I’ve written on the parable of the blind men and the elephant before, as far back as Manufacturing Religion (1997), where I argued: The problem with the story of the blind men … is that the level of the narrative open to the listener is characterized by privileged access to the fact that there is indeed an elephant beyond the individual perceptions of the blind men…. [T]he story works only because, from the outset, we as listeners see the big […]