EPIGONIC

Blessed Convergence

I've been happily consuming a terrific convergence of great writing and public discourse about religion, its relationship with the state of our world, the the things that drive people to embrace religion, and the causes of this age of revived fundamentalism almost everywhere (including here) and thought I'd share the links:

First, Karen Armstrong's terrific book The Great Transformation which covers how the great religious traditions of today all have roots in almost concurrent developments in the Axial age. Armstrong is a terrific writer, her books The History of Jerusalem and  The History of God are also required reading.

Second, Bill Moyers current series on PBS: Faith and Reason. Great interviews with writers including Margaret Atwood, Martin Amis, and Salman Rushdie among others.

Finally, speeches, readings and interviews at the related PEN World Voices festival in New York.

Listening now to Martin Amis with Patrick McGrath from the PEN series. One great line from Amis:

"I'd much prefer there not to be a God. Because then that gives us free will. An all-seeing, all-predicting God lowers what it is to be human, and I want that to be as maximal as it can be."

Philip Roth on Religion

In this evangelical age, it was nice to hear Roth sounding the trumpet for a rational, secular life.

From Fresh Air a month or so ago:

Gross: "Is there any part of you that wishes you were a man of faith"

Roth: "I have no desire to be irrational."

Gross: "So there isn't any part of you that wished you could believe?"

Roth: "I have no taste for delusion."

And from Roth's new book, Everyman:

"Religion was a lie that he had recognized early in life, and he found all religions offensive, considered their superstitious folderol meaningless, childish, couldn't stand the complete unadultness -- the baby talk and the righteousness and the sheep, the avid believers. No hocus pocus about death and God or obsolete fantasies of heaven for him. There was only our bodies, born to live and die on terms decided by the bodies that had lived and died before us. If he could be said to have located a philosophical niche for himself, that was it -- he'd come upon it early and intuitively, and however elemental, that was the whole of it. Should he ever write an autobiography, he'd call it 'The Life and Death of the Male Body.'"