This is Sam Harris's full argument, a much broader and more successful take than his Cliff's Notes-version, directed-at-Christian-America tome Letter to a Christian Nation. The argument is essentially that in a modern, rational age, we should no longer afford religions special privileges in terms of being able to state claims that have no supporting evidence. He is essentially saying that religions are an antiquated, backwards-thinking approach to life when we have (in most cases) over 1500 years of human-acquired knowledge (via science, philosophy, etc.) to utilize in our approach to everyday life. His argument then takes a forked approach. One fork is that Islam in particular is a dangerous religion, and he makes a good argument that we all know this but are afraid / unwilling to call the religion out in the international sphere. Islam has a particular bent on violent dealings with opposing views, and while the Koran in parts admonishes suicide, murder and other such acts, so much of the bulk of the text and the religious tradition points toward afterlife rewards for deeds done in the name of Islam that the end result is a favorable review of rationally deplorable acts. Islam is, despite its defenders as a "peaceful religion," an inherently violent one, and Harris repeatedly points towards the fact that a religion like Jainism (noted for its pacifist teachings) does not suffer from such implicitly violent tendencies. Harris further acknowledges the ultraviolent and magical-thinking history of Christianity - he puts forth a harrowing argument about the Inquisition and witch trials and their reflection of Christianity as a brutal, non-thinking religion - and stakes the claim that it is only modern, secular thinking which keeps us from continuing to pursue barbaric lines. Harris rather notably states that stepping into Islam is akin to stepping into the 14th century mindset. Harris's language throughout these sections is bristling and entirely unapologetic; he is definitely taking an attitude that this is patent, and only cowardice and ignorance are preventing us from noting it and acting upon it. He further adds that these detriments of religion are often defended in the light of the good that religions accomplish w/r/t morality and charity, but he dismisses these claims and states that morality and charity can be achieved through humanist means.
The second fork of his argument is probably the crux of the book, that as bad as the fundamentalists are, a lot of the blame for their actions can be placed on the relative apathy of the moderate religious people. People that toe the line, that find one set of metaphysics and explanations palatable on Sunday mornings and another one applicable in their daily lives, are clearly not the ones perpetrating the heinous crimes in this day and age. But their tolerant attitude towards all things religious, even things which are blatantly ludicrous and lack any sort of evidential basis, is what permits the extreme end of the spectrum to persist. There is a powerful tendency to allow any kind of freedom of belief, but Harris argues that belief by its very definition is something that must be acted upon - so permitting any kind of belief implicitly allows for the actions that would follow such beliefs. Harris states that the fact that modern religious moderates do not dismiss the radicals out of hand but instead allow them to contribute to the global dialog makes the moderates a reckless, irrational and irresponsible group that is indirectly permitting atrocities to happen. If the moderates would instead abandon the traditional religious teaching as the naive magic-based mythical mindset that they are and deny broad permission to believer whatever one will without evidence, they would bring rational, scientific and evidence based thinking to the forefront and the insane claims of religious extremists would be squelched and not tolerated rather than permitted to infect the minds of masses. Harris repeatedly points out that the arguments that it is only the poor and destitute who behave irrationally w/r/t religion is incorrect; numerous terrorists have been college educated and come from established financial backgrounds. It is the passive attitude of those who should know better that allows even the intelligent among us to fall into these mind-bogglingly irrational worldviews.
Harris also draws a parallel between religion and slavery - both are antiquated practices that have been held as legitimate by the vast majority of people (with the possible exception of the slaves themselves) for the bulk of human history. Slavery was fundamental to our culture for centuries - without slavery, there's no America, there's no Renaissance, there's no Greek philosophy, etc. And yet, enough people came t o the conclusion that slavery was a cruel, inhumane practice that it was eventually toppled and outlawed in the bulk of the world. That was a massive change that clearly took a radical change in thinking (as well as tremendous amounts of courage and bloodshed) to enact. Harris's goal, then, seems to be to do the same to religion, and while he admits that it seems almost impossible to envision a worldwide overthrow of religion (given its cornerstone place as part of human society since the dawn of), he readily points out that at one point it seemed fundamentally impossible to overturn slavery, too. I find this argument nothing short of amazing - while my gut feeling is that the goal itself is ludicrous, that religious wondering seems so fundamental to the famed "human condition*" that getting rid of it is by definition impossible, but I have to admit that the idea that at least the organized body of religion could topple and that worldviews could come to be dominated more by rational thinking, in light of the similar staggering and seemingly unconquerable opposition to abolition, doe snot seem out of the realm of all possibility. In short, I think, "Huh..."
* - The "human condition" is in quotes because it does not exist, but that is for another day.
If the book had stopped here, I think Harris would have been justified in his attitude and presentation, even if some of his claims about Islam as living 500 years in the past were a bit over the top. His argument is passionate and frightening, and he keeps falling back again and again on the same line: science has essentially been a sequence of topplings of these religious ideas that were set centuries and centuries ago. To continue to cling to these old teachings in some regards is akin to relying only on 3rd century physics as our knowledge base - its plainly ludicrous, and furthermore, we don't "agree to disagree" with anyone who goes around denying Newtonian physics, so why should we do so with notions of morality, ethics or the meaning of life? His call to treat the physical world rationally seems to be a solid one - he does not deny that there are possibly realms beyond the physical, evidential one in front of us, but he abhors any argument that tries to explain anything in the physical world without evidence.
The book did not, of course, stop here. Harris, for better or worse, laced his book with some extraneous and odd arguments. A couple examples - one, he spent a long time illustrating how intent was an implicit consideration in moral judgments, but then went on a lengthy arguments about how torture (complete with intentionally inflicted, horrific pain) is justified because of collateral damage (presumably unintended but able to be anticipated) in war. Even if this argument was valid (which is debatable), it was stunningly off topic. Two, he spent the bulk of one of the final chapters of the book explaining how meditation is actually an empirical exercise, even going so far as to claim that the separation of self from the body is a readily apparent phenomenon if you only look hard enough. This not only had the feel of a self-contradictory argument - after spending a book demanding evidence, he pulled a subjective "you'll know it if you try it" line - but it also gave off an air of new-age-ness or some kind of quasi-Eastern religion agenda, probably the last thing a self-claimed rational-only tome should do. It's not that I objected to the arguments; it's that I found their placement in the book bizarre - the argument had already been made. I suppose the second was something of an apologetic stab at maintaining spirituality within a rational worldview, but that in and of itself seems to be a bow to Eastern traditions instead of Western ones, not a bow to the rational over the religious. In essence, trying to maintain spirituality within the rational worldview, given what we know about meditation and the associated brain states, seems to be just as much of a faith leap as everything that Harris ranted against for the previous 200 pages.
In the end, I found this book to be less of a screaming, fist-waving exercise than the follow-up, but I still think Harris is taking an approach that is going to receive Amens from the rational choir and get a whole lot of nothing from the intended "converts." I find it difficult to discern if this is because we are looking at the equivalent of early, early abolitionist stances or if there is just something that is actually so fundamental about myth structures and religious narratives within our cultures that any screaming attack like this is a failure out of the gates. I also think his complaints specifically targeted against Islam were overly derogatory and referring to such an expanse of people as living in the 14th century is certainly going to do nothing to convince them to see his light. I regard Harris as right - the trump card of faith, the ability to say anything sans evidence, is a dangerous notion, especially when played within the game of conflicting religions, at least one of which has a fairly explicitly stated goal of world domination. Your own brand of faith is going to only butt heads with that notion and end in a violent dispute, so even if it is entirely unrealistic, he's right that it would be best if cooler, rational heads could prevail as the definitive system.
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