the fish god

I often very much enjoy Stanley Fish. His book There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, which I believe I never actually finished, nonetheless changed the way I think about a few things—no small matter—and, for example, finally made me see how affirmative action (formerly a position I embraced, I'll admit, more because it fit with a set or a kind of political beliefs that I endorsed, as opposed to a position I truly felt and could argue with confidence and good faith) actually makes a lot of sense...more to the point, made me see how the argument against it based on fairness and "color-blindness" is a deeply flawed one (as opposed to a troubling one I couldn't quite see how to refute, see preceding parenthetical).*

ANYWAY:

Lately he's been lashing back at the atheist writers Harris, Dawkins, and Hitchens,† and I wrote a little response to this piece only to find that comments had been shut down after a surprisingly small number of responses. Not sure what that's about. Anyway, here's what I said, more or less, from memory:

I enjoy and appreciate Dr. Fish's persuasive reasoning, as always, but my own objection to religious belief (and Sam Harris's, I believe...I have not read the Dawkins and the Hitchens books) goes more or less unanswered. On what basis does it make sense to believe in the literal truth of a set of stories or the literal existence of a being that controls or otherwise influences the universe, in the absence of empirical evidence—particularly when there exist so many reasons to believe, psychological and otherwise, some of which Dr. Fish lays out himself in this piece, other than its having any relationship to reality?

It would seem that Dr. Fish's main defense of God lies in a postmodern rejection of the very idea of objective truth, and I cannot help but think that many of the religious readers encouraged by Dr. Fish's arguments would find the underlying assumptions of his argument absolutely untenable. Is he not saying, essentially, that the reason it's silly to attack a belief in God is that the question of God's existence or nonexistence is effectively meaningless and moot?

And I didn't say this part (not that that makes any difference), but it feels to me that Fish is responding to atheism not with faith but with agnosticism—or (even "worse") with relativism.‡ And that's fine, but let's be clear about what's being argued, here. Fish isn't so much defending the validity of religion as he is attacking the notion of validity, not so much arguing in favor of belief in God as dismantling the idea that any belief can or need be justified in any way, not so much endorsing credulity toward a narrative as expressing incredulity toward metanarratives.§

On the other hand, as Donald Barthelme wrote in "Kierkegaard Unfair to Schlegel," "I have a deep bias against religion which precludes my discussing the question intelligently." What a man, what a man, what a man, what a mighty good man. (He's a mighty mighty!)

* I used to think, basically, "Well, black people got worse-than-screwed and were and have been and are in various ways still oppressed in this society, so it makes sense to help," but then also, "Why should a black guy get a job just because he's black if there's an equally or possibly even more qualified white guy applying—what about meritocracy?" But Fish answered that question for me, first by pointing out that the "playing field" is not "level" but then also by giving the very early-'90s example of conservatives crying foul when a Chinese guy was cast as Hamlet, I think it was—the objection basically being, "How come liberals complain when a white guy gets cast as a Chinese guy but suddenly it's O.K. for a Chinese guy to play a white guy?"—and then replying, essentially, "Because Chinese actors do not dominate and control theater, because there is not a historical problem of white actors not being able to get parts, because there is not a tradition of Asians getting made up to look like caricatures of Caucasians and essentially mocking them." Good answer. (The same thing goes, by the way, for why it's not as big a deal to call a white guy a honky as it is to call a black guy a nigger, not as big a deal to call a straight girl a breeder as it is to call a gay girl a dyke—and, although in fact this is not the way it's broken down in our society, not as big a deal to criticize someone for being religious as it is to criticize someone for being an atheist.)

† Who, I want to point out, are still getting mentioned regularly by writers as if they were these profoundly influential philosophical giants representing a powerful and overwhelming anti-religious force in our society, as opposed to the voices of a tiny, effectively meaningless minority (see preceding footnote). One thing I like less than the powerful stomping out the weak is the powerful wailing about how they're under siege by the weak. What that says about our relationship to vermin I do not know...but what the homeowner–vermin analogy tells us about the dangers a threatened majority poses to a creepy minority need hardly be dwelled upon.

‡ Which it seems to me is often an intellectually defensive form of nihilism.

§ Eh? Eh?