Start the week

Great early morning discussion between Rowan Williams and D. Athill on the radio. Can one imagine a maulvi having a similar talk with a declared agnostic?! But perhaps this is more a cultural thing than a religious point, a particular way of discussing things. And in any case, it may be that with the decline of faith in the west the religious have to acknowledge that other points of view may have some legitimacy, in which case there's a genuine conversation and not just the passing down of the official dogma. Second thoughts: radio is really very reassuring at breakfast time, a bit too reassuring perhaps.

R.W.: "If what people like me are saying is right, and one never knows.." . R.W. always tries to find the common ground. And then they turn to Bach, Wittgenstein...

Well, yes, that type of tentativeness is something you find deeply appealing. not a post-modern scepticism, but a straightforward, old-world decency which allows other people/views to breathe. Also, something strange happens to agnostics in the presence of religious people; it's as if they want to be won over by other arguments. Maybe it's more than that: a matter of personality more than the arguments themselves.

D.A. made the intriguing point: maybe religion made sense in a world which was relatively small, when many things weren't just unknown but unthinkable. With the advance of science, amongst other subjects, there are lots of competing ideas/truths/approaches out there. And religion can only sometimes tangentially comment on them, rather than initiate and transmit them.

But I don't think R.W. was too phased by that; religion has, after all, always lived with the ineffable, the mysterious, with what it can, and what cannot be 'named'. The quest for knowing everything, the belief that we can know it all, does seem far-fetched and smacks of hubris. Not that we can necessarily say anything positive about limits

But I don't think R.W. was too phased by that; religion has, after all, always lived with the ineffable, the mysterious, with what can, and what cannot be named. The quest for knowing everything, for believing that we can know everything, does seem rather far-fetched. Not that we can say anything positively about limits..