Defrocking the high priests of atheism

Wheeling out the big guns

In the flood of responses to the high priests of atheism, Richard Dawkins and Christo­pher Hitchens, from both believers and non-believers, it's hard to stand out from the crowd; unless, that is, you are Terry Eagleton and you can get by on the strength of your reputation.

Eagleton is one of the world's most famous literary critics. He started out in the left wing of the Catholic Church before establishing himself as a prolific reviewer and commentator on cultural studies, and is infamous for his increasingly unfashionable defence of radical politics and criticism of postmodernism's tendency for relativism and moral vacuity. Recently he has become more infamous for a scathing review of Dawkins' The God Delusion, and for attacking Martin Amis's heavy-handed views on Islam and terrorism. Eagleton has been criticized lately for rehashing his own material — and anyone familiar with his work will here encounter familiar topics: ethics in the postmodern age, tragedy, the "meaning of life", Jesus as a radical. But equally, Reason, Faith and Revolution stands as an excellent summary of his recent thinking, not to mention brimming with his trademark wit and ability to sensibly summarise great swathes of philosophy.

Eagleton's major criticism of Dawkins in his review was that Dawkins' idea of religion is a straw man. Dawkins' views on God are not held by most Christians, and certainly not any theologian of standing. His is an "abysmally crude" picture of a kind of large being alongside the universe that makes unreasonable moral demands of us. Dawkins' idea of religion is as an alternative to science of course; not as something more (metaphysical means, literally, 'beyond the physical'), something operating on a more foundational plane. In one sense Dawkins shares his view with proponents of Intelligent Design theories. Both think that proving the existence of God is a matter of peering down the microscope far enough. But in one sense, the universe won't look any different to the Christian and the atheist (with both wonder and complexity and brute misery) — it's just that the Christian assumes a meaning behind it.

Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate Terry Eagleton (Yale University Press)

There is a great irony in the fact that Dawkins is always trumpeting the idea of reason because, as his many critics have pointed out, his ignorant view of religion is anything but reasonable. At bottom Dawkins hates religion, and writes for people who feel the same way, so he doesn't want to understand it (which is why books about the reasonableness of religion ultimately won't persuade the new atheists), but he disguises his emotional reaction by claiming to be the righteous defender of reason.

Beside the fact that, as Eagleton (and Aquinas before him) is at pains to point out, faith is not an alternative to reason but aids understanding, there is further irony in the fact that Dawkins, Hitchens, A.C. Grayling and the like are such advocates of liberalistic reason, as even such an avowedly secular philosopher as John Gray says that much of Enlightenment liberalism owes its existence to Christianity. But the biggest sign of the unreasonableness of Dawkins and Hitchens could be their faith in liberalistic progress to bring a golden age to humankind. It is nothing less than "bright-eyed superstition", says N.T. Wright, to emerge from the bloodiest century in history thinking that it is all onwards and upwards. Eagleton suggests that, unlike comfortably upper-middle-class atheists, Christians are traditionally realistic about the mess the world is in.

Christians are also wildly hopeful about the solution. For Eagleton, this is where Christianity most closely fits his political ideals. He offers his usual line that Christianity "turns out" to be about feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, giving away your possessions and associating with the "scum of the earth". Well, yes, and more. Of course Christ calls us to radical acts of loving, and this shouldn't be downplayed; but this is part of a larger spiritual reality which is probably neither here nor there for Eagleton. But he is spot-on when he writes that faith is like falling in love, that it is "commitment, not just assent". Christians claim a relationship with this Christ who radically breaks into history. We don't just tick off boxes, but are swept off our feet into a whole new way of living. Like someone in love, we can state reasons for our rapture — love is not a matter of being unreasonable — but the whole business of being a Christian is much greater than this. But then Dawkins, Hitchens and their ilk don't really want to understand all this, because they are preaching to the converted.

Nick Mattiske