Fish does not come close to understanding that Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris—“shallow … schoolyard atheists,” he calls them—assault religion on precisely the same grounds on which billions believe it: They don’t bother with the dulling tedium, the meanders and switchbacks of theological argument, because the global throngs don’t bother with them. In Save the World on Your Own Time (2012), Fish rightly asserts that “intellectual work” concerns itself with “the evaluation, not the celebration, of interests, beliefs, and identities; after all, interests can be base, beliefs can be wrong, and identities are often irrelevant to an inquiry.” And that is exactly what Dawkins and company are up to, the evaluation of beliefs as they are believed.
Au contraire. Fish understands them quite well. They do not evaluate the beliefs as they are believed by those who take the trouble to understand what they believe and why. Dawkins and Co. take no trouble whatever to even learn, let alone understand, how I — and many others — believe. And yes, there is a component of faith underlying science.
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