Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Hi all, we have some important news to share. Please follow the link here to find out more!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058419143/important-news/p1?new=1

Terry Eagleton

  • 07-05-2010 01:07PM
    #1
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,550 ✭✭✭


    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.

    Prof. Terry Eagleton's opening sentence to a rivetting demolition of TGD (and the thinking behind it). One could only hope that Terry would himself one day see the light - what a Christian apologist he'd make.

    http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/terry-eagleton/lunging-flailing-mispunching


«13

Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,018 ✭✭✭legspin


    Prof. Terry Eagleton's opening sentence to a rivetting demolition of TGD (and the thinking behind it). One could only hope that Terry would himself one day see the light - what a Christian apologist he'd make.

    http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/terry-eagleton/lunging-flailing-mispunching

    I read that review and came away with the impression that Eagleton is nowt other than your typical condecending christian apologist bigot (I've since found out he has a track record of that), who had his mind made up before he even read the book. The LRB was disingenous in getting someone as biased as Eagleton to review a book with which he was never going to agree. Not only that but there was no review from anyone on this side of the fence or even on the fence. I bet you that even if Dawkins had proved beyond doubt his hypothesis Eagleton was still going to launch his diatribe of misdirection and obfuscation.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,550 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    legspin wrote: »
    I read that review and came away with the impression that Eagleton is nowt other than your typical condecending christian apologist bigot (I've since found out he has a track record of that),

    That's funny, I was at a lecture given by Terry Eagleton but a few weeks ago and he stated himself an unbeliever. How can an unbeliever be a Christian apologist?


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,466 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    That's funny, I was at a lecture given by Terry Eagleton but a few weeks ago and he stated himself an unbeliever. How can an unbeliever be a Christian apologist?
    You'll have to ask Mr Eagleton why he bothers to support something that he believes is nonsense. Though, noting that he's widely known as a popular and effective defender of christianity against reason, it seems plausible to suggest that he's making quite a good living doing what he's doing.

    Regardless of that, whenever I happen across any of Eagleton's pompous and confused output, I'm reminded of the first few words of Peter Medawar's commentary on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's immensely silly The Phenomenon of Man:
    The greater part of it, I shall show, is nonsense, tricked out with a variety of metaphysical conceits, and its author can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive himself.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,550 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    robindch wrote: »
    You'll have to ask Mr Eagleton why he bothers to support something that he believes is nonsense.


    Could you support the assertion that Eagleton finds Christianity a nonsense? Note that debunking TGD isn't supporting Christianity, it's debunking TGD.

    Though, noting that he's widely known as a popular and effective defender of christianity against reason, it seems plausible to suggest that he's making quite a good living doing what he's doing.

    Weasel words allied to a non-sequitur or two.

    Could you link me to where Eagleton mounts a defence of Christianity (apologetics) as opposed to exhibiting non-antitheism traits. That an atheist isn't an anti-theist and can find a positive to Religion doesn't make him an apologist. It just makes him a traitor to those of an anti-theist bent.

    Regardless of that, whenever I happen across any of Eagleton's pompous and confused output, I'm reminded of the first few words of Peter Medawar's commentary on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's immensely silly The Phenomenon of Man:

    It would be better for you if you could support your position with something more substantial. Like this for instance:

    Professor John Sitter, Chairman of the English Department at the University of Notre Dame and Editor of The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth Century Poetry, describes Eagleton as "someone widely regarded as the most influential contemporary literary critic and theorist in the English-speaking world"

    ...otherwise pomposity and confusion is something more likely to be attributed to your assessment of Eagleton.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,466 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    robindch wrote: »
    That's funny, I was at a lecture given by Terry Eagleton but a few weeks ago and he stated himself an unbeliever. How can an unbeliever be a Christian apologist?
    You'll have to ask Mr Eagleton why he bothers to support something that he believes is nonsense.
    Could you support the assertion that Eagleton finds Christianity a nonsense?
    Well, I have your word to go on that Eagleton is an "unbeliever". As such, I think it's fair to assume that he finds christianity lacking in common sense.

    If, on the other hand, he finds it worth defending -- and he has done so at book-length -- then he really needs to figure out for himself if it's worth defending what he knows to be false.


  • Advertisement
  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,550 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    robindch wrote: »
    Well, I have your word to go on that Eagleton is an "unbeliever". As such, I think it's fair to assume that he finds christianity lacking in common sense.


    He suggests that the question 'do you believe in God?' is akin to asking someone whether they believe in the Loch Ness monster. Dawkins, he says, seems to imagine God 'if not exactly with a white beard then at least as some kind of chap', whereas even in the simplest sense, 'for Judeo-Christianity, God is not a person in the sense that Al Gore arguably is... He is 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.'


    Eagleton is not convinced this God exists, but believes that anyone who holds that He does is to be respected, while Dawkins and his acolytes, he argues, 'consider that no religious belief, any time or anywhere is worthy of any respect whatsoever'.
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/dec/16/martinamis




    I'm not sure quite what "lacking in common sense" means. Needless to say, the fact that someone is an unbeliever doesn't mean they need to find Christianity/Religion in general non-sensical or worthless. Which is why, perhaps, he can so easily ream The God Delusion (and the thinking behind it) such a large, new arsehole.

    :)



    If, on the other hand, he finds it worth defending -- and he has done so at book-length -- then he really needs to figure out for himself if it's worth defending what he knows to be false.

    Hmmm. From the preface of that book:
    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. But it is also the case, as this book argues, that most such critics buy their rejection of religion on the cheap. When it comes to the New Testament, at least, what they usually write off is a worthless caricature of the real thing, rooted in a degree of ignorance and prejudice to match religion's own. It is as though one were to dismiss feminism on the basis of Clint Eastwood's opinons of it.

    It is with this ignorance and prejudice that I take issue in this book.


    It's ironic that his complaint (rationalist/humanist caricaturising of the real thing) is the very same thing that you do with his book - which isn't so much a defence of Christianity as it is an attack on ignorance and prejudice amongst rationalists/humanists


    If you read that book or lunging, flailing, mispunching you'd have an idea why he takes on the likes of Dawkins-think. Perhaps he realises that just because you don't believe Christianity to be true (in a Jesus-actually-walked-on-water kind of way) doesn't mean Christianity is worthless. Perhaps he recognises that just because you are without belief doesn't mean you have the last word on anything: 'without' being the absence of something, not the presence of anything else (as the atheists are fond of reminding us). Perhaps he wouldn't err as you do, in suggesting that he knows Christianity - or any other religion to be false. You do know that you can't know Christianity to be false, don't you?

    Perhaps he's just an without-belief-atheist, not an anti-theist-atheist like you, Dawkins and so much of what constitutes New Atheism


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,466 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Moved off-topic posts here.


  • Posts: 25,874 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    So anti skeptic I trust you read extensively on Asgardian and Olympian theology before you decided that they weren't true, right?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 22,479 ✭✭✭✭philologos


    robindch wrote: »
    You'll have to ask Mr Eagleton why he bothers to support something that he believes is nonsense. Though, noting that he's widely known as a popular and effective defender of christianity against reason, it seems plausible to suggest that he's making quite a good living doing what he's doing.

    As far as I am aware, just because Eagleton is critical of other atheists, doesn't necessarily mean that he is supporting Christianity.

    I thought atheism wasn't about party lines. It's almost as if Terry Eagleton is a "traitor" of sorts in your book.

    Then we also have the unwarranted assumption that Christianity is antithetical to reason. Indeed, and the assumption that atheism is somehow the bastion of reason itself.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,457 ✭✭✭Morbert


    There are two sides to Dawkins's polemic: A defence of atheism and a critique of religion (particularly Christianity).

    I don't find his treatment of the latter to be convincing, but he gives a very good defence of atheism. By that, I mean he does a very good job of explaining why atheism is a valid and consistent world-view that can be adopted with intellectual integrity if someone is not convinced by the historical or personal evidence for Christianity (or any religion).


  • Advertisement
  • Closed Accounts Posts: 17,485 ✭✭✭✭Ickle Magoo


    Eagleton has never studies philosophy and yet it doesn't stop him spewing out book after book on the subject - to accuse dawkins of being ill educated to comment on religion without a theology degree is plain old hypocrisy.

    I think Eagleton just fills a similar if slightly different niche, pandering to all who don't like dawkins style and who want religion held in some kind of special veneration, no doubt with one eye on his own bank account.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 25,610 Mod ✭✭✭✭Dades


    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.
    Replace "theology" with "astrology" in that quote and you have my feelings on the matter.

    Neither are a science, but both are made up by men and don't warrant scrutiny because of it.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,466 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Posts related to convincing (or otherwise) evidence of the present (or past) existence (or otherwise) of one (or more) deities has been moved to the following thread:

    The existence or non-existence of a god/the gods


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 34 sublunar


    i was at a lecture by eagleton recently and he was even worse than i'd imagined. he didn't really cover the topic of the talk, spending most of it going on about marx (which had nothing to do with the topic, at all) and was for the most part incomprehensible. he didn't make any concrete points, just made a few bitchy asides about dawkins and hitchens before going on to talk nebulous academic fluff for the best part of an hour. a few audience members asked him questions, which he didn't really answer, preferring to expound on marx a bit more. i asked him a few questions and he failed completely to answer them, he just talked around in circles. not surprisingly in retrospect, there weren't many people there. suffice it to say that if he's supposed to be dawkins et al's main opponent, the new atheists have nothing to worry about.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,240 ✭✭✭✭Fanny Cradock


    Eagleton has never studies philosophy and yet it doesn't stop him spewing out book after book on the subject - to accuse dawkins of being ill educated to comment on religion without a theology degree is plain old hypocrisy.

    I think Eagleton just fills a similar if slightly different niche, pandering to all who don't like dawkins style and who want religion held in some kind of special veneration, no doubt with one eye on his own bank account.

    AFAIK, Dawkins doesn't have a degree in theology, history or philosophy - yet he wrote a rather successful polemic that used elements of all three against his targets. I assume you are equally dismissive of him?

    I'm not sure what Eagleton's motives for putting pen to paper has to do with anything. His thoughts and critical analysis should be judged apart from any unsubstantiated accusations about his clawing desire for money.
    sublunar wrote: »
    i was at a lecture by eagleton recently and he was even worse than i'd imagined. he didn't really cover the topic of the talk, spending most of it going on about marx (which had nothing to do with the topic, at all) and was for the most part incomprehensible. he didn't make any concrete points, just made a few bitchy asides about dawkins and hitchens before going on to talk nebulous academic fluff for the best part of an hour. a few audience members asked him questions, which he didn't really answer, preferring to expound on marx a bit more. i asked him a few questions and he failed completely to answer them, he just talked around in circles. not surprisingly in retrospect, there weren't many people there. suffice it to say that if he's supposed to be dawkins et al's main opponent, the new atheists have nothing to worry about.

    I was at the same talk. I found that he dealt with the subject of evil at quite an academic level, which was at the expense of a meat and bones dissection of the subject - the terrible practical out-workings of evil. Still, despite my initial disappointment (and this was in no small part due to my inability to hear him because the sound didn't travel up the back of the auditorium too well), when I got my head around his approach to discussing evil, I enjoyed it. The enthusiastic applause at the end showed me that there were many there who enjoyed his musings.

    He began the talk by making clear that he wasn't a theologian, and his discussion wasn't strictly of a theological nature. Why would it be? However, many of the audience were interested in discussing theology (and even psychology), so he attempted to answer these questions while not fully committing himself to a theological answer. All fair enough.

    And interesting perspective on the lecture here, here and here.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 34 sublunar


    the talk i was referring to was "atheism, postmodernism, and the war on terror" in the moore institute. it was crap, and followed by a bewildered silence from the audience. sounds like yours was better though.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 17,485 ✭✭✭✭Ickle Magoo


    AFAIK, Dawkins doesn't have a degree in theology, history or philosophy - yet he wrote a rather successful polemic that used elements of all three against his targets. I assume you are equally dismissive of him?

    This thread has been spliced from another...you are making the same point I was - Eagleton dismisses dawkins as being unqualified to write about theology because he has no degree in theology while merrily writing about subjects he has no degree in.
    I'm not sure what Eagleton's motives for putting pen to paper has to do with anything. His thoughts and critical analysis should be judged apart from any unsubstantiated accusations about his clawing desire for money.

    Again, it has to do with the original thread my post was spliced from and eagletons own school boy tactics levelled at hitchens and dawkins. :)


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,240 ✭✭✭✭Fanny Cradock


    This thread has been spliced from another...you are making the same point I was - Eagleton dismisses dawkins as being unqualified to write about theology because he has no degree in theology while merrily writing about subjects he has no degree in.

    And that's why I asked a question at the end. Are you happy to say the same of Dawkins? Are you happy to say the same of anyone else who doesn't have the relevant 3rd level qualification?
    Again, it has to do with the original thread my post was spliced from and eagletons own school boy tactics levelled at hitchens and dawkins. :)

    I'm not sure what type of defence this is. You accused him of being in it partly for the money. Can you back this up? Can you explain to me what his motivations for writing a critique - as noble or base as they may be - have to do with the worth of his words?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,892 ✭✭✭ChocolateSauce


    sublunar wrote: »
    for the most part incomprehensible..... nebulous fluff

    His hand writing is awful too! I invited him to speak with the UCD Humanists and he wrote back by hand; his signature was so illegible it took me 20 minutes to figure out who it was from, or even what the topic in the letter was!:pac:


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,840 ✭✭✭Mark Hamill


    And that's why I asked a question at the end. Are you happy to say the same of Dawkins? Are you happy to say the same of anyone else who doesn't have the relevant 3rd level qualification?

    I think you are missing Ickle Magoos point. The point is not that we think Eagleton shouldn't write books on philosophy because he has no formal education in it, the point is that is what he should be thinking , ie: if he truely believed that Dawkins shouldn't write about religion, purely because Dawkins has no formal education in it, then he wouldn believe the same thing about himself with respect with to philosophy. He obviously doesn't, therefore he is a hypocrite.


  • Advertisement
  • Closed Accounts Posts: 17,485 ✭✭✭✭Ickle Magoo


    And that's why I asked a question at the end. Are you happy to say the same of Dawkins? Are you happy to say the same of anyone else who doesn't have the relevant 3rd level qualification?

    Okay, I think you completely missed my point then. I didn't say that either dawkins or eagleton are insufficiently educated to write on their chosen subjects. Eagleton claims dawkins, as a geneticist, is ill qualified to write about religion because he has not studied theology while in the same breath quite happy to espouse philosophy and consider himself qualified to do so - his double standard, not mine.
    I'm not sure what type of defence this is. You accused him of being in it partly for the money. Can you back this up? Can you explain to me what his motivations for writing a critique - as noble or base as they may be - have to do with the worth of his words?

    It isn't a defence, it's an observation. If he is not actually an atheist, as his multiple links to the RCC, theistic publications and organisations would alude but more interested in carving himself a niche as the christian poster boy against dawkins et al, hanging onto more popular coat-tails trying desperately to stay relevant and appear more rational then his ad-hominem embittered sniping regarding dawkins & hitchens, etc, holds even less worth, if that's possible.

    PZ Myers pretty much sums up my opinion on eagleton here...

    http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/05/the_eagleton_delusion.php


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,550 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    I think you are missing Ickle Magoos point. The point is not that we think Eagleton shouldn't write books on philosophy because he has no formal education in it, the point is that is what he should be thinking , ie: if he truely believed that Dawkins shouldn't write about religion, purely because Dawkins has no formal education in it, then he wouldn believe the same thing about himself with respect with to philosophy. He obviously doesn't, therefore he is a hypocrite.

    I'm not sure Eagletons beef is Dawkins lack of theological education. It's that quite apart from the ways in which a person might become literate in that subject, Dawkins remains illiterate on the matter of theology. And because of that, he would be best off steering clear from theological comment.

    He makes the point that Dawkins attacks a caricature of Christianity due to this ill-informedness. And he is dead right. Indeed, what else would you expect?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,550 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    I didn't say that either dawkins or eagleton are insufficiently educated to write on their chosen subjects. Eagleton claims dawkins, as a geneticist, is ill qualified to write about religion because he has not studied theology while in the same breath quite happy to espouse philosophy and consider himself qualified to do so - his double standard, not mine.

    Has Eagleton actually claimed this? In "Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching" he merely pointed out that Dawkins knowledge of the subject was severely limited. Which is quite a different matter to saying a person needs a degree in a topic before they can comment.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 34 sublunar


    His hand writing is awful too! I invited him to speak with the UCD Humanists and he wrote back by hand; his signature was so illegible it took me 20 minutes to figure out who it was from, or even what the topic in the letter was!:pac:

    i wouldn't really advise getting him as a speaker, i can't imagine him being worth listening to even on a decent topic :rolleyes: and inviting him to talk lends him credence as an academic, which isn't deserved in my opinion.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 17,485 ✭✭✭✭Ickle Magoo


    Has Eagleton actually claimed this? In "Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching" he merely pointed out that Dawkins knowledge of the subject was severely limited. Which is quite a different matter to saying a person needs a degree in a topic before they can comment.

    I don't think he comes right out and says dawkins should get a theology degree, that's just me paraphrasing :o - ironically in my post that you actually quote I suggest he thinks dawkins et al are ill qualified to discuss theology, which would certainly be true. :p
    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.
    without being so theologically illiterate
    ...that would make a first-year theology student wince
    "What one wonders are Dawkins's views on the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus? Has he read Eriugena on subjectivity, Rahner on grace or Moltmann on hope? Has he even heard of them?"
    These days, theology is the queen of the sciences in a rather less august sense of the word than in its medieval heyday. Dawkins on God is rather like those right-wing Cambridge dons who filed eagerly into the Senate House some years ago to non-placet Jacques Derrida for an honorary degree.

    http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/terry-eagleton/lunging-flailing-mispunching

    The continual referrals to dawkins being no theologian don't stop at that article...
    They misinterpret that position to mean that theology doesn’t have to conform to the rules and demands of reason. Then theologians can say anything they like
    http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2009/09/17/religion-for-radicals-an-interview-with-terry-eagleton/
    "All I can claim in this respect, alas, is that I think I may know just about enough theology to be able to spot when someone like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens--a couplet I shall henceforth reduce for convenience to the solitary signifier Ditchkins--is talking out of the back of his neck."
    http://www.yale.edu/terrylecture/eagleton.html
    Will Ditchkins read this book and experience an epiphany which puts the road to Damascus in the shade? To use no less than two theological terms by way of response: not a hope in hell.
    Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate - Terry Eagleton


  • Legal Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 5,400 Mod ✭✭✭✭Maximilian


    I only had a quick read of that (that kind of rubbish makes me wince) but I just I think he could make the same arguments against vulgar caricatures of orbiting teapots that would make a first-year Astro-kitchenwareology student wince.

    How can a rational person be anything other than dismissive of religion. I don't care how complex they've made it, theology-wise, it's still utter nonsense.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,169 ✭✭✭✭bnt


    This criticism of Dawkins not being a theologian keeps coming up, and it's frankly spurious, in my opinion. You don't need to be an expert on a subject to know that you don't want anything to do with it. It's enough to see the effects, and base your judgement on that, without having all the facts about the cause(s).

    I don't do drugs, and don't want to, but I'm not an expert on drugs. I can't describe the pharmacological properties of cannabinoids, nor can I cite conclusive research on the long-term effects, so I can't claim to know it all. Does that mean I should smoke some weed, just in case I'm wrong about it? So what if I'm saying no based on incomplete information? I don't have to do drugs, and I don't have to accept religion, just because other people do.

    You are the type of what the age is searching for, and what it is afraid it has found. I am so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.

    ―Oscar Wilde predicting Social Media, in The Picture of Dorian Gray



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,550 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    bnt wrote: »
    This criticism of Dawkins not being a theologian keeps coming up, and it's frankly spurious, in my opinion. You don't need to be an expert on a subject to know that you don't want anything to do with it. It's enough to see the effects, and base your judgement on that, without having all the facts about the cause(s).

    The trouble is that Dawkins makes theological statements (ie: he declares on the intricacies of the nature of God). You don't need to be a formally educated theologian to do that ... but you do need to be "theologically literate"

    If not, then your talking out your behind .. more or less.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,550 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    Maximilian wrote: »
    How can a rational person be anything other than dismissive of religion. I don't care how complex they've made it, theology-wise, it's still utter nonsense.

    Good grief!

    Another one for the New Atheist thread


  • Advertisement
  • Posts: 25,874 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    Good grief!

    Another one for the New Atheist thread

    So you are well versed in Asgardian theology then?


Advertisement