Thank God I'm already an atheist but that didn't stop me from listening to Sam Harris, and reading his book "The End of Faith - Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason" (and not only because the title contains the rare Oxford comma).
This important and timely book delivers a startling analysis of the clash of faith and reason in the modern world. "The End of Faith" provides a harrowing glimpse of mankind's willingness to suspend reason in favour of religious beliefs, even when these beliefs inspire the worst of human atrocities. Sam Harris argues that in the presence of weapons of mass destruction, we can no longer expect to survive our religious differences indefinitely. Most controversially, he maintains that "moderation" in religion poses considerable dangers of its own: as the accommodation we have made to religious faith in our society now blinds us to the role that faith plays in perpetuating human conflict. While warning against the encroachment of organised religion into world politics, Harris draws on insights from neuroscience, philosophy, and Eastern mysticism in an attempt to provide a truly modern foundation for our ethics and our search for spiritual experience.
As Richard Dawkins wrote in "The God Delusion": "We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further." I am one of those who've gone one god further.
But I leave the last word on the Bible to Spike Milligan - click here.
