more ethically troublesome. "If we are unwilling to torture, we should be unwilling to wage modern war," Harris concludes. Finally, Harris turns to spirituality, where he especially takes his inspiration from the practices of Eastern religion. He writes that there have been mystics in the west and calls some of these "extraordinary men and women", such as Meister Eckhart, Saint John of the Cross, Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint Seraphim of Sarov, but that, as far as Western spirituality is concerned, "we appear to have been standing on the shoulders of dwarfs." He discusses the nature of consciousness, and how our sense of "self" can be made to vanish by employing the techniques of meditation. Harris quotes from Eastern mystics such as Padmasambhava and Nisargadatta Maharaj, but he does not admit any supernatural element into his argument – "mysticism is a rational enterprise," he contends, "religion is not." He later elaborates: "The mystic has reasons for what he believes, and these reasons are empirical." He states that it is possible for one's experience of the world to be "radically transformed", but that we must speak about the possibility in "rational terms". Reception Positive Writing for The Independent, Johann Hari was largely positive, describing the book as "a brave, pugilistic attempt to demolish the walls that currently insulate religious people from criticism." Other broadly positive reviews have come from Natalie Angier, Daniel Blue, and Stephanie Merritt. Richard Dawkins has also endorsed the book. Negative In a review for Free Inquiry, the editor Thomas W. Flynn alleged that Harris had allowed his argument to become clouded by his personal politics and by his use of spiritual language. Harris later described Flynn's review as "mixed, misleading, and ultimately exasperating." Another review by David Boulton for New Humanist described the book as containing "startling oversimplifications, exaggerations and elisions." Critical reviews from Christians have included those by R. Albert Mohler, Jr. for The Christian Post, and Matthew Simpson for Christianity Today. Madeleine Bunting, writing in The Guardian, quotes Harris as saying "some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them." Bunting comments, "[t]his sounds like exactly the kind of argument put forward by those who ran the Inquisition." Quoting the same passage, theologian Catherine Keller asks, "[c]ould there be a more dangerous proposition than that?" and argues that the "anti-tolerance" it represents would "dismantle" the Jeffersonian wall