Subtitled A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything and clumsily cowritten by Steven Levitt (the aforementioned economist) and Stephen Dubner, this book was ok but just ok. Maybe I'm tiring of the genre; I will dig out A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper and see if I'm still the big fan I thought I was. Anyway, the quote was from John Kenneth Galbraith on the topic of conventional wisdom. Very good.
This passage is from a book that surprised me from the start and amazed me through to the end.
The Christian world has a habit of extending great reverence for such places as "The Jaffa Gate." The Church of Holy Sepulchre, The Damascus Gate, Mount Zion, "The Golden Gate" and many old land marks in the Holy Land, which are about obliterated; their sites being traditional. Many claim that where The Church of Holy Sepulchre stands, Constantine found the tomb and cross of Jesus; others say that the true Calvary is the hill and tomb known as "Jeremiah's Grotto." The truth is, none of them know, and none are sure when they reverance one spot but what it may be the other that should be looked upon as sacred. Theology says the Savior suffered death for the redemption of the world.
This, of course, is superstition, a dogma, and untrue, for in the first place Jesus was murdered by a street mob of half-crazed religious fanatics, and in the second place the Gospel of St. Matthew is a known forgery, the book having been proven annonymous (sic).
This passage is from a book that surprised me from the start and amazed me through to the end.
The Christian world has a habit of extending great reverence for such places as "The Jaffa Gate." The Church of Holy Sepulchre, The Damascus Gate, Mount Zion, "The Golden Gate" and many old land marks in the Holy Land, which are about obliterated; their sites being traditional. Many claim that where The Church of Holy Sepulchre stands, Constantine found the tomb and cross of Jesus; others say that the true Calvary is the hill and tomb known as "Jeremiah's Grotto." The truth is, none of them know, and none are sure when they reverance one spot but what it may be the other that should be looked upon as sacred. Theology says the Savior suffered death for the redemption of the world.
This, of course, is superstition, a dogma, and untrue, for in the first place Jesus was murdered by a street mob of half-crazed religious fanatics, and in the second place the Gospel of St. Matthew is a known forgery, the book having been proven annonymous (sic).
Comments