Before I Forget...

Daniel Dennett finally replies to the review of his book in the new york times book review. The latest edition also contains a reply by Leon Wieseltier who authored the original review. Check out the letter and the response here. It is not as elaborate or something and it seems that they are fighting off at tangents! The book review also features an overview of the debate in the blogosphere. My blog doesn't feature in it. Damn!

For a more elaborate discussion on the role of science and faith in the modern world, click here. Dennett discusses his book with Richard Swinburne who is a professor of the philosophy of religion at the Oxford University. It is a little heavy and long but worth battling through (okay, I haven't read it yet myself).

And this on the feel-bad endings in literature:

It is not the mere happiness or unhappiness of fiction that grips us, but the questions it asks, the people and situations it creates, the complexity of emotions it stirs.
[...]
We should not demand that a last line makes us either happy or sad, but thoughtful; it is this that ensures great literature lives, happily, ever after.

How true!