Bob just wrote me to say that he is reading a very provocative book by Sam Harris, called the "ENd of Faith". He said that he sees this book as carrying the "one universe paradigm" to its logical conclusion. Interested, David or Eugene? He thinks it would be a great book for future discussions!!! According to Bob, Mr Harris does give validity to spiritual experience and expression but asks us to think about our faith as presented through our 'traditions". Bob tried to copy a telling quote from the book for this forum,but apparentlty it didn't go through. So, I am just relating this to you for him. What do you guys think about reading together something like that? Or has someone out there already read it?
Thank you, Marion, for forwarding my aborted suggestion for a possible book discussion, in order to perhaps "extend" our discussions beyond the scriptural.
I have been unable to put this book by Harris down, so persuasive are his arguments. In my few scant exchanges about it with Marion, she has said that she is a bit fearful of it, lest she come out of a reading of it nothing more than a vague sort of "humanist." But far from negating the value and validity of spirtitual experience, which the author extols even from his standpoint as a neuroscientist, the point he is making is that only secular humanism is going to prevent us all from killing each other over ancient texts, with their proposterous propostitons that are utterly and by their own self-proclaimed "sacredness" beyone rational criticism, and with their "any atrocity is permissible in the service of blind faith" systems that have grown up around those ancient texts. (History both distant and recent is full of such brutality.) Christianity, Judaism and Islam are all equally fanatical and extreme in their core beliefs, and claiming to be "moderate" only means that you are, in Harris's phrase, nothing more than a "failed fundamentalist" who chooses to ignore significant and equally canonical passages of his particulae sacred text.
My contention is that any faith that cannot withstant critical analysis is not much of a faith to begin with and is really nothing more than, again in Harris's language, an accumulation of handed dowm ancient ignorance and derangement.
I wouuld relly like to engage all of you, with your collective spiritual sensitivities, in a discussion of this book.
Again, thank you Marion, my most extraordiary sister-in-lw, for having the loving and bold and inquiring mind and heart I so admire.
