Bush and the NYTimes

the machinations of the Bush administration (always the default villain for Times readers) [S.Fish]

More Fish

“The good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, I do…. Who shall deliver me?” (Romans, 7: 19,24). The anguish of this question and the incredibly nuanced and elegant writings of those who have tried to answer it are what the three atheists miss; and it is by missing so much that they are able to produce such a jolly debunking of a way of thinking they do not begin to understand.

Fish on proving God

O.L. (in a comment on June 11), identifies the “religion is man-made claim” as the “strongest foundation of atheism” because “it undermines the divinity of god.” No, it undermines the divinity of man, which is, after all, the entire point of religion: man is not divine, but mortal (capable of death), and he is dependent upon a creator who by definition cannot be contained within human categories of perception and description. “How unsearchable are his Judgments and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counselor” (Romans, 11:33-34). It is no wonder, then, that the attempts to contain him – in scriptures, in ceremonies, in prayer – are flawed, incomplete and forever inadequate. Rather than telling against divinity, the radical imperfection, even corruption, of religious texts and traditions can be read as a proof of divinity, or at least of the extent to which divinity exceeds human measure.

If divinity, by definition, exceeds human measure, the demand that the existence of God be proven makes no sense because the machinery of proof, whatever it was, could not extend itself far enough to apprehend him.

Hauerwas

"Stanley Hauerwas likes to say: ‘The only requirement for being a member of a religious study department is that you not believe in God.”

Bunyan by Fish

But in a short while Christian comes to see that while his new friend has all the answers to any question of doctrine – he boasts “I will talk of things heavenly or things earthly; things moral or things evangelical; things sacred or things profane, things past or things to come” – none of his answers has made its way from his lips to his heart. That is, they come from a rote erudition and not from an inward conviction.

Eagleton

"Eagleton likes this turn of speech, and he has recourse to it often when making the same point: “[B]elieving that religion is a botched attempt to explain the world . . . is like seeing ballet as a botched attempt to run for a bus.”

Broad minded

"Most of our so-called 'broad-minded' individuals seem to dwindle in depth as they gain in breadth."
--- Rabbi Shraga Silverstein