LRB | Terry Eagleton : Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching

There has been considerable publicity recently about Richard Dawkins new book

I wanted to write a response but time and the right words were both hard to find.  So I came accross this response.

Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology. Card-carrying rationalists like Dawkins, who is the nearest thing to a professional atheist we have had since Bertrand Russell, are in one sense the least well-equipped to understand what they castigate, since they don’t believe there is anything there to be understood, or at least anything worth understanding. This is why they invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince. The more they detest religion, the more ill-informed their criticisms of it tend to be. If they were asked to pass judgment on phenomenology or the geopolitics of South Asia, they would no doubt bone up on the question as assiduously as they could. When it comes to theology, however, any shoddy old travesty will pass muster. These days, theology is the queen of the sciences in a rather less august sense of the word than in its medieval heyday.

Click here to read the whole review.  We need to stand against those who are producing such books and attacks such as these.  However, we must do it with Love, Grace and intelligence!

Source: LRB | Terry Eagleton : Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching