Islam

  (out of 5 stars)

Having read Harris' more substantial work The End of Faith (and given it 4/5 stars despite having some signficant disagreements with some of his points), I finally picked up the much shorter (96 pages) Letter for a quick read. It reads mostly like a condensed, directed version of Faith and offers very little new material for the reader, Christian or atheist.

There really isn't much to discuss about the book. It is a one-sided conversation Harris is having with the anonymous Christian reader (though it is doubtful many actual Christians will read the book). Harris uses many of the same arguments he puts forward in Faith to support his thesis that religion is dangerous and that Christians in the US are no more correct or moral, and make no more positive contributions than any other group of people.

I've read other reviews which trash this book as 'preaching to the choir'. I do agree that, despite the fact that this letter is to a 'Christian', this is largely intended for atheistic audiences. However, 'preaching to the choir' is not really a legitimate knock on this or any work. Until the mid-2000s, most US atheists had no popular voices for their point of view. What Harris (and other vocal atheists) have done is provide a provacative (and antagonist) voice for those of us who have had almost no one speaking on our behalf. While I agree that Harris is confrontational, I argue that that is his point. Atheists have long needed a few loud-mouthed antagonizers to bring our issues into popular discussion, and we certainly could not have done so if Harris et. al. were polite reconcilators.

Overall, this book is just a condensed version of Faith and will largely serve as a booster for atheists who need to find arguments which speak to their own positions. Three and one-half stars.

  (out of 5 stars)

Religious scholar Hector Avalos, better known for his book The End of Religious Studies, tackles a contentious subject in Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence. Avalos argues his theory that religions create scare resources (regardless of whether real or imaginary) which lead to various levels of violence in order to defend, gain, or promote them. He posits that there are four main areas where scarce resources are created, namely through divine revelation (inscripturation), sacred space (such as Jerusalem), group privileging, and salvation. While Avalos is clearly a dedicated, detailed, and highly intelligent researcher, Fighting Words offers a dense format that often slowed and obfuscated his argument to the reader.

From the beginning, Avalos makes it clear that the book will serve as a direct rebuttal of arguments (of other writers and researchers) which determined that religions are largely peaceful and that violence is an aberration of the nature of religion. The interpretations of these 'pacifist'-leaning researchers are deemed 'essentialist' and found to be no more reasonable than the fundamentalist interpretations. Large parts of each chapter are dedicated to describing the arguments Avalos seeks to counter, and at times, the narrative bogs down in explaining them.

Avalos explores the three main Abrahamic religions and how each has created scarce resources which inspired violence. The strongest part of the book for me involved a long discussion of Hitler and Nazism and how the anti-Jewish violence was largely rooted in Biblical scarce resource creation. The comparison of Mein Kampf and the Bible (as inspirational sources of value) is fantastic and compelling.

The last few chapters were weak (to me). The discussion of secular states and Avalos's solutions left much to be desired as the author admits frequently that the solutions he offers are unlikely and possibly ineffective.

Fighting Words offers a dense history of some aspects of religious violence and is clearly aimed at scholarly readers familiar with the materials. I felt that there were many examples of the author missing obvious events worthy of consideration and instead concentrating on incidents that (perhaps) were not the best available to address (and I admit this was likely determined by specific arguments within the scholarly circles and not as much by popular non-scholarly debate subjects). While much of the book was clearly written for Avalos's fellow researchers, a lot of history and argument were within my grasp as an intermediate non-professional religious reader. Strong scholarship, solid-but-not-concise argument, and decent attention to the subject await the reader therein. Three and one-half stars.

  (out of 5 stars)

Sam Harris has long been a speaker and thinker whose ideas I enjoy hearing, especially in regards to some of his base-level anti-religious arguments. The End of Faith is a fine first effort which offers some fundamentally strong arguments against religion in general, and more precisely, against the irrationality of faith without evidence. The book loses its way at times, and the last chapter should never have been included.

Other reviewers comment on how strongly Harris singles out Islam in this book, specifically condemning numerous passages (at one point he even offers 3-4 pages of non-stop quotes from the Koran espousing violence and hatred for non-muslims). It is clear that Harris believes Islam is the primary threat to our safety in these modern times, and his argument is backed up by ample evidence that this is the case. I'll respond with three thoughts (*) on this at the end of the review so as not to derail anyone wanting me to get to the point here. Harris does hammer Christians and Jews hard as well, though certainly not with the focus directed at Muslims.

EoF offers a view similar to that which Bill Maher advocates at the end of his film Religilous, that non-religious people need to stand up strongly and be accounted. The era when religion can cause the end of civilization is upon us, and the ability of religion to move masses to murder and mayhem, not to mention nuclear war, is a primary concern for all of human civilization. In other words, dissent loudly or die from the irrationality and violent tendencies of religions. I've subscribed to his view before reading this book, and find Harris' arguments provide compelling testimony (not evidence as such) that there is some reason to be very concerned.

This book loses some points in the way it wraps up, especially Chapter 7, which involves an odd inclusion of discussion of self and mysticism. While I'm inclined to agree with Harris that mysticism is not necessarily religious, I feel he was trying to justify himself one last time and the result is a muddled conclusion to an otherwise solid effort. I very much enjoy philosophy of mind and egoism discussions, and while those subjects certainly apply to how we view and value religion, Harris' narrative of edgy concern followed through most of the book slides strangely into a fuzzy discussion out of place in the book. He cites Dennett and other mind-matter thinkers, so he does appear to have an empirical interest in such things, but I don't feel that he needed to (nor should have) included chapter 7 justifying his views that mysticism is available to non-religious. It just didn't jive with mood established previously.

My edition of EoF included an update at the end written by Harris, responding to several key criticisms leveled since the book's original publishing. I thought this section was a neat summary of Harris' responses and if you have watched or read any of Harris' talks, you've likely seen him perfect these responses over time.

I enjoyed Eof for the most part, minus the unnecessary chapter 7, and would recommend it to anyone concerned about the desires and actions of religious people everywhere, especially moderates, for whom Harris shows no sympathy nor gratitude. Four stars.

* In response to Harris' focus on Islam in this book, I'd like to elaborate a bit. Harris hammers Islam hard, and explicitly defines it as the primary source of concern in religion to day. Three points.

First, in support of Harris, I believe that he acknowleges quite clearly that viewing Islam as the key enemy of reason is not simply due to the fact that believers believe horrible things and are willing to do things just as horrible, it is a matter of social progress elsewhere that tends to make Judeo-Christian societies, perhaps, more tolerant and less likely to use literal interpretations of holy books as a basis for violent actions (however, I acknowlege that this is up for strong debate and depends greatly on how you define terms like 'violent actions' and 'tolerant'). In other words, it is important to note that the Crusades and especially the Inquisition showed how irrational violence can be encouraged through literal readings of the Bible. The difference, in the end, is temporal.

Second, I believe Harris somewhat misses the point of the suicide bombers he uses to convey his vision of Islam. He views Islam as more terroristic, more likely to kill civilians without mercy, less likely to listen to reason, and certainly more likely to be dangerous to us than any other religious fanatic, all due to his belief (which seems accurate) that the Koran is unequivocally in favor of violence against non-Muslims.

He singles out Islam because of their use of weapons and tactics, attributing such behavior to direct quotes from scripture, but Harris ignores the fact that most Muslim countries are in highly aggitated states, especially in places most likely fall victim to suicide bombers, and the available arsenal to such Muslim believers is very limited. They cannot raise armies of tanks, Apaches, and B2s to enforce their worldview. They can't even organize 'normal' militias as a means to gain or hold power (this is especially true in suicide bombing targets Iraq and Israel). They instill terror on the only level they know how to: blowing something up (which does not always include suicide bombing). I would postulate that organized Islamic states with a more 'sophisticated' terroristic arsenal would not need to rely so heavily on randomly bombing civilians. Torture prisons, embargos, invasion forces and occupation can create enormous states of panic and terror and all have much longer-lasting effects. Harris here either ignores or refuses to recognize such actions as implicitly terroristic, and by extension, does not equate such Judeo-Christian inspired terror as on the same plane as that created by Islam. I utterly disagree and given the information which has become public since Faith was publish concerning Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and waterboarding, have the advantage of understanding how our Christian nation can cheerlead such devestating and horrific behavior.

Finally, third, Harris takes the position that torture is justified under the Dershowitz proposition of the 'ticking time-bomb' even knowing the information is almost certainly going to be worthless, assuming that we would also be willing to bomb an area knowing we would kill innocent civilians. Where to begin on this one... The Dershowitz argument is quite the straw man because it never happens yet we always assume it does. Anyone with knowledge of an imminent threat is highly unlikely to give up the details if he is as blinded by his religious beliefs as Harris spends several chapters assuring us he is (in the case of a Muslim). KSM was tortured 6 times a day over a month's time, and the actual information recovered from this was almost certainly not timely, even if in the end it turned out to be accurate. If it takes 30 days of near-continuously drowning a man in order to get him to talk, there never was a ticking time-bomb to justify the torture in the first place.

In the ethical considerations of torturing a person who is more likely to be innocent than have useful knowledge, Harris compares the choice to whether to bomb a target knowing innocent civilians will be killed. He throws up this bit of a red herring, and I cannot believe he didn't remove this and pick a clearer example. Torturing innocent people is not in any way the same as attempting to neutralize a military target. Yes, in both cases innocents are harmed (Harris rightly calls both torture), but only in the second case is the effort made to specifically damage the enemy's ability to perform the same action against our side. Torturing many people in hopes that one might tell us where the ticking time-bomb is located is such a fruitless pursuit that we are almost certainly more ethical to carpet bomb a location full of civilians and military targets than we are to specificially target individuals knowing they are likely to be innocent. Again, if there is a ticking time-bomb, the odds that you will capture and torture the person with just the right knowledge in time to defuse the bomb is incredibly small, enough to define anyone behind the action as evil under any rubric you choose to follow. The odds of destroying the fighting capability of a military unit with the precise (relative to previous methods) munitions available today is very high, to the point where we can often avoid civilian casualties (though by no means always). Straw man: remove thy self from this discussion.

I hope to find out Harris has backed off this proposition given that it is entirely disingenuous and dangerous. (I emphasize here that Harris IS NOT advocating torture, this was a thought exercise in the middle of a discussion of ethics).