Terry Eagleton: Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching

[theIdi0t]

I was reading Terry Eagleton's review of Richard Dawkin's God delusion, and I thought it might be of a bit of interest to others here. He makes a few comments about creationist, and says a lot about christianity and God. Some may not agree with his liberation theology ideas in the latter parts of his review, but I think it's an enjoyable read nonetheless:

Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching

 

[gluadys]

I was reading Terry Eagleton's review of Richard Dawkin's God delusion, and I thought it might be of a bit of interest to others here. He makes a few comments about creationist, and says a lot about christianity and God. Some may not agree with his liberation theology ideas in the latter parts of his review, but I think it's an enjoyable read nonetheless:

Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching

Definitely enjoyable.

I really enjoyed and learned a lot from Dawkin's scientific work. So I was hugely disappointed when God Delusion turned out to be so sophomoric. I expected a real challenge, not a book full of straw men.


A couple of quotes from the article that I loved, though they don't have much to do with Dawkins himself.

The central doctrine of Christianity, then, is not that God is a bastard. It is, in the words of the late Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe, that if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you.

Those who don’t see this dreadful image of a mutilated innocent as the truth of history are likely to be devotees of that bright-eyed superstition known as infinite human progress, for which Dawkins is a full-blooded apologist. Or they might be well-intentioned reformers or social democrats, which from a Christian standpoint simply isn’t radical enough.

I fully agree with that last statement. I have always been mystified at the American truncation of the political spectrum such that its "left" end is "liberal". To me that is the mid-point, with as much more further left as the various shades of conservative are further right.

And from a gospel perspective, none of the political ideologies is anywhere near radical enough.

 

[Galle]

I was reading Terry Eagleton's review of Richard Dawkin's God delusion, and I thought it might be of a bit of interest to others here. He makes a few comments about creationist, and says a lot about christianity and God. Some may not agree with his liberation theology ideas in the latter parts of his review, but I think it's an enjoyable read nonetheless:

Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching

"Lunging, flailing, mispunching" is a good description of Terry Eagleton's "review". And I put quotes around that because Eagleton didn't review Dawkins' book so much as throw out one PRATT after another. I would have enjoyed Eagleton taking specific arguments and showing them incomplete or otherwise flawed, but Eagleton insists on a level of vagueness that's almost maddening. It's little more than what you might get from a drive-by troll in the JREF forums. Had this appeared as a post at CF from some anonymous person, I would have wondered if it were an atheist troll trying to make Christians look bad.

 

[FranciscanJ]

I was reading Terry Eagleton's review of Richard Dawkin's God delusion, and I thought it might be of a bit of interest to others here. He makes a few comments about creationist, and says a lot about christianity and God. Some may not agree with his liberation theology ideas in the latter parts of his review, but I think it's an enjoyable read nonetheless:

Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching

Pretty funny stuff. Some good ole' fashioned clowning. Not really formal arguments, more humor and jabbing at Dawkins general views. While I was reading this I was reminded how people on the outside of anything they don't understand will be tempted to be reductionistic in their explanation of it. It seems everyone does it in some way.

Dawkins lack of knowledge in theology, yet wanting to reduce it to absurdities reminds me of this. It also reminds me of how creationists often want to argue against evolution without ever bothering to learn much about it besides rhetoric against it.

 

[theIdi0t]

"Lunging, flailing, mispunching" is a good description of Terry Eagleton's "review". And I put quotes around that because Eagleton didn't review Dawkins' book so much as throw out one PRATT after another. I would have enjoyed Eagleton taking specific arguments and showing them incomplete or otherwise flawed, but Eagleton insists on a level of vagueness that's almost maddening. It's little more than what you might get from a drive-by troll in the JREF forums. Had this appeared as a post at CF from some anonymous person, I would have wondered if it were an atheist troll trying to make Christians look bad.

Hum, I thought Eagleton was quite thorough with his analysis.

I've read the God Delusion myself, and I've always been puzzled by how such a brilliant mind like Dawkin's can become so mindless when it comes to religion and God. Eagleton sums this up in his opening sentence:

"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."

And he goes on to explain what Dawkins is ignorant of.

I'm also confused about this "vagueness" you are referring to, what exactly did you find "vague"?

I've been reading Karen Armstrong's "A History of God", that covers much of the ground Eagelton does in his review, and perhaps this provided the ground for me to understand what Eagelton is getting at. Her book is close to 500 pages, but Eagelton sums up a great amount of what she covers in one essay, so I commend him for that.