The End of Faith

We believe that the sun is the center of the solar system . We know that it is true . We do not bow down every day and face the sun . We do not worship the sun like our ancestors did before . We know that the world is round and shaped liked a sphere . We know that we will not fall off from the world if we go too far away from land . We do not fear to venture out in the vast expanse of that ocean for we know that it will just take us

back from where we started . All of this we know . We are sure of it . Science explains it . There is reason and logic behind it all

It is this same logic that we try to find when one encounters the book entitled , The End of Faith by Sam Harris . As a literary account of a single day in the life of a religiously challenged person , in this case a suicide bomber , The End of Faith provides a different view of faith and the dynamics that exist between the different types of religions These religions , according to Sam Harris , are all equally uncontaminated by evidence ' This short discourse will therefore try to shed more light on these differences in religion and the dangers of being extremist , on one hand , and being too moderate , on the other

Everyday people go out and visit chapels . Every minute someone is kneeling down in a church and praying to God . Every second around the world people are calling to God for blessing and guidance . If you ask them if there is a God they will answer YES ' with the same conviction as they would when asked if the world is round . They believe firmly in a God whose presence cannot be proved and disproved . There is no reason or logic behind God . Science cannot explain God . We know this . We believe there is a God . We have faith

While this is generally the type of faith that people try to explain or expound upon , Sam Harris takes a different approach to all of this . He examines the nature of faith and human belief by confronting the ideologies that exist with regard to the freedom of religion (or in this case freedom of belief . The utility of belief then becomes dependent upon the logic and coherence that it brings in relation to the real world . This pragmatic approach finds support in the argument of Sam Harris with regard to the failure of beliefs to furnish any form of empirical evidence on the matter . As such , religion and faith soon become only functions of lingering mental illness that dangerously manifest themselves in extreme cases at certain times

It can certainly be argued , however , that no one puts all his faith in something whose outcome is already certain . We never hear the people say I have faith in you ' to the champion who is sure to win on 1 ,000 ,000 is to 1...