{"id":88,"date":"2008-09-05T22:26:07","date_gmt":"2008-09-06T02:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therowboat.com\/?p=88"},"modified":"2022-04-11T23:51:32","modified_gmt":"2022-04-12T03:51:32","slug":"dialogue-in-the-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/2008\/09\/dialogue-in-the-dark\/","title":{"rendered":"Dialogue in the Dark"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"NoIt totally slipped my notice that, a couple days ago, Religion Dispatches<\/em> posted my latest article, a review of Michael Novak’s No One Sees God<\/em>. This one, unfortunately, may inspire more ire from the anti-atheists. But I promise, I genuinely tried to move a more sensible conversation forward on all sides. Take a look at it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I begin, mercilessly, with a quotation from Plato. Fitting treatment for someone I later almost call a Straussian elitist (only to quickly back down on the charge in admiration for Novak).<\/p>\n

In Book X of Laws<\/em>, Plato sighs, “Who can be calm when he is called upon to prove the existence of the gods?” Still, he concludes, “it must be done.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Note: I have generally insisted on using the spelling “dialog” in all cases instead of “dialogue,” but most editors, including those at RD<\/em>, demand the latter. I understand the need for conformity with general usage. But according to the OED, both are valid. And to me, the “ue” just reeks of the feel-goody fluff that is most polite interreligious conversation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"NoIt totally slipped my notice that, a couple days ago, Religion Dispatches<\/em> posted my latest article, a review of Michael Novak’s No One Sees God<\/em>. This one, unfortunately, may inspire more ire from the anti-atheists. But I promise, I genuinely tried to move a more sensible conversation forward on all sides. Take a look at it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I begin, mercilessly, with a quotation from Plato. Fitting treatment for someone I later almost call a Straussian elitist (only to quickly back down on the charge in admiration for Novak).<\/p>\n

In Book X of Laws<\/em>, Plato sighs, “Who can be calm when he is called upon to prove the existence of the gods?” Still, he concludes, “it must be done.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Note: I have generally insisted on using the spelling “dialog” in all cases instead of “dialogue,” but most editors, including those at RD<\/em>, demand the latter. I understand the need for conformity with general usage. But according to the OED, both are valid. And to me, the “ue” just reeks of the feel-goody fluff that is most polite interreligious conversation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[37,38,29,11,61],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-atheism","tag-books","tag-dialog","tag-existence-of-god","tag-platonism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5794,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions\/5794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}