A little bit on The Pilgrim's Progress.

I sometimes enjoy listening to the Philosophy in Action podcast. It's a good little listen when you're concentrating on other things, and I enjoy it in spite of some of the politics that don't jive with me.

A recent post at the blog, however, caught my eye, in regards to John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress.

I just finished listening to the classic allegorical novel of protestantism, The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. It was truly atrocious, even aside from the Christianity. I cannot imagine Christians finding any value in it… and yet it is a classic.

The worst — and hence, the best — bit was the following passage on the proper Christian interpretations of natural phenomena:

I battled my way through TPP a couple times, once on my own back in 1999 or so, and then in 2001 for a University class. It was a hard slog each time. The sort of appalling logic represented in the article quoted above made it an eye-roller every time. And I`m pleased to note that somebody else might think it isn`t worthy of being called a "classic." Historically important as the text is, and as representative as it is in regards to Puritan attitudes, its logic is utterly obsolete. 

Let's relegate it to the sidelines of our canon, OK? OK.