Poet scorner

Dalrymple’s latest column in the British Medical Journal (on Conversations on Religion with Lord Byron and Others, Held in Cephalonia, a Short Time Previous to His Lordship’s Death, by a British military doctor named James Kennedy) is even better than usual:

An earnest evangelical, Dr Kennedy sought to convert his lordship to Christianity, a thankless task. He did not see the irony of it….Byron raised all the objections to religion that Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have raised more than a century and three quarters later: that religious people are not always good, that the doctrine is incoherent, and so on. Some questions are delightful because they can never be settled.

Read the whole thing (subscription required).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.