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It is the evening, and after much reading on the symbols of fidelity in the Odyssey and after much eating of grilled zucchini and goat cheese, I am taking a break to intentionally not react, ever so indifferently, to pages R6 and R7 of the November 12, 2006, Los Angeles Times Book Review.

R6 and R7 are the center pages of the section, so they open up callously into a rectangular sprawl of atheism vs. Christianity, two-thirds “Keepers of the non-faith” one-third “Let there be enlightenment” with a picture of the earth from space creased down the middle.

Here are my two favorite quotes:

“Scattering secular fatwas with abandon, [Richard] Dawkins assumes the mantle of an ayatollah of atheism.”
-Robert Lee Hotz

“If human understanding evolves, surely the ability to apprehend the divine also evolves to keep pace, even if organized religion lags behind."
-also Robert Lee Hotz

And as I watch my bird peck furiously at its reflection in the mirror attached to its cage, either trying desperately to open the window to the next dimension or, more likely, to mindlessly murder that other bird, I wonder what we (this neatly organized, chaotic mass of emotional tentacles that cling so tightly together serendipitously as our tiny little spherical rock races towards its destiny) are really getting at.