For those who take in our weekend postings: Noah Millman has two postings on his blog here (a) taking issue with some of my Wieseltier/Dennett comments, (b) discussing the Robert McCauley paper I linked to on science and religion.

I’m always a bit nervous when Noah tells me he’s taken up some point of mine, because he is approximately 100 times smarter and better read than I am. You can read his posts, though (twice, preferably, for the full flavor) and make up your own mind. I’d defend myself on Noah’s point comparing my dissing of Daniel Dennett to my ditto of Irving Kristol by just noting that I was dissing Dennett for being impolite, Kristol for being not altogether honest; and that it is possible to be both polite and honest. Not easy, but possible. However, you can read the posts for yourself and decide. Noah is particularly good on theodicy.

I’d only add to all this, as an orienting device, my own favorite condensation of the essence of religion. It’s the one in the “Conclusion” of William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience:

“There is a certain uniform deliverance in which all religions appear to meet. It consists of two parts:– (1) An uneasiness, and (2) Its solution.
“(1) The uneasiness, reduced to its simplest terms, is a sense that there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand. (2) The solution is a sense that we are saved from the wrongness by making proper connection with the higher powers.”