RT Article
T1 Blessed, precious mistakes: deconstruction, evolution, and New Atheism in America
JF International journal for philosophy of religion
VO 76
IS 1
SP 75
OP 94
A1 Schaefer, Donovan O.
LA English
PB Springer Science + Business Media B. V
YR 2014
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1821413547
AB This paper explores the ways that Daniel C. Dennett’s bestselling 2006 book Breaking the Spell traffics in a set of distinctly American presumptions about the relationship between religion and science. In this Americanized atheism, religion is presumed to be a set of logically organized propositional beliefs–a misbegotten science in need of correction or elimination. I show that a convergent critique, drawing on both evolutionary theory and deconstruction, highlights the limitations of this approach. This convergence highlights the theme of accident in both pluralist evolutionary biology and continental philosophy of religion. Thematizing accident opens up a new conversational space between a deconstructive approach to religion and postadaptationist evolutionary theory, with implications not only for a philosophical understanding of religion, but for new, postsecular atheisms.
K1 Pluralism
K1 Accident
K1 Evolution
K1 Postsecularism
K1 Caputo
K1 Derrida
K1 Deconstruction
K1 Dennett
K1 Atheism
DO 10.1007/s11153-014-9446-5