I’m not calling for censorship here, but I would be so happy if Terry Eagleton would just put a sock in it. In his latest interview, in the Monthly Review, he shows some disturbing tendencies.
The first is his implicit claim that he alone is the proper interpreter of scripture:
NS: (Interviewer):Though of course the Christianity you present doesn’t sound like a lot of the Christianity one hears in the public sphere, especially in the United States.
TE: I think partly that’s because a lot the authentic meanings of the New Testament have become ideologized or mythologized away. Religion has become a very comfortable ideology for a dollar-worshipping culture. The scandal of the New Testament — the fact that it backs what America calls the losers, that it thinks the dispossessed will inherit the kingdom of God before the respectable bourgeois — all of that has been replaced, particularly in the States, by an idolatrous version. I’m presently at a university campus where we proudly proclaim the slogan “God, Country, and Notre Dame.” I think they have to be told, and indeed I have told them, that God actually takes little interest in countries. Yahweh is presented in the Jewish Bible as stateless and nationless. He can’t be used as a totem or fetish in that way. He slips out of your grasp if you try to do so. His concern is with universal humanity, not with one particular section of it. Such ideologies make it very hard to get a traditional version of Christianity across.
I’m always amazed at how people who claim that God is nebulous and ungrasp-able are nevertheless so sure about what God is really like, or what he wants.
And then Eagleton once again shows either a failure or a deliberate refusal to grasp popular faith:
. . . These new atheists, and, indeed, the great majority of believers, have been conned rather falsely into a positivist or dogmatic theology, into believing that religion consists in signing on for a set of propositions.
Has Eagleton heard of the Nicene creed? Or any of the other statements of belief of popular churches?
But the scariest thing is this:
NS: There are so many competing claims for supernatural revelation; some people say they adjudicate truth by the Bible, or by papal authority. How do you know one reliable supernatural tradition from another?
TE: Well, you have to argue about it on the basis of reason, and evidence, and analysis, and historical research. In that sense, theology is like any other intellectual discipline. You don’t know intuitively, and you certainly can’t claim to know dogmatically. You can’t simply, in a sectarian way, assert one tradition over another. I don’t think there’s any one template, any one set of guidelines, which will magically identity the correct view. Theology, like any other intellectual discipline, is a potentially endless process of argument. But that’s not to say that anything goes.
and this:
NS: Back to issues of faith and reason — your position reminds me of Stephen Jay Gould’s model of “non-overlapping magisteria.” Gould himself was not a believer, though he wrote about religion and science, and sometimes he has been accused of having a position that is only possible if you’re not really taking belief seriously.
TE: I think that Gould was right in that particular position. What is interesting is why it makes people like Dawkins so nervous. 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. They don’t have to produce evidence, and they don’t have to engage in reasonable argument. They’re now released from the tenets of science. Traditionally, this is the Christian heresy known as fideism. But all kinds of rationalities, theology included, have been non-scientific for a very long time and yet still have to conform to the procedures of reason. The new atheists think this because they falsely identify the rules of reason with the rules of scientific reason. Therefore if something is outside the purview of science, it follows for them that it is outside the purview of reason itself. But that’s a false way of arguing. Dawkins won’t entertain either the idea that faith must engage reason or that the very idea of what rationality is is to be debated.
All right, Mr. Eagleton, can you tell us whether, on the basis of reason, evidence, and analysis, Muhammed was the prophet of God? Or whether Jesus was the son of God? Or whether, indeed, there is a God? Please enlighten us with the data.
And when “rational” theologians disagree, Mr. Eagleton, is there any way to settle the issue, as there is in science (or indeed, in any dispute that can be settled by evidence)?
The lights are on chez Eagleton, but nobody’s home.
So it is, but it isn’t, yet it is, but it ain’t.
I can see clearly now the brain is gone.
“I can see clearly now the brain is gone.”
I am so stealing that.
Jerry said; “I’m always amazed at how people who claim that God is nebulous and ungrasp-able are nevertheless so sure about what God is really like, or what he wants.”
And, by implication, that everyone else (even those who claim the same faith) has it all wrong when *they* feel the same certainty about what god wants.
Evidence! Evidence!?! What evidence do theologians ever produce?
Ophelia, I find your strident, militant scientism the problem here. If only you’d allow that a Christian (and only a Christian) can know God’s will because an all powerful God would make that the believer knew his desires. This is warrant and evidence enough.
B. English, so we should view all the revelations to every individual as equally coherent from the non-trinitarians all the way through to Smith? Doesn’t sound very compelling or unified from an omniscient or omnipresent deity. Your view lends credence to a whimsical God.
Brian English – what nonsense you spout.
Poe.
Sarcasm is a brilliant thing.
Or irony.
I’m just trying to determine if those who thought my Poe comment was a real xtian screed, or they were poeing me back? To much irony here. 🙂
Well I knew it was irony, but only because I’ve seen comments by Brian English before. The irony is indistinguishable from the real thing.
For a further irony, his retort to me is the obverse of what I claim in Russell’s and Udo’s anthology (50 Voices of Disbelief) – that god’s failure to make sure we know is the deal-breaker.
In one sense, of course, there are all sorts of ‘reasonable arguments’ going on in theology, because, for theology, a number of things count as evidence.
For example, in the debate within the Anglican Communion about admitting sexually active gay people into full membership in the church -which would include ordaining them and permitting their relationships to be recognised and solemnised – a lot of things are brought into play as evidence: biblical texts and interpretations of them, how biblical texts have been used in the past to underwrite moral judgement, development and change of Christian morality over time, and reasons for this having happened the way it did, and so on, including how theologians have understood God and God’s relationship to us, etc. So, there is, as our friend Eagleton says, a lot of ‘rational discusion’ going on.
However, this doesn’t save theology, as is evident as soon as you read a bit of theology, because the kinds of evidence that are admitted can put you all over the map in terms of conclusions in a way that evidence shouldn’t enable you to do. And what Eagleton must show – and he can’t, because literary critics use these kinds of techniques too, and think that they are being perfectly reasonable – is that theology provides some reasonably solid ground to stand on. And that’s where the ground gets all marshy and unstable. So long as you stay within theology, it all seems to make perfect sense, so you get the illusion of talking rationally. Been there, done that.
Brian English charges you with scientism, because he thinks that you are arguing that you can’t talk about things other than scientifically, and of course, as you know, we can. But the thing that most people like Eagleton and Englisn don’t seem to recognise is that there is talk and talk, and some of it, like scientific talk, needs to go somewhere, and religious talk is like this, it really needs to go somewhere, and it doesn’t. If it was like literary criticism, we could talk enjoyably in circles all day, and we would probably both come out the wiser. But religion has practical implications, just as science does, and so it needs to have some kind of foundations, some way in which we can actually come to reliable conclusions. It can’t simply pretend to be in the same league as literary or music criticism. That’s the league it belongs in, where we talk expansively of ‘the meaning of life,’ but it makes claims that go much further, and that’s why it has to be brought to heel, and why people like Eagleton should just put a sock in it.
Eric, it appears that you’ve not read any of my comments on B&W. I’m one of the knee-jerk atheists. Though I’m trying to learn to be more nuanced. Oh well, I thought my comment was suffiently over the top that it would break irony meters. It turns out Poe’s law operates at all levels.
Eagleton sez,
“And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great” (Genesis 12:2).
“Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the LORD my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it. Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the LORD our God is in all things that we call upon him for? And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?” (Deuteronomy 4:5-8).
“When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them: Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the LORD be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly. But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire.” (Deuteronomy 7:1-5).
Eagleton needs a refresher course in the history of henotheism.
Once again we see a supposedly learned person (Eagleton) tell us what a book says without having read much of it.
Oh, and the link to Butterflies and Wheels is broken.
Eagleton appears to be getting a lot of mileage from an empty tank.
That was my biggest laugh of today. And then there was his take of Gould-ishness. I laughed so hard that tears came to my eyes. What a fool Terry Eagleton is.
It would be more truthful if he said:
Well, you have to convince yourself that you are arguing about it on the basis of reason, and evidence, and analysis, and historical research. In that sense, theology is like any other “woo”.
Yahweh as “stateless and nationless” is one of the dumbest things I have EVER read. What an incredibly glaring falsehood. Has the man READ the Bible?
So, Eagleton thinks it is possible to determine the truth of various claims about God by the application of reason. Excellent! So, how does reason tell us that an omnipotent would be unable to create the world, including intelligent creatures capable of reasoning, without all the suffering necessitated by evolution? Answer, it can’t tell us any such thing. This is simply taking omnopotence seriously.
Given that an omnipotent God was CAPABLE of avoiding all this suffering, etc., can reason tell us why a good (as in infinitely loving and benevolent) God was NOT MOTIVATED to do so?
Try to use reason to find an intellectually plausible motivation for such a God to act as it has. I say that there isn’t one.
Eeek. I think “omnopotence” would be a good word, but I meant “omnipotence”, of course.
Remember Ted Knight’s great line from Caddyshack?
“I’ve sentenced boys younger than you to the gas chamber. Didn’t want to do it. I felt I owed it to them.”
Same for God, I guess.
Yeah, if I kill someone, no matter how painful and slow I make it, it only lasts a short time (geologically speaking). God, being so loving, makes it last eternity.
I wonder what the religious types who say they accept evolution think about the fact that we are a transitional species, and will evolve into another species if we don’t finish ourselves off. Will God not allow that species to go to heaven or hell, being not the race of Adam and Eve?
Keith Ward, in his response to Dawkins, Why There Almost Certainly Is a God, trys to fulfil this demand by suggesting that God is omnipotent in the sense of being able to bring into existence any number of good possible worlds (since God is also presumed to be good), but that in some of those worlds evil must exist which is necessary in order to bring about the distinctive goods of those worlds.
In our world, for instance, all the goods consistent with carbon-based life forms are in fact brought about, that is the good, distinctive for this kind of possible world, though these could not be brought about without the evils that accompany them.
It is not particularly convincing, especially when he suggests that it may be the case that God redeems those evils by providing a good existence for those sufferings, whose goodness depends upon the precise nature of the suffering endured.
It sounds to me like a tangle of post hoc ‘gerrymandering’ (sorry Jerry, und zu irgendwelchen Deutschen, die das lesen können), but at least he is aware of the problem.
Jerry: I’m always amazed at how people who claim that God is nebulous and ungrasp-able are nevertheless so sure about what God is really like, or what he wants.
Me: You do realize, don’t you, that Eagleton is a literary critic? When he says he knows the nature of God it’s much the same as if he’s saying he knows the character of Leo Bloom. And you respond by saying “Leo Bloom” is a fictional character. Brilliant.
Jerry: Has Eagleton heard of the Nicene creed? Or any of the other statements of belief of popular churches?
Me: Has Jerry ever asked himself why there IS a Nicean Creed in the first place? (Look it up) And why the church was rife with schisms and heresy for centuries after it was written? . . . Could it be perhaps that “Jerry Coyne’s preferred brand of Christianity” may NOT be the only one?
A much better question is whether you recognize any knowledge aside from scientific knowledge . . . I frankly don’t care whether Eagleton thinks God exists or not, and I don’t see why you do.
But what is interesting to me is the profound ignorance I see in this blog–the sort of ignorance that can’t see anything except statements of facts, the sort of attitude that obsesses over whether Shakespeare’s mistress REALLY had wiry hair.
Who cares? Ignorami, that’s who.
I don’t think Jerry does care whether Eagleton thinks God exists or not; I think he cares whether Eagleton keeps on churning out nonsensical baseless made-up drivel about God in public. Why care about that? Because it promotes stupidity and bullshit and bad argument, that’s why.
Bullshit. Leopold Bloom (he’s not called Leo, you know – Molly calls him Poldy) is not the source of a lot of commandments and proscriptions that millions of people take seriously and obey.
So on the one hand Eagleton trying to characterize God as a bit more humane and non-nationalist is stupid, but on the other we worry that God is the source of commandments and proscriptions that we object to. Seems kind of contradictory.
The fact is that the vast majority of the world’s population isn’t going to convert to atheism tomorrow or the next day or the day after that. And they aren’t going to construct formal arguments that you will admire any time soon, either. So why it is we should condemn someone who is trying to get people to think of their gods as being open-handed and somewhat above petty human conflict is rather beyond me. Unless of course you care more about striking an extreme pose than you do about the abuses of religion you refer to.
“I think they have to be told, and indeed I have told them, that God actually takes little interest in countries.”
I wish that more American Christians took this view.
What Blake Stacey said. God, Eagleton’s credibility even as a literary critic went out the window for me when I read that. The one thing that is absolutely pounded into your head by most of the Jewish Bible is just how much Yahweh cares for nations–the survival and adoration of his, Israel, and the destruction of others.
To read the OT and think that God is a friendly happy-clappy nationless everyman, you would have to throw out everything between Genesis and Chronicles, roughly, and cherry-pick a few nice cute quotations that pass for universal morality from the wisdom literature or the prophets. Nice, fine, but God seemed to forget that himself when he ordered the Israelites to slaughter all the inhabitants of Canaan so they could inhabit the land.
The really scary part is that the Torah — roughly corresponding with the very worst parts of the Bible — make up the most venerated parts of the text in Judaism. But that’s a debate for another day.
So you figure Eagleton ought to be telling us that any enormity done on behalf of the state of Israel is not only justifiable, but heroic?
Assuming you realize that the audience for that statement is believers, not skeptics. In other words, he’s not trying to justify religion to you, he’s challenging the interpretation you’ve just laid out. Not because it’s more accurate necessarily, but because he actually cares about the consequences of that interpretation becoming general.
In other words it is FAR more likely that the effect of a post like that would to be influence believers that killing Palestinians is OK than to convince those believers that God doesn’t exist.
So you just keep telling believers that if they *really* believe they’ll be out there slaying the enemy, stoning suspected adulterers and killing abortion doctors. They’re bound to come to their senses after a few hundred years of this, no?
So, Eagleton makes an ass out of himself! That is the theologian’s pattern! They ever make one hole after another to get out of situations their ever begged questions bring them to. God cannot be a embodied being as one then could find Him. Ah, He is disembodied. Well, then He cannot think nor act, because He has no brain! Ah, He is not the god of the scientific gaps. Well, then He is the one of the theological it must be gaps: there is no reason to ask why is there something rather than nothing; that is Leibniz’s big blunder as that is a nonsensical question, like asking what is the color of sound [ Unless one has synesthesia.] They aver that only created things can have causes.That begs the question and special pleads as that tries to instantiate somehing by definition in that they claim He is so different from any other existent.
So, one can indeed ask without making the fallacy of multiple questions [ Dr. Willim Sahakian] the what caused and what designed the First Cause and the Designer.
Cause, event, explanation and time presuppose previous ones, so there cannot be the First Cause. Again, Leibniz errs: natural causes and explanations themselves are indeed the suffficient reason. God cannot add any explanation as He is needlessly redundant [ no pleonasm on my part], contrary to Dr. Alister McGrath, my friend Dr. Dawkins’s nemesis, that He is a meaningful redundancy! This arises from the violation of the Ockham. Then one cannot postulate God into existence with any definition, not only the begged one of the ontological argument as Dr Jonathon Harrison notes under the rubric abut theological meaninglessness or as Lord Russell about some other matter makes about the postulation of somethng: such instantiation cannot effectuate itself
God is then also an nebulous term as His atributes are incoherent and conflict one with the other; So, He cannot exist!
The argument from pareidolia is that theists postulate intelligence in place of natural selection and other natural causes and see designs where only patterns exist as people see Mary or Yeshua in mundane places.
The atelic or teleonomic argument relies on the weight of evidence that there is no cosmic telology but rather comsic teleonomy: no basis for thnking that some entity programmed for us to arrive. And such teleology is therefore not at all consistent with science but contradicts it such that theologians are ever making the new Omphalos argument that He decieves us into finding no teleology as part of divine hiddenness [ Dr. John L.Schellenberg decries the hiddennness.], as part of His epistemic distance [ favored by Dr. John, Hick, our Trojan horse as Dr. Oppy emailed me.] Therefore, creationist evolution is as Dr. Coyne exposes it in ” Seeing and Belieiving,” is an oxymoron!
This is where our friend Dr. Scott and the NCES so err: they can indeed state that from the side of religion there is no conflict betwixt religion and science, but they err in stating that there is no conflict from the side of science. She makes a demarcation error as Dr. Draper emailed me in her book against creationism where she states that we err by claiming that there is no such teleology in that that is a philosophical rather than a scientific claim. No, Drs. Mayr, Simpson, Povine, Kurtz Crewes and I remain intransigent on this point! Eh, Jerry, my friend?
Dr. Eagleton merely obfuscates as theologian are ever so want to do!
And faith, that begged question [ Articulett] cannot instantiate Him. Dawkins is right that we don’t have to answer the advanced theologians as they have no more so advance than others as Dr. Meyers affirms, but I Skeptic Griggsy [ aka under other forms of griggsy] do explicate their incompetency to intantiate Him! Google skeptic griggsy to see that!]
We atheologists have the right and the duty to expose the scam of the ages!
Also, My friend, Dr Paul Kurtz, in his ” The Transcendent Temptation,’ illustrates why the supernatural and the paranormal are indeed that scam! Both violate the presumptions of empricism, naturalism, rationalism and skepticism.