"I of my own knowledge…"

I thank God that there are men such as Michael Ventura in the world. Thoughtful, fierce, gentle, sincere, troubled, grounded — and one foot in the air, where it should be. From the Austin, Texas, Chronicle, via a friend: 

http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/column?oid=oid%3A777882

Letters at 3AM: ‘Where Is Your Faith?’

BY MICHAEL VENTURA

My brother Aldo returned again and again in our conversations to one question. He posed it always as though for the first time: “Mike, how can you have a personal relationship with an impersonal God?”

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I am right there with John Anthony West in deriding what he calls the Church of Progress. I am really tired of people pretending they are profound when in fact they are merely sheep following trends. The trend of the past tiresome century, and this one to date, is to regard religion as superstition, as if  blind faith in “progress” or in “science” were anything but superstition.

This piece, via my brother who called it to my attention, from The New York Times http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/god-talk/?emc=eta1 .

God Talk

 Stanley Fish

In the opening sentence of the last chapter of his new book, “Reason, Faith and Revolution,” the British critic Terry Eagleton asks, “Why are the most unlikely people, including myself, suddenly talking about God?” His answer, elaborated in prose that is alternately witty, scabrous and angry, is that the other candidates for guidance – science, reason, liberalism, capitalism – just don’t deliver what is ultimately needed. “What other symbolic form,” he queries, “has managed to forge such direct links between the most universal and absolute of truths and the everyday practices of countless millions of men and women?”

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