Since its publication in 2004, Sam Harris’ The End of Faith has been widely read and thoroughly discussed. However, I’ll provide a brief summary before making my comments in case I’m not the only person who waited so long to read Harris’ book. Harris argues that religious faith is both irrational on the part of those who embrace it and extremely dangerous to everyone on the planet. It is irrational because it involves accepting claims for which one has insufficient evidence, and it is dangerous because of the desire to either subjugate or exterminate non-believers that is inspired by many religious texts. Harris then asserts that we can develop a more rational morality than we find in religions by seeing others’ suffering as a source of our obligation, and he ends by arguing that there is a legitimate role for rational spirituality and mysticism as explorations of human consciousness.
The first part of Harris’ book includes some valuable points. For example, he argues that religious moderates—even though they may not take the violence- or hatred-inspiring claims written in their sacred texts literally—are still responsible for the pressure in our society to treat such irrational beliefs as somehow “beyond” reason and therefore as immune to rational criticism. Although religious moderates may not themselves be violent or hateful, they are in no position to condemn people who follow the instructions in a book that they themselves hold sacred. Further, Harris points out that the extent to which religious moderates are moderate is a direct result of the extent to which they are less religious; when a religious moderate chooses not to stone an adulterer to death, it is a result of the external influence of modern culture and not a result of some sort of moral development within the religion itself since the sacred text remains the same. The first part of the book is worth reading because of this valuable point and some other interesting discussions.
I had a lot of problems with Harris’ positive argument toward the end of his book, though. In his chapter on morality, Harris begins by asserting a form of hedonism in which something falls within the sphere of ethical relevance “only to the degree that anyone is in a position to suffer on account of [it]” (footnote on p. 272). This claim is far from self-evident (especially in light of the fact that the word ‘ethics’ comes from a Greek word that means ‘character,’ not one that means ‘other people’s suffering’), but Harris offers no real argument and expects the reader to simply accept his definition. His only attempt at a justification is to argue for intuitionism by successfully conflating many different cognitive acts under one sloppy concept (pp. 182-4). One cannot help wondering why, exactly, Harris thinks that his ethical intuitions are more reliable than a religious person’s intuition that some god exists.
More problems arise as soon as Harris starts talking about the nature of consciousness. He seems to think that we have no way of knowing whether or not consciousness continues after death, and therefore life after death remains an open question. However, as many people have noticed, there is an obvious dependence of consciousness in the mind upon the physical structures of the brain; for example, a person who suffers brain damage tends to suffer damage to the capacities of her conscious mind as well. On a less severe level, changes in our states of consciousness such as going to sleep are correlated with changes in our brain activity. Further, none of us have any memories of being conscious prior to having a brain, so it seems that the two are inextricably connected. It feels ridiculous to have to point these things out.
Another issue is Harris’ promotion of spiritual and meditative practices. He seems to believe that there is some sort of happiness that can be reached only by transforming one’s consciousness and losing one’s sense of self. The problem, however, with these sorts of endeavors is that they draw one away from external reality (you know, the place where we have to find food and shelter if we want to survive), not to mention the tragedy of willfully trying to escape one’s self, the most precious thing one has in terms of both minimal survival and happiness. Anyone who delights in losing touch with external reality and destroying her sense of self is going to have serious problems getting by, let alone being happy. And as Harris should have pointed out, those who engage in this kind of self- and reality-deserting meditation only moderately, rather than devoting every moment to it at the cost of losing their lives, are only rational to the extent that they are not mystics, rather than being some sort of rational mystics. Just because there are strange things that one can do to one’s consciousness through meditation does not mean that doing those things is rational.
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