Thursday 23 July 2009

The End of Faith


A noble piece of prose (I think) from Sam Harris. The last paragraph from "The End of Faith":-

"Man is manifestly not the measure of all things. This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name. The consciousness that animates us is central to this mystery and the ground for any experience we might wish to call "spiritual". No myths need be embraced for us to commune with the profundity of our circumstance. No personal God need be worshipped for us to live in awe at the beauty and immensity of creation. No tribal fictions need to be rehearsed for us to realize, one fine day, that we do, in fact, love our neighbours, that our happiness is inextricable from their own, and that our interdependence demands that people everywhere be given the opportunity to flourish. The days of our religious identities are clearly numbered. Whether the days of civilization itself are numbered would seem to depend, rather too much, on how soon we realize this."

8 comments:

  1. Creation? An odd word to use in this context, surely?

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  2. I agree. Did he get a bit carried away by his own eloquence I wonder?

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  3. "the universe" or "existence" would have been better.

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  4. Of course it isn't capitalised.

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  5. It's a shame that the word 'creation' now makes us think of creationist dogma, I wonder if the word 'human' would ever have the same ability to make you think of humanist values.

    One of the thngs that stuck with me after reading this book - "Spain translates as many books into spanish each year as the entire arab word has translated into arabic since the ninth century." (Harris, 2004, p.133)

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  6. Good point.

    His book seems full of QftD doesn't it? That is a particularly remarkable one. Shows why the arab world is still stuck in the past. Are you going to post it?

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  7. It's a great book. Have you read Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali? I read it a couple of months back and I couldn't put it down.

    I'll post the quote asap.

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  8. I've heard of it, but thanks for the recommendation. I'll read it next.

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