Eagleton is a professor of literary criticism, a marxist (a lonely position these days) and is clearly in possession of a razor sharp wit and clarity of thought. The subtitle of the book is "Reflections on the God Debate" and it really does read like the thoughts of someone looking in from the outside. If that someone was acerbic, refused to suffer fools and was confident enough of their own mind to call out self-deception, mindlessness and crass idiocy for exactly what it is.
I love this book and in some ways it's a huge antidote to Will Hutton's Them and Us because it reminds me why I care about justice, fairness and mercy in the first place and so also reminds me of the reasons why I shouldn't get down about a lack of progress and why one should keep fighting regardless. (more on that later).
Eagleton skewers the New Atheism, or the Brights or the Fundamentalist Athiests, whatever the papers are calling them this week. In fact he skewers them with wicked humour and a sense that it's almost too easy for anyone to spend too much time on and whilst a good portion of the book is spent ridiculing Dawkins, Hitchens and their ilk (with clear precise arguments not simply straw men) he also devotes time to understanding WHY these kinds of mental frameworks are so attractive to a certain form of culture and why they are so strong.
For that matter he is no less devastating when taking apart Fundamentalist Christianity (and he openly admits he has stuck with this because it's what he knows better than any other religions out there). He is substantially more accommodating towards considered atheism, 'orthodox' christianity and ambiguity which I, at least, find hugely attractive and certainly more self-consistent than some of the nonsense spouted by both extremes in the debate. Eagleton leans fairly heavily on his central 'proper' arguments about society, politics, culture and belief on Charles Taylor - which is no bad thing - after all Taylor's work is magisterial in scope and profound in its depth.
Eagleton is no friend of fools but is very warm towards the thoughtful - and one suspects this is true regardless of whether their thoughts are in agreement with his. I suppose one cannot afford to suffer from hubris when one is a marxist in contemporary society but whatever the reason, his commitment to understanding the limits of knowledge of all types is refreshing and is the real weight in his approach to dismantling the positions taken by the American Right and the Ditchkins of the world.
It could have been a longer book. It could have been more academic, but that would have been a waste. This short book, based as it is on a series of lectures, must certainly be shocking to many, it scabrously funny and hugely recommended for anyone at a loss with how to engage in discussion about belief when the mainstream seems so determinedly ignorant, closed minded and willfully ideological.
High recommended stuff. And no, you can't have my copy - I've got two people already queuing up to borrow it.
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