Stanley Fish reads two books on religion–one for, one against–and comes to a stirring, there-are-good-arguments-on-both-sides conclusion:
>Perhaps an individual reader of either will have his or her mind changed, but their chief value is that together they testify to the continuing vitality and significance of their shared subject. Both are serious inquiries into matters that have been discussed and debated by sincere and learned persons for many centuries. The project is an old one, but these authors pursue it with an energy and goodwill that invite further conversation with sympathetic and unsympathetic readers alike.
>In short, these books neither trivialize their subject nor demonize those who have a different view of it, which is more than can be said for the efforts of those fashionable atheist writers whose major form of argument would seem to be ridicule.
The chief value of these books on religion is that they are books on religion.
What a vacuous man. It really saddens me that someone with such impressive academic credentials can come off like such a twit with the amazing frequency Fish does. And the pro-religion book he picks looks like it was produced at the expense and manipulation of a one great philosopher who has become vulnerable to apologist weasels in his aphasia-induced dotage http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/magazine/04Flew-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin.
Integrity? Anyone?
Nevyn,
In answer to your question, might I quote Bush’s favorite philosopher? “Why seek you the living among the dead?” You’re looking for honesty and morality among a host of duplicitous, morally bankrupt people who have politicized their faith and gutted their God on the altar of their own profit. The eager manipulation of Flew is but one in a long line. How very sad.
And Fish isn’t vacuous, he’s intellectually dishonest and crude. That he’s so smart is not the subject of sorrow, but a warning sign to his reader. He’s not foolish, he’s manipulative and malignant. His entire game (outside of his Milton scholarship, sadly negelected of late)consists of these sorts of milquetoast appraisals of of others works and elaborate, contrived equivocations.