By the way ... That's Pat!
Posted on 07/16/2007 4:13:26 AM PDT by Kaslin
Years ago I had a series of debates with the literary scholar Stanley Fish. Our topic was political correctness. I portrayed Fish as the grand deconstructor of Western civilization, and he fired back in There’s No Such Thing As Free Speech, several chapters of which are an answer to my arguments. As I got to know Fish, however, I recognized that although he defended some of the practices being promoted in the name of multiculturalism and diversity, he was not himself a politically correct thinker. We became friends, and in 1992 he and his wife attended my wedding.
Fish has of late been demonstrating his political incorrectness by writing critically of separation of church and state, and also by challenging leading atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christoher Hitchens. Indeed Fish uses his detailed knowledge of Milton as well as his famous skills of literary deconstruction to show the emptiness of the atheist arguments.
In his New York Times blog, Fish takes up the argument advanced by Dawkins and company that belief in God is a kind of evasion. According to this argument, we avoid the responsibilities of this life by putting our hopes in another life. Religion makes us do crazy things.
Fish takes as an example of the Harris-Hitchens-Dawkins critique the behavior of Christian in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Christian becomes aware that he is carrying a huge burden on his back (Original Sin) and he wants to get rid of it. Another fellow named Evangelist tells him to "flee the wrath to come." Evangelist points Christian in the direction of a shining light. But Christian can't clearly see the light. Still, he begins to run in that direction. Bunyan describes his wife and children who "began to cry after him to return, but the man put his fingers in his ears and ran on, crying Life! Life! Eternal Life!"
For Harris, Hitchens and Dawkins, this is precisely the kind of crazy behavior that religion produces. Here is a man abandoning his duties and chasing after something he isn't even sure about. Fish writes, "I have imagined this criticism coming from outside the narrative, but in fact it is right there on the inside." Bunyan not only has Christian's wife and children imploring him to return, he also has Christian's friends struggling to make sense of his actions.
Fish comments, "What this shows is that the objections Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens make to religious thinking are themselves part of religious thinking. Rather than being swept under the rug of a seamless discourse, they are the very motor of that discourse." Citing the atheists' portrait of religion as unquestioning obedienece, Fish writes, "I know of no religious framework that offers such a complacement picture of the life of faith, a life that is always presented as a minefield of difficulties, obstacles and temptations that must be negotiated by a limited creature in the effort to become aligned with the Infinite."
Fish observes that while religious people over the centuries have dug deeply into the questions of life, along come our shallow atheists who present arguments as if they first thought of them, arguments that Christians have long examined with a seriousness and care that is missing in contemporary atheist discourse.
In a follow-up article, Fish deepens his inquiry by looking at the kind of evidence that atheists like Hawkins and Harris present for their “scientific” outlook. Harris, for example, writes that “there will probably come a time when we will achieve a detailed understanding of human happiness and of ethical judgments themselves at the level of the brain.” Fish asks, what is this confidence based on? Not, he notes, on a record of progress. Science today can no more explain ethics or human happiness than it could a thousand years ago.
Still, Harris says that scientific research hasn’t panned out because the research is in the early stage and few of the facts are in. Fish comments, “Of course one conclusion that could be drawn is that the research will not pan out because moral intuitions are not reducible to phyhsical processes. That may be why so few of the facts are in.”
Fish draws on examples from John Milton to make the point is that unbelief, no less than belief, is based on a perspective. If you assume that material reality is all there is, then you are only going to look for material explanations, and any explanations that are not material will be rejected out of hand. Fish’s objection is not so much that this is dogmatism but that it is dogmatism that refuses to recognize itself as such. At least religious people like Milton have long recognized that their core beliefs are derived from faith.
Fish concludes that “the arguments Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens mostly rely on are just not good arguments.” We can expect our unbelieving trio to react with their trademark scorn, but Fish has scored some telling points.
Yep.
Glad the article didn't leave you speechless. I actually had writtent "stumbled" in quotes because I didn't physically stumble onto it and changed my mind figuring nobody would take it literally that I physically stumbled on it.. It came up in a search.
Psychology thinks
I'm astounded. I never knew that before and would think it impossible.;-)
“A God who knows the future is powerless to change it. An omniscient God who is all-powerful and freewilled is impossible.”
“Sailing around the world” was once “impossible.”
Any philosphy or logos that leads someone to this word is faulty.
Let's start with this little bit of idiocy:
An omniscient God who is all-powerful and freewilled is impossible.
Anyone with a kid in college knows that this is indeed quite possible.
Its called "love".
I find your response very interesting. My post had nothing to do with the physical.
I find your response very interesting. My post had nothing to do with the physical.
My response was my thoughts as I original wrote the sentence, and in particular the word 'stumble'. In my search at Google I wasn't looking for the article or any other God-refuting article.
You came across it. How much do you agree with it? All of it, some of it or none, but you’re throwing it in here to generate discussion?
I guess, just as a matter of knowing how we sit, I’d like (and I’m sure others would like) you to fill us in on your position.
The reality is that every knee shall bow.
Until you die.
Yeesh. I myself doubt the existence of any god, and feel about as certain as one can that the Jesus story is pretty much fable. That said, I have no problem whatsoever with believers (aside from Mohammedans), so long as they leave me the hell alone. Similarly, I find myself somewhat embarrassed by the recent spate of books, TV appearances, lectures etc. by all of these atheists - to me, they’re no different than the Pat Robertsons of the world - a bunch of evangelists for things they can’t possibly hope to prove. And in my experience, trying to persuade believers is like reading Sanskrit to a pony - there’s just no point whatsoever.
So the question: Why do we (on any side) even bother? Why not just live and let live?
My Bad,
Side note for anyone to see-
I walked away from the computer for my shower before work. As I was walking, I was thinking of this thread. I start my shower and do what I usually end up doing there: contimplate metaphysics and logos.
I had one of my more stunning realizations.
People claiming to be “atheist” or “Christian” or anything at all, are in fact supposing (even, presupposing) the order of our normal logic as far as I’m familiar.
When someone inquires about your association with an event (for simplicity’s sake, lets make it a crime), the first question, whether stated or not, is “Did you do it?”
From the varying degrees of answers and how it plays out from there, we eventually work through the mechanics of the event, and go to the “why”.
This is of interest to me at this time because it builds in my mind this image of a sophist musing over the pet question of human nature. “Why?” And a child’s first questions on an occurance they do not understand, is no different.
When we ask “Why” by our modern reasoning, we are presuposing we have the pertaining information. “Who, how, when, what...” *Where* is usually unimportant in philosophy, but in criminal justice it can be a lifetime in jail.
But this still begs in the back of my mind- if we suppose our current rationales are overall the right way to go about things, then that means that by proclaiming a side on issue of “God?” we assume we have already burned through and can account for all the other questions first- and that we would be lead to the same answer.
By assuming existance or nonexistance of God, we assume we have mastered all other streams of thought into the issue. At least, according to standard laws.
Incomplete babble, I’m sure, but I needed to get it out there. Maybe someone will be able to help me build on it?
Here, here! This is exactly the achilles heel of the relatavists, and atheists. The assertion that there are no absolutes is, itself, an absolute. It idividing by zero philisophically. It is absurd. It is akin to the ranting of the babbling street-person, or hobo, as they were fomerly known. It cannot be true. More importantly, it cannot be evaluated as true or false.
You surround yourself and enable moral relativism. This is the slow death of the world. It is a shame men like you think they are so smart.
That's simply conjecture based on absolutely nothing; as is the remainder of the article.
Wow, that was a silly article you stumbled on.
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