Now, Eagleton on Dawkins

In the LRB, Terry Eagleton reviews Dawkins' The God Delusion.

Such is Dawkins’s unruffled scientific impartiality that in a book of almost four hundred pages, he can scarcely bring himself to concede that a single human benefit has flowed from religious faith, a view which is as a priori improbable as it is empirically false. The countless millions who have devoted their lives selflessly to the service of others in the name of Christ or Buddha or Allah are wiped from human history – and this by a self-appointed crusader against bigotry. He is like a man who equates socialism with the Gulag. Like the puritan and sex, Dawkins sees God everywhere, even where he is self-evidently absent. He thinks, for example, that the ethno-political conflict in Northern Ireland would evaporate if religion did, which to someone like me, who lives there part of the time, betrays just how little he knows about it. He also thinks rather strangely that the terms Loyalist and Nationalist are ‘euphemisms’ for Protestant and Catholic, and clearly doesn’t know the difference between a Loyalist and a Unionist or a Nationalist and a Republican. He also holds, against a good deal of the available evidence, that Islamic terrorism is inspired by religion rather than politics.

These are not just the views of an enraged atheist. They are the opinions of a readily identifiable kind of English middle-class liberal rationalist. Reading Dawkins, who occasionally writes as though ‘Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness’ is a mighty funny way to describe a Grecian urn, one can be reasonably certain that he would not be Europe’s greatest enthusiast for Foucault, psychoanalysis, agitprop, Dadaism, anarchism or separatist feminism. All of these phenomena, one imagines, would be as distasteful to his brisk, bloodless rationality as the virgin birth. Yet one can of course be an atheist and a fervent fan of them all. His God-hating, then, is by no means simply the view of a scientist admirably cleansed of prejudice. It belongs to a specific cultural context. One would not expect to muster many votes for either anarchism or the virgin birth in North Oxford. (I should point out that I use the term North Oxford in an ideological rather than geographical sense. Dawkins may be relieved to know that I don’t actually know where he lives.)

Comments

[fred lapides]

It is good to learn from Eagleton that the "troubles" in ireland have (or had) nothin g to do with Catholics versus Protestants.
Terry's rant shows a guy slidin g some dsitance from the hill he once was atop, and he seems not as familiar with the Dawkins book he is badmouthing as he should be. A lot of what gets said here is simply unfair reading of Dawkins's latest work.

[Danny Rathjens]

"With or without religion you would have good people doing good things
and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things,
that takes religion." -- Dr. Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate, Physics

[JonJ]

Well, Dawkins is not any great shakes as a philosopher, but neither is Eagleton. From the philosophical point of view, the basic question is: does god exist or not? (Given a particular meaning of the word "god.") If the answer is no, then all the wonderful theology and moral doctrine Eagleton praises may be fascinating, but it doesn't have anything to do with reality. It may motivate people to do noble, sacrificial actions, or terribly evil ones, but then so did Zeus, Enlil, etc., and I'd be surprised if anyone today seriously wanted to maintain that they exist. (Maybe a few would.)

Eagleton concedes this point, actually: "The mainstream theology I have just outlined may well not be true..." And goes on to say that he is upset because Dawkins doesn't respect it. But as I understand him, Dawkins, perhaps rather intemperately, is simply making the point that a theory about reality (which a religion like Christianity certainly implies, though it may do other things as well, such as inspire glorious poetry, art, and music, and humanitarian actions) that assumes an entity that doesn't exist is just not a theory that can get to the starting gate for the theory race. And, he maintains, there is no reason to think that said entity does exist. It's up to those who do to give the rest of us some justification for accepting that it does.

Eagleton argues that Dawkins must be the sort of person who doesn't see any point to music, poetry, or art. That may or may not be true; I don't know that much about Dawkins, But it's certainly not true of many, or even most, atheists. I can appreciate Verdi's Requiem and Donne's poetry as well as any theist. I just don't think the "god," and other entities on the same ontological level that they refer to, are in existence.

I don't have space to deal with Eagleton's reference to the Thomistic sort of claim that there are multiple senses of the word "existence," and his concession that god doesn't exist "in one sense of that word." But I don't think that there are such multiple senses. Again, it is up to him, and Thomas A., to give an argument that there are, because prima facie there aren't.

He argues that god and the "creation" are not two objects, just as "my envy and my left foot" are not. But envy and my left foot definitely are two objects; the envy is a disposition of my nervous system, which is an object exactly on the same level as my foot. He states that god is the condition of the possibility of anything existing. But it is not at all clear what such a "condition of possibility" really is, regardless of how fond theologians are of the sound of those words in their mouths. Why should things need a condition for the possibility of their existing? What would otherwise prevent them from existing?

"OK," the modern Christian might concede, "god and the trinity, etc., don't exist; it's all a kind of poetry or art." But that is a rather serious concession for traditional Christianity, because traditionally it was believed that human beings really were conceived in a condition, original sin, which would really condemn them to eternal torment in a real place called hell if they didn't believe that god gave his son to save them -- save them in reality. So traditional Christian belief wasn't just a mass of symbols, like a non-scientific science fiction novel.

I also think that Eagleton may be mostly correct in his criticisms of Dawkins' politics; I don't know enough about that subject to say. But I'm not impressed at all by the basic philosophical claims of Eagleton's review.

[Abbas Raza]

Jon J, I completely agree with your detailed criticisms of Eagleton here, and thank you for putting them down.

As for Dawkins being unable to appreciate poetry, etc., this is just silly of Eagleton. As if one's being sensitive to art has anything to do with religious claims. In any case, as an aside, Dawkins is an extremely literate man, often quoting and alluding to poetry and literature in his writings, and even likes religious art of various sorts (as he makes clear in the book under review).

Eagleton is eager to defend the theological sophistry that goes into justifying all sorts of religious claims (and always has, just think of the near-infinite amounts of nonsense trying to make sense of transubstantiation!) as some sort of intellectually serious material, which it isn't. Just because someone expends a great deal of cleverness and intellectual effort and energy on something, doesn't automatically make it worthwhile. There is plenty of "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin" type stuff that falls into this category. This is the problem with apologists for religion: as soon as you try to corner them using something they said, they start weaseling out by saying that religious claims shouldn't be taken literally. The problem is, they ARE taken literally by the hundreds of millions of common practitioners.

The only thing that Eagleton gets right is his observation that Dawkins seems almost naive in his neglect of the underlying politics of what on the surface may seem like religious conflicts.

[Abbas Raza]

One other thought: imagine, as part of a junior high school practice debate, say, having to argue that the tooth fairy exists. How would you argue this? I would probably say things like, well, how do you know it doesn't exist? You present video evidence that my mother is the one who put a rupee under my pillow, and I say, yes, but the tooth fairy took over her body, or inspired her, etc. Finally, in desperation, I start saying things like, "The tooth fairy is the condition of possibility of generosity to one's children." What crap!

When what you are trying to examine is already taken to be true, even in the face of evidence to the contrary (hence my debate example), these are precisely the silly sorts of weasely paths of argument open to one, and it is no surprise that they are the ones which have in fact been taken by religious people throughout the ages. To keep pretending that there is great insight to be had from theology is just to continue the intellectual farce.

[anonymous]

Had Dawkins accused Star Trek of being fiction, my guess is Eagleton would have damned him for failing to learn Klingon.

[Soren Juneau]

I would say Professor Weinberg has it right below, except, substitute one word--"science" for "religion."

"With or without religion you would have good people doing good things
and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things,
that takes religion." -- Dr. Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate, Physics

[Dave Adams]

Apologies for my comment coming so long after yours, Jon J, but I've just come across this website and would like to respond to your entry on Eagleton's review.

Eagleton's first point is that Dawkins is not an expert on what he is criticizing. In your opinion, theology may be the study of something that doesn't exist, but that doesn't mean it is not about anything. It is about ideas, conceptions and theories, and there is a lot to know about them. Historians may put forward theories about something that didn't happen, but in order to criticize their theories I would have to know about them in detail. The point is that Dawkins doesn't even go as far as dealing with central Christian doctrine in The God Delusion, possibly because he misunderstands the basic conceptions of God put forward by Christian theologians. As Eagleton states, Dawkins sees God as either outside or inside the universe, an entity that would have to be subject to the laws of nature (any creator would have to have come about by evolution - yes, any physical, natural creator). The toughest case for a supernatural creator comes not from whacko fundamentalists, but from mainstream theologians who assess the world around them and theorize firstly, whether there is a God or not, and then, if so, what sort of a God exists.

As for your claim that your left foot and your envy do in fact add up to two objects, you are ignoring the fact that envy ceases to be envy when your only explanation of it is the physical activity that causes it. In the same way, the pain caused by damaging my nerve cells would not be pain if I was on a large amount of morphine, or was unconcious. It is the experiencing of the action that makes it abstract. If chemcial reactions did not create thoughts that is all they would be, but they are, in fact, thoughts that we experience. Eagleton's point is that God is not physical in that sense - he is not inside or outside of the universe, but a transcendent being.

As for your claim that things don't need a condition for existing, do all physical things not need a creator? As Eagleton says, Dawkins himself loves to theorize about the mechanics of creation, aiming to find a physical explanation for everything. Dawkins tries to ridicule "why" questions, but are the questions "Why is there something rather than nothing?" and "Why does the universe work as it does?" not valid questions?

Very few modern Christians would concede that God and the Trinity don't exist. They may say they don't exist in the way Dawkins interprets them (quite why he deals with the Trinity under polytheism is beyond me - it is a monotheistic idea) - as an entity as such, or three different Gods, but certainly they would not be Christians if they said they don't exist in any way.

Thanks for your time, any comments would be appreciated, I am constantly looking to refine my ideas and always want to look to reason and rationality as far as it will take me. I have have faith because reason can only take me so far, and I have jumped over reason's edge, in the same way that in falling in love I have based it on reason as much as possible, but it will take me no further. If someone was to give me convincing evidence that there is no God, there would be no need for faith. But Dawkins fails to do that. My faith is based on reason because my reason tells me there is a need for it.

[Dave Adams]

Abbas Raza, I'd like to respond to your comments as well. Your claim that your sensitivity to religious art etc. is not affected by your beliefs is correct, except that most sacred art, music and literature is written with a deeper meaning and sentiment to it. You may, for example, love the aesthetic appeal of much sacred music, but dislike the words and message it is trying to put across. It is your sensitivity to aesthetics that is unaffected.

Your treatment of theology is overly simplistic. You say that it is about a load of tripe, but that doesn't mean there haven't been good ideas and good writers whose work we can know. In order to criticize a theological idea, you must know it in detail, in the same way as you would expect me to know exactly what atheists believe before I was to criticize their position. The claim that there is a God is both a scientific and a theological proposition, as is the claim that there isn't one. You may say we all know what Christians believe, but is that not what theology is about, and has that not come, at least in part, from theology? As for your claim about literalism, would you read a poem as you would a newspaper? Some biblical texts are not meant as detail-by-detail accounts of events, and this an accepted fact amongst biblical historians (see, for example, Hans Kung's On Being a Christian).

Your claim that the tooth fairy and God are parallel ontological examples is flawed. The tooth fairy is accepted as folklore mythology, and we would all concede that there is no ontological need for it in explaining anything. It is not the condition for generosity to your children, since generosity clearly exists independently of it. The proposition of God is something completely different - even you would concede (as Dawkins does) that a world with a God and a world without a God would be completely different things. One with a tooth fairy and one without would be only slightly different. Furthermore, as I have said, God is invoked in explaining not just our existence on this planet (we evolved yes, but from RNA - a physical molecule in itself), but the existence of anything at all.

Thanks, and again any comments would be appreciated.

[Chris Tyack]

I agree with Dave Adams.

Jon J, when Eagleton says that God doesn't exist "in one sense of that word" he is not alluding to Aquinas but to Heidegger. In existentialism, to "ex-sist" is to "stand over against" the world, as a finite and reflective being. God does not exist in that sense. In existentialism only man "exists"; other things, like rocks or trees, merely "are".

In Thomism, God clearly "exists," and is called "Being" itself. Being is not a finite being, but is the first and necessary cause of beings. Being is the first Power and Reason, which is one, infinite and immaterial. Being is that "in which, of which and according to which" all things are. So it is Truth and Goodness. To deny the existence of God is, for a Thomist, simply irrational.

These ideas are the stock-in-trade of theologians, but Dawkins clearly hasn't heard of them.

Dawkins actually rejects the God of infantile wish-fulfillment, not the God of theology.

Broadly catholic (incl. Anglican) theology knows the biblical images of the Old Testament as metaphors only.

[Pseudonym]

Alvin Plantinga reviews Dawkins here:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/global/printer.html?/bc/2007/002/1.21.html