The End of Faith

Sam Harris has been shaking people up recently. His book The End of Faith has stirred up a lot of controversy, not the least for his assertion that religious moderates are more to blame for the current culture wars than the religious extremists actually killing people. Here's a 20 minute talk he gave recently on the subject. I like his use of the term calling a spade a spade, which are exactly the words I've been using in hopes that the spineless democrats in the US will finally stand up and stand for something.

Harris' book starts out as a vigorous polemic that says 1) most of the horrors visited by man upon himself have roots in religion, and 2) religions are fundamentally intolerant, especially of other religions.

My simple logic has always been that if one religion is right, the others all have to be wrong. Therefore none of them are right.

Interestingly, his last chapter muses on the curious divide between East and West on the notions of consciousness and religion. Why, he asks, has Western thought never left the dogma stage, always asserting there's a Higher Being that we talk to in prayer, whereas Eastern thought has explored the nature of consciousness and studied the many levels possible?