Flutterby™! : End of Faith

I mentioned reading The End of Faith by Sam Harris, and then said I was going to take it apart. I don't think it was a powerful enough book to bother really tearing apart. Sure, the first few chapters felt good in a "booya, go us atheists" sort of way, but then some of his contradictions started showing up, like when he proclaims that the intent (not even the ends) justify the means, or when he spends time showing the idiocy of torture in the history of Christianity in rooting out things like witchcraft and heresy, and then writes an impassioned defense of its use in "the war on terror".

So in the end (which comes about half-way through the book, the rest is notes on stuff referenced in the text) I felt very much like he'd trivialized a discussion that I'd very much like to be having. It ends up being yet another "let's pile on Islam and the fundie Christians in the wake of September 11^th" rather than a "how is faith negatively impacting our culture and our public policy" discussion.

I think the second one is interesting, but I think it needs to be had while keeping in mind that faith may be an evolutionary mechanism. Think about it: If you're not willing to accept the notion of an afterlife or a divine reward, then you probably aren't willing to die for your culture. Bing, that culture has just lost its ability to make war. Similarly, I'll bet the feelings of faith and the desire to procreate are more than slightly correlated.

I'd also offer up to those who claim that faith and organized religion are to blame for the evils, rather than a deeper human need to belong to something greater, that Kamikaze pilots more often referenced their "beautiful hometowns" and their families than their country and their emperor...