I have mixed feelings about the ideas in this book, but Harris is a good writer and I intend to seek out more from him. ( )

Non-believers and believers alike should definitely read this book. Excellent read, Sam Harris is fantastic as always.

Sam Harris breaks down the ways we fool ourselves and others when we engage in practices that will lead to suffering and death, all in the name of faith. He teaches us that there is no need to believe in things with insufficient evidence to find meaning in our lives.

Religion convinced us that we were sick and only they had the cure. Turns out they were the disease.

Excellent Read! ( )

I dislike polemics. Lost me almost from the ridiculous opening.

Good (although slightly short of great) book by Sam Harris. Mainly made the arguments that religion is generally bad, has a lot of impact on society, that different religions are differing levels of bad (Jain and Buddhism are minimally bad; Islam pretty maximally bad; Christianity rather bad depending on implementation.) . The religion parts were actually the least interesting to me (he did a better job of arguing this in The Moral Landscape and on his podcast); the interesting part was about non-religious meditation and other things.

Audiobook was unfortunately not read by the author; the reader was adequate but didn't deeply understand the book, showing in inflection/pacing. ( )

It has been a few years since I read this book, and what stuck with me wasn't the neuroscience, the calls for turning any biological imperatives for a need to believe toward secular humanism, and so on. What stuck with me is two main points that were very thoroughly and intelligently explored, and which fly in the face of liberal (not in the political sense of the term "liberal") ethos of religious tolerance as a "reasonable" policy.

1. The author very convincingly makes the argument that religious moderates are basically "doing it wrong" with regard to religion. True religious faith, Harris argues, demands an extreme perspective. Religious moderates are not among the true faithful of any particular orthodoxy, and do not take their own foundational holy writings seriously; they pay lip service to these faiths, in essence, and ignore where the logically necessary requirements of the faiths in question counsel religious extremism.

2. The author points out the logical consequence of truly unswerving faith and devotion to the core doctrines of the major monotheistic salvation-based religions: that the truly faithful must eventually confront the fact that true devotion to the core tenets advanced by their holy books demand outright hostility -- even a policy of destructive physical violence -- toward any belief systems that contradict their own faiths' requirements for salvation.

It seems like pro-atheism writings are the very height of fashion in self-consciously intellectual circles. While some of these writers seem to be having a good time poking fun at religious thinkers, their writings often strike me as mere pandering to an audience. The book The End of Faith by Sam Harris, however, takes a novel approach to attacking religious belief systems and the social consequences of these faiths, accepting their foundations at face value for argument's sake, then following them through a rational chain of reasoning to their necessary conclusions. What the reader finds when led there by the author is an intolerant, dangerous, violent hatred of anything that presents arguments against the "correct" faith, temptations to explore other philosophies, or inducements to question one's devotion to that faith.

Whether you find his reasoning ultimately convincing or not, this polemic is certainly daring, direct, and thorough. If nothing else, it is worth reading to inspire thoughtful consideration of the importance of identifying the real consequences of our belief systems when they are taken as unquestionable truths. ( )