Absorbing book, but lacks objectivity and realism - Rated 
I found both of Harris's books on atheism, 'The End of Faith' and 'Letter To A Christian Nation' fascinating reading - I was enthralled - particularly the latter book. And it's that one that I have most in mind in my review below (for some reason I am unable to place it in the review section of 'Letter To A Christian Nation' - the system keeps telling me I've already got a review there - but I absolutely don't. So, so as not to waste a lengthy review, I give it here. Thanks.
Harris does make some good points in his 'Letter'. Christians aren't nearly critical enough about their beliefs, and they need to be challenged every now and then about their rigid beliefs, how their views affect others, etc. So, to the extent that this is a challengling little read, then I welcome it. Further, Harris's section on stem-cell research I found wonderfully illuminating, and I believe it has even helped to change my thoughts on the subject. There are other sections which I personally found helpful.
But often, like Dawkins, Harris doesn't seem to attempt to hide his detestation of monotheistic religions, and Christianity in particular. He is too angry for his own good, thus clouding his judgement and weakening his arguments.
Clearly Harris is an atheist fundamentalist of incomparable proportions. He quite openly, and repeatedly (especially in 'The End of Faith', but also in this book) calls out for eradication of religion! In this he sounds frighteningly like the autocratic and intolerant ranting of someone like Stalin, Pol Pot or Hitler.
The book is written in the first person, directly to the Christian believer. Thus Harris tells the reader (who he assumes to be a Christain) what he or she believes. This can be rather presumptous and sometimes simply wrong. At a number of places, I found myself saying - 'No, I don't believe that'. He can tell me what he believes, but Not what every Christain believes.
For example, he spends consideralbe time talking about 'criminal' attitudes of 'Christians', such as their shunning of birth control, etc. Here, he completely fails to mention that the majority of the world's Christian believers (hundreds of millions of evangelicals and and many, many Catholics, too) have no aversion to the use of condoms etc. It is simply not an issue to them.
One very notable aspect of the book is that, numerous times when Harris seeks to provide evidence of religion being intolerant, or violent, etc - he gives NO examples from Christianity, but instead makes reference to Islamic thought and Islamic terrorist activities! These are referred to again and again. Yet this is a book supposedly aimed at 'a Christian Nation'. In these instances, Harris is completely unable to find Any parallels in Christianity. To say that this weakens his overall argument is an understatement! It becomes rather farcical. His book might better be called 'Letter to an Islamic Nation'.
In any case, even when Harris does succeed in pinpointing a less than honourable incident from 'Christian' history - e.g. the Crusades of a Millennium ago - this simply goes to show how Un-Christian such an act was - contrary to the teaching and spirit of Christ. To show that Christians - assuming they were Christians, because calling yourself a Christian doesn't, in itself, make you one - have done wrong - in no way proves that Christianity itself is wrong. It only shows that mankind is prone to wrongdoing, which is precisely a root teaching of Christianity (which also teaches that it is solely through dying to self in Christ that we can conquer that fleshly nature). In no way, unfortunately, does being a Christian, of itself make believers immune to wrongdoing.
There are many good points in this book, and I'm glad I read it. But Harris's overt bias and lack of sound reasoning make this little book impossible to take on board. Far worse, the author seems completely unaware that a world with no-one but atheists would by no means be a peaceful one (how naive to even think it!). Man is greedy and power-lusting and, despite his intelligence, often foolish. Atheism is unable to quench these base natures. The teachings and Spirit of Christ, on the other hand, speak directly and constantly to these human failings. A world with a universal atheistic worldview - full of fundamentalist ahteists like Dawkins or Harris - would surely be hell on earth. Besides, it is absurd to think that it will ever happen. Man is a spiritual being with a natural propensity to believe in 'something out there'. Always has been, and, I believe, always will be.
Most important book written in the last fifty years - Rated 
The title says what I think. I have just been through the dozens of reviews above and I am absolutely astounded at how some people can "think". If you had not read the book, but only the reviews, you would think that Harris was not able to philosophise or think things through, or take account of the "spiritual" needs of mankind. It is quite distressing how often people will use emotive terms to oppose him - "rant", "narrow", "intolerant", etc, without actually coolly justifying their position, or facing how he REALLY writes about openness to reason and evidence and justification, or how he is just as opposed to the thought processes of any other religion as he is to those of Islam.
The other really depressing thing about this is how people simply do not understand that "atheism" is just not "another faith"! Listen to me. There is a race of intelligent chocolate biscuits living on the planet Neptune. They have been communicating with me and I am going to start my own spiritual movement based on their guidance. You don't believe me, do you. So that means that you "have faith" that "intelligent chocolate biscuits" don't live on Neptune? Your rejection of my current lack of objective scientific proof for this proposition is not "another form of faith", is it? Is it? Please, just think about it for about five seconds! If you're an atheist about Father Christmas and the Great Pumpkin, but you don't see your disbelief as an "alternative faith" (I'm an "asantaclausist", just because there is a word for it now!) - why is disbelief in gods any different? They're just another concept, handed down from primitive desert-dwelling tribes. You're only an "aNeptuneBiscuisist", which is "just another form of faith".
If you don't like Sam Harris's personal style or some other aspects of his thinking, but you still think you have the guts to confront thinking about religion and atheism and agnosticism - along with an awful lot of other things - try looking up Stephen Law on the net, author of "The Philosophy Gym", and THEN confront the arguments without letting them have anything to do with your perceptions of Mr Harris's "shortcomings". Try dismantling the arguments about how there is an evil God and we have to deal with the "problem of Good", and then start being an agnostic about an evil god as well as a good one.
The world needs the intellectual input of Mr Harris and his like. And yes, it is perfectly possible to use intellectual processes and reason to discuss and legislate about - rather than blow up or excommunicate - animal experimentation, and hunting or looking after endangered species, and the supporters and opponents of such experiments, and those ethically deficient types who would support the use of torture in places like Guantanamo Bay, and whether we should reasonably discuss reasons for the use of abortion rather than killing doctors who may have a well-thought through position for working in abortion clinics. And don't jump on that as if I'm saying "all religious people blow up abortion clinics", of course I'm not. But the ones who DO, ARE religious. And they will not discuss evidence for and against reincarnation before arriving at a position on it which is STILL open to further discussion in the light of possible future evidence - unlike people like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins.
Utterly brilliant. - Rated
I really can't begin to articulate or do justice to the quality and lucidity of the arguments put forward by Harris within this book, so I'll just say this;
If you have an open, intelligent and enquiring mind - Read it.
If you want a better understanding of why the world is in such a mess - Read it
If you are interested in ethics, moral identity and politics - Read it.
If you are intrigued by the nature of belief - Read it
The end of faith cannot come soon enough. - Rated
It is a peculiar fact that the quickest way for an atheist to rile a person of faith is to take an interest in their holy book. Simply quoting a few passages from the Bible, for example the ones dealing with burning witches or selling daughters into slavery, will be enough to label you "militant" or "fundamentalist", and you will be accused of "reading out of context", something the believer, of course, never does. In this brilliant and important book, Sam Harris not only quotes chapter and verse to highlight some of the terrible things the Bible and the Koran actually say, he gets to the heart of what faith is (it's "what credulity becomes when it finally achieves escape velocity from the constraints of terrestrial discourse") and why it is dangerous and should no longer be held in high esteem ("while it has never been difficult to meet your maker, in fifty years it will simply be too easy to drag everyone else along to meet him with you").
It's an uphill task. Having a strong faith in one or other of the many gods on offer (apart from the ones, like the flying spaghetti monster, that "obviously" do not exist) is often seen as a good thing, even by those who are not themselves particularly religious. Religion is widely assumed to be the ultimate source of justice, decency, morality, discipline, and meaning in life. In the wake of a suicide bombing, however, "extremist" replaces "pious" as the adjective of choice by politicians and clerics, who assert that theirs is a religion of "peace" and "community" and in no way responsible for acts of violence or sectarianism. So reflexive is this response that it may well constitute a sincere belief. Harris has an important message for anyone who takes comfort in such platitudes. One of the central themes of his book "is that religious moderates are themselves the bearers of a terrible dogma: they imagine that the path to peace will be paved once each of us has learned to respect the unjustified beliefs of others." These same religious moderates, "by failing to live by the letter of the texts, while tolerating the irrationality of those who do... betray faith and reason equally."
Sooner or later in any debate involving the devout, they will demand that their unfounded religious beliefs are tolerated and respected, but what they really want is for these beliefs to be privileged and put beyond criticism. Any adverse comment is quickly labelled an "insult" and therefore to be neither tolerated nor respected. The fatwa on Salman Rushdie was a high-profile example of this widespread double standard, and it is a chilling fact that "the justice of killing apostates is a matter of mainstream acceptance, if not practice," among Muslims (better wait until Sharia law is in force before gathering the stones). "If a Muslim renounces Islam, even if a new convert reverts to his previous faith, the penalty is death." Respect? Tolerance? The clue to Islam's real attitude is in the meaning of the word: submission.
Any religious person requesting that their beliefs be tolerated is guilty of hypocrisy, since intolerance is "intrinsic to every creed": all other traditions "are mere repositories of error or, at best, dangerously incomplete." In what sense does a Muslim respect or tolerate the Christian belief in the resurrection? In what sense does a Christian respect or tolerate the Muslim belief that "Muhammad ascended to heaven on a winged horse"? Respect and tolerance are secular, not religious, values.
On the science versus religion (or reason versus faith) debate, Harris is in no doubt which wins when it comes to advancing knowledge. While religion passes down ancient ignorance as though it contained primordial truths, science "represents our most committed effort to verify that our statements about the world are true". The attitude of an authoritarian church toward science is well-known, and Harris reminds us that "Galileo was not absolved of heresy until 1992". Less well-known is the incredible fact that "not a single leader of the Third Reich - not even Hitler himself - was ever excommunicated". "This inversion of priorities" - the Catholic church turning a blind eye to genocide while getting its theological knickers in a twist over sex - "falsifies our ethics".
It's easy to see how science has replaced religion in explaining why the world is the way it is (notwithstanding the depressing numbers of creationists who still roam the planet, foaming at the mouth). It takes a little more effort to see how "a rational approach to ethics" can replace the moralizing and sanctions-based stance of religion (such an approach "becomes possible once we realize that questions of right and wrong are really questions about the happiness and suffering of sentient creatures"). Most intriguing of all, however, is the possibility that faith and religion are in fact obstacles to a spiritual life and to mysticism. To the surprise of some, perhaps, Harris admits that "there is clearly a sacred dimension to our existence, and coming to terms with it could well be the highest purpose of human life."
The word "spirituality", however, has become debased in our culture. It's what "cretins have in place of imagination" as Charlie Brooker puts it, and Harris agrees that the term has "many connotations that are, frankly, embarrassing." But, after two hundred pages exposing the preposterous claims of religion and debunking faith, he's not about to jeopardize his atheist credentials. It must be possible, he argues, to reclaim spirituality from the confusions of faith, "to bring reason, spirituality, and ethics together in our thinking about the world."
"Claiming to know things we manifestly do not know" is never justified. "Whenever a man imagines that he need only believe the truth of a proposition, without evidence... he becomes capable of anything." Dostoyevsky and his poputchiks are wrong: when you stop believing in God, you are likely to become more, not less, discriminating in your beliefs.
An excellent book - Rated
Well written, well argued thesis. If I had to read any of the 'new atheist' books it would be this one.
Aside from the frankly amusing one-star reviews I would also ignore the very lengthy review which starts banging on about reductionism for no particular reason.
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