The Duck’s unsettling soliloquy: on the boundaries between science, religion and existence

This book moved me both intellectually and emotionally, to the verge of tears. Religion, science, philosophy and philosophy of science are rarely written about in this manner: intelligently and with great feeling.

The Gloves Come Off  opens with the Duck declaring that joining a cult is the best thing he’s ever done. And yes, the Duck is specifically talking about  a religious  cult. This is no joke,  The Gloves Come Off  really is a passionate defence of religion. And what a defence it is! The passion here is not religious fanaticism, but intellectual pursuit that does not let the reader off easy.

Just leafing through this book, it’s immediately clear that this is not a light-hearted monologue. On the contrary.  The  Gloves Come Off  is the result of extensive reading, personal experience and long-term reflection, perhaps as a reaction to the current anti-religious climate of secularisation. In Western countries New Age ideas have been gaining ground, whereas traditional institutional religion – in Finland that’s the Evangelical Lutheran Church – has been declining and losing power. Yet, New Age “dabblings” are considered marginal and, above all, intellectually implausible. A critically thinking Westerner who believes in enlightened rationality does not fall for tarot cards or mantras! And even if one might occasionally venture into such things as a form of entertainment, no intelligent person actually believes that religion or spirituality could offer anything truly significant or real. Least of all any actual  knowledge.

The Duck has examined the themes presented in  The Gloves Come Off  at length, and it almost feels like the pressure to write this particular book has grown so strong over time, that the book just had to be written. The Duck aims to, on the one hand, showcase the shallowness of typical criticism towards religion and, on the other, to seriously ponder the basic tenets of living and being. What is all this about?

The running theme of the book is the question of what sense religion makes in today’s world. As he mulls over possible answers, the Duck goes on a long philosophical expedition, all the way from Nietzsche and Marx to post-war social criticism, to philosophy and mathematical research, and from there on (back) to ancient Indian Vedic literature. The exploration is accompanied by several philosophical quotations lifted from original texts, which the reader can reflect upon alongside the Duck. This gives rise to new perspectives, even in the most familiar of quotes.

The Duck’s intellectual train of thought through the ages is breathtaking, and the baffled reader finds themselves reviewing certain sentences again and again. For instance, mathematical infinity theorems, or St. Anselm’s ontological arguments, are sometimes so convoluted that trying to decipher them makes one’s brain hurt. Fortunately, the book also features familiar philosophers and their theses, which the Duck approaches in his own fresh, “duckish” manner. The Duck’s unyielding inference is so delightfully insightful and idiosyncratic that it’s easy to fall in love with him! One wants to keep reading and to follow the stream of ideas ever farther – through eight hundred pages! – to keep finding new territories. Much like the Duck, the reader also wants to have a wider and deeper understanding of things.

Even though the philosophical expedition is long and sometimes meandering, the Duck’s reflections are ultimately about—well, nothing more and nothing less than the ultimate existential questions. What is the relationship between matter and spirit? What do naturalism and physicalism mean as scientific orientations, and what is their significance in the world view of Western people? Where are the boundaries of science, knowledge and language? What falls outside these boundaries? And of course (perhaps the most tantalising question): what is consciousness? The Duck’s unmatchable sense of humour alleviates his deep reflections on the limits of a materialistic worldview and modern science.

The reading experience is illuminating, and it is easy to imagine oneself returning to the book time and again. Some pertinent quotations and the Duck’s thought patterns could be used as bases for meditation, just as they are. But above all:  The Gloves Come Off  is an  important  book. It asks those unfashionable questions that science has largely forgotten; questions that are scoffed at and swiftly overlooked in academic discourse. What is our existence based on, what does it come back to? What is the ultimate essence of a living being? What is eternity? Or virtue? What about beauty?

The Gloves Come Off  explores Western science’s inability to understand and study the qualitative, subjective experiences of human existence. And as long as we don’t know how to study these things, it’s as if these experiences don’t exist! What will our lives be reduced to if we don’t believe in the existence of transcendence or even beauty? As the Duck points out, Wittgenstein once stated: “Not how the world is, but that it is, is the Mystery!”

P.S. I’m looking forward to the sequel, where we’ll get swiftly into the multidimensional twists and turns of religious thinking!

Maija Butters
Postdoctoral Researcher,
University Lecturer, University of Helsinki