This brings into focus a startling fact: that the practice of contemporary reviewing, whether fiction or non-fiction, owes nothing to self-styled “cr… - A. C. Grayling

The media no longer hesitate to whip up lurid anxieties in order to increase sales, in the process undermining social confidence and multiplying fears.

Worst of all, symbols sometimes live on in their own right when what they symbolise has long been forgotten.

Four kinds of answer are standardly given to the question why religion exists. One is that it provides explanations—of the origin of the universe, of the way it works, of the apparently inexplicable things that happen in it, and of why it includes evil and suffering. Another is that religion provides comfort, giving hope of life after death, providing reassurance in a hostile world, and a means (by supplication, propitiation, and the practice of one or another form of prescribed behaviour) to get a better deal in it. A third is that it makes for social order, in promoting morality and social cohesion. And a fourth is that it rests on the natural ignorance, stupidity, superstitiousness and gullibility of mankind.