A response to Stanley Fish's article in the NYT

Stanley Fish's article entitled, The Three Atheists, appeared in today's NYTimes. In it he reviewed three recent books on the topic of the irrationality and danger of religious faith. After reading his opinion piece I was moved to write my own comment on the subject, which I've reproduced here. I've been wanting to say this for a long time. Fish's article was just the trigger I needed, I guess.

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That man has evolved a faith-based system of beliefs is not surprising - so many things which effect his livelihood and survival have been mostly out of his control for so long, it’s perfectly understandable that as a rational species we would evolve a super-being to whom we could plea for assistance. Farmers and hunters have forever been at the mercy of nature’s systems, whose mechanisms even now are poorly understood.

Even atheists must surely find themselves “hoping” for something to happen in their favor once in a while. From there is it not a short step to fashion some sort of mysterious being who, if not omnipotent, can at least tune in to our brain’s broadcast frequency and receive its signal? And then “hopefully” act on our request? It’s this second part, especially, that requires some kind of faith - in a power greater than ourselves, and, more to the point, greater than our limited understanding of the workings of nature would allow.

And so there’s the rub. Centuries of momentum are carrying us and our blissful ignorance merrily along the war-torn road strewn with IEDs, even in the face of dramatic advances in scientific knowledge and the education systems for its dissemination. Is it not fair to say that a fifth grader (third grader?) is educated to a level that would have exceeded all but perhaps a handful of the most highly educated people available in the 18th century?

The good news is - somewhere along the line we discarded the pantheon of gods from our polytheistic days, and settled on just a single god (or three or four - if you consider each of the major religions having a different one) in a monotheistic belief system.

I remain hopeful (to no god in particular) that we are now short steps away from humanity finally coming to the realization that the notion of retaining one last god of their choice is no less fanciful, and no more rational, than the belief system of the ancient Romans and Greeks, with their Hera and Zeus atop Mount Olympus.

— Posted by tom short