Comments on Modern Novels - Neil Stephenson's QUICKSILVER

     In Neil Stephenson’s novel, Quicksilver, the author explains the nature of religious leaders.

“People who are especially bad and know that they are may be drawn to religion because they harbor a desperate hope that it has some power to make them virtuous– to name their demons and cast them out. But if they are clever then can find ways to pervert their own faith and make it serve whatever bad intentions they had to begin with. The true benefit of religion is not to make people virtuous, which is impossible, but to put a sort of bridle on the worst excesses of their viciousness.”

    Does religion stand as a sort of sanctuary for those that are not virtuous, as a defense against their uncontrollable behaviors? I hope to believe that Stephenson is mistaken, that the highlighting of religious leaders’ wrong doings is just that, a highlighting of only the bad. But there is a failure to show the everyday good of the majority of religion and religious leaders. I believe that religious leaders can be looked at as having to uphold a higher standard than those not in a leadership role. However is this not true of government and organizational leaders as well? I believe that there exists a factor in a person’s makeup that lead them to extremes, this same factor is what compels leaders to rise to the top. Those that are followers lack this gift and/or drive. Religious leaders are no different.