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So, I recently got done reading a book called The End of Faith by Sam Harris. In it, he goes to show that faith is the prime factor in irrational decisions and injustices throughout history.
First, he calls for an end to all established religions: especially Islam, due to the number of verses the Muslim community in the Middle east uses to support it's suicide bombings and violence. Because there is little to no moderate Islam in the middle east, and little tolerance for liberal positions on Scripture, the area has become religiously stagnant and their religious texts and faith is what drives them to violence and rationalizes their violence. If they were a faithless society, it would remove the justification for their actions. We can also go into how Christianity has used it texts and faiths to savagely murder millions, but since a majority of it's followers are now moderate, our largest concern is the end of Islam, or at least fundamental Islam.
Secondly, he makes the case that we can establish moral truths without the need for religion. He basically founds this on the principle that almost all of us want happiness and happiness for others. This is a general concept, so don't bother getting picky about it. If we establish that it is in our nature to find happiness and to provide happiness, we can then extend this into what brings happiness and what doesn't in a rational way. BUT - we can only approach rational morality this way if we first throw away faith-based rationality. An example would be: God doesn't like homosexuality, therefore it makes me unhappy to see gay people, therefore gay people should be outlawed. This is an irrational claim based on the beliefs of an unresponsive invisible being. Imagine the case where anti-gay advocates had to base their arguments on rationality: "We want to end homosexuality because they don't produce babies, and that means it wastes energy, which makes society more tired and less happy!" A bit harder to argue then the typical "GOD WILL BURN YOU" argument, eh? As our society becomes more secularized and less religionized, we will see more rational morality, such as gay unions/marriage, female/male equality, drug laws that actually make sense, etc. As we can see from the past, Religion is always playing catch-up adaptation with modern day secular morality and science.
Thirdly, he claims we can have spiritual experiences without Religion, mainly concentrating on our levels of consciousness. We still don't know why we are self-aware and other creatures are not. There's yet to be a biological marker found that says "these creatures will be self-aware and these creatures will not." The spirituality Harris puts forth is based mainly around our interaction with our self-awareness and how we can manipulate or experience reality differently. This is most commonly accomplished through meditation, drug use, and other ways yet to be discovered.
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That's a basic summary of the book. I think I agree with most of what he has to say. It's difficult to present the book since it covers an insane number of topics on culture and society and government and of course, religion, but I tried. There are pluses to Religion, such as establishing a community, goodwill services, etc, but these can all be accomplished just as easily through secular mechanisms instead of religious ones. Faith is, in a nutshell, the largest hindrance we've had to peace and justice in this world. If we look at the different Religions, the ones we consider most moral are the ones most closely tied to secular rationality, not faith based rationality.
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