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Merrick wrote: fauny fergus wrote: Terry Eagleton's review of the The God Delusion is pretty incisive
You really think so?
Eagleton appears to be attacking Dawkins for not knowing about the detail of theology, yet that misses the point. It's like attacking a vegan for not knowing enough about being a seafood chef.
Um, no it's not like that at all. It'd be like attacking a vegan for not knowing enough about being a seafood chef when they repeatedly kept saying, "Sea food is stupid, I'm right lalalalalala."
Merrick wrote:
Eagleton goes into great detail about the 'real' message of God as opposed to the 'unscriptural' decrees of the religions that worship God, which misses much of the thrust of Dawkins' point.
If you find the idea of there being a revealed omnipotent creator as ludicrous as there being a Santa Claus, then what they actually said via a burning bush or whatever is as irrelevant as the wording on the note Santa leaves for your kids to say thanks for the mince pie.
Again, no, that's not the point either; I think saying it has 'thrust' is being a bit generous to the force behind it. What Eagleton is saying - straightforwardly - is that Dawkins uses the Bible as the basis of many of his arguments (when he's not setting up spurious straw men via clearly invented anecdotes; for a scientist he's a bit shit on 'proof') but that most people's faith or spirituality does not begin nor end with the Bible. To use the Bible as the basis of his arguments is to demonstrate ignorance of the how, the what and the why of most people's religious/spiritual beliefs. This is what Eagleton is getting at: Dawkins is a poor poster boy for atheists because he doesn't know anything about the opposition.
In fact, he's startlingly similar to evangelicals; won't hear anything but his own set of truths. It reminds me of what Nietzsche wrote in the Genealogy of Morals,
Nietzsche wrote: Modern science, which, as a true philosophy of reality, evidently believes only in itself, possesses courage and will in itself, and has got along up to this point well enough without God, a world beyond, and virtues which deny. However, I'm not impressed with such a fuss and agitprop: these trumpeters of reality are bad musicians. One can hear well enough that their notes do not sound out of the depths. The abyss of scientific conscience does not speak through them—for today scientific knowledge is an abyss. The phrase "scientific knowledge" in such trumpeting mouths is mere fornication, an abuse, an indecency.
I think this is Dawkins' problem: he believes fervently in his philosophy of reality and only in it. He is apparently driven by a desire to eradicate other philosophies of reality that he believes to be (a) in competition with his and (b) erroneous. By seeking to assume the mantle of his enemy he is, truly, in the process of taking on their worst aspects: a sneering and cynical contempt for those that disagree with him. In this respect I think it's entirely understandable that he produces such a one dimensional version of religion in his writings - it rings 'true' to him because it is the inverse of his own faith.
Dawkins is the bad musician that Nietzsche writes about - metaphorically and, i suspect, literally; I'd never want to hear him speak about love or poetry or things that can't be measured. Nor would I like to hear him make music. I honestly don't think he has the capacity for it and think of him as an impoverished mind because of it. Don't get me wrong, he has done an excellent service to promoting a popular understanding of evolution but beyond that his writing is all a bit shit.
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