Recent Links and Comments: Ken Ham, Timothy Egan, Valerie Tarico, Adam Frank, Nathaniel Frank

Posted on Thursday 24 July 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

I’m some two weeks behind on posting comments and links here, though I’ve been compiling such links for eventual posting. Website issues have preoccupied me. Here’s a first bunch of them. More tomorrow.

23 July:
Salon: The Christian right’s 5 worst scientific claims

Creationist Museum’s Ken Ham thinks there’s no point in exploring the universe, because if there are alien intelligent beings, they are all damned to Hell! Because Bible!

Creationist Ken Ham: We Should Stop Exploring Space Because the Bible Says Aliens Would Go to Hell.

Ha ha. This must be why there were no creationists on the starship Enterprise. The likes of Ken Ham and can stay home and rant, while the rest of us, maybe, if fundamentalists don’t disrail government and society, will go out and explore reality — the incredibly vast universe, of which our Earth and tribes are a tiny tiny tiny portion.

Actually, science fiction has occasionally addressed such issues, i.e., how do our local religions relate to the potential other societies in the vast universe? James Blish did this relatively intelligently in A Case of Conscience (though not convincingly, to me); Ray Bradbury did this rather dumbly in a famous 1949 short story called “The Man”, which I reread a year or so ago. As part of this blog’s theme, I will address these stories in detail eventually.

18 July, New York Times

Timothy Egan, Faith-Based Fanatics

A reminder, as if we don’t already know, that the vast majority of conflicts around the world are about one faith group fighting another, because each side thinks God is on their side. Sigh.

Sunnis vs Shiites. Rick Perry praying about the drought, which of course didn’t work. Hamas and Israelis. Boko Haram. Prostestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. Buddhists and Muslams in Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

Egan concludes,

In the United States, God is on the currency. By brilliant design, though, he is not mentioned in the Constitution. The founders were explicit: This country would never formally align God with one political party, or allow someone to use religion to ignore civil laws. At least that was the intent. In this summer of the violent God, five justices on the Supreme Court seem to feel otherwise.

Is humanity doomed to such tribalistic, superstitious conflict?

9 July on Alternet;

Valerie Tarico: 9 Truly Evil Things Right-Wing Christians Do

Do I seem to be continually harping about the evils of religion? Well, maybe it’s because these influences are doing, it seems to me, continuing damage to American (and Global) society, and the progress of the human race — in the grand sense of the themes of progressive science fiction — is being held back by such tribal influences, and might well be defeated by them. (Another answer to Fermi’s Paradox! — Tribal superstitions defeat intelligent attempts to save the species, based on reality, i.e. science.) Tarico’s points:

  1. Opposing protections and rights for children is evil
  2. Denying young people accurate information about their bodies is evil
  3. Demeaning and subjugating women is evil
  4. Obstructing humanity’s transition to more thoughtful, intentional childbearing is evil
  5. Undermining science is evil
  6. Promoting holy war is evil
  7. Abusing and killing queers is evil
  8. Destroying Earth’s web of life and impoverishing future generations is evil
  9. Trying to suck vulnerable people into your poorly researched worldview is evil

Who could disagree? Well, many religious folks, apparently.

13 July:

NPR’s Adam Frank: Science Vs. Religion: Beyond The Western Traditions

This expresses a point I’ve made here numerous times. Religious apologists who appeal to cosmological arguments via William Craig Lane or whomever, elide the vast distance between such arguments and their own personal belief system — implying that, for instance, the Kalam cosmological argument leads directly to Jesus being the savior who’s saved you from your supposed sins.

Adam Frank:

I’m often struck by how narrow the discussion remains. That’s because often people don’t want to talk about science and religion; they really want to talk about science and their religion. It’s exactly in that first step that the conversation goes down hill for all sides.

This is so obvious, the fact that there are so many competing and contradictory belief systems in the world, that I can’t help but believe that proponents of any one particular belief system … just aren’t very smart.

10 July:
Slate’s Nathaniel Frank on Mark Regnerus: What Does Mark Regnerus Want?

His conclusion:

He has clearly demonstrated that stigmatizing gay people is his very top priority. It’s no surprise that a federal judge in Michigan earlier this year dismissed Regnerus’ testimony against same-sex marriage as a farce, saying: “The Court finds Regnerus’s testimony entirely unbelievable and not worthy of serious consideration.” Hopefully the rest of the world will follow suit.

Posted in Culture, Lunacy, Religion, science fiction | Comments Off on Recent Links and Comments: Ken Ham, Timothy Egan, Valerie Tarico, Adam Frank, Nathaniel Frank

Tuesday Night: sfadb; Mahler 5

Posted on Tuesday 15 July 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

It’s only because I’m on a roll, with updates to sfadb.com, and because Yeong is out of town, visiting his elder son in Chicago, that I am sitting at home on a late Tuesday evening compiling and posting this past year’s awards results on that site.

And because I need to get as much done as possible on this and other projects before other potential plans displace these, in the next year or so.

And because I’m obsessed by an introspective section of the otherwise very energetic second movement of Mahler’s 5th symphony, beginning at about the 4:15 minute mark in that movement (whichever recording you listen to). It begins slowly and very quietly, as if in a deep pit; it gradually rises, as if investigating into the upreaches; seems to reach a slightly higher state, if still unsettled and questioning, but then finding a bit of urgency. It’s rather like the probing, exploratory, opening bars of the last movement of Beethoven’s piano concerto #5, in that the music seems uncertain for a bit before eventually finding its feet and becoming confidant in the context of the larger work. And in Mahler’s movement, this passage does eventually flower back into the movement’s relatively propulsive main theme…

But it’s this abrupt moment of introspection that always catches my attention.

There are tiny bits like this in all of Mahler’s symphonies; little peaks into other worlds that inform the grander schemes. Every symphony is a world, as Mahler has said.

Of course the rest of the symphony is terrific too. See how the opening motif of the very first movement is an inversion (in more ways than one) of that of Beethoven’s 5th. And how the eventual response descends one octave, then an octave and a half, then two. The drums. The counterpoint theme. And the gorgeous third movement (used heavily in the film of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, many years back — but it has survived that association).

Here is a YouTube recording of a performance of this symphony by Leonard Bernstein, one of Mahler’s greatest conductors and likely his earliest promoter.

See the 18:30 mark for the deep passage I described above, until 19:45.

And the third movement, a world unto itself, which begins at 49:00, and which I won’t attempt to describe.

Except — listen for that gentle, hesitant, yet transformational octaval descending chord at about 56:30, which Bernstein downplays compared to some other conductors, yet is still a key moment. In the arc of the movement, it’s a crucial turning point. Every Mahler movement is a story that makes sense musically in a way that is inexpressible in words.

Posted in Music | Comments Off on Tuesday Night: sfadb; Mahler 5

In the Quiet of the Railway Station

Posted on Tuesday 15 July 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

I do declare, there were times I was so lonesome I took some comfort there…

In the clearing stands a boxer…

Posted in Music | Comments Off on In the Quiet of the Railway Station

Today’s Odds and Ends: Conservative rejection of science; Christians’ perceived persecution; Dinesh D’Souza’s paranoia

Posted on Wednesday 9 July 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

There have been several articles in recent days about how people [conservatives] who don’t accept evolution or climate science don’t necessarily know less about those subjects than others… they do so because their “community” rejects such conclusions, by instinct.

New York Times: Brendan Nyhan on When Beliefs and Fact Collide.

Mr. Kahan’s study suggests that more people know what scientists think about high-profile scientific controversies than polls suggest; they just aren’t willing to endorse the consensus when it contradicts their political or religious views. This finding helps us understand why my colleagues and I have found that factual and scientific evidence is often ineffective at reducing misperceptions and can even backfire on issues like weapons of mass destruction, health care reform and vaccines. With science as with politics, identity often trumps the facts.

Jerry Coyne’s take: Do people who deny evolution know less about it than others?, with lots of graphs. Referring to his book Why Evolution is True [WEIT],

As I’ve been saying repeatedly, the way to eliminate creationism is not to teach people about evolution (as I tried to do in WEIT), but to get rid of the major factor that make them deny evolution: religion. Granted, WEIT was successful in changing some people’s minds (I have lots of emails attesting to that), but I suspect its main effect was simply to tell people who already accepted evolution about the kind and amount of evidence supporting it.

Another piece about how Christians, the dominate religious sect in the US, feel themselves persecuted. By the gays.

Slate: The Christian Persecution Complex Moves Into the Workplace

All of this is extravagantly silly, and I respect Dreher and George’s intellects too much to believe that they’re actually taking it seriously. But for the unhinged Ruse and his acolytes, I’m sure the story plays right into a developing narrative on the far right: LGBTQ people, they insist, are the true oppressors, and conservative Christians an embattled, discriminated-against minority.

This persecution complex—which actually began long before the Brendan Eich controversy—is so asinine that I almost regret wasting space refuting it. But the fear needs a rebuttal, because, daft as it may be, it’s also dangerous. Recasting a tiny, historically despised minority as a covertly powerful conspiracy of puppeteers is a time-honored smear tactic used to vilify Jews and other disfavored demographics. It’s a darkly clever strategy here, especially given Americans’ traditional love for an underdog. Suddenly, gays aren’t a small minority fighting for basic equal rights; they’re unduly influential string-pullers, using behind-the-scenes machinations to persecute Christians.

And finally, Salon on how right-wingnut Dinesh Di’Souza thinks the whole world is against him. Conspiracy! Between The New York Times, Costco, and Google!

Salon: Dinesh D’Souza’s paranoid nightmare: Everything is a vast conspiracy against him

Or maybe he’s just a paranoid religious franatic (like so many right-wing heroes are) who does not, in fact, and fortunately, have very many followers.

Posted in Culture, Evolution, Lunacy, Reviews, Thinking | Comments Off on Today’s Odds and Ends: Conservative rejection of science; Christians’ perceived persecution; Dinesh D’Souza’s paranoia

Sam Harris on Morality and the Christian God

Posted on Wednesday 9 July 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

I came across couple audio tracks from Sam Harris on how Christian morality not only makes no sense, but can be regarded as positively despicable.

I realize that a large majority of the American population subscribes to this morality (and reflexively despises anyone who does not), and can only think that they have not completely thought this morality through, but just accepted it because everyone else in their community accepts it. This has to be a prime example of the way human intelligence of too often subsumed to groupthink and tribal identity. We could do so much better. (And we will, eventually. But it will take so much longer than it might.)

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/morality-and-the-christian-god

The text below is from the second reading “of a similar text”. This whole audio is about 6 minutes. Here’s just the opening, and the last bit. (Yes, his point here is about the ancient “problem of evil”, but there has never been a satisfactory answer to this question, to nonbelievers. Only to believers who seem to be able to explain anything away.)

It’s often argued that religion gives us the most secure foundation for morality, that without it questions of good and evil, right and wrong, simply cannot be answered. Or worse, without God such questions have no answers.

But what can we make of this notion that God is the basis of morality, in a world in which 9 million children a year die before the age of 5. Most of this death and suffering has nothing to do with the choices people make for which they could conceivably be held responsible. You can’t say that these children were bad of their own free will, or that they got what they deserved. We’re talking about children dying before the age of 5. We’re talking about disease and unclean water and accidents and natural disasters—death by bad luck, essentially. There are some very unlucky people in this world, but according to a religion like Christianity, this is all part of God’s plan.

[He goes on about such needless deaths, vs the Christian idea that a serial killer can get into heaven by simply accepting Jesus in the last moments before his execution.]

One thing should be crystal clear to us at this point: this vision of life has absolutely nothing to do with moral accountability. And notice the double standard that most believers use to exempt God from any accountability for this evil. We’re told that God is loving and kind and just and wholly good, but when someone points out the evidence that God is cruel and unjust, because he imposes suffering on innocent people on a scope and scale that would embarrass the most vicious psychopath, we’re told that God’s will is a mystery. God cannot be judged by mere human standards, don’t you know? And yet these merely human standards are what believers use to judge God to be good in the first place.

[and skipping until the last minute or two]

Consider the real moral framework that Christianity recommends. It’s rather startling when you think about it. Christianity is actually a cult of human sacrifice. God so loved the world that he gave his only son. John 3:16. The idea is that Jesus suffered the crucifixion so none need suffer Hell – except of course for those poor people in India, and billions like them throughout history.

Humanity has actually had a long fascination with blood offerings to imaginary gods. In fact it has been by no means uncommon for a child to be born into this world only to be patiently and lovingly reared by religious maniacs who believe that the best way to keep the sun on its course, or to ensure a rich harvest, is to lead him by a tender hand into a field or a mountaintop, and bury, butcher, or burn him alive, as an offering to an invisible god. Human beings, just like ourselves, actually buried their children alive in postholes, believing that this would keep invisible beings from knocking down their buildings.

These are the sorts of people who wrote the Bible. And it is atop this truly contemptible history, of scientific ignorance and religious barbarism, that Christianity now stands.

Christianity is not a religion that repudiates human sacrifice. It is a religion that celebrates a single human sacrifice, as though it were effective. Christianity amounts to the claim that we must love and loved by a God who approves of the scapegoating, torture, and murder of one man – His son, incidentally – in compensation for the misbehavior and thought-crimes of all others. But who has still created a circumstance in which most others end up in Hell for eternity. And Jesus himself will happily preside over this misery and terror on the Day of Judgment.

If there is a less-moral moral framework to be found anywhere, I haven’t heard of it.

Posted in Religion | Comments Off on Sam Harris on Morality and the Christian God

Another Apologetic

Posted on Tuesday 8 July 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Slate has an article today, Know Nothing: The true history of atheism, that is an attack on the “new atheists” and a defense, i.e. an “apologetic”, for traditional Christian faith.

My fascination about such pieces is that they *invariably* assume that the sophisticated theology that they ridicule ‘new atheists’ and others for knowing nothing about is the theology of *their own particular* flavor of religion – i.e. Christianity. The faith they grew up with. What presumption! How do they know that perhaps one of the many *other* religious traditions around the world today, or throughout history, isn’t the right one?

Needless to say, evidence is not involved. Nor have these critics in any way indicated that they have studied the theology of all of those other religions before having concluded they can be dismissed. They’re only trying to defend their own traditions. I needn’t study theology, or investigate the arcane complexities of astrological methods, to dismiss both belief in gods, and astrology.

Because the effective way of understanding the universe, the one that works, that has generated our modern technological civilization, is inconsistent with both.

The second flaw in apologist arguments like this is that they ridicule atheistic dismissals of religion myths like the belief that the universe was literally created in 6 days. Pshaw, this writer says; sophisticated theologians haven’t thought this in millennia. Maybe not– but that ignores the evidence that a surprising percentage of the current American population *does* believe such literal Biblical myths. These apologists who criticize the atheists seem to think they can define what proper religion is. But it’s the religion of the masses, according to these polls, that writers like Dawkins are addressing.

There must be a term, one of those psychological biases perhaps, that applies to this – the lack of recognition that one’s own personal experience isn’t the default position for everyone else in the world to accept, lest they be charged ignorant of theology. I need to capture this bias; it is a principle theme of my own worldview, via science fiction, that the world, the universe, is vaster and more complex than any particular parochial point of view, and the likelihood of your childhood faith being the one true religion (or theology) is vanishingly small. For all practical purposes, dismissible.

Posted in Religion, Thinking | Comments Off on Another Apologetic

Literary SF authors

Posted on Tuesday 8 July 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Thought of the day – is a characteristic of a ‘literary’ genre SF writer one who writes short fiction?

(By ‘genre SF writer’ I exclude those ‘outsider’ literary authors who happen to write books resembling SF. Like today’s example, Edan Lepucki. Or even the likes of Margaret Atwood, et al.)

There are many very popular SF authors who write only novels, and I realized today that they are not among my favorite authors, or those whom I consider the most important. (Having this thought after chatting with some neighbors who are “sci-fi” fans by very different standards than my own.)

From Andre Norton to David Weber to J.K. Rowling.

My favorite SF authors, from Robert Silverberg to Gene Wolfe to Kim Stanley Robinson, have published substantial bodies of short fiction.

So question for the proverbial Group Mind: are there SF authors who have substantially contributed to the genre and science-fictional thinking, only through novels, without having written much short fiction?

(Actually, Iain M. Banks jumps to mind. Others?)

Posted in science fiction | Comments Off on Literary SF authors

Parents and Children

Posted on Monday 7 July 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

On Sunday I posted this link and comment on Facebook:

Major New Study Finds Kids Raised by Same-Sex Couples Are ‘Healthier and Happier’

Contrary to the right-wing funded studies in the US, such as the debunked Regnerus study, that have financing and prejudice to conclude otherwise.

Of course, all scientific studies are provisional until confirmed by follow-ups, but I find this conclusion plausible, for this reason: gay couples who have children go to considerable effort (and sometimes expense) to do so. They do not take their children for granted. They do not get pregnant by accident. There is certainly a proportion of straight couples who cannot say the same. And that contrast is likely the difference in these results.

Today, Monday, there have been numerous other online articles covering this study, including this one on Slate by Mark Joseph Stern, who identifies another factor that might explain the results: that gay parents are not as constrained as straight parents are by rigid gender roles.

These reactionaries don’t care how much your silly peer-reviewed “studies” contradict their anti-gay views, since “the factors that really matter” are their own breathtakingly antiquated (and totally unscientific) views of gender stereotypes.

And Stern goes on to expose an irony: that children of gay parents are not disadvantaged by their parents; they are harmed when their interaction with the outside world exposes them to the animus of conservatives, who debase their families.

Gay parents don’t disadvantage their children—but conservatives’ smear campaigns against gay parents do. This insidious harming of children at the hands of conservatives is pretty easy to understand. Anti-gay activists debase gay families as a whole by opposing equal rights for same-sex couples, singling them out for disfavored treatment and thus marking them as inferior or defective. Children begin to wonder why their parents are subject to such opprobrium and legal impediments, and translate legal inequality into moral deficiency. Their status as children of gay parents hangs like an albatross around their necks, impairing healthy development and fostering grief, anger, and depression.

Note the Top Comment block, which echoes my first reaction: that gay couples value their kids because they (virtually) never have them by accident….

If conservatives were really concerned about *the children* — as so many arguments against same-sex marriage focus on — then they should lighten up and accept the reality that gay people do have children, have always had children — despite laws forbidding the legal recognition of their own relationships — and are as capable of raising their children as anyone.

My own contribution to this controversy is this: It’s not about whether the parents are of the same sex or not. It’s about there being two of them. An infant or child learns about the world through the interaction with those around them. Does an infant, toddler, or child, know or care about gender? The range of personality types among males and females is so broad that they overlap substantially; it’s magical thinking that a child must be exposed to some one iconic ‘male’ and another iconic ‘female’, in order to properly develop. (Added 8jul14: And as for sex itself– the last thing a child wants to think about is their parents having sex. This has always been true, about traditionally straight parents. Kids want to discover this for themselves. In this context, it doesn’t matter whether their parents are straight or gay — kids don’t dwell on how their parents have sex, no way, no matter.)

Two parents are better than one, because that exposes the child to multiple dimensions of human interaction. And for that matter, exposure to *more* adults in early childhood is even better, I would think. (Though it’s the two who have authority over the child who matter the most.)

A final irony, on a related subject but which I don’t think I’ve had a chance to mention on this blog.

Being gay may not be strictly genetic, but there is plenty of evidence that there is a genetic component. (There is much fascinating research about why this must be so.)

Throughout much of history (at least American history), gay relationships have not been recognized, and have even been criminalized.

This has obliged many gay people to conform to societal standards and marry people the opposite sex. And have children. (I have an uncle who did exactly this.)

This propagates their genes. To the extent that homosexuality is genetically based, this introduces into the next generation a propensity to be gay.

If conservatives who disapprove of gays, in their rigid biologically-compelled view of the world in which propagation of the species, rather than individual human happiness, is the ultimate goal, want to make gays go away — then they should *approve* of gay marriage. To the extent that that reduces the number of straight marriages that result in children (that pass on the genetic potential toward homosexuality), gay marriage would reduce the incidence of homosexuality in each generation.

It’s the disapproval of gay relationships, and the social obligation toward heterosexual relationships, that has promulgated the gay gene, such as it is.

I’ve had this thought for some years, and never seen it expressed anywhere. Ironically, these days, in our advanced technological civilization, this argument is being undercut by advanced fertilization technology. Because it seems — and I have commented about this before — that being gay is entirely independent of the desire to have children. And now that these fertilization and surrogacy technologies are available, more and more of the gays are having children, one way or another. So there.

Posted in Culture, The Gays | Comments Off on Parents and Children

We’ll ride on the rain… we’ll worship the wind

Posted on Sunday 6 July 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

We watched Pedro Almodovar’s Law of Desire the other night, a 1987 film possibly set earlier, since there is a scene in which a famous 1960s pop song, “If You Go Away”, is sung [in Spanish] to a stage performance. This triggered a memory: that song is one that imprinted deeply on me, at age 10 or 15, and hearing it again, now in several versions on the web, it doesn’t strike me as corny or dated, but still quite beautiful… yearning, hopeful at the same time, though ultimately heartbreaking.

If you go away, on this summer day
then you might as well take the sun away
All the birds that flew in the summer sky,
When our love was new and our hearts were high;
When the day was young and the night was long,
And the moon stood still for the night bird’s song.
If you go away, if you go away, if you go away.

But which version did I hear? Which was the most famous? YouTube has dozens of recordings, and Wikipedia has this entry about the song and some of its most notable cover versions. (It was written by French composer Jacques Brel, and translated into English by Rod McKuen.)

But if you stay, I’ll make you a day
Like no day has been, or will be again
We’ll sail the sun, we’ll ride on the rain
We’ll talk to the trees, we’ll worship the wind.

Then if you go, I’ll understand,
Leave me just enough love to fill up my hand,
If you go away, if you go away, if you go away.

One of most popular according to Wikipedia was by Jack Jones — and this one has a nice video:

This doesn’t quite strike the exact memory chord, though I’m pretty sure the version I heard so many times as a kid was by a male voice. Wikipedia OTOH indicates that one female, Damito Jones, placed highest on the charts with it.

If you go away, as I know you will,
you must tell the world to stop turning
Till you return again,
if you ever do,
for what good is love without loving you
Can I tell you now, as you turn to go,
I’ll be dying slowly till the next hello,
If you go away, if you go away, if you go away.

Mm, I don’t think that’s what I heard over my parents’ radio in the mid or late ’60s.

But everyone from Nina Simone to Glen Campbell to Neil Diamond to Julio Iglesias has covered it.

But if you stay, I’ll make you a night
Like no night has been, or will be again.
I’ll sail on your smile, I’ll ride on your touch,
I’ll talk to your eyes that I love so much.

But if you go, go, I won’t cry,
Though the good is gone from the word goodbye,
If you go away, if you go away, if you go away.

Which version imprinted on me? Don’t know. In any event, Frank Sinatra, as always, does the song credit… if a tad sluggishly.

If you go away, as I know you must,
There’ll be nothing left in the world to trust,
Just an empty room, full of empty space,
Like the empty look I see on your face.

I’d have been the shadow of your shadow
If I thought it might have kept me by your side.
If you go away, if you go away, if you go away.

[updated 9jul14 with complete, rather than sampled, lyrics. though different versions of the song have slightly differently rearranged lyrics.]

Posted in Music, Personal history | Comments Off on We’ll ride on the rain… we’ll worship the wind

Grayling on Ehrenreich

Posted on Sunday 6 July 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Yet another review of a review.

There has been discussion on various sites in recent weeks, including Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish, of a recent book by staunch unbeliever Barbara Ehrenreich, Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever’s Search for the Truth about Everything. The book is about an experience she had during adolescence that she now perceives as some sort of mystical experience, outside rational thinking.

I haven’t read this book or anything earlier by Ehrenreich, but I suspect I would respond as does A.C. Grayling, in the Los Angeles Review of Books (via)

Ehrenreich is well known for her atheism as well as her other publicly-avowed stances. As a highly talented writer and a powerful advocate for social justice causes, she has a standing in American life that will make this spiritual — or quasi-religious — turn a subject for debate. The explanation she gives of what she means by her “animism” is only sketchily offered, for the reason mentioned: the difficulty of expressing the inexpressible. All those who report having the kind of experiences she has had have had to resort to poetry, allusion, hand-waving, or metaphor to convey what these experiences are like.

…

We should always remember that the mind is a great player of tricks: one can induce Ehrenreich-type experiences in the lab, or by popping certain kinds of pills, no Other and no Mystery required. It is accordingly a surprise and — let it be confessed — a disappointment to find so doughty a heroine of her causes sliding away from Athens to — well, if not to Jerusalem than to some other Eastern locus of the ineffable, the unnamable, and the smoky.

I repeat: it is a disappointment when a rational person’s thinking about the unusual, the unexpected, the extraordinary, the amazing experiences of transcendence and unity that many of us have at heightened moments of life, suffers a declension into quasi-religious or supernaturalistic vagueness. The human brain is complicated enough to produce all these experiences from its own resources; we need no fairies in the garden to explain how roses bloom.

All that said, Grayling concludes,

That disappointment registered, my admiration for Barbara Ehrenreich the author and campaigner remains, as it does for the book itself: it is so beautifully written, so full of pungent insights on matters other than a putative Other, and so fascinating as a portrait of an intense and hypersensitive mind, especially in its youth, that it must surely count as one of the best reads of the year.

Posted in Book Notes, Religion, Thinking | Comments Off on Grayling on Ehrenreich