Why is religion so important to most Americans and so trivial to most intellectuals?
January 21, 2002
The 5th Annual Edge Question reflects the spirit of the Edge motto: “To arrive at the edge of the world’s knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.” David Gelernter asks: why is religion important to some?
Originally published January 2002 at Edge. Published on KurzweilAI.net January 21, 2002. Read Ray Kurzweil’s Edge question here.
Is it just a matter of IQ? (Though I thought intellectuals no longer believed in IQ…) But empirically it can’t be an IQ issue, because so many of history’s greatest minds based their lives on religion — from Michaelangelo or Bach to Spinoza or Dante or Kant. Do modern intellectuals actually believe that all such people are naively deluded? Or could they be missing something themselves?
Copyright © 2002 by Edge Foundation, Inc.
