Have you read "The End of Faith" by Sam Harris? If you have, post your OUTRAGE here! I've only read the first five pages but I am so filled with ire at his absolutist hypocrisy I'm not sure I can go on.
And so I issue this, My Royal Challenge: I dare you to go into any bookstore and read more than the first five pages without feeling disgust, anxiety, sadness or just pure, unadulterated homicidal rage. If you can do this, than you are a better dude than I.
2 comments:
Well, I read the whole book, and I wasn't really suffused with rage. I thought that he exaggerated the overall badness of Western monotheism a bit, and his endorsement of Buddhism kind of came out of nowhere, but for the most part I thought the book was interesting.
But then again, I'm a sucker for that "fuck God" kind of stuff.
I'm curious- what got you so righteously angry about it?
Well, having only read five pages...
1) His sweeping generalizations. He never says "some" or "few" or "perhaps." No: this is how it is. Period. Space.
2) Specifically, his INTRODUCTORY vignette. The idea that a suicide bomber's parents would usually or always be proud and thrilled that their son was dead (you know - for the greater good) is just false. We talked about this in the anthropology of the middle east class I took at UO. Sure, maybe some are, but it's hardly normal.
3) The idea that we never talk about the religion of the suicide bomber as a motivation. He's mistaken 'taken for granted' with "discounted."
4) Not all people who believe religious texts are truly the word of God (or god, or gods) also believe they're infallible.
I have too much to go on here. I have to go to work. But I'll post more when I get home.
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