Posted on 06/29/2006 8:17:17 PM PDT by pissant
Call it intellectual trickle-down: Great thinkers of our time talk to Bill Moyers, then he talks to us.
In the engrossing "Bill Moyers on Faith & Reason" (debuting 9 p.m. Friday on KCTS), he mind-melds with Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Martin Amis and other writers on the rise of radical Islam and fundamentalist Christianity, their similarities, their influence on politics — and the need for transcendence even among skeptics.
The Emmy-winning broadcaster, 72, settled in for a spirited dialogue from the porch of his New Jersey home.
Q: Why talk to writers about faith and reason?
A: Because storytellers have a great ability to imagine what it's like on the other side. They can take us across boundaries that we cannot literally go, and their love of language enables them to reach the nuances in this tension between faith and reason that few of us can. Theologians come at it with a fixed opinion. Ideologues come at it with a closed mind. But writers are always letting the story carry them where their imagination leads.
Q: America seems fiercely anti-intellectual right now — i.e., more faith, less reason.
A: If you judge only by what we see in the media and read on the blogs, yes. There's no question that there's a great divide between the religious and the secular. But I'll tell you, most people I know — my family, my friends, my neighbors, my colleagues at work — don't live on either side of that divide. Most of us are walking a swinging bridge between them. To change the metaphor, most of us ride both ends of the seesaw of faith and doubt.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
Jack Handey has deeper thoughts.
I think a pillow should be the peace symbol, not the dove. The pillow has more feathers than the dove, and it doesn't have a beak to peck you with.
One thing vampire children are taught is, never run with a wooden stake.
I love to go to the schoolyard and watch the children jump and scream, but they don't know I'm using blanks.
So does Jim Dandy
He who go to bed with itchy butt, wake up with smelly finger
When Gary told me he had found Jesus, I thought, Yahoo! We're rich! But it turned out to be something different.
If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is "God is crying." And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is "Probably because of something you did."
Of course the definition of an ex-spurt is a has been drip under pressure...describes Moyer to a T.
Laurie got offended that I used the word "puke." But to me, that's what her dinner tasted like.
The answer is trout.
It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.
He's a bona fide marxist
Yep. Just when you think you've made peace, here comes the business end of that pecker.
Swordfish trombones.
When you go in for a job interview, I think a good thing to ask is if they ever press charges.
...which leads me to wonder: How do you give Bill Moyers an EEG? How do you attach electrodes to a man's head when it's firmly lodged in his lower GI tract?
Raise up your glass to good king Richard.
The left reveres this guy, all 47 IQ of him.
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