My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Thought provoking read, which is what I think anyone asks for when reading a book of this nature, a book the delves into questions of religion truth and utility, ethics and consciousness. I don't necessarily agree with all of Harris's points, but he makes strong arguments to support his positions, and truly gives his reader good points to chew on and reflect upon. I was particularly interested in his discussion near the end of the book, concentrating solely on the concept of consciousness, as well as ethics, from a scientific viewpoint. I think much of ethics is not understood by the general public, primarily the necessity of a divine being for ethics to exist, so this was a very relevant conversation for our times. I believe that Harris' most recent book, "The Moral Landscape," addresses these issues, so I will probably find myself reading that in the near future.
There are two primary aspects of the book that stands out to me. First, is Harris' treatment of Islam, and how he sees that impacting future relations. Second, mentioned previously, is the reality of spiritual experiences, consciousness, without faith. Harris sees Islam as very dangerous for the future of current civilization. His reasoning, in a nutshell, is that Islam theology is currently where Christian theology was approximately 600 years ago. Well, 600 years ago, Christianity was conducting the Inquisition against witches and pogroms against Jews, killing thousands upon thousands of people. The danger, as Harris sees it, is that modern technology, particularly modern weaponry, could result in those thousands of people being millions of people. I think Harris acknowledges that such literalism in holy book interpretation is not Islam's province alone, but he asserts that the literalism in the West and the Judeo-Christian traditions have had the filter of reason to weed out the absurd from those religious texts (Deuteronomy, after all, if interpreted literally, would support a whole bunch of killing, maybe even me), whereas such has not taken place in Islam yet. I am still digesting Harris's thoughts here, but I imagine it will be interesting to see how the relationship between a rational secular world and certain fundamentalist strains of Islam progresses.
I mentioned in my the short review on Goodreads that I think people often misunderstand ethics by finding no place for it outside the existence of a divine being. From a purely philosophical point of view, the ethical systems of John Stuart Mill, Aristotle, Hume, Locke, and Kant, among others, do not rely on such a being, while others, such as Thomas Aquinas and Augustine, do. While I enjoy this discussion, what really caught me from Harris's book is his use of the concept of consciousness to argue for "spiritual" experience that have no divine being. Its not a new idea to me - after all, much of Buddhism is about spiritual experiences with no belief in God - but the tying of consciousness to science, and Harris's assertion that eventually, science will be able to document such experiences as it continues to understand the brain, neurology, and its relation to what we deem as consciousness. As Harris notes, in the West, we have essentially relegated spiritual experience completing to the realm of the religious, and there may not be a real good reason to do so. Thus, one other idea that I continue to chew on after reading this book is how, with a "western" mentality of focus on science and rationality, and absent any religious connotation, what spiritual experiences can be had.
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