Regarding de Botton’s proposed atheist monument, commenter Crudely Wrott writes:
Build a cathedral? Build a cathedral?!
Shit, de Bottom, we are born inside the grandest one of all!
Look about you.
We don’ need no stinkin’ interpretive scale models!
Or, in Cuttlespeak…
We could pillage, pilfer, plunder
All religion knows of wonder
We can take the best from all their holy books
We can ask the three-in-one set
What they’ve got to match a sunset
Which is there to see for anyone who looks
When reality is greater
Than some fictional creator
There’s no reason we should steal the lesser stuff—
We should simply look around us
What we witness will astound us—
Cos the world itself is beautiful enough.
Ramen.
I think he just wants an excuse to have his own Tower of Isengarde.
It’s not a temple to atheism, it’s a monument to de Botton’s monumental ego.
We already have a cathedral to the null hypothesis. Look carefully and you will see it. It is the one that is not there.
Well said!
Want a lasting monument to Atheism? Take the millions in cash that you feel so keen on wasting on a monument and put it into schools that need it. Or help shelter and feed kids without homes.
Our actions on this world, and the way we affect others, are the only monuments we need.
This . . .
. . . is why I love the innertubes and blogs like Cuttlefish’s. It adds an extra dimension to our lives. It brings out the width in us. Just like engaging the universe with an open face and dealing honestly with one another does. It goes such a long way to dispel the anachronisms of the past and to encourage real knowledge based on reliable information rather than superstitions based on fearful rumor or myth.
Thanks for the cite, Cuttle. And thanks for all you do. While my words don’t rhyme all of the time, in my heart dwells a poet like you.