I'm nominating this book as my top read of the month. I'll even throw it into the running for best book I've read all year, but its sharing some hard fought brain territory with several exceptionally written books. Also, keep in mind that the year is not entirely over. Before I start on praise, I'd like to briefly touch on the two points of contention I have with this book, just to clear the air, so to speak. First off, Sam Harris somewhat haphazardly criticizes Noam Chomsky and I will lay out my case later on in the review as to why I feel this way. It would probably be prudent to also mention—before spurious accusations of idolatry are leveled—that although I've read several of Chomsky's books, I do not believe he is above criticism. Actually, my complaint isn't with the specific charges that Harris levels at Chomsky, its the terse and somewhat superfluous nature of them. The other complaint is his moralistic rationalizing of torture. I will return to elaborate on these dissensions later, and now on to the praise.
Near the very beginning of the book, Harris begins to rend the idea of biblical literalism to shreds. This is an idea in American Christendom which has spiraled out of the realm of personal faith, invading public and political life in America. You cannot simply practice your faithful meditations, kneeling bedside with hands folded, you must accept a literal translation of the bible and not only that, you must intervene to save others from eternal hellfire. Harris' criticism of Christian faith is flawless, presenting new arrangements of arguments and rarely recycling others material (although he does call on Bertrand Russell with some frequency). He also excellently attacks the broad spectrum of "faith" or unjustified belief without evidence, again with superb argumentation.
A large portion of the book is dedicated to what Harris dubs "The Problem of Islam". He analyzes polling data from territories with high Muslim populations pertaining to suicide bombing. Indeed, the polling data shows an alarmingly high general acceptance of the practice which is undoubtedly cause for concern. Also, Harris extracts all of the excerpts from the Quran in which heretics, infidels, or non-believers are specifically ordered to be killed or punished which appallingly takes up nearly five-and-a-half pages. The most often leveled charge against the New Atheists (Are they even considered "new" anymore? One of them is dead.) and Sam Harris is often specifically accused of this, is "Islamophobia". Not only is the word a bit of a psychological misnomer, is it really Islamophobia when most of what Sam Harris is doing is analyzing/presenting polling data and quoting the Koran? I would argue strongly in the contrary.
The first issue I take with the book is the fleeting attack on Noam Chomsky. Rather than providing an overview on political belief and how it functions to cloud rational judgements (like in Michael Shermer's The Believing Brain) Harris singles out Chomsky's brand of leftist ideology and fleetingly takes a jab at him. He starts by tying this into his criticism of Islam. Commonly, leftist ideology takes the stance that Chomsky embraces, that the reason Muslims hate the United States is because of the United State's past foreign policy transgressions not because of the inherit positions that must be taken on a literal reading of the Quran. Although I partially agree with Harris, to summarily pass over the political history of the region is tantamount to a failure of analyzing the full picture. Regional politics is much more complicated than most people can imagine and you can't singly point to either Islam or political history then announce "See, there's your problem right there." The two are irrevocably tied together, interwoven, and doubtlessly there is a "Problem With Islam" in the region. To conclude, while Harris' critique of Chomsky compromises with acknowledgements of the factual basis of Chomsky's arguments, Harris also doesn't attempt to defend the U.S.'s past actions, and even concedes many of Chomsky's points, yet Harris wraps up his critique by accusing Chomsky of moral blindness. And while I partially agree (Chomsky focuses almost entirely on the United States, it's client state's histories, and their transgressions), Chomsky has written thousands of extremely well-researched pages (which itself is somewhat of an understatement) probing into the politics of the region and deserves more than three pages of criticism in order to launch a properly argued critique of his stances. In the end, all of this is entirely superfluous to the overall purpose of the book.
The second dissension to examine is Harris' justification of torture. He does this by a spectacular bit of moralistic reasoning. How can we reconcile our willingness to wage war with the use of torture? Slowly, (although this is accomplished second-hand, by using other people's arguments) he begins slipping down the long, upturned waterboard* slope towards embracing the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. This is a section which I encourage you to read for yourself and reading it again makes me doubt whether Sam Harris actually embraces the stance or is playing the moralistic "devil's advocate". In the end, he makes the very valid point that there is already scientific evidence that our ethical intuitions are driven by considerations of proximity and emotional perceptibility. Whats more, that these intuitions are fallible. While this quarrel perhaps appears nebulous by objective standards, it does seem to me that if Harris could possibly harbor ideas that State-endorsed torture of unproven, judicially invisible Muslims can be justified in certain situations I find the inclination rather ironic considering he was earlier accusing Chomsky of moral blindness.
Despite these two points, this book is a fantastic read and Harris makes several exceptionally impeccable arguments. Often, people want to read books with which they overall intuitively agree with. However, one of the reasons I've enjoyed this book so thoroughly is that I didn't entirely agree with it, I see the points of contention as almost boosts to my enjoyment of this book and there are a few smaller disagreements with which I've not tackled out of brevity. This work challenged me in a way which few atheist books do. In the end, books should confront your conventions and modes of thinking so that you can form new ideas which will shape your own world-view, its the challenging aspect which makes for excellent literature.
*I also encourage you to read Christopher Hitchens' account of being waterboarded which also appears in his collection of essays Arguably.
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