re: #70 Killgore Trout

I’ve come to the conclusion that anti-intellectualism isn’t just for stupid people. It’s a conscious choice. Al Ghazali’s The Incoherence of the Philosophers is very much the same thing Ben is promoting. It’s a well thought out and deliberate choice to ignore reality in favor of religious dogma. It’s like having millions in the bank but living in a shack in the woods. People do these things.

Ahh, yes, Tahafut al-Falasafia (The incoherence of the philosophers); My favorite was the response, by al-Farabi “Tahafut al-Tahafut” (The incoherence of the incoherence). Required reading, both of them, for anyone looking for some insight into the whole revelation/reason thing. Also, a cautionary tale is there, of what happens when an entire intellectual tradition is suppressed on theological grounds.

Oh, and by the way, al-Ghazali was a Sufi. Yeah, those Sufis.