The End of Faith by Sam Harris

incoherent. There is simply no other logical space for our beliefs about the world to occupy. As long
     as religious propositions purport to be about the way the world is God can actually hear your prayers, If you take his name in vain bad things will happen
     to you, etc.they must stand in relation to the world, and to our other beliefs about it. And it is
     only by being so situated that propositions of this sort can influence our subse- quent
     thinking or behavior. As long as a person maintains that his beliefs represent an actual
     state of the world (visible or invisible; spiritual or mundane), he must believe that his
     beliefs are a conse- quence of the way the world is. This, by definition, leaves him vul- nerable to new evidence.
     Indeed, if there were no conceivable change in the world that could get a person to
     question his religious beliefs, this would prove that his beliefs were not predicated upon
     his taking any state of the world into account. He could not claim, therefore, to be representing the world at all.26
    ALTHOUGH many things can be said in criticism of religious faith, there is no discounting its
     power. Millions among us, even now, are quite willing to die for our unjustified beliefs,
     and millions more, it seems, are willing to kill for them. Those who are destined to
     suffer terribly throughout their lives, or upon the threshold of death, often find
     consolation in one unfounded proposition or another. Faith enables many of us to endure
     life's difficulties with an equanimity that would be scarcely conceivable in a world lit
     only by reason. Faith also appears to have direct physical consequences in cases where
     mere expectations, good or bad, can incline the body toward health or untimely death.27 But the fact that religious beliefs have a great influence on human life says nothing at
     all about their valid- ity. For the paranoid, pursued by persecutory delusions, terror of the CIA may have great
     influence, but this does not mean that his phones are tapped.
    What is faith, then? Is it something other than belief? The Hebrew term 'emžn‰ (verb 'mn) is alternately translated as “to have faith,” “to believe,” or “to trust.” The
     Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, retains the same meaning in the
     term pisteuein, and this Greek equivalent is adopted in the New Testament. Hebrews 11:1 defines faith as
     “the assurance of things hoped for, the convic- tion of things not seen.” Read in the
     right way, this passage seems to render faith entirely self-justifying: perhaps the very
     fact that one believes in something which has not yet come to pass (“things hoped for”) or
     for which one has no evidence (“things not seen”) consti- tutes evidence for its actuality
     (“assurance”). Let's see how this works: I feel a certain, rather thrilling “conviction”
     that Nicole Kid- man is in love with me. As we have never met, my feeling is my only
     evidence of her infatuation. I reason thus: my feelings suggest that Nicole and I must
     have a special, even metaphysical, connection otherwise, how could I have this feeling in
     the first place? I decide to set up camp outside her house to make the necessary
     introductions; clearly, this sort of faith is a tricky business.
    Throughout this book, I am criticizing faith in its ordinary, scrip-
    tural senseas belief in, and life orientation toward, certain histor- ical and
     metaphysical propositions. The meaning of the term, both in the Bible and upon the lips of
     the faithful, seems to be entirely unambiguous. It is true that certain theologians and
     contemplatives have attempted to recast faith as a spiritual principle that transcends
     mere motivated credulity. Paul Tillich, in his Dynamics of Faith (1957), rarefied the original import of the term out of existence, casting away what he
     called “idolatrous faith” and, indeed, all equa- tions between faith