Culture

  James Barham offers (March 12, 2012), “Another way of understanding Chekhov’s position is as the contrary of John Gray’s. That contemporary pessimist was observed here a while ago to be essentially saying to science and religion: “A plague on both your houses.” We may think of Chekhov as saying the exact opposite: We need both science and religion. Or, more exactly, we need the core of faith in the goodness of humanity that lies at the common root of both science and religion. Chekhov’s great subject is how we are to live our lives in the absence of all ideologies—how to get through the “long row of days” facing each of us. In this, he is the clear forerunner Read More ›

Last time around, last May, the heart of the answer was: . . . if clever but willfully deceptive rhetors — Ms Forrest, B, with all due respect; sadly,  this means you — can get away with strawmannising and dismissing design thinkers as “Creationists in cheap tuxedos,” where it has already been firmly fixed in the public mind by other clever rhetors — Mr Dawkins, CR, with all due respect; sadly, this means you — that Creationists are “ignorant, stupid, insane and/or wicked,” and that such are fighting “a war against science” and want to impose “a right-wing theocracy” (presumably  complete with Inquisitions and burnings at the stake) then we can be distracted from the issues on the merits and Read More ›