Interesting times

The ancient Chinese may have cautioned us to "avoid interesting times," but, as John Mortimer pointed out in his 2003 "last will and testament" (Where There's a Will), "there is nothing...to suggest that the times are likely to become less interesting." [p. 94]

Yes, these are interesting times. On page 13 of last Sunday's New York Times Book Review, for example, I see an advertisement for three books published by Houghton Mifflin, the first of which is Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion, in recommendation of which Ian McEwan is quoted, "A magnificent book, lucid and wise." Interesting that I should not only currently be re-reading Dawkins's book (because it is lucid and wise) but also reading one after another of McEwan's novels.

And overleaf from the advertisement (on pages 14 and 15), I see reviews titled "Take It on Faith" (captioned "John Dilulio argues for government financing of social programs run by religious institutions") and "The Godless Delusion" ("A professor of philosophy thinks our era has been too quick to dismiss religious faith"). Hmm, interesting. I'm going to have to read these reviews....

It's interesting, too, to consider whether my recent dismissal of religious faith came as a result of my reading Dawkins and (before I took him up) Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens and (again) Bertrand Russell, or my reading of these atheist authors proceeded from atheist tendencies of my own....

I think it was more the latter, for I remember reading another advertisement in the Book Review, sometime over a year ago, that described Harris's The End of Faith in terms that thrilled and excited me for revealing that there at last seemed to be an author who had articulated what I too was now thinking and feeling about religion. Indeed he had...and far more than that. He had read many books that I had not, looked at a lot of data I didn't even know existed. I had not only met a brother, but also met a teacher. And in Hitchens and Dawkins I met two more teachers, Dawkins the most mind-opening of them all.