Einstein said it best, “My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveales himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds.”

Terry Eagleton . . . excoriates Fish’s “discreditable epistemology” as “sinister.” According to Eagleton, “Like almost all diatribes against universalism, Fish’s critique of universalism has its own rigid universals: the priority at all times and places of sectoral interests, the permanence of conflict, the a priori status of belief systems, the rhetorical character of truth, the fact that all apparent openness is secretly closure, and the like.” Hence, it is inherently self-defeating. Of Fish’s attempt to co-opt the critiques leveled against him, Eagleton responds, “The felicitous upshot is that nobody can ever criticise Fish, since if their criticisms are intelligible to him, they belong to his cultural game and are thus not really criticisms at all; and if they are not intelligible, they belong to some other set of conventions entirely and are therefore irrelevant.”

* *
I did learn something about the tenets of literary theory from Eagleton. All I get from Fish is a universal daze.

I’m with Taibbi on “agnostic.”

Second, he isn’t necessarily a Christian and Fish certainly isn’t. It is the quest of most literary critics to inhabit and translate expressions of thought. People like Eagleton and Fish are just annoyed at illiteracy and incompetence of “school-yard atheists” like Dawkins. They are literary scholars and they just want to raise the bar of the discussion. Expect pop-atheists to keep that bar lowered, discussing the subject with the only vocabulary they know and calling everything said outside their frame of reference mere babble.

Second, he isn’t necessarily a Christian and Fish certainly isn’t. It is the quest of most literary critics to inhabit and translate expressions of thought. People like Eagleton and Fish are just annoyed at illiteracy and incompetence of “school-yard atheists” like Dawkins. They are literary scholars and they just want to raise the bar of the discussion. Expect pop-atheists to keep that bar lowered, discussing the subject with the only vocabulary they know and calling everything said outside their frame of reference mere babble.

Very true. Our vocabulary can indicate whether one believes x, y, or z, but not the degree to which one is invested in that belief.

It was certainly reasonable and necessary for most of human history to invest (heavily) in metaphysical explanations for everyday phenomena. But once the microscope and telescope started to unravel these mysteries, such explanations became less and less reasonable and necessary — and more and more dangerous and irresponsible.

I find the term “agnostic” to be rhetorically wishy-washy, as it implies a tolerance for a type of “belief” which is in fact profoundly immoral and destructive — not just “by-The-Book” fundamentalism, but any type of religionism which grounds morality in metaphysics. To counter such belief, we need all the rhetorical weapons at our disposal, and I don’t find “agnosticism” very potent in this regard.

OK, back to my Bible-burning…

Jason the anti-theist

“I don’t think we’re here for anything, we’re just products of evolution. You can say, ‘Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don’t think there’s a purpose,’ but I’m anticipating a good lunch.” –James Watson

Of course, it’s also possible that after years of exposure to the unforgiving conclusions science has made of the natural world, their traumatized brains have collapsed into an atrophied mush left with barely enough functionality to incorporate collegiate bombast, logical fallacies, circular reasoning, and myopic observations into an endless feedback loop of obnoxiousness.

I wish many of the aforementioned artless stylizations were a more modern thing, but it’s been around for a while. The kind of awful and misleading prose that Matt has criticized (especially anything by Thomas Friedman) was thoroughly dissected by Orwell in his still-prescient essay “Politics and the English Language” some 44 years ago.

Second, I really have a hard time with the terms Agnostic and Atheist, being lumped into any category besides jiu jitsu freak or jedi, twists my gut hard. I’m a smart person who loves critical thinking and vicious cut throat debate with those who love it also. That being said, Dawkins and Harris are definitely in love with themselves with no tolerance for anyone who does not fully agreed with there points view about religion or science or atheism. The low tone, non humor, Brights (they call themselves that) have fallen into the same dilution as the religious, arrogance and bias.

I have read and scoured the internet for the last couple of years. It pisses me off that there seems to be some sort of Atheist crusade. WTF? Are we going to be as stupid as the religious zealots? Hitchens is mad as hell. Though I respect and agreed with most of his points but his distain is evident , he goes as far as to call the religious his enemy. What? If you have the time punch Dawkins and Chopra in an youtube search or Enemies of Reason. What the video. The arrogance and distraint of Dawkins toward Chopra is almost unbelievable. Chopra does the best at presenting coherent reason for spirituality and belief. It would be great to see Chopra on a full with Dawkins or Hitchens, preferably Hicthens.

Again, I agree with a lot of what the Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens write. The way they present it a turn off. My point being I do not think you where unfair to Dawkins. All of our feet must be held to the fire continually. Jiu Jitsu Jedi out.