If you’re curious about what can be said in response to the criticisms of religion launched by Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, don’t read Terry Eagleton’s new book Reason, Faith, and Revolution. As I’ve said before, I’ll take even Lee Strobel and William Lane Craig over most of the “why the New Atheists ™ are wrong” books, but most of those aren’t as bad as this one. The book appears to be a lightly-edited transcript of talks delivered without any preparation, though thanks to Matt Taibbi, I’ve seen videos of the original talks and in those Eagleton is constantly glancing down at something, which I’d guess is a manuscript (as opposed to just note cards) given how often he has to look at it. For this reason, I’m a little baffled at how this book came to be, though my best guess is that Eagleton sat down at a laptop and started typing without even a hint of a plan in mind, and called that the manuscript for his talks. I’m honestly tempted to say the book is the worst I’ve ever read, though PZ, even after reading Eagleton, reserves this honor for The Spiritual Brain, which I admit I couldn’t even finish. Here are some low-lights:

• In spite of the badness of the book, reading it had a few “aha!” moments. I’ve commented before on how some confuse story telling with philosophical analysis, and Eagleton is noteworthy because he seems OK with the fact that his story is fiction. It’s a story about a mash-up character of Dawkins and Hitchens named “Ditchkins”–a fictional character. Similarly, Eagleton at one point claims that on Kant’s view of ethics, “if what you do feels pleasant, it is unlikely to be virtuous.” which is followed up with a parenthetical, “I am simplifying The Critique of Practical Reason a little here, as you may have noticed.” It’s as if Eagleton takes glee in misrepresenting his targets. The Salon reviewer follows this approach, happily describing how Eagleton portrays Dawkins and Hitchens without wondering whether the portrayal is accurate.
• Eagleton also has a remarkably weird vision of liberal religion. He has no trouble being vaguely committed to Christianity while admitting that Jesus thought the end of the world was coming in his life time. He also informs us the “God does not ‘exist,’” though the question of whether God exists–as oppose to “exists,”–is left open. Thus, we have the unintentional comedy of even Eagleton’s fans being unsure what he believes, including Stanley Fish and current “most useful” Amazon review, which describes Eagleton as “insofar as I can tell, an atheist himself…”
• Like Chris Hedges, Eagleton’s vision of Christianity is largely about hating capitalism, though Eagleton takes this much further, and adds lit-theory silliness about the supposed metaphysical foundations of capitalism, which mainly shows us that Eagleton has no idea what the meaning of the word “metaphysics” is.
• Fish’s review, though mostly like a book-report, has the virtue that Eagleton’s ramblings about “faith” should be taken as a suggestion that faith = the a priori. This makes more sense than most of what Eagleton actually says, though it makes mathematics a faith-based enterprise, and if the religious attitude isn’t necessarily different than the mathematical one, it’s not clear what the difference is between faith-heads and rationalists.

There’s more I can say, but, honestly, too much stupid for one blog post. I think it was a mistake to try to post normal reviews of these books… the same silly ideas are repeated again and again, to say anything worthwhile about most of them is enough for one blog post.