Guest-blogging at The Daily Ablution, Kasparsohn endeavours to set out an argument for religious belief that seems to involve getting oneself into a state of (what one starts by knowing to be) illusion, in order to end up happier than one presently is. I have a number of problems with the argument, but I'll confine myself to one: if it works for religious belief, does it (not) then also work for every other kind of belief? How could the requirements of truth, evidence, consistency and so on, retain any hold on us?
I'd be a lot happier thinking that the opinion pages of the Guardian were doing a good job for the kind of left-liberal newspaper the Guardian purports to be. Is there nothing to choose between talking myself into the view that they are doing a good job of it, and exercising what little critical pressure I can in the hope of securing an improvement on their not very impressive recent record?