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FAITH & REASON
Reason and faith have always co-existed in an uneasy symbiosis. People
in every era have sought convincing reasons for their profoundest
beliefs about the physical and moral worlds, even as every generation
has challenged received truths in the light of new perspectives. Yet as
Pascal pointed out, the heart does not always respond to the arguments
of reason, and for much of mankind, faith’s empire has never faltered.
Today, faith and reason seem increasingly estranged across the globe,
as religions vie against science, fundamentalists, post-modernists and
geopolitical realists all question the liberal humanist creeds of
democracy, equality and human rights, and old and new orthodoxies
contend with one another. As faith-based fanaticism breeds violence,
the dreams of reason produce amoral technologies as fearsome as any
religion’s inferno. New dogmas of market-driven global capitalism
threaten to overwhelm old faiths and attachments to a homeland or a
certain way of life.
What is the role of literature in these new iterations of an
age-old contest? As witnesses to the truths of the heart as well as
masters of the languages through which all reasoning must ultimately be
rendered, writers can help to heal the breach between faith’s passion
and reason’s clarity. By convening a truly global group of authors to
talk about the problem of faith and reason in a number of its many
forms, PEN World Voices seeks to deepen and broaden the contemporary
discussion of one of the central dichotomies of our time.
>>Click here for the full schedule of events.
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Chris Abani on Faith & Reason: The New Religion
 Faith is something like this, I imagine. Not of God. But of a pen or a brush / held up like the last flaming torch of the century, and yet flimsy— / this desire of the artist to keep the blue from swallowing it all up. / Like something that happens only at night. / Like a lie and desperation so thick you can breath it. >> Read more
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Azhar Abidi on Faith & Reason
 To my mind, the human experience is far too rich, mysterious and deep to be
reduced to the limited methods of logic, science, and rationalism. Surely
whether something cannot be proven by reason does not mean that it does not
exist. >> Read more
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Gioconda Belli: On Faith & Reason
 I still have faith
I cannot stop believing / We weren’t just meant to destroy each other I am a romantic / From the forgotten world.... >>Read more
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Hans Magnus Enzensberger: On Faith & Reason
 When I looked up from my blank page / there was an angel in the room. // A rather commonplace angel, / presumably of lower rank. // You cannot imagine, he said, / the degree to which you’re dispensable.
>> Read more
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Raymond Federman on Faith & Reason
 I cannot say which / is my country today / it constantly changes / it's always the country / that invades me / devastates me / that makes me angry / I mean I cannot write... >> Read more
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Moses Isegawa on Faith & Reason
 When I was fifteen I decided to become a writer. I had fallen in love with books at six and I believed it was enough to catapult me into a dream world inhabited by the gods of the letters. >>Read more
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Hanna Jansen: On Faith & Reason
 There is no reason for believing what lies beyond belief. Believing finds its reason in itself. Faith and Reason are big names. Too often misused to bend wrong to right! >>Read more
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Navid Kermani on Faith & Reason
 In two or three years time at the latest, he had continued, when his son became aware of his own loneliness, he would not be able to help him any more, given that he himself was helpless in face of the horror. Then there would be only one thing left that he could do for his son, and that was to save him from the rest of his life. >> Read more
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Lyubomir Levchev: On Faith & Reason
 I know it is a dream. / I know that now / I should move / my hand. Drive it away. And take / a tranquilizer… >> Read more
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Transmigration of Souls: Agi Mishol
 If only someone would explain / where the souls are, in a city or a town / or a kind of campground, / and how much one can count on a soul / whose entire existence is based on rumor. >> Read more
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Anne Provoost: Conversation With Noah
 Many live in ignorance. And what is learnt now will soon be forgotten again. What makes you confident your god will not do the same thing all over again in 500 years, to your children and your children’s children? That he will not destroy your cities again, and will not butcher your descendants? >> Read more
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