I don't know how to analyze [music] scientifically. I can certainly construct chords and do
mathematics in music, but that seems to be pretty far from the essence of it. Or poetry.... These are
realms that, at least for the moment, are outside the realm of science. And yet, I don't want to say
they're unreal.A response could be that science will eventually make sense of these things, but that's a faith statement
and so it doesn't add much clarity.
Well, I don't know if I've actually said anything. But this is one of the five directions my mind went in
as I read your note.
All the best,
Preston
Greg and Preston remain in touch. A brief exchange between them, written as the editing process was
coming to an end, revealed that they were still at a friendly standoff.
PJ: I've been editing all day.... I don't know where we found the time during those months to keep up the
writing.
GG: Where did we find the time? You know the answer, my friend: The Lord works in mysterious ways!
1. CHRISTIANITY AND VIOLENCE
Several times in their correspondence, Greg and Preston consider the topic of violence done in the name
of Christianity (see pages 133-36). Perhaps the greatest symbols of Christian violence are the witch trials
of the early modern period. Below is a portion of a transcript of a witch trial that led to the torture and
execution of a young French woman named Suzanne Gaudry.
[Gaudry] says that ... she is not a witch, and being a little stretched [on the rack] screams ceaselessly
that she is not a witch, invoking the name of Jesus and Our Lady of Grace, not wanting to say any
other thing.Asked if she did not confess that she had been a witch for twenty-six years.Says that she said it, [but] that she [now] retracts it, crying Jesus-Maria, that she is not a witch....Suzanne Gaudry [is to be put] to death, tying her to a gallows, and strangling her to death, then
burning her body and burying it there in the environs of the woods.In his letters, Greg implies that violence and irrationality will decline to the extent that Christianity
declines. The wellknown evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins makes the point this way:
Religious beliefs are irrational. Religious beliefs are dumb and dumber: superdumb. Religion drives
otherwise sensible people into celibate monasteries or crashing into New York skyscrapers.
Religion motivates people to whip their own backs, to set fire to themselves or their daughters, [and]