Over dinner with Tony Blair, Gould confessed to feeling lost. He had done everything required of him. Why had the cancer returned? Blair’s response was remarkable: “The cancer is not done with you, it wanted more. You may have changed but not by enough, now you have to go on to a higher spiritual level. You have to use this recurrence to find your real purpose in life.”

Somehow managing to stay one step ahead of Harry Hutton and his avenging noose of justice, this silly tosser is waxing metaphysical everywhere I look all of a sudden:

Finally, were this to become reality, there would, in my view, be one major and positive consequence for faith itself. It would allow those of us of faith to discuss and proclaim what our faith means to us, why Faith and Reason go hand in hand and how Faith enriches our lives and guides them, however that might be obscured by our human frailty. It would open up the potential of Faith to many who search for meaning, who are trapped in the present, but have come to regard the faith traditions as the anachronistic preserve of the irrational, the superstitious and the prejudiced. It would allow a true and rational belief in God to direct the path of the 21st Century. That is where Faith belongs. And why the world needs it.

Even post-industrial Western democracies are run by madmen. You just gotta laugh.