If you can't read Sam Harris's award-winning book The End of Faith, this slender volume is a worthy substitute; even though it adds nothing new to his previous book, it now sits at #6 on the NY Times best seller list. His polemical rhetoric makes for a good read, plus he makes some important points that Christians need to hear. Unfortunately, while many have praised Harris for his "fearless honesty," his strident tone, his self-congratulatory overstatements ("atheism is simply an admission of the obvious"), his misrepresentations of positions that he wants to refute, and gross generalizations will accomplish the exact opposite of his goals. I guess that preaching to the choir is hard to resist, especially when they paid handsomely to hear your first song.

In this sequel to his longer book, Harris makes the same four points. First, he advances an epistemological claim to expose religion, any and all religion, as a "flagrant irrationality" and "ludicrous obscenity." According to Harris, in practice religion lacks any claim to intellectual credibility, but that really does not matter because he also argues that religion lacks such evidentiary support in principle. Support for religion, he believes, is, literally, inconceivable. Second, Harris makes the tried and true moral criticism that religion has fostered barbarism and cruelty, although he does not explain how this calculus disproves religion, or why similar atrocities propagated by the atheism of Stalin and Mao do not disprove that worldview, or how a person could empirically prove whether atheism or religion has been more misanthropic. Third, and this is the most important point of his book, Harris is outraged at how religion has poisoned public discourse and wielded an undue influence in politics, especially in right wing conservative Christianity and Islam. Finally, he accuses those who disagree with him of intellectual dishonesty. Leaving aside the ad hominem nature of his fourth argument, it's a shame that matters like slavery, stem cell research, abortion, or the problem of evil receive such smug treatment. He intends to "demolish the intellectual and moral pretensions of Christianity in its most committed forms," but instead of advancing a more civil discourse about important matters of faith and politics, he plays right into the hands of his detractors. In short, he has probably made matters worse, not better.

I bought Harris's first book "The End of Faith" so as to better critique its content on my own time. When I heard about this book, I went to a Barnes & Nobel to do the same. I did not end up buying the book however because there is simply nothing to critique. This is nothing more than Sam Harris complaining back to Christians that have complained to him.

If you are an atheist and would like to read a useful, intellectually stimulation book, do not read this one.

If you are a Christian, and are even remotely curious about this book and its contents, you do not need to buy it. You can obtain a free transcript by simply walking to the nearest mirror and promptly flipping your self the bird.

I cannot possibly express how much better this little book is than the previous one by the same author, mainly because I could hand it to a Christian without the Christian coming to the assumption that Sam Harris is a Buddhist. That is an idea that ALMOST comes across in his first book. He apparently has learned to be more careful and explicit in expressing his views when addressing the Christian public directly.

The best thing about this book is it gives a little of almost every argument I have read or heard against Christianity or religion in general, without getting into extreme detail. The worst thing is that it does not get into extreme detail! That contradiction aside, this is a book I would not hesitate to give to an open-minded Christian, or one I am having serious conversation with in regard to the issues of religion versus the absence of superstition.

The only real weakness I can see for that purpose, where it concerns fundamentalists, is that there just is not enough information regarding scriptural missteps to argue convincingly against the most blinding part of fundamental Christianity. The literal approach to the bible is the hardest barrier (mutatis mutandis for Islam and the Qur'an).

My highest recommendation to honest seekers in the Christian faith for more information would be to read the works of Bart Ehrman, B M Metzger, and F F Bruce (the former no longer a Christian...the latter two were unequivocal Christians honest enough to admit problems). Also, honest biblical works such as the New Oxford Annotated Bible, the HarperCollins Study Bible, and the New Interpreter's Study Bible give commentary and essays in a much more honest way than evangelical study bibles such as the NIV Study Bible.

5 stars for this tiny book I read in one night, with no reservations.

A must read about most glorified superstition. Specially, by person of faith that also believes that he or she is of reason.

Sam Harris writes this book in a less pedantic style more accessable to the average reader. This should be required reading for anyone who wishes to survive long into the 21st century. Any religious person who takes the teachings of his faith seriously is quickly becoming a threat to those who believe differently or not at all.