglects to divulge the religious beliefs of the boy, he challenges the reader to make an assessment as to what the assumed religion is. Most would say Muslim. It seems that the main point of Harris’s book, The End of Faith, is that religion is nothing more than a way for people to group themselves together and kill one another. He talks about the Crusades, the riots in the late twentieth century between the Palestinians and Jews, and touches on other, widely known instances of religious intolerance. He attacks religion on all fronts, from every angle, analyzing it’s creation, basic tenets of faith, and the actions of believers and concludes that it is a mere construction of the ancients to help understand things in their time and that it has outlived its purpose. He discusses how Islamic hatred of the West is not necessarily because the West is not Muslim; rather it is because a nation of infidels is surpassing their beloved land in all things technological and monetary. Mr. Harris says that it would be better if Osama Bin Laden “merely hated us”. He calls for a revamping of thought to the point where religion is no longer an issue. That religion no longer exists seems to be the end goal in this plan, and that reasonable thought is what should be sought, not imagined deities.
All that being said, I think Sam Harris is wrong. I do not hate him for writing what he has, he is entitled to his opinion. I also agree with much of it. Religion should not be used as an excuse to murder or cajole. The problem I have is the way in which Harris attacks religion throughout the book. He describes faith as something that “should not have survived an elementary education” and attacks the scientific knowledge that Christian scholars had available in the 14th century. First of all, the greatest scientific advances of the last two millennia have occurred in the last 200 years. The fact is that the technology has only recently - as broad as that term is - in the last two centuries and any comparison of knowledge of the natural world between then and now should have that fact taken into account. I think that Harris is a good writer, but instead of insulting faith with such rancor, he could have made much better use of his time by not criticizing in such harsh terms the faiths he obviously abhors, but try to dissect them. He describes their ideals and reasoning in very good terms when he is not being so curmudgeonly, and, again, I agree with much of what he says.
The atrocities that he criticizes for being carried out for religious