Product Description

"...offer(s) an account of Jesus and his teachings which is as good as any outside the ranks of biblical specialists."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14667 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 200 pages

Review
"Like the poor, the God debate seems to be always with us; Terry Eagleton takes a witty, polemical line."
--Arminta Wallace, Irish Times 3rd Jan 2009

"...essentially a contra-Dawkins and contra-Hitchens polemic: he conflates the two angry atheists as "Ditchkins" and successfully shreds what they say."
-- Piers Paul Read, Observer, 24th May 2009

"... thought-provoking, infuriating, inspiring and very, very funny." --London Review of Books, 23rd July 2009

`A witty and polemical book ... Here at last is [Eagleton's] defence of Christianity as a radical movement.'
--Laurence Coupe, Times Higher Education Supplement, 10th September 2009

Review
"This is sure to ruffle feathers on both sides of the God debate ... Many will, simply, have to read this."

Review
"... a rich, subtle and humane series of essays that deserves close study ... Eagleton has immeasurably raised the standards."

Customer Reviews

Eagleton straw-targets atheist position but offers virtue
Eagleton is an amazing combination of Catholic believer and Marxist. He derides much of what Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens write, disrespectfully calling them `Ditchkins'. He is contemptuous of their Oxford/Washington/neocon etc scene, adding in Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan for good measure. His main critique is that whilst Dawkins and Hitchens critique religion, they do not apply the same critique to science or the enlightened modernity they promote, summed up in their castigation of the Inquisition but not of Hiroshima. Eagleton however commits the same errors he accuses Dawkins and Hitchens of. They attack a straw man of extremist religion rather than more credible expressions and interpretations - `this straw targeting of Christianity is now drearily commonplace he complains' - whilst Eagleton himself attacks Dawkins and Hitchens rather than the more credible atheist arguments of Simon Blackburn, Andre Comte-Sponville, Julian Baggini etc. He challenges that Dawkins and Hitchens should know more about religion before critiquing it but then himself freely lambasts multinational corporations about which he is equally uninformed. Eagleton deploys streams of similes to support his points - `it is rather like saying that thanks to the electric toaster we can forget about Chekhov' - which start as amusing but soon become irritating. He is clearly annoyed with Hitchens for leaving the Marxist camp where they were former fellow travellers. He doesn't like modernity's belief in its inevitable progress to a finer world, but he fails to say that belief in the kingdom of God offers the same hope. We are told of `the social devastation wreaked by economic liberalism' p145!

Eagleton simply assumes God. By page 7 he is writing in detail about the nature of God without any supporting argument - God is just as Eagleton says he is. He says on page 34 that he has given a theological account which he clearly hasn't. He has simply speculated on some ideal fabrication of an imagined God. And Jesus is Eagleton's revolutionary, a Che Guevara figure who stands for the poor, critiques the establishment, and himself suffers ignominy and bears injustice.

He does offer allegory as a useful interpretation of religion and this deserves further development. He says p48 `there has been no human culture to date in which virtue has been predominant' which is a succinct moral challenge to human society which should cause reflection and correction? For Aquinas p122 `all virtues have their source in love' so here is Eagleton's key virtue which compares to Iaian King's twin virtues of empathy and obligation and Comte-Sponville's 18 virtues in his 'A Short Treatise on the Great Virtues'.

A critical response to the atheism of Dawkins & Hitchens.
Terry Eagleton, the Marxist literary critic and former Roman Catholic, has written an accessible and witty book which is a critical response to the anti-God best-sellers of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens(or "Ditchkins" as Eagleton labels them). Eagleton accepts that "religion has wrought untold misery in human affairs" but also realises that without Christianity his Irish ancestors "would have gone unschooled, un-nursed, unconsoled and unburied". 'Reason, Faith and Revolution' is a fascinating book based on Eagleton's lectures at Yale University in 2008 and deserves to be read especially by the many followers of 'Ditchkins'.

Eagleton's well targeted blast
This is a good book. It's cheerful, straightforward, well argued and iconoclastic.

It shatters the idols that atheists such as Dawkins and Hitchens have made for themselves. It shows up the shallowness and inadequacy of many atheist positions. The fact that Eagleton is himself an atheist increases the depth of his critique of much contemporary atheism.

He is also good at pointing out some of the flaws in Christianity and in other belief systems such as multiculturalism. The following quotes are particularly memorable,

"Multiculturalism at its least impressive blandly embraces difference as such, without looking too closely into what one is differing over. It tends to imagine that there is something inherently positive about having a host of different views on the same subject.....Such facile pluralism therefore tends to numb the habit of vigorously contesting other people's beliefs..."

and

"Any preaching of the Gospel which fails to constitute a scandal and affront to the political state is in my view effectively worthless."

This book is challenging to all participants in the debate over God, and what he means both here on Earth and in Heaven and Hell. Read it, enjoy it, disagree with it...but go prepared to enjoy a lively conversation...and to learn some new ideas from it.