The Big Guy

While it may come as a surprise to members of my enormous fan-base, I do -- contrary to what you might have expected -- keep one or two vices in the otherwise endless wardrobe of my virtues.

Amongst the more newly-minted (and more embarassingly pedestrian) of these, I have of late, but wherefore I know not, developed something of a road accident fascination with the mass-media's "Is religion bunk?" debate. I do not, of course, mean by this the age old and unending argument between reason and revelation. Instead, I am referring to the more pompous debate that was sparked a few years ago by the flurry of best-selling atheist manifestoes (by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens) and which has since clogged up the middle-brow literay marketplace the way that Jane Fonda exercise videos clog the tables of actual marketplaces.

This is not, of course, to be confused with my interest in theology, where the interest is of course, greater, but where I'd drop the 'road accident' reference like a bad simile.

For those of you who might also be afflicted by this disease, I would like to reccomend that you puruse the debate between Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan:
at http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Secular-Philosophies/
Is-Religion-Built-Upon-Lies.aspx


I am, in case you are interested, more impressed with Sullivan than Harris (who at times is quite graceless, although he DOES pull himself back from the abyss of total churlishness more than once), but then the race is not always to the stylish, nor even to those who appeal to my idea of good prose. In fact, both antagonists write well, although, again, I'd probably give the laurels to Sullivan. This is surely enough of a reason for you to check-out [supermarket scanner noise!] the debate. It's not, of course, that I think that all the great issues are covered (on the contrary: much that I think absolutely fundamental, from political philosophy, to the dialectic of enlightenment, never gets to so much as a mongoose-like twitch of one of its multi-fanged heads), but this does not, fortunately, prevent the exchange from being worth reading, at the very least for sociological reasons. It is after all always nice to hear the rumblings in the stomach of the Great Republic across the Pacific. Wastn't it Theodoric the Ostrogoth who said: when Rome belches...you get the idea...

As for the more substantive issues: I am inspired to dedicate my next few posts to the topic of religion and secualrism. Religion/secualrism and the possibility (meaning?) of a secular society is of course, an enormous topic, and one that in many ways, I do not feel qualified to speak about without some reservation and more caution. Thus, I say by way of a caveat: I will naturally abstain from trying to prove or disprove the existence of God. (Not that you were worried about this, surely?) Nor am I particularly interested in tilting against the angrier partisans of either side (although do comment freely, as always.) But I would like to make some observations on the nature of the debate and the pathologies of its present form. (Teaser: one of my more predictable points is obviously going to be against anyone on either side who thinks that they can effect a coup de grace.)

So, before I write my brief review of Sullivan/Harris, some preliminaries: First, I know that I won't be able to get away with commenting on such issues without provoking in the reader the question: what colour is MY parachute (if I can invoke what is, for me, the endlessly amusing title of a popular self-help book) or, put otherwise, where do I stand on such issues? I will thus dedicate the first post to saying something about my own religious leanings.

However, in the interest of my new 'short-posts' regime (c.f. 'are we having fun yet?') you'll have to wait to the New Year for this one. But the next two posts will contain revelations. And perhaps even reasons. Perhaps the one will even be limited (but not destroyed) the other to the point of stalemate.

-Hoping that those acquaintances are forgotten quickly/wishing you all love and joy,


-Mal.