Salon.com MobileLike most religious critics of Dawkins et al., Terry Eagleton ignores what Dawkins has to say in favour of a simplistic caricature that serves much better as a rhetorical stalking horse. Pace Eagleton, Dawkins envisions no post-religious utopia, sees (as even this warmly welcoming reviewer notes) unheeding capitalism and our eager, willful, 'global warming is a hoax' exploitation of the world we all depend on as real threats, dismisses the absurd fundamentalist view of God and adopts an account of the 'God hypothesis' which, while it does encompass a personal God and no doubt is not vague enough to please Eagleton, is strikingly moderate. Dawkins' central claim is that, insofar as we have any means at all by which to find real answers to questions about ourselves and the world, those means are scientific. This makes the too-often-heard complaint about nasty technologies that science has made possible obviously, grotesquely beside the point. Science gives us reliable answers to questions. The fact that those answers sometimes enable us to do bad things in no way undermines Dawins' epistemic thesis.
Read what I pasted below and imagine what a sniveling twit this letter writer must be. If someone happens to read a book or an article about a book, they automatically affect the most sophisticated air. It sounds like we've all become Oxford dons shaking our heads sadly at the ignoramuses/elitists out there beyond the gates.
Hardly.
Terribly nice of him to concede, in his "new" book, that most of Dawkins criticisms actually strike home even to Eagleton with devastatingly accurate effect.
But not addressing the slippery, fanciful, I-just-pulled-it-out-of-my-ass, solipsistic "god" that Eagleton apparently "worships" is not, really, so much of a flaw as a choice.
A. C. Grayling, again:
Terry Eagleton [...] misses the point that when one rejects the premises of a set of views, it is a waste of one’s time to address what is built on those premises
Indeed. Either a god exists, or he/she it doesn't.
Of course Hitchens and Dawkins are aware of modern, post-Enlightenment Christian thought. Of course they are aware that there has been a steady trend further and further away from scripture. Of they are aware that post-Enlightment Christians talk in abstract terms about God's love and the need for spiritual growth.
The reason they focus on the Scripture, and on the crazy stuff in the Scripture is because it IS crazy stuff, and if you profess to be Christian you own that Scripture, or, at least, have to explain how you can be a Christian and not believe in a virgin birth of the actual Son of God who is physically transported to heaven after his death.
These are core beliefs, relived in every vernal equinox and winter solstice. Dawkins would say they are making actual statements of the nature of the universe, of biology and of the natural world. When Dawkins says people get angry with him for bringing this stuff up, that these issues were settled in theological thought in the 19th century, his reply is "No they were not. Everybody agreed to set these issues aside because it is embarrassing to address them directly."
So when you say that Augustine would roll his eyes, that is exactly the point. Augustine knew these core beliefs were largely nonsense. But you can't have it both ways. You can't believe, to put it in the terms of the South Park kids when they faced a doctrinal crisis, the way to heaven entails eating crackers and also claim some higher spiritual truth. You're still eating the crackers, still reciting the Nicean Creed, still professing faith in nonsense.
When they call you on that, they aren't being shockingly ill-informed. They are calling you out on being, at best, disingenuous about what you believe.
But there are questions science cannot properly ask, let alone answer, questions about "why there is anything in the first place, or why what we do have is actually intelligible to us." That is where theology begins.
Right, so theology begins with poorly thought-out questions and goes down from there.
To paraphrase from your article, St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas would roll their eyes in disbelief at the third-rate belief in their God posed by the likes of 99% of "Christians" today.
It possesses the kind of certainty that belongs to such wistful sentences as "I believe the Mets are the best team in baseball."
So pure delusion in the face of evidence. Statements of falsity based on a hope that they're true. Yeah, that's worthwhile.
Everything that cannot be scientifically proven- or provable- is not therefore "false."
And I'm not talking about baseball.
Part of me enjoys Eagleton's viewpoint, but in the end it contains many of the flaws that I see in Dawkin's and Hitchen's work. As an atheist, I find the "Christians are ignorant and irrational" argument that they lean towards to be limited at best, and Eagleton is no better as he calls names and limits all atheists to the Dawkins/Hitchins model.
While there are any number of anti-theists out there, most atheists I know are fairly low-key about it. It's a matter of personal faith, and we often avoid the question because theists are usually shocked, horrified and totally uncomprehending. It is tiresome to field conversion attempts or questions about how one can be an atheist and "have no moral compass" or "Not believe anything" (Lack of theistic faith rarely equates to lack of morals, and most of us believe plenty of things, thanks.) Contrary to most theist's beliefs, there are atheists in foxholes, we just aren't rude enough to bring it up while the shells are falling. After all, what would be the point? As long as someone isn't beating me over the head with their beliefs, how does it hurt me?
While science can be applied to prove or disprove specific events in the bible, at the end of the day, you can't use science to prove or disprove God. It is just as much a form of poor science as intelligent design. Nor can you point to science or religion as holding the prize for all things good or evil. All it does is put people on the defensive and create more of these half-baked books. So, huzzah, Eagleton is witty, and even has a few points, but at the end of the day, he is merely trying to sell books with controversy. *yawn*
