Skip to main content

logocentrism, scientism, atheism, Chesterton, any stick will do to beat a dog

Fifteen years ago, deconstructionists attacked theism, I think for its daring to come up with a comprehensive account of reality.  Today, Sean Carroll and his like say that the very questions which lead to such comprehensive answers should be disallowed.  It seems that both groups of anti-theists have in common this opposition to wonder, as is classically conceived.  But they also disagree with each other: deconstructionsts would attack science's claim to be able to come up with objective answers (this may have to do with the term "logocentrism": I don't know); hence the famous "science wars."

Deconstructionism would make us all fideists of a sort, whereas the other brand of anti-theism advocates scientific rationalism.  If so, then theism has been attacked by one group (the quasi-fideists) for being too boldly rational; and later for its perceived opposition to reason.  This reminds me of Chesterton's remark (I think in Orthodoxy) that upon noting how the Church has been criticized for being both too sensate, too ascetic, etc., Chesterton began to suspect that it had perhaps gotten things just right--which is what he did discover once he investigated the mater.I need to review deconstruction in order to see if the Chestertonian come-back would be applicable to the last couple of decades of anti-theism.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dembski's "specified compexity" semiotics and teleology (both ad intra and ad extra)

Integral to Dembski's idea of specified complexity (SC) is the notion that something extrinsic to evolution is the source of the specification in how it develops. He compares SC to the message sent by space aliens in the movie "Contact." In that movie, earthbound scientists determine that radio waves originating in from somewhere in our galaxy are actually a signal being sent by space aliens. The scientists determine that these waves are a signal is the fact that they indicate prime numbers in a way that a random occurrence would not. What is interesting to me is the fact that Dembski relies upon an analogy with a sign rather than a machine. Like a machine, signs are produced by an intelligent being for the sake of something beyond themselves. Machines, if you will, have a meaning. Signs, if you will, produce knowledge. But the meaning/knowledge is in both cases something other than the machine/sign itself. Both signs and machines are purposeful or teleological...
Post a Comment
Read more

particular/universal event/rule

While listening to a recorded lecture on Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism, it occurred to me that every rule is in a way, a fact about the world. Think about baseball: from the p.o.v. of an individual player, a baseball rule is not a thing but a guide for acting and interpreting the actions of others.  But this rule, like the action it guides, is part of a concrete individual --i.e., part of an institution that has come into existence at a particular place and time, has endured and  may eventually go out of existence.  The baseball rule, as a feature of that individual, is likewise individual.  The term "baseball rule," on the one hand, links us to a unique cultural event; it can, on the other hand, name a certain type of being.  In this way, it transgresses the boundary between proper and common noun. If there were no such overlap, then we might be tempted to divide our ontology between a bunch of facts "out there" and a bunch of common nouns "in here....
Post a Comment
Read more

continuing the discussion with Tim in a new post

Hi Tim, I am posting my reply here, because the great blogmeister won't let me put it all in a comment. Me thinks I get your point: is it that we can name and chimps can't, so therefore we are of greater value than chimps? Naming is something above and beyond what a chimp can do, right? In other words, you are illustrating the point I am making (if I catch your drift). My argument is only a sketch, but I think adding the ability to name names, as it were, is still not enough to make the argument seem cogent. For one can still ask why we prefer being able to name over other skills had by animals but not by humans. The objector would demand a more convincing reason. The answer I have in mind is, to put it briefly, that there is something infinite about human beings in comparison with the subhuman. That "something" has to do with our ability to think of the meaning of the cosmos. Whereas one might say"He's got the whole world in His han...
2 comments
Read more