Sam Harris

If Sam’s aim is to end faith, he must find a way to kill God.
To kill God we need to destroy the mystery of death.
We have killed many gods in the past by solving many mysteries.
Now the last one - death - needs an explanation. Once death is explained we do not need God anymore.
Life is cruel. We need hope (God) to face life’s cruelties.
If we kill death we kill God and there is no need of hope or religion.
It is a pity that Sam will be dust before he even starts looking for a way to kill God.
Meanwhile, it is a good idea to sell books… There are six thousand million potential readers…

I think that killing God may be a little extreme in terminology and in method.  As we look into the past, we do see this deicide committed in the killing of Zeus, Dagon, Odin, and countless others; but the action used was a forceful replacement of those old Gods with new ones.  An on-going tournament has been raging with followers of different religions getting the upper-hand through force, fear, and politics, snuffing out opponents and isolating others into obscure corners.  It’s this action of replacement of one religion or regime with another that comes to mind when I hear of “killing” of God.  But this game got a new competitor, relatively speaking, in the form of science. 
    Now with science we have the rival to this faith game.  Science sits so superior to religion in its transparency, reasoning, and endless self-critiquing that it has built itself into an unavoidable gravitation for humanity.  The rising tides of scientific knowledge sends a reeling God off his comfortable plains of significance and onto higher grounds of scientific uncertainty.  The question of death, as you made your main point, is certainly a spot where the religious take refuge, but there is no rest on these peaks.  As science spreads and reason prevails over dogmatism we’ll see an asphyxiation of religion; as his power atrophies every day we can be delighted in our adaptation to this new landscape of a sea of scientific knowledge and grow comfortable with its benefits and hidden gems.  I for one, moving from a young believer into a slightly older non-believer, have found sublime beauty and spiritual delight for the vastness of the natural world that’s free of an omnipotent puppet-master. 
    I don’t mean to be rebuking in this reply to your original post, as I’m sure you’re a reasonable and intelligent person, but I wanted to present an alternative and maybe more hopeful scenario to the downfall of faith.  The wheels are already in motion, the human species is naturally curious and will always have an affinity for advancing in knowledge.  Our goals now should be to keep that motor burning with education and dismember any road blocks that are frivolously and frantically being erected by the ignorant.  I will agree though, a great scientific explanation of death would be a lead life-jacket for religion, but may be unnecessary, as I don’t think religion ever learned how to swim.

Thank you for your message.
When I say we need to kill God by killing Death I mean that we need to end the mystery of death by finding out what’s behind that wall.  We have killed all the other gods by destroying their mystery.
I am not a religious man; I mean I do not follow any religion. I believe all priests are impostors and any religion, when organized, turns into a political party. I believe that chatting about religion is a waste of time. There is nothing more private and personal than this problem. Everybody is a universe in himself, alone and parallel to everybody else’s universe; therefore, we never “touch” each other. Language, as we can see, does not help us, but it is always fun to play with it, right?
On the other hand, I don’t have any problem with God. He is up there, I am down here, and that’s that. I do not have that feeling of superiority you seem to express about your “atheism”.  Atheism, I believe, is impossible. You cannot deny something just after you have accepted it by naming it. It’s the old joke: “I swear I do not believe in God”. 
People have turned science into another religion and cannot see that science cannot be an answer for this death problem. Wherever you look, you find an immense gap between what is said about science and what science really is and where it really stands. Science is the product of an immense propaganda effort to sell it and its by-products from space travel, quantum math and clones to cancer, allergies and colds. People do not remember even if they suffer from this gap that most of what is said about science is BS created every day to keep this BS alive and to make money. I find it only natural that people have more faith in God than in science. People believe in God because they want to, and that’s that, too. He is there, He helps them, they can talk to Him whenever they wish, which is more than science can do. Science is the new a Thousand and One Nights.   
On physics, science has lost half a century playing with a blackboard, a piece of chalk and math.  It speaks about an infinite number of universes without been able to demonstrate most of the basic “facts” of quantum mechanics among many other “facts”. It mounts a fly on a whale full of gas and talks about going to have lunch on Mars. Just by looking at its ship you know that’s not the way to space travel. But it has computers to show the whole universe as if it had already explored all universes. It has graphics now and uses graphics every night at seven to fool the ignorant and those who cannot read anymore. 
On medicine, it has created millions of zombies and frankensteins older than 70, a legion which will be “alive” as long as their SS checks keep coming to feed their “care givers”. Science claims it has made our lives longer, but forgets that such “life” is life no more.  It is not life but it is not death. Only billionaires can claim to having enjoyed some benefits from this “science” but, as I am not a billionaire, I have never seen such benedictions, and the same can be said about 90% of the human race.  What kind of “science” is that?
This is too long already. Please excuse me.