Customer Reviews

Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate (The Terry Lectures Series)

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Literary critic Terry Eagleton, who is, insofar as I can tell, an atheist himself, nevertheless engages in a nuanced take-down of some of the pretenses associated with contemporary atheism. And he focuses in particular on the two most articulate writers within the neo-atheist movement---Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. For purposes of convenience (since Dawkins and Hitchens, in numerous instances, offer similar arguments) Eagleton amusingly conflates their names into a singular entity that he calls "Ditchkins."

Eagleton sees the neo-atheist movement as a reaction to the resurgence of Islamic and Christian fundamentalism after 9-11, and he sees that reaction as largely obtuse, both intellectually and psychologically. Eagleton, for example, sees real value in the Bible, and in the story of Jesus in particular, and what it can teach us about life and social change. Eagleton's readings of the Ten Commandments and the story of Jesus were especially dazzling, and illustrated his point that one needn't throw the religious/mythic babies out with the fundamentalist bathwater.

Eagleton is also an unreconstructed Marxist, which I think is a rather dubious intellectual position itself. Nevertheless, it gives him a vantage for making sharp and astute critiques of Ditchkins's complacency with regard to the role that capitalism and Modernism have played in creating a world of religious fundamentalist reactionaries. Eagleton sees fundamentalism as the West's psychological shadow---and points us to Euripides's Bakkhai as a play we would do well to study. In that play, King Pentheus treats Dionysus, who inhabits the borders of his realm, with enormous arrogance and without self-critical awareness, and the result is his own destruction. In this part of the book, Eagleton is rehashing material that he dealt with in more detail in a previous book ("Holy Terror").

Eagleton's book is strongest in its first half. The first chapter was especially thought provoking, for in it Eagleton offered a brilliant aesthetic defense of God's existence that could (almost) make me a believer. Eagleton's argument is a reversal of Liebnitz-like utility, in which God must do everything perfectly---and this must be "the best of all possible worlds." To the contrary, Eagleton suggests that God may have made the universe for a very different purpose. The universe may be (if we are to attribute it to God) a contingent art project, utterly inefficient and without utility---an act of freedom, not necessity. This, of course, has its own problems, but Eagleton has offered a clever retort to traditional theodicy.

Why did Eagleton write this book? If I may engage in a bit of armchair psychoanalysis, I think it is because Eagleton perceives the universal acid of reductionist rationalism heading his way. It's coming after religion now, but it's coming after poetry, literature, and Marxism later. In other words, Eagleton's book is, at one level at least, a battle against an obtuse utilitarianism which sees the price of everything and the value of nothing. I saw Eagleton's (perhaps unconscious) motive leaping from page 34 of his book, in which he wrote: "That a great deal of [religion] is indeed repulsive . . . is not a bone of contention between us. But I speak here partly in defense of my own forebears, against the charge that the creed to which they dedicated their lives is worthless and void."

In some sense, this book is Eagleton (as a Marxist critic) fighting for his own life---defending the importance of nuance and measured judgment against the crassest forms of reductionist cynicism---and making a case for the value of some form of hope for POETIC JUSTICE in the future.

The atheists Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have suffered their share of critical reviews, but perhaps none have been as categorical or vociferous as this one from their fellow Brit Terry Eagleton. By some accounts, Eagleton is the most influential literary critic in Britain; by all accounts he is an unreformed intellectual bad boy, and not only for his Marxist socialism. In the present volume he combines his rapier wit, encyclopedic knowledge, and spirited prose to dismiss the "Ditchkins" as pitiful pikers whose ramblings deserve our disdain.

True, the "Ditchkins" make some good points. But their sloppy thinking, strident language, and dogmatic condescension are warning signs of an atheism bought "on the cheap." Their stock in trade includes vulgar caricatures of religion, an "abysmally crude [and] infantile version of what theology has traditionally maintained," ignorance, cultural supremacism, an "eminently suburban" love affair with the Enlightenment myth of liberal progress, the refusal to acknowledge that religion has done any good anywhere or that science has done any harm, and an either/or mentality that ignores ambiguity. They are defenders of the political status quo, and hardly the revolutionaries they purport to be.

Eagleton was raised as an Irish Roman Catholic in working-class England, and although he has been ambiguous about his own personal faith, he says that one reason he wrote this polemic was to defend the faith of his forbears as something worthy of a defense. Christendom has betrayed the truly revolutionary nature of original Christianity, he says, and so in addition to attacking the secular left he undertakes the Kierkegaardian task of distinguishing between the genuine article and its many counterfeits. The revolutionary gospel does not conform to the geo-political and economic ways of the world and, in the end, "is absurdly, outrageously more hopeful than liberal rationalism" and its myth of progress. "Any preaching of the Gospel which fails to constitute a scandal and affront to the political state is in my view effectively worthless."

Along the way, Eagleton has harsh words for capitalism, which he considers inherently atheistic (as did Karl Barth), postmodernism, Oxford High Table, globalization, the corridors of power in Washington and London, and western civilization's failure to understand and engage Islam in a meaningful way. If you enjoy unapologetic iconoclasm of the highest order, Eagleton makes for a good read. In addition to his forty books, he's scheduled to deliver a single Gifford Lecture in March 2010.

It's astonishing how many people have reviewed this book thinking that's it's a defense of religion, when Eagleton himself is atheist, or agnostic at best. It indicates that not all of us are reading this book as closely as perhaps we should be. Clearly, quite a few of us are predisposed to take offense on behalf of Dawkins and Hitchens, every time Eagleton flourishes his dry British wit. But this is how the British debate: witheringly and dramatically.

I'm glad someone is pointing out that Dawkins leaps gleefully into a chasm of hypocrisy by attacking religion's crimes (which are many) while obtusely dismissing how science has enabled us to wreak havoc on one another. Eagleton romps from one end of the book to the other, slaughtering sacred cows, and is clearly enjoying himself.

Again, I don't claim to be an expert on textual analysis, but I'm seeing a lot of misfires in the reviews section here. It's a very nuanced style, and sometimes you have to slow down quite a bit to grasp what he's saying. For example, there is not, in fact, any indication that Eagleton thinks Hitchens is a closet Marxist. If anything, Eagleton repeatedly confirms the man's strident and misbegotten *fascism*. Which dovetails into his argument about how Enlightenment values can end up producing the opposite of the intended effect.

Then there's the matter of taking seriously such cast-off, joking comments such as the one he makes about the phases of the moon. For some reason, people are latching on to this as a confirmation of some character flaw. They are elevating it beyond the confines of the statement; erasing the ambiguous humor from the page because a certain interpretation allows them to dismiss more serious statements elsewhere. That's intellectually dissonant.

Basically, the message of the book is this: Dawkins and Hitchens see the debate on religion and secularism in overly broad terms, and their underlying worldview has an inherently *mystical* bias (such as blind faith in the Path of Progress).

You may not agree with it, but I don't see many people on these pages disagreeing with what Eagleton is actually saying. Many of them don't even seem to understand his personal religious disposition. In essence, they're proving his point about obtuse cognitive tunnel vision.

Reading books by the Marxist literary and cultural critic Terry Eagleton is one of my guilty pleasures. After reading his biting critique of religion in After Theory (2003), imagine my surprise when I found Terry Eagleton "defending" religion in his latest book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).

I use quotation marks because Terry Eagleton is still an unbeliever, but, curiously, he finds religion more congenial to his Marxism than the liberal humanism so prominently displayed in the recent books of militant atheists like Christopher Hitchens (God is Not Great)and Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion).

I enjoy reading Terry Eagleton because his prose is often eloquent, stimulating, and insightful. His clever analogies make me smile. For example, he says the contention that science and technology have made religion superfluous is like "saying that thanks to the electric toaster we can forget about Chekhov" (7). He further observes that "science and theology are for the most part not talking about the same kind of things, any more than orthodontics and literary criticism are" (10).

Eagleton sees four worldviews competing for dominance in our time: liberalism (both economic and humanistic), socialism, religion, and science (136). In the books by Hitchens, Dawkins, and their ilk (a group he labels "Ditchkins"), he finds secular liberalism trying to ally itself with science against religion.

"The difference between science and theology," Eagleton opines, "is one over whether you see the world as a gift or not; and you cannot resolve this just by inspecting the thing, any more than you can deduce from examining a porcelain vase that it is a wedding present" (37). Thus, religion is fundamentally no more opposed to science than is socialism, and science must not become the private domain of liberalism or be commandeered to serve its capitalistic agenda.

While Eagleton rejects religion as simply unbelievable, he does see Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism in their purest forms as compatible with his ideal of socialism. "The mainstream Christian theology I have outlined here may well be false," he writes, "but anyone who holds to it is in my view deserving of respect" (33). "I also seek to strike a minor blow on behalf of those many millions of Muslims whose creed of peace, justice, and compassion has been rubbished and traduced by cultural supremacists in the West" (34).

As a radical thinker, Eagleton finds a kindred spirit in Jesus. "If you follow Jesus and don't end up dead, it appears you have some explaining to do" (27). Obviously, though, Eagleton would rather deliver lectures at Yale than end up dead himself, so his radicalism is mainly limited to his thoughts. But liberalism can never become a true ally of religion, he maintains, because "the advanced capitalistic system is basically atheistic" (39). Why? Because its values, beliefs, and practices are "godless."

What really unites socialism and religion, according to Eagleton, is their sense of "tragic humanism," by which he means "that only by a process of self-dispossession and radical remaking can humanity come into its own" (169). Neither religion nor Marxism is as optimistic about human nature and human perfectibility as is a secular humanism that puts its faith in the idea of progress and firmly believes religion is the chief obstacle to such progress.

While I find Eagleton's spirited defense of biblical theology gratifying, I also view it as disingenuous. As an unbeliever, he must know that the socialist's faith that "the powerless can come to power" (27) is far different that the Christian's belief that Christ was "crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God" (2 Corinthians 13:4). Socialism and Christianity may be compatible in many regards, but they have completely different outlooks. The New Testament's solution for sin and suffering comes at the Day of Judgment--and not by revolution on earth.

Likewise, Eagleton's naïve appreciation of Islam seems wrongheaded. If he has read the Qur'an (3:28; 4:56; 8:55; 9:5; 98:6), he is surely aware that it does not suffer infidels gladly. Were he to loudly proclaim his atheistic views in Bagdad or Kabul or Islamabad, I doubt he would find "peace, justice, and compassion" for very long.

Ultimately, Eagleton is not so much defending religion as he is taking advantage of a golden opportunity to criticize liberalism, the sworn enemy of his socialist philosophy. You might say he is temporarily and hesitantly making religion, the enemy of his enemy, his friend.

"Our age," he says, "is divided between those who believe far too much and those who believe far too little" (137). I suspect he himself belongs in the latter category. While his critique of liberalism as an ideology without the moral authority, intellectual insight, or political will to defend itself is often spot on, he never makes a convincing case for his own Marxism. It, too, has already been weighed in the balances of history and found sadly wanting.

The books of Terry Eagleton are my guilty pleasures. They are rhetorically and stylistically satisfying, but the food for thought contains a lot of empty calories and, in the last analysis, is not very good for you.

In his oft-cited October 2006 review of Richard Dawkins's "The God Delusion", Terry Eagleton casually makes a joke about how relieved Dawkins must be that Eagleton doesn't know his address. Unfortunately, he reprints this unfunny remark in "Reason, Faith, and Revolution". One would have thought that he, given the time that has passed, had opted to leave it out. What would he have done if he DID know where he lives? Bust his knee-caps, or what? Run up and down the street in his underwear? Or is it just for a laugh? As it turns out, Eagleton exhibits just the same qualities he so lambasts others for having - irony, cynicism and impudence. He undermines his arguments by ridiculing his adversaries. Admittedly, the invention of Mr. Ditchkins as a conglomerate of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins (and others), IS funny and works very well, thank you. But by pretending that Ditchkins's ideas about religion equal those of a toddler, he loses in persuasion. It's funny for a while, but by the 10th time Ditchkins compares God with the Yeti, the joke tends to wear thin.
He turns nasty when he first makes a remark on the expensive education of Christopher Hitchens (since when is that an argument for grown-ups?), and then insinuates that Ditchkins would be proud if mankind destroyed Earth all by themselves, without help from an angry God. It gets worse: in a twist of forced logic, Eagleton accuses Richard Dawkins of regarding Hitler as a symptom of moral progress (86).
Eagleton actually reminds me quite a lot of Hitchens. I've always had the feeling that the latter could rival Dickens if he set his mind to it (Hitchdick, anyone?). Terry Eagleton has a bit of the same flavour to him - spicy and sharp and with a healthy (sometimes) mix of the High and the Low. He sprinkles philosophers and writers around your ears with the same ease as references to the Loch Ness monster, gay goblins and said Yeti. In this respect he also reminds me of Zizek, who not surprisingly makes his token guest appearance.
At the start of the book Eagleton states that he doesn't know that much about religion and science - and then proceeds by mocking the two anti-crusaders for exactly the same shortcoming. Curiously, he nevertheless seems to be in possession of the true meaning of Belief. Surely many a believer would raise an eyebrow when he presents Jesus as a sick joke of a saviour and Christianity as disappointingly materialist (19). In his highly idiosyncratic exposé of religion, not much is left intact but Love. God is love and "there can be no full humanity without God "(86). Nothing to get terribly excited about perhaps, but throughout the book he attacks the "Yeti-theorists" with scathing sarcasm for lacking this insight.
For all its ups and downs, "Reason, Faith, and Revolution" is fun to read. It takes you on a roller-coaster ride through the landscape that is The God Debate. Terry Eagleton is never pedestrian and presents his case with panache. Whether you agree with him or not is another matter. He's perhaps the only writer around capable of mentioning Karl and Groucho Marx in the same breath.

The power, complexity, and originality of Eagleton's apologia will find an eager audience only among the intelligent, the open-minded, and the curious, but readers interested in He Who Was Before the Big Bang and She Who Lives Beyond the Universe's Edge will find the author's work is erudite and compelling and will profit from reading and thinking about his thesis.

[...]

"Religion has wrought untold misery in human affairs. For the most part, it has been a squalid tale of bigotry, superstition, wishful thinking, and oppressive ideology. I therefore have a good deal of sympathy with its rationalist and humanist critics" (Terry Eagleton, p. xi).

So Terry Eagleton begins his critique of the so-called New Atheist movement. Eagleton, Distinguished Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster, England, clearly is not advocating an uncritical acceptance of religion. In fact, his stinging analysis of the "Polyanna-ish" faith in human progress manifested by New Atheists like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins (whom he humorously lumps together as "Ditchkins") is balanced by his just-as-stinging indictment of a Christianity he feels has largely betrayed its initial ideal of social justice and human transformation.

Eagleton was invited to deliver the 2008 Dwight H. Terry Lectures at Yale University. His initial delight in the invitation was tempered when he discovered the lectures "are traditionally devoted to two subjects I know embarrassingly little about, namely science and religion" (2). His lectures were compiled and edited--retaining the conversational format--into the new book Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate. The author is a strange brew--part Marxist, part liberal Catholic, all rolled into a British literary theorist.

Eagleton's four lectures are divided into the book's four chapters: "The Scum of the Earth," "The Revolution Betrayed," Faith and Reason," and "Culture and Barbarism." Throughout each lecture he is outspoken in regards to money, politics and capitalism, post-modern foundationless self-congratulation, faith in the cult of science which some believe, if followed, guarantees a bright future for all, and perhaps above all, he damns the way certain critics of religion "buy their rejection of religion on the cheap" (xi). What does he mean by this? Essentially, such critics are taking the low road in their treatment of religion:

"A huge number of the charges that Ditchkins levels against actually existing religion are thoroughly justified...Indeed, it is hard to imagine how any polemic against, say, the clerical abuse of children or the religious degradation of women could be too severe or exaggerated. Yet it is scarcely a novel point to claim that for the most part Ditchkins holds forth on religion in truly shocking ignorance of many of its tenets" (49).

Indeed, while exalting science and condemning faith (a dichotomy Eagleton finds problematic to begin with) critics like Dawkins "castigate the Inquisition, for example, but not Hiroshima" (133). What many New Atheist writers put together is usually "a worthless caricature of the real thing" (xi). But Eagleton doesn't say he particularly blames them for such lapses. For one thing, he notes they view religion as silly from the start, so of course they won't spend due time becoming properly familiar with it. "What profit is to be reaped from the meticulous study of a belief system you hold to be as pernicious as it is foolish?" (51). For another thing, many Christians have, in his view, "squalidly betrayed" their own "revolutionary origins. Christianity long ago shifted from the side of the poor and dispossessed to that of the rich and aggressive" (55). Eagleton recognizes, however, that his own critique of Christianity would be impossible without the "Judeo-Christian legacy itself," something most New Atheists seem pleasantly unaware of (58).

In the end, Eagleton explores the problems of Christian faith in a liberal (Western) society. There seems to be, he says, a "certain creative indifference to what people actually believe" as long as the economics work out. Taken to an extreme, "Liberal society's summum bonum is to leave believers to get on with it unmolested--rather as the English would walk by if you were bleeding at the roadside, not because they are hard-hearted, but because they would be loathe to interfere with your privacy" (144).

Though Eagleton focuses mainly on Christianity for the "Religion" parts of the book, he occasionally includes Islam in the discussion. For instance, the peaceful integration of Muslims in the West, Eagleton argues, need not require their wholesale conversion or destruction or the west's wholesale indifference. Instead, "if the British or American way of life really were to take on board the critique of materialism, hedonism, and individualism of many devout Muslims...Western civilization would most certainly be altered for the good" (154). Not that Eagleton is really holding his breath. He is painfully aware of a "liberal paradox that there must be something close-minded about open-mindedness." Liberalism (in the traditional sense) fears being overly-liberal when it comes to its own founding principles. The irony is made explicit in comments like that of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair: "Our tolerance is what makes Britain Britain. So conform to it, or don't come here" (127).

Eagleton would counter what he sees as the liberal humanism of Ditchkins with his own sort of "tragic humanism" with a religious twist (168). "Tragic humanism," he concludes, "holds that only by a process of self-dispossession and radical remaking can humanity come into its own. There are no guarantees that such a transfigured future will ever be born. But it might arrive a little earlier if liberal dogmatists, doctrinaire flag-wavers for Progress, and Islamophobic intellectuals did not continue to stand in its way" (169). Eagleton's book is a brisk and welcome contribution to the ongoing discussion about the place of religion in the world today. Readers will find plenty to challenge them in this brief snapshot of today's "God Debate."

This is a good book. It's cheerful, straightforward, well argued and iconoclastic.

It shatters the idols that atheists such as Dawkins and Hitchens have made for themselves. It shows up the shallowness and inadequacy of many atheist positions. The fact that Eagleton is himself an atheist increases the depth of his critique of much contemporary atheism.

He is also good at pointing out some of the flaws in Christianity and in other belief systems such as multiculturalism. The following quotes are particularly memorable,

"Multiculturalism at its least impressive blandly embraces difference as such, without looking too closely into what one is differing over. It tends to imagine that there is something inherently positive about having a host of different views on the same subject.....Such facile pluralism therefore tends to numb the habit of vigorously contesting other people's beliefs..."

and

"Any preaching of the Gospel which fails to constitute a scandal and affront to the political state is in my view effectively worthless."

This book is challenging to all participants in the debate over God, and what he means both here on Earth and in Heaven and Hell. Read it, enjoy it, disagree with it...but go prepared to enjoy a lively conversation...and to learn some new ideas from it.

Just a brief review here. Most of the reviewers who rate the book with only one star have an ax to grind, as far as I can tell. Simply reading the review excerpts provided by the publisher will give the potential reader enough information to know that, at the very least, this is a well written and interesting book. If you don't agree with the author, that's something different. If you want a view about anti-theists Dawkins and Hitchins, this is a higher-level and different-than-average approach. Most critiques of the two come from Christians, often evangelistic/protestant. Here you get a view that is from a Catholic influenced Marxist. So sit back with an Irish coffee--and dictionary if your vocabulary is rusty--and enjoy.

As a non-Christian, Eagleton understands theology in a way that completely eludes the average believer. He has clearly surrounded himself by a number of Christian thinkers who are actually familiar with their tradition, and thereby easily dismantles much of the criticisms leveled by Dawkins & Co. Not that the latter are without merit, it is just that they criticize that which most of historical Christianity would criticize too.

I really liked this book, however, David Hart's 'The Atheist Delusions' is probably the best on the subject. If you are a Christian, read both of these, as they are the best help you can find (most apologists play into the hands of their 'enemies'), and if you are an atheist, it is best to know your best 'enemies.' Just read it charitably.