Sherlock Holmes & Jesus Christ
IS CHRISTIANITY JUST A GAME?
“Excellent!” I cried. “Elementary,” said Holmes. — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Crooked Man
For a few luminous months during my sophomore year in high school I came to believe in the Full Personhood of Sherlock Holmes. That is, I became persuaded that the “world’s first consulting detective” had been, after all, not a mere fictional device, but a living, breathing man.
The instrument of my conversion to this faith was W.S. Baring-Gould’s marvelous Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, which purported to be the authentic biography of the great detective. From his birth to Siger and Violet Holmes in the North Riding of Yorkshire to his death among his beehives in Sussex, Sherlock Holmes and his life and times were presented with such a wealth of believable circumstantial detail (complete with footnotes) that I felt compelled to believe in his existence.
The world seemed a larger and more wonderful place with the knowledge that Sherlock Holmes had had a life outside the reports of his cases written by his associate Dr. Watson and published through Watson’s “literary agent,” Conan Doyle.
You May Also Enjoy
The most egregious remark in the Pope's interview with Scalfari concerns a subjective definition of conscience, one that the self-described atheist says he "perfectly shares."
An incident in Italy this past April offered appropriable insight into the profit-driven abortion industry's largely hidden dark aspects.
The post-Darwin recasting of "science" has served to marginalize theology, ethics, and metaphysics by portraying them as mere matters of personal taste.