Dinesh D'Souza, fellow at the Hoover Institute and frequent columnist on conservative and religious topics, posts a recent article on Townhall.com in which he praises Stanley Fish, the widely cited literary critic, for taking atheists to task via deconstructionism. Fish tells the story of a man who seemingly abandons all (family, friends, who are beckoning him to return to more reasonable/knowable pursuits) to pursue a light which claims to be able to grant him eternal bliss. The deconstructive argument then shows how the atheist position is part of that narrative and depends on it, rather than standing outside it as it claims to be. I will give you one comment from an atheist and my reply:
Atheist Comment:
Dinesh writes "Fish comments, 'What this shows is that the objections Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens make to religious thinking are themselves part of religious thinking.'"
Same old same old, Christians framing atheism in theistic terms that assumes the very concept of god that's questioned by atheism.
He adds "Science today can no more explain ethics or human happiness than it could a thousand years ago."
Science explains how, not why. Religion explains neither.
My reply:
This atheist must be filtering Dinesh's words through an impenetrable barrier of belief (whether it be called unbelief or not).
Let's read for understanding before we analyze: Fish's point is not that you somehow secretly believe in God because you reject Him. He's not assuming that YOU have a concept of God simply because you are questioning those that do. He's making the (quite powerful) case that your type of thinking--your discourse--against God would not be possible without the existence of a discourse on the existence of God. You don't have to buy into the concept of God to admit that you wouldn't be called "atheist" without some kind of "theism" already in place. No reason to feel impugned here. Imagine an environment where the norm is atheism, would you be called atheist then? This is the essence of Fish's deconstructionism. And beyond this essence, Fish is also asserting that you may perceive yourself as standing outside the debate on God because you don't subscribe to the assumptions, but religious discourse nonetheless perfectly circumscribes your thinking into its own, making your discourse of being outside dependent on actually being inside theirs. It's an unfair and inescapable discursive structure if you're an atheist, but it's there whether or not you believe you are outside of it.
Now on your other point, I cannot disagree more: Science explains how and can sometimes say why, but religion most emphatically DOES claim to explain the why, and the significance of the why too. That you don't find the explanations compelling does not grant you license to deny that religionists have a claim to explanatory power beyond (current) science.
Comments