Talk:Deconstruction-and-religion

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Religion Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Religion, a project to improve Wikipedia's articles on Religion-related subjects. Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to good and 1.0 standards, or visit the wikiproject page for more details.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the Project's quality scale. Please rate the article and then leave a short summary here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.
	This article falls within the scope of the Interfaith work group. If you are interested in Interfaith-related topics, please visit the project page to see how you can help. If you have any comments regarding the appropriateness or positioning of this template, please let us know at our talk page

	Christianity Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Christianity, an attempt to build a comprehensive guide to Christianity on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit this article, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. If you are new to editing Wikipedia visit the welcome page to become familiar with the guidelines.
B	This article has been rated as B-class on the quality scale.
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the importance scale.
Assessment comments This article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need.

	Philosophy Portal This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Philosophy, which collaborates on articles related to philosophy. To participate, you can edit this article or visit the project page for more details.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
???	This article has not yet received an importance rating on the importance scale.
Additional information: Related task forces (major fields): Philosophy of religion

	Deconstruction-and-religion is part of WikiProject Atheism, which aims to organize, expand, clean up, and guide atheism related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit this article, or visit the project page for more details.
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the Project's quality scale. (If you rated the article please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.)
For more information and how you can help click Show → If you would like to participate, you can edit this article, or visit the project page for more details. Quick help: See changes to: Main talk page Article layout Links to Atheism information and Wikipedia:Research resources Writing about religion and Article development Citing sources, Verifing Sources and Original research Assume good faith and be civil Core articles Atheism article New atheism articles To Do List: edit - history - watch - purge Join WikiProject atheism and be bold Show off a userbox with {{userWPA}} or {{userWPA2}} and attract potential members Help with articles. See this month's adopt an article. Help out with the To-do lists Be consistent Use a "standard" layout for atheism related articles (see: atheism layout style, The perfect article, and Featured articles) Add Atheism navigation template on the bottom of all atheism articles; (use {{Atheism}} or see navigation template) Add Atheism info box to all atheism related talk pages (use {{Wpa}} or see info box) Add {{Category:atheism}} to the bottom of all atheism related articles, so it shows up on the list of atheism articles Maintenance / Etc Find/cite sources for all positions of an article (see citing sources, and atheism references). Try to expand stubs, however, some "new" articles may be neologisms, as this is common with positions on theories on life and may be suitable for deletion (see deletion process) Watch the list of atheism related articles and add to accordingly (see atheism articles) And always write for an encyclopedia. Article to improve for the month of November Agnosticism Create Notable atheist articles Shorten / merge into others false choice into false dilemma - discuss whether you are for or against this merge here Expand an atheism stub Your immediate attention false choice into false dilemma - discuss whether you are for or against this merge here Clarify references in Atheism, using footnotes.

[edit] "non-secular-humanist"

Is it "non-secular-humanist" (not secular humanist, end of statement), or "non-secular humanist" (religous humanist)? I'm guessing the latter, but a clarification in the text would be good. — coelacan talk — 22:16, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

It's not secular humanist. Hay4 00:14, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

And also not religious humanist? I'm genuinely confused about the wording here — coelacan talk — 00:49, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

It is not religious humanist, it is deconstructionist. I tried to describe the school of thought as well as possible, but I know it can be done better. Hay4 01:15, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

If it's not humanist at all, might just want to leave that out. It kind of throws the reader off. There are a lot of things it's not. I wouldn't include it unless there was some overwhelming expectation that it would have been humanist. I just took it out, see how that looks. I won't revert if you don't like it though. — coelacan talk — 01:33, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

It looks good with the change. Thanks for the input. Hay4 03:05, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Very interesting article, by the way. I'm generally stumped by Derrida's works but this seems interesting enough to dig deeper in spite of that. — coelacan talk — 04:03, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Not much of a range!

The sentence, "In terms of dogmatic theology, deconstruction-and-religion ranges from almost certainly atheistic to out-and-out atheistic," does not seem to denote much of a range of opinion. Should the range read instead "almost certainly *theistic* to out-and-out atheistic"?Larry Hamelin 14:28, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

In terms of dogmatic theology, the range is very constricted. But in terms of what can be thought, it is not necessarily a small range. The notion of a God (as the idea is generally understood) is anathema to deconstructive thought. Explaining why the traditional God is anathema to deconstruction and why the range nearly-atheistic-to-atheistic is not necessarily constricted is exceedingly difficult. But I will try to do so in the next few minutes. Deconstruction is, at heart, a critique of Heidegger's phenomenology. A large part of the critique employs a certain critique of structuralism. Basically, Heidegger critiqued western metaphysics by pointing out that it unjustifiably favors the present over the absent. (For Derrida, the absent in temporal terms is: absolute past, past-present, future-present, and absolute future.) However, in critiquing metaphysical notions of time, Heidegger anchored his thought in an atemporal conception of Being. Derrida uses the insights of post-structuralism to attack Heidegger's reliance on Being to anchor his thought. For Derrida, all of thought is a play of signifiers: there is no transcendental signifier to guarantee that the signifiers that make up language and our thoughts are in a proper or natural order. So, Derrida thought that for Heidegger, Being was unjustifiably used a trascendental signifier. So what results from Derrida's rather complex critique of Heidegger is a style of thinking that is a brew of various intricate ideas. When Derrida solidified his method of reading/thinking/philosophizing in the 1980s, he turned his attention to bodies of thought that were the "other" of deconstruction. When he opened deconstruction up to religion, he found that the God of Abrahamic religions has been understood as a transcendental signifier, even the God of negative theology. However, Derrida equally resisted "scientism", which is placing Cartesian "reason" in the position of a transcendental signifier (see eg Rogues); additionally, Derrida resisted placing political ideology in the sopt of a trascendental signifier (see, eg Specters of Marx). Derrida's thought centers on differance, which is a phenomenologically-derived idea that stands for that that is neither word, concept or thing. Differance is a difficult concept to explain, so I'd suggest you look at the wikipedia entry for it. But for Derrida in particular, I think he suspected that earlier, far more crude conceptions of differance were theorized by medieval negative theologians. Thus, Derrida suspected that he may be an intellectual descendent of negative theologians. So, when asked if he was an atheist late in his life, Derrida, sensitive to the language of traditional religion, answered only that he "rightly passed for an atheist" and that he "didn't know that he was an atheist." But, when someone like Simon Critchley says that he is an out-and-out atheist, he is really taking a significantly different posture than Derrida. But in the end, even the most "religious" of the authors engaging with deconstruction-and-religion like John D. Caputo are nontheists and oppose a conception of God-as-transcendental-signifier. Hay4 22:46, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikiproject atheism

As the creator of this entry, I'd like to voice my opposition to the idea of deconstruction-and-religion being associated with most of what goes on under the label of "atheism." Further, I oppose the entry being considered "grade-B" and of "low importance." This entry concerns religion and phenomenology and has very little to do with the belief systems harbored by 99.9999% of atheists. In fact, deconstruction-and-religion adherents have as much in common with negative theologians as they do with atheists. Would the judge of the entry please identify his/her reasons for judging the entry to be atheism related and of low importance? Hay4 20:48, 29 April 2007 (UTC)