Submitted by David Edwards, Jul 4, 2007 14:32

First off: to Adam Kirsch, bravo for a thoughtful and badly needed review and editorial article.

The last paragraph is particularly apposite:

"If there is anything miraculous about mankind, it is not our Scriptures, but our ability to read the text of the world. In a time when obscurantism speaks louder and louder, Mr. Richet reminds us that the truth, if anything, is what will set us free."
Unfortunately there are those - the previous commentator among them, it seems - who do not wish us to be free. The words from the above comment:

"a Master Designer who is the source of all, and to whom, we must bend our knee"

are particularly telling in this respect. They reveal what we can expect if those purveyors of obscurantism, those purveyors of dogma and doctrine, are ever successful at subverting and supplanting reason. It is not, after all, as if there is no precedent to examine in order to judge this.

As Mr Kirsch said earlier in the article:

"Yet our lives are supported by an immense edifice of scientific ingenuity, which we seldom understand or even think about. Mr. Richet reminds us that each acre of the continent of modern science was won back from an ocean of ignorance, by the hard work and intellectual courage of individuals."

A reminder of what is at stake, and the high price that will; be paid by us all if the continued efforts of those who are not satisfied with ignorance, and those who labour and exert that intellectual courage, are ever subverted.

Note: Comments are screened, and in some cases edited, before posting. We reserve the right to reject anything we find objectionable.