With arguably no topic in America more contentious and hotly debated than religion (oddly enough), it is important to ponder the rationality of stated and unstated religious wars (or just one-on-one killings for the same purposes). In absence of a compulsory high-school course on “comparative world religion and philosophy,” this book, as a minimum, provides a few interesting observations. Overall, an entertaining read, sure to fuel endless passionate debates (in which I have absolutely no intention to partake). ( )

Harris and Hitchens take advantage of Christians being 'out' during the Bush years. I just wanted the singing circles outside the Student Union to go away. ( )

Although I have some reserves regarding some passages about the US' foreign policy, this book is definitely a keeper. His demonstration on torture was extremely disturbing, not to my taste since I ended up with the very same conclusion as his... while trying to find another solution which I couldn't, but overall this is a book to read for anybody who believes he/she's got enough neurons to think and reason.
You may not agree with everything, but as a believer here's an author you'll have a hard time contradict without absurd reasoning. We certainly need more people like him out there. ( )

In The End of Faith, Sam Harris hits directly at the heart of religion. Harris uses logic, science, reasoning, and philosophy to disprove religion, just as he did in Letter to a Christian Nation. ( )

Sam Harris is one of the select band who are often collectivelydescribed as the 'New Atheists'. Along with Richard Dawkins, DanielDennet and PZ Myers he has put his head above the pulpit and asked that he be counted.This book starts off as a powerful essay against religion. Importantlyhe isn't reserving his ire for any particular religion. But he isaiming his criticism at all religions.The reason is simple. By their very nature religions don't countenancethe fact that any one other religion can be right. In one Ann Coultervideo for instance, she parroted one party line where Jews are 'just'unperfected Christians. The problem is that this attitude, whencombined with teachings which instruct the believer to kill those ofother religions and with weapons that make instantaneous genocide apossibility is a very dangerous attitude. In fact the dangers dwarf allprevious dangers from warfare. Simply put, in the Cold War erastability was maintained by the tasteless acronym 'MAD' (mutuallyassured destruction), but in the modern era MAD no longer holds sway.After all, if your people are wiped out on mass following a strikeagainst the infidels then everyone in your country would be a matyr!After this powerful start Sam Harris moves on to the subject ofSpirituality. This might sound like a bit of an odd direction for sucha book to go in, but the thesis is that humans are spiritual and can beso quite separately from any given religion. There follows a longtreatise upon the nature of reality, and how much of what we experienceis filtered by our conciousness. This was of less interest to me,though the conclusions drawn are incisive and interesting.Unfortunately this part of the book for me dragged horribly, especiallysome of the notes which included long asides on the dual nature ofexperience and philisophical attempts to prove which is more 'real' -pragmatism or realism. By the end of the end note, I had to admit Ididn't really care...So over all the book was interesting and an enjoyable read. However,the first half of the book is much more to my liking than the second.One point that I did disagree with strongly seemed to me (as anon-American) to be written with a very distorted view. At one point,when discussing the immorality of terrorist acts Harris takes exceptionto what he describes as the Chomsky school of apologists. His argumentis that when engaged in wars like the Gulf Wars (I and II) and theirequivalents the US is trying not to cause 'collateral damage', and thatthis intent to minimise non-combatant casualities marks the Americansout from terrorists as being on the 'moral high ground'.This is, of course utter poppycock. The US military machine may havetechnological weapons which lower the collateral damage, but bothAmerican foreign policy and the use of military technology repeatedlycauses massive civilian deaths. From the use of cluster bombs (the UScurrently refuses to ratify any treaty to stop deployment) to support todirty proxy wars, to claim a moral high ground is laughable, ifunderstandable given the blinkered American view of the world... But this is, in the context of the book a small point (it just irked me at the time!) ( )