“Why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say, 1500 in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable?”
That question comes from Charles Taylor, a Canadian philosopher, who ranks as one of the most provocative thinkers alive today. Last year, he won the million dollar Templeton Prize, given each year to a person whose work brings together science and religion.
Where is Osama bin Laden?
This is not a question I spend much time thinking about.
But I am acquainted with someone who does think about it. And he knows a lot more about this terrorist leader.
Of his mother, Dudley Clendinen writes: “She was an extraordinarily charming and thoughtful and also artfully manipulative woman, skilled at moving people around like puppets while smiling at them fondly.”
This description appears in his new book, A Place Called Canterbury, available in stores this week in time for Mother’s Day.
“In fewer than one hundred years, human beings made greater gains in life expectancy than in the preceding fifty centuries.”
This sentence opens the book “The Longevity Revolution” published last month by Robert Butler, M.D. It calls attention to a reality that has already profoundly changed the lives of people who live in the United States and other industrialized countries.
And it will bring about further changes of great significance.
On the occasion of my first visit ever to a Mosque, two dominant impressions swept over me. First, the strength of the religious piety which I observed during the community prayer and in the talks afterward. And secondly, the warmth of the hospitality shown to me and other visitors.
Only last week did I discover that writing obituaries can be dangerous.
This emerged from the revelation made by a veteran staffer in the New York Times newsroom. To a group of us journalists taking part in a weeklong seminar he disclosed a current project he is working on: an obituary for David Rockefeller, long one of New York’s most prominent bankers.
Mind you, Mr. Rockefeller is not dead yet. In fact, at 93 he may, for all I know, be thriving.
My heart was touched when I heard what happened to opera singer John Mac Master. This tenor, after all, had the chance of a lifetime.
There he was last month on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, singing a major role before an audience of some four thousand people.