Book: The End of Faith

I have to say I really enjoyed reading The End of Faith by Sam Harris. When I was at the TechEd speakers dinner in Auckland this week, I mentioned it to Steve Riley and I noticed his eyes light up. He'd also read it and found it pretty fascinating stuff. Sam sees any form of religious faith as pretty irrational. Having grown up myself through the Catholic system and now being outside of it, I do struggle to understand how sensible and intelligent people can believe so much of the doctrines put forward by most religions today. I now see most of it as patently absurd and what puzzles me is why it took me so long to come to that conclusion.

However in this book, Sam Harris really struggles most with the Islamic world. He argues that it simply isn't possible for Muslims to integrate in any other society apart from a strictly Islamic one and that at best, they can only see it as a temporary state of affairs if they have to. But I'd have to say that Hindus, Jews, Buddhists and Christians would find his writing pretty confronting as well. Given the picture of the future that Sam Harris paints, I can only hope some of his predictions don't come to pass.

Yet, this is definitely recommended and challenging reading for anyone pondering their place in the world, whether or not they agree with Sam Harris' conclusions.