An interesting and good book, with a few very noticeable flaws. The End of Faith takes on religious beliefs in general, something very few atheist authors are willing to do.

The book can be divided into two parts, the first and largest part is a critique of faith and religious beliefs in any form. The shorter part is some speculation on where morality and society would go if purged of faith.

The first half is the stronger of the two. He opens with a strong indictment of religious moderates for providing cover to the fanatics on their sides. Then goes into why faith is not a valid grounds for any belief. This is followed by a discussion of the dangers of Christianity and Islam. This section makes the important and subtle point that Islam is more dangerous then Christianity. But that the reason it is more dangerous has as much to do with Christianities weakness in the west as with any inherent difference in how violent the religions are.

The second part starts by explaining how science and morality are linked. And then goes into a discussion of moral reasoning and rational atheist morality. Finally there is a section on consciousness, science and morality. Much of this is speculation on how bringing consciousness under the banner of solid science will help to bring morality in general into the realm of science and logic.

So where does the book fall down? The most significant is that Harris seems too impressed with Buddhism, meditation and certain elements (such as reincarnation) that are related to it. He does draw a distinction between the religious elements that should be discarded and the parts that are open to scientific investigation. But he places a lot on the side of needing further investigation, he seems unaware that much of this has been discredited as thoroughly the Shroud of Turin. For a book that claims to be arguing for atheism it is an odd problem.

Other problems that jumped out at me where his weak discussion of the Iraq war, his comment on the atheist / communist link, and the lack of any space given over to religions other then Christianity and Islam.

His discussion of the Iraq war is the worst section of the book. He tries to draw a sharp line between the actions of Saddam Hussein and terrorists and the actions of the US and the Bush administration, with the dark side unrelentingly bad and evil and the good side clearly justified and right. And it just doesn't work. More over it is one that doesn't need to be drawn, it is possible to understand that we are better then terrorists while recognizing that our behavior exists on a grey scale shared with the terrorists.

The atheist / communist link is a small point but it needs more the hand waving dismissal. And the same goes for covering other religions. Even just a few paragraphs on Hinduism, Buddhism and other religions would have helped bring some depth to the book.

Still, overall the book is quite good. His general attack on any form of faith and/or religious based beliefs is the core of the book and quite strong. His argument can be summed up as nothing more then the validity of beliefs is based on how well they map to reality and evidence and science our the tools for judging that validity. But he lays this down in great detail over several chapters, explaining each point along the way.

Jay