…we denizens of the third millennium ce make constant recourse to specialists whose art has no basis in empirical discovery or other Enlightenment values. We shape our moral and aesthetic imaginations through reading Lord of the Rings or watching The Matrix series. We sate our appetites for stylized violence by watching Pulp Fiction and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. We depend on an acupuncturist for healing and we practice yoga. We are pulled in by Yom Kippur or the Old Rugged Cross.
The metaphysical underpinnings of all of the above run very deep. They have little or no basis in empirical discovery or naturalistic explanation. Like the ancients, we experience far more than we understand. We experience in order to understand. And we are, or tend to be, syncretists.
John Hobbins, “Reading Genesis as if Moses wrote it in the Late Bronze Age”, ancient hebrew poetry (4 October 2009) [http://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/ancient_hebrew_poetry/2009/10/reading-genesis-as-if-moses-wrote-it-in-the-late-bronze-age.html]