My own reaction to Eagleton's review was that I almost totally agreed with him about his specific criticisms of Dawkins but almost equally lost sympathy when he tried extending it into arguments about why atheists shouldn't engage in theology. But confirmed atheists willing to speculate about theological issues seriously can often have useful arguments to contribute.
To take an example - Charlie Stross's views on God and religion seem to be in many ways very similar to those of Dawkins, but that doesn't stop him engaging more or less indirectly with theological questions fairly consistently in his fiction and usually reasonably constructively. (OK, the "what if there is a god and he is entirely evil?" question that is implicit in the Laundryverse may not seem that constructive to theists, but the question is worth arguing as the assumption that theists often make that an infinitely great being must also be good is not exactly obviously true to many unbelievers - and, in other novels, the at least somewhat god-like Eschaton is a generally sympathetic character running into several standard theological problems.)
Dawkins, of course, never does this - for Dawkins, theological questions are never worth taking seriously except as mental viruses to be purged from the human mind.
My own reaction to Eagleton's review was that I almost totally agreed with him about his specific criticisms of Dawkins but almost equally lost sympathy when he tried extending it into arguments about why atheists shouldn't engage in theology.
I didn't see him doing that, which may well be my own blindness. I'd disagree with that point of view, though (being as I am an atheist who sometimes does just that). Which bit of the review do you read as saying that?
To take an example - Charlie Stross's views on God and religion seem to be in many ways very similar to those of Dawkins, but that doesn't stop him engaging more or less indirectly with theological questions fairly consistently in his fiction and usually reasonably constructively. (OK, the "what if there is a god and he is entirely evil?" question that is implicit in the Laundryverse may not seem that constructive to theists, but the question is worth arguing as the assumption that theists often make that an infinitely great being must also be good is not exactly obviously true to many unbelievers - and, in other novels, the at least somewhat god-like Eschaton is a generally sympathetic character running into several standard theological problems.)
Dawkins, of course, never does this - for Dawkins, theological questions are never worth taking seriously except as mental viruses to be purged from the human mind.
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I didn't see him doing that, which may well be my own blindness. I'd disagree with that point of view, though (being as I am an atheist who sometimes does just that). Which bit of the review do you read as saying that?
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Well, this theist (here via djm4) finds it quite intriguing and wasn't previously aware that Stross had written on it, so thank you :-)
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