Stanley Fish's second take on the recent atheist literature topping the best-seller charts:

A very strong assertion is made – we will “undoubtedly discover lawful connections between our states of consciousness [and] our modes of conduct” – but no evidence is offered in support of it; and indeed the absence of evidence becomes a reason for confidence in its eventual emergence. This sounds an awfully lot like faith of the kind Harris and his colleagues deride – expectations based only on a first premise (itself asserted rather than proven), which, if true, demands them, and which, if false, makes nonsense of them.

Dawkins exhibits the same pattern of reasoning. He believes, like Harris, that ethical facts can be explained by the scientific method in general and by the thesis of natural selection in particular. If that thesis is assumed as a baseline one can then generate Darwinian reasons, reasons that are reasons within the Darwinian system, for the emergence of the behavior we call ethical. One can speculate, as Dawkins does, that members of a species are generous to one another out of a desire (not consciously held) to preserve the gene pool, or that unconditioned giving is an advertisement of dominance and superiority. These, he says, are “good Darwinian reasons for individuals to be altruistic, generous or ‘moral’ towards each other.”

Exactly! They are good Darwinian reasons; remove the natural selection hypothesis from the structure of thought and they will be seen not as reasons, but as absurdities. I “believe in evolution,” Dawkins declares, “because the evidence supports it”; but the evidence is evidence only because he is seeing with Darwin-directed eyes. The evidence at once supports his faith and is evidence by virtue of it.

Dawkins voices distress at an imagined opponent who “can’t see” the evidence or “refuses to look at it because it contradicts his holy book,” but he has his own holy book of whose truth he has been persuaded, and it is within its light that he proceeds and looks forward in hope (his word) to a future stage of enlightenment he does not now experience but of which he is fully confident. Both in the vocabulary they share – “hope,” “belief,” “undoubtedly,” “there will come a time” – and the reasoning they engage in, Harris and Dawkins perfectly exemplify the definition of faith found in Hebrews 11, “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

As I've suggested before, I tend to get bored with debates that rerun longer than "I Love Lucy" reruns (apologies to the fine folks from the old Channel 55 days when they ran that show). But Fish's means of dissecting the arguments for atheism are well worth a read. He is, after all, one of the more prominent and skilled literary critics out there.

And not to strike a redundant note intentionally, but I still think Chuck Colson is missing the point as he views the same phenomenon:

The writers know that evangelicals and conservative Catholics have had decisive influence on public policy and recent elections. Their books have one purpose: to silence us in the public square.

But we must not be intimidated; rather, we must continue to speak out boldly against abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, slavery in Sudan, and same-sex marriage.

Really? I mean, as important as most or all of those are to me and many others, does my faith hinge on guessing God's policy on stem cell research ... or does it not hinge more on seeing to it that I show Christ's love as best that I can? Colson, of course, focuses most of his time on issues in the public sphere. So I can understand his vantagepoint. But it strikes me that there are far, far more of us that don't focus our time, energy, and efforts there. What of us?