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This version of that venerable chestnut features a review in the New York Times by Stanley Fish (yes, that Stanley Fish, inventor of "Reader Response Theory," the ultimate relativist viewpoint) of the latest book by critic Terry Eagleton -- Reason, Faith, and Revolution. I've not read the book, although I saw an earlier catty review of it in the Times Literary Supplement (but I can't find a link) and I've read some of Eagleton's other essays. More interesting than the Fish piece itself, though, is this discussion of it at Crooked Timber.
We find Fish arguing an odd position for a relativist -- that religion provides some fundamental things, by implication things essential to humanity, which nothing else can provide, especially atheistic science (all science is atheistic? What?). Eagleton's position seems to be that somehow atheists are "school-yard bullies." He also accuses most of being a sort of liberal, human-progress-is-on-its-inevitable-march Panglossians. Yet Eagleton's view of what religion does seems so nebulous that it is hard to see what it is.
The most interesting parts of the discussion to me are the comment trails. The comments to Fish's NYT piece are not as good -- many are as hand-wavingly vacuous as Fish's article is (or just snarky), but the ones to the Crooked Timber piece are very good. I recommend them. Here's a succinct one that whacks both Eagleton's complaint about people he calls "showy atheists," i.e. Hitchins and Dawkins (whom he lumps together as "Ditchins) and the entire debate in general.
". . . instead of showy atheism, I like the relatively muted apathetic agnosticism better: not only am I not buying what you’re [Eagleton or Ditchins] selling, I don’t want it for free either. Get off my lawn."
We find Fish arguing an odd position for a relativist -- that religion provides some fundamental things, by implication things essential to humanity, which nothing else can provide, especially atheistic science (all science is atheistic? What?). Eagleton's position seems to be that somehow atheists are "school-yard bullies." He also accuses most of being a sort of liberal, human-progress-is-on-its-inevitable-march Panglossians. Yet Eagleton's view of what religion does seems so nebulous that it is hard to see what it is.
The most interesting parts of the discussion to me are the comment trails. The comments to Fish's NYT piece are not as good -- many are as hand-wavingly vacuous as Fish's article is (or just snarky), but the ones to the Crooked Timber piece are very good. I recommend them. Here's a succinct one that whacks both Eagleton's complaint about people he calls "showy atheists," i.e. Hitchins and Dawkins (whom he lumps together as "Ditchins) and the entire debate in general.
". . . instead of showy atheism, I like the relatively muted apathetic agnosticism better: not only am I not buying what you’re [Eagleton or Ditchins] selling, I don’t want it for free either. Get off my lawn."
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