Estou lendo, muuuuuito devagarinho, o livro do Sam Harris, The End of Faith. Não sei por que diabos não pus as mãos nesse livro antes, já que o comprei em New Jersey no final de 2007. Talvez porque já vi várias entrevistas com o autor e sempre o achei meio sem sal. Seu texto está muito longe disso: ele é de uma clareza ímpar, seus exemplos são fantásticos e seu raciocínio non fa una piega – é absolutamente perfeito. Mas o melhor de tudo é que, sendo filósofo, ele oferece pontos de vista e linhas de raciocínio originais, bem diferentes dos que estamos acostumados a ouvir contra a religião. Ainda estou no começo, porque com a Carol em casa eu praticamente só consigo ler quando ela dorme e eu, por um motivo ou por outro, não consigo dormir também. Estou na página 38 e o livro já está cheio de page markers coloridos com trechos interessantes. Escolher um pra postar aqui foi difícil, mas nerd é nerd e a menção a Star Wars foi o que me pegou ;)

“We live in an age in which most people believe that mere words – “Jesus”, “Allah”, “Ram” – can mean the difference between eternal torment and bliss everlasting. Considering the stakes here, it is not surprising that many of us occasionally find it necessary to murder other human beings for using the wrong magic words, or the right ones for the wrong reasons. How can any person presume to know that this is the way the universe works? Because it says so in our holy books. How do we know that our holy books are free from error? Because the books themselves say so. Epistemological black holes of this sort are fast draining the light from our world.

There is, of course, much that is wise and consoling and beautiful in our religious books. But words of wisdom and consolation and beauty abound in the pages of Shakespeare, Virgil and Homer as well, and no one ever murdered strangers by the thousands because of the inspiration he found there. The belief that certain books were written by God (who, for reasons difficult to fathom, made Shakespeare a far better writer than himself) leaves us powerless to address the most potent source of human conflict, past and present. How is it that the absurdity of this idea does not bring us, hourly, to our knees? It is safe to say that few of us would have thought so many people could believe such a thing, if they did not actually come to believe it. Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything – anything – be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in.”

Sam Harris, The End of Faith