No, Robert , I didn’t say Richard Dawkins is silly for not fearing the complete annihilation of the self. As you point out, some entirely unsilly people, Socrates and Cicero among them, have felt the same way. I was instead—unsuccessfully, it seems—using sarcasm to point out how condescending Dawkins is being to the vast majority of his fellow human beings who reject—logically, I think—the notion that death is the end and believe instead in the afterlife.
Notes on Anosmia
One morning several years ago, as my wife, Wendy, and I were having breakfast together, I had…
Empire of Unreality
Shiva Naipaul (1945–1985) was the author of three novels and two books of mordant dispatches from places…
The Dreadful Christ of Pär Lagerkvist
It’s dangerous to meet a god,” says the disgraced Pythia in Pär Lagerkvist’s The Sibyl. Her observation…