Sullivan on the contigency of faith
Sarah knows that Andrew Sullivan is one of my regular blog reads. He's recently been engaging in a conversation on faith with Sam Harris, an athiest and proponent of rationalism. Their (rather lengthy) conversation in full can be found here. Sullivan's most recent letter (not posted as of my writing) is quite poetic, more or less attacking the "contingency" of faith--the fact that we may belive based on our histories and context. Harris believes that science escapes such contigency by asking for proof of every claim--seeing everything through a "clean glass." However, Sullivan more or less deconstructs this idea, rightly in my view. One of the most interesting parts of the Geography class I took last semester was the discussion of postmodern critiques of science's claims to objectivity. The problem is that the very categories scientists choose to use in their work are themselves are creation of their culture and background. This problem is perhaps most acute with social sciences--we can never step outside of our own cultural background when studying society. In any case, I'd recommend Sullivan's piece for a good read. It's on his blog.