Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe

mystical experiences are clearly authoritative for the individuals who have them. We can recognise that, while also acknowledging at the same time that no authority emanates from them that can compel the assent of those who stand outside them.

The basis of the scientific method is the conviction that the only way to gain reliable knowledge of external reality is by a process of critical enquiry cleansed of all subjective distortion and personal involvement.

‘Scientia’, that science thing again – which is the belief that salvation from the tumults and sorrows of

Are we to understand here that we are to take the suffering that comes upon us as if it came from God, and in that way make something out of it, turn it to a good use?

I am tired of the persuasion game, the dominant-story story and the loud shouting that goes with it. If you are so sure of your story why do you have to make so much noise about it?

Its preachers claimed that these ancient writings were not art, the imaginative expression of enduring truths about the human condition. They were reports of events that happened precisely as they were described,

The Scottish writer James Kelman described the eloquence of unlettered people with a gift for language as ‘orature’, the capacity to compel and

Golda . . . they take the cross and turn it around, they turn it around my God.19 No, the Church never really tried to live the Jesus-life. What it did was to keep his story alive.

What it does is destroy the power of what may be the oldest effect suffering can have on the afflicted, which is to give them a sense of their own complicity in what is happening to them.