Best response to Dawkins and other New Atheists
1 Sep 2009
Terry Eagleton began his infamous review of “The God Delusion’ in the London Review of Books, with these sentences:
‘Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology. Card-carrying rationalists like Dawkins, who is the nearest thing to a professional atheist we have had since Bertrand Russell, are in one sense the least well-equipped to understand what they castigate, since they don’t believe there is anything there to be understood, or at least anything worth understanding.
With no claims to faith himself, Eagleton provides some of the best reasoned responses to the emerging New Atheists, IMHO. His book, ‘Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God debate‘, came out just before the summer this year.
For anyone who takes Dawkins and his ilk seriously, reading one of Britain’s leading literary critics in response, is surely a must read. Ken Myers provides a superb review of Eagleton at the outstanding Mars Hill Audio.
Tagged: Ahtie
12 comments
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Comment by fernando
12.44 am on 3 Sep 2009
Eagleton is an interesting guy, he has a Catholic background and still, on occasion, writes from a semi-theological position (although not trinitarian).
BTW, did you see James Wood’s piece on Eagleton in the recent New Yorker (Aug31 I think). I have been meaning to blog about that and your post prompted me to re-read that piece.
Comment by Jason
7.23 am on 3 Sep 2009
I haven’t seen the piece by James Wood’s.
Comment by fernando
10.45 am on 3 Sep 2009
I put up a blogpost on it today, but the article is only available in abstract form online.
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5.06 pm on 6 Sep 2009
[...] my last post I made reference to a book by Terry Eagleton, as a good resource in response to the emergence of [...]
Comment by Alex
9.49 am on 7 Sep 2009
for the uninitiated – what distinguishes “new atheists” from any other athiests?
alex
Comment by Jason
10.19 am on 7 Sep 2009
HI Alex, take a look at: http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/11/08/atheism.feature/index.html
Comment by Alex
9.20 am on 9 Sep 2009
Ahh – very helpful article. Seems to be a bit of a smoke screen between the Christian and New Atheist camps though with claim and counter-claim as to whether one should really criticise the other given lack of personal experience or academic credentials. My point is this…don’t the New Atheists sometimes raise legitimate questions that need to be given proper consideration by the church at large?
Comment by Jason Clark
11.00 am on 9 Sep 2009
I know as christian I am biased, but as Eagleton would point out the new atheists, tend to ask questions, that ignore all christian tradition that has asked those questions and wrestled with them deeply.
It’s the ignoring of the depths of faith in asking questions and presenting questions as if they are the only people to ask them, and to do so with out reference the depths of religious discourse, that seems to pointless.
A book by a humble atheists that posed the hardest questions about faith, and offered humble answers from atheism would have more impact than these books that just polarise the already converted in both camps.
‘A new kind of atheism’, or ‘How to lose faith’, that explored the real nature of faith would be far more challenging, IMHO.
Comment by graham corcoran
4.00 pm on 7 Sep 2009
Just an aside I was reading Terry’s book it was a borrowed book in water stones in Dublin.When this man came and sat be side me reading a book and drinking coffee.I looked at the fly leaf and the person next to me and realized,it was Terry.We had a good chat about the situation with the church in Ireland regarding the scandals,his last words were its hard being a Christian.
Comment by Jason
4.07 pm on 7 Sep 2009
Small world and ‘no way!’
Did you get him to sign it?
Comment by graham corcoran
9.28 pm on 7 Sep 2009
I couldn’t it was a library book.you can’t win them all.
Comment by Jason Clark
10.56 pm on 7 Sep 2009
Still tempting
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