Regis Nicoll
A short while back, philosopher Stanley Fish observed that religion was “transgressing the boundary between private and public and demanding to be heard.” That’s a dangerous thing, as Mr. Fish sees it, because religion is based on claims that are excluded from tests of “deliberative reason.”Take the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the linchpin of Christianity. According to Mr. Fish, “The assertion that Christ is risen is not one for which evidence pro and con is adduced in a judicial setting.” Mr. Fish worries that the growing influence of such non-critical beliefs is threatening liberalism.
There’s more than a little irony here. Stanley Fish, along with the other architects of postmodernism, ousted objective truth and reason in favor of subjective truth and personal experience decades ago.
Among trenchant critics — Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett, being the most trenchant — people who believe in the resurrection are under the spell of an authority directing them to sacrifice intellectual freedom on the altar of superstitious tradition. That makes religious faith coercive, if not dangerous.
Read on...
No comments:
Post a Comment