The New Republic

Ronald Reagan: the savior arrived or simply the best president ever? Discuss.

- propjoe

March 30, 2010 at 4:01pm

"I want you to answer an age-old question: Is religion more of a force for good or evil in today's world? Let me know what you think." The great thing about this topic is that nobody has strong feelings about it, so you can have a dispassionate, intellectual discussion.

- Fishpeddler

March 30, 2010 at 4:17pm

based on the headline, i thought this post was going to be about homer's messiah syndrome.

- hellx

March 30, 2010 at 4:28pm

Yes, all right, this is vaguely funny and I see the analogous elements, but they're not the same at heart. However contentious the issues Fareed's question raises are, they could, at least theoretically, be addressed objectively, in the same kind of way a utilitarian could theoretically measure overall happiness. The question Kent poses, which is orders of magnitude funnier and more insane, on the other hand, essentially never could be so addressed (barring some kind of a situation where all of humanity was granted access to the behind-the-scenes workings of a faith and all of humanity agreed that the overwhelming evidence proved that all other faiths would have to be false.) Kent's question exposes a lot of the self-centered-ness, contradictions, and lack of rationality in religion generally; Fareed's is just hard to answer.

- gpfeit

March 31, 2010 at 12:24pm