Book and Movie Reports by Ed

Book report: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, by Sam Harris Sigh. This is yet another of those books about how great the world would be if only most of the people in it – in this case, the 5 billion or so who believe in God – didn’t exist. Let me save you a little time (and 348 pages) by summarizing his main points: 1. All religious faith is nonsense. 2. Some of it is dangerous nonsense, because it encourages people to hurt or kill people (Spanish Inquisition, suicide bombers). 3. Especially Muslims, because martyrdom and jihad are prominent parts of Islam. Luckily, he has some simple solutions to these problems: 1. Establish a world government to which all nations surrender their power. 2. Induce Muslims to reform Islam from within to remove all the violent elements. 3. Convert our societies to the use of alternative energies so that oil has no value and Muslim countries become impoverished. No, I’m not kidding. Those are his solutions. He doe