The end of Faith: religion, terror, and the future of reason by Sam Harris wwNorton 2004
Harris argues that "fondamentalism" is a faulty system; so flawed that it endagers its adherents and everyone else. It is dangerous because it is hermetic. Suppose someone from 7th or 14century were brought back to modern society: he would be an idiot, in nearly every way. "His beliefs about geography, astronomy and medicine would embaress even a child, but he would know more or less everything there is to know God. Religion , for Harris is not a branch of knowledge but a body of dogma that pretends to tell us something about the world.
Harris identifys Islam as a belief system in love with death, and in using the Sunny philosopher
Sayyid Qutb( who denounced Jews for their "craven desire to live") as an illustration
Harris states that even socially progressive religion privileges faith, creating an environment within which fanticism can blossom; he states that the totalirarian regimes that rejected organized religion were nonetheless so irrational that they qualify as perverted religions.( North Korea, for example, is a "cargo cult"). The key Harris 's statement is that reason is open to debate and argument, where faith is impervious.
Harris makes his case pugnaciously and for long stretches compellingly, but he does not answer the basic question :Why religion?
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