This damming review, by Terry Eagleton in the London Review of Books, of Richard Dawkins’ new book The God Delusion is so extremely well-written, so painfully excoriating, that it deserves to be read by every literate English speaker on the planet. Go on, you’ll laugh out loud.
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My God. A literary theorist writes a load of bumph on religion that 0.001% of “Christians” would ever agree with and it becomes “well written and painfully excoriating”.
So much illogical nonsense in there to dissect. Where to start? Well, switch on your reasoning faculties people and have a bash here:
http://cosmicvariance.com/2006/10/29/the-god-conundrum/
and here:
http://www.paulnixon.org/?linkid=1221
I can’t find any suggestion in either of those two articles (the first a bit rambling and pedantic, the second admirably concise but I don’t see his point) that Mr Eagleton’s review is either badly written or whatever the antonym of excoriating is, maybe opprobrious?
I don’t know the antonym either! I’d lean towards commending?
Eagelton writes sentences that don’t mean anything.
Eagleton thinks that he is describing traditional Christian doctrines. Surely this is simply false. Take what he says about the doctrine of the atonement, one of the most seriously off-putting aspects of traditional Christian doctrine. But traditional Christians took Isaiah seriously, and interpreted the death of Jesus as in fact God’s act for the sake of his people. And much Christian theology of the atonement has endeavoured, not entirely successfully, to avoid the inhuman connotations which Dawkins, quite rightly, takes very seriously. It may have been the Romans who killed Jesus — though Christians traditionally blamed the Jews, and, in the gospels, try very hard to exculpate Pilate — but it was really God who was bringing about, through the death of Jesus, the salvation of mankind. So, the claim that “It was the imperial Roman state, not God, that murdered Jesus,” is prevarication. Besides, Eagleton still hasn’t answered the question: Who is God?
Eagleton also uses a cheap (but unfortunately familiar) rhetorical trick to deny skeptics the right to criticize ideas: the only individuals deemed expert enough to criticize religion are those who believe in the worth of religion and thus limit their criticism. I am no fan of censorship, but I would be more inclined to exclude from debate anyone who uses the word “rationalist” as a pejorative. Would Eagleton prefer that Dawkins be an “irrationalist”?
This is a comment from a religion to atheist convert on Eagleton’s review:
————
We sneered at “average” church goers. We were appalled at their lack of committment, faith and failure to sacrifice. We really beleived. In all the crazy stuff, redemption, resurrection, rapture and apocalypse. Nonetheless we would defer to wise theologians, read their books and ruminate on the mystery of god.
The fact that so much metaphysical verbiage is churned out in the name of god sustains the fiction. We need to interdict the process, and robustly denying, the unsupportable supernatural core, it’s theological cover is critical to that goal.
Do I sound like a nut job? A crazy angry person? Well you got me, I am, but for a very, very good reason. Faith has stolen 20 years of my life, and spiked them with fear and inhibition. So yeah, I’m pissed off, but I also want to warn people off the experience, like a reformed smoker:-) Guys like the writer of this review simply muddy the waters with unsubstantiated metaphysical claptrap.
———-
At one point Eagleton writes the following:
[quote] Nor is he a principle, an entity, or ‘existent’: in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist. He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. God and the universe do not add up to two, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects. [/quote]
This is so incoherent as to verge on postmodernism. This is a professor of English Literature? It’s laughable to see somebody with such poor communication skills and muddy thinking attempting to criticise a work of such bright clarity and concision. Can you imagine Dawkins writing something as wishy-washy and deliberately obtuse as that?
But then, that’s exactly the kind of language used by theologians. I agree with Dawkins: theology is a pretty empty subject.
And now, some of the actual theology:
[quote] Dawkins’s God, by contrast, is Satanic. Satan (‘accuser’ in Hebrew) is the misrecognition of God as Big Daddy and punitive judge, and Dawkins’s God is precisely such a repulsive superego. This false consciousness is overthrown in the person of Jesus, who reveals the Father as friend and lover rather than judge. [/quote]
Oh, that’s OK then. So because Jesus signifies that God isn’t as nasty as we all thought, everything is suddenly rosy. Fine, let’s burn all the copies of the Old Testament and stick to the New one. All these intricate arguments are trying to eat their cake and have it too. They are arguments which the majority of Christians (and what happened to the other religions, by the way?) simply won’t understand. The important thing about Dawkins’s criticism of religion is that the philosophical wrangling is not really very relevant: it is the effect on people’s minds and on society that really counts, and that is exactly why this book has been written at this point in history.
It is a rallying cry, an outraged “NO!” to all the nonsense that has infected us for centuries, and if its goal, being nothing less than the improvement of the human condition, is to be achieved, it can ill afford to get bogged down in such fruitless ivory-tower discussion.
And, by the way:
[quote] Dawkins considers that no religious belief, anytime or anywhere, is worthy of any respect whatsoever. This, one might note, is the opinion of a man deeply averse to dogmatism.[/quote]
This is utter rubbish. Dawkins simply asserts that religious views should be open to debate the same way as political or philosophical ones.
I found the whole article bewildering. The highbrow references and sneering tone regarding gaps in Dawkins’ knowledge (real or imagined) were surpassed only by the utter incoherence of some of the more surreal passages. This is waffle at its finest.
OK, already, I’ll take this out of the ‘briefly’ category.
I haven’t read ‘The God Delusion’ so I can only go by what I’ve read about it and the other things by Dawkins that I’ve read.
Sean Carroll says, in the article at Cosmic Variance that you linked to above, that Dawkins tackles three issues in his book -
Sean says that he thinks the last two ‘are incredibly complicated issues about which it is very difficult to say anything definitive’. I’d argue that although that may be true, they are at least issues that one can discuss in the context of structured, logical debate in scientific terms, something which Dawkins is well qualified to do. The first issue is not the same as the others. This is what Eagleton is arguing in his review. He is saying that you can’t measure the existence of God scientifically, that Dawkin’s science is inadequate for the job. He doesn’t spend much time on the other two issues. The unscientific language that he uses might well sound incoherent or obtuse to a scientist, but so might poetry, or humour. (Have you ever heard the output from an AI joke generator?) That doesn’t mean he’s wrong, any more that calling the sea ‘wine-dark’ is wrong when everyone knows that it’s generally a shade of blue.
Eagleton says Dawkins shouldn’t write about God because he doesn’t know anything about theology, Dawkins says people shouldn’t write about God if they can’t prove what they’re saying scientifically. Nobody could ever persuade Richard Dawkins to give up his faith, no matter how convincingly they argued. The same probably goes for Terry Eagleton. Let’s face it, it’s not much of a debate because they are starting from such different positions, but it’s very entertaining to see two clever people exercising their minds in this kind of gladiatorial combat.
I find Dawkins depressing and irritating because he appears so intolerant of other people’s views and so certain of the inherent benefits of science. I particularly enjoyed what Eagleton had to say about capitalism
and about the inevitable progress that science brings
I personally see science as a neutral force, like the weather or geography. It doesn’t inevitably make human life better or worse and it is only one way to view the world. Since I am so keen on computers and technology I have to remind myself about this all the time. Art is one way, religion is another. Dawkin’s world would be a very bleak one, as far as I’m concerned.
Apparently it’s emetic
From A.C. Grayling
Terry Eagleton charges Richard Dawkins with failing to read theology in formulating his objection to religious belief, and thereby 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 (LRB, 19 October). For example, if one concludes on the basis of rational investigation that one’s character and fate are not determined by the arrangement of the planets, stars and galaxies that can be seen from Earth, then one does not waste time comparing classic tropical astrology with sidereal astrology, or either with the Sarjatak system, or any of the three with any other construction placed on the ancient ignorances of our forefathers about the real nature of the heavenly bodies. Religion is exactly the same thing: it is the pre-scientific, rudimentary metaphysics of our forefathers, which (mainly through the natural gullibility of proselytised children, and tragically for the world) survives into the age in which I can send this letter by electronic means.
Eagleton’s touching foray into theology shows, if proof were needed, that he is no philosopher: God does not have to exist, he informs us, to be the ‘condition of possibility’ for anything else to exist. There follow several paragraphs in the same fanciful and increasingly emetic vein, which indirectly explain why he once thought Derrida should have been awarded an honorary degree at Cambridge.
A.C. Grayling
Birkbeck, University of London
it’s not much of a debate because they are starting from such different positions
I think that’s the whole issue – it’s an issue which is *impossible* to debate, because there is so little common ground to provide a framework.
One of the things I do is ‘reiki’. Scientifically, I have no idea how or why it works; but it does. So I just put the science side of my brain on hold for a bit while I’m doing it. And these days I don’t try and debate about whether it works or not with people who are looking for scientific explanations; because I don’t have any and it just frustrates us both.
As you say, interesting to watch intellectual giants collide; and an illustration, should one still be needed, of why there is no place for religion or faith in public life.
Ally – I’m not sure I entirely agree with you. I think there is some place for religion in public life although there should be no place for it in government. There is also a place for religion in schools because even if you don’t believe in any sort of God it’s useful to understand the beliefs of other people in order to understand them. It’s also quite hard to understand a lot of British art and literature if you don’t know about the bible in one way or another.
Mr Grayling – If all Richard Dawkins’ book is saying is “God doesn’t exist (if you think he does you’re crazy)” wouldn’t he have been better off writing a poster? And what will his next book be, “I don’t like Marmite (and if you do you’re crazy)”? I strongly believe that religion, like anything else, will become stagnant and poisonous if it’s not regularly stirred up by criticism. So will science, and so will academia, and that’s why I welcome Terry Eagleton’s blasphemous criticism of Saint Dawkins.
Sorry, didn’t make myself terribly clear – I think that teaching about religions should be required, for all the reasons you state – it’s the actual practicing of religion that I think should be divorced from public life – by which I supposed I mean government organisations – and schools.
So who is Sam Hastings and why has he or she quoted a whole chunk of the Eagleton article (even including an [...]) as a review on amazon.co.uk?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0593055489/
It seems to have been an account created entirely for the purposes of posting that review since “Sam Hastings” hasn’t written any other reviews. It doesn’t seem to me to be a particularly unethical thing to do although he should have given Terry Eagleton the credit for his review and of course the LRB deserve a link.