Friday, November 6, 2020

We are all hunting for rational reasons for believing in the absurd.

 From Justine by Lawrence Durell.

Yet once when I spoke enthusiastically of some remarks he had made he sighed and said, with that perfect Alexandrian skepticism which somehow underlay an unquestionable belief in and devotion to the Gnosis: ‘We are all hunting for rational reasons for believing in the absurd.’ At another time after a long and tiresome argument with Justine about heredity and environment he said: ‘Ah! my dear, after all the work of the philosophers on his soul and the doctors on his body, what can we say we really know about man? That he is, when all is said and done, just a passage for liquids and solids, a pipe of flesh.’

In the 63 years since the words were penned, "We are all hunting for rational reasons for believing in the absurd" that is pretty much where we still are.  Confirmation bias is well documented and infuses much public discourse.  But we are all still hunting for rational reasons for believing in the absurd.


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