In an interesting review of British critic, Terry Eagleton’s new book Faith, Reason and Revolution, on NYT’s Opinion page, Stanley Fish asks, “Why are the most unlikely people, including myself, suddenly talking about God?” After an exploration of answers from many perspectives, one conclusion reached is that faith in modern liberalism and science may have suppressed the possibility of a good-faith effort to understand the perennial religious quest and its possibilities, and suddenly modern men and women are awakening to larger questions. 

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1. salvo on May 4th, 2009 at 11:55 am

   I’m talking about God because religious fanatics—both in the US and abroad—are trying to destroy my way of life due to some warped/misguided interpretation of their god (really, in these instances, I think it has less to do with “God” or “religion,” or morality, per se than it does about power—getting it and retaining it) and I’m trying to figure out a way to deal with these knuckleheads.

2. Cindy Scroggins on May 4th, 2009 at 12:00 pm

   In my experience, the people who most consistently ask the “larger questions” are not people of faith.

3. Andrew Simone on May 4th, 2009 at 12:11 pm

   See also, a Pew Study I found via this NYT aricle Defecting to Faith.

4. Daryl Scroggins on May 4th, 2009 at 1:52 pm

   I’m with Cindy on this (what a shock). It often seems to me that the inclination toward faith and religion is one that seeks not to address the “big questions,” but to select from a set of pre-formulated answers to such questions. I don’t think that the longing to know and understand more about the stuff of these questions is “owned” by faith and religion–no matter how often zealots attempt to define longing itself as evidence of a need for gods. Christians speak of a great love that reaches into them and comforts them. I feel this love too, but I don’t think it requires me to believe that it is being delivered to me from a god or gods–only that it is an aspect of something that holds all of us.

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