Not sure if you're saying Arguers from Design smoosh system regulation into pre-existing models, or if Dawkins does? Clearly the Arguers do; Nagel would claim Dawkins does.
I detested the piece by Eagleton, as I detest Eagleton--disgusting sub-Wildean rhetorician that he is. "Theology" 's number of heads doubles roughly every five years, almost all of which feed on Design. The rest tend to start with some God-is-cause, God-is-love, God-is-consciousness kind of Trojan horse, where they're just relabeling as God some concept that Dawkins et al. wouldn't even have trouble with, then sneaking in superfluous content that they very much would. Modern Theology never reduces religion to metaphor, but step one is to pretend to, to claim you're rephrasing or unpacking the obvious. Dawkins is entirely right to stay clear of it, and to stick with the empirical claims it was originally based on. No one would have come to recent theology on their own, it exists only as a refuge for those driven from more substantial claims. Dawkins digs back to those.
Eagleton's review is astonishingly condescending, appallingly bitchy, deliberately misunderstands, distorts, or flat-out lies about Dawkins at more or less every point (claiming he's some kind of positivist, feels nothing good ever came out of any religion, is untroubled by global capitalism etc.) and does so because Eagleton is afraid this new atheist wave will split a Left that needs solidarity with Christians. This part was my favorite, as a smarm-collector:
Reading Dawkins, who occasionally writes as though ‘Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness’ is a mighty funny way to describe a Grecian urn, one can be reasonably certain that he would not be Europe’s greatest enthusiast for Foucault, psychoanalysis, agitprop, Dadaism, anarchism or separatist feminism.
I.e., Dear London Review of Books Reader: DAWKINS PROBABLY DISAGREES WITH YOU! Neglecting to put together that aesthetes, Foucaultians, Freudians, Marxists, Dadaists, anarchists and feminist separatists are not likely to be fans of one another (how many can you even be at once, three?).
The actual trouble with Dawkins' book, as he'd presumably admit, is that it isn't particularly well-organized. Partly this is because he does get emotional, partly because he wants to come across as a human voice (dispelling the fear that atheists are robots in black sweaters), mostly because the opposition is all over the map and he has to go chasing it. Harris' is tighter, excepting his highly unfortunate digressions toward the end.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: looking for complexity
Date: 2007-03-18 07:15 pm (UTC)I detested the piece by Eagleton, as I detest Eagleton--disgusting sub-Wildean rhetorician that he is. "Theology" 's number of heads doubles roughly every five years, almost all of which feed on Design. The rest tend to start with some God-is-cause, God-is-love, God-is-consciousness kind of Trojan horse, where they're just relabeling as God some concept that Dawkins et al. wouldn't even have trouble with, then sneaking in superfluous content that they very much would. Modern Theology never reduces religion to metaphor, but step one is to pretend to, to claim you're rephrasing or unpacking the obvious. Dawkins is entirely right to stay clear of it, and to stick with the empirical claims it was originally based on. No one would have come to recent theology on their own, it exists only as a refuge for those driven from more substantial claims. Dawkins digs back to those.
Eagleton's review is astonishingly condescending, appallingly bitchy, deliberately misunderstands, distorts, or flat-out lies about Dawkins at more or less every point (claiming he's some kind of positivist, feels nothing good ever came out of any religion, is untroubled by global capitalism etc.) and does so because Eagleton is afraid this new atheist wave will split a Left that needs solidarity with Christians. This part was my favorite, as a smarm-collector:
Reading Dawkins, who occasionally writes as though ‘Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness’ is a mighty funny way to describe a Grecian urn, one can be reasonably certain that he would not be Europe’s greatest enthusiast for Foucault, psychoanalysis, agitprop, Dadaism, anarchism or separatist feminism.
I.e., Dear London Review of Books Reader: DAWKINS PROBABLY DISAGREES WITH YOU! Neglecting to put together that aesthetes, Foucaultians, Freudians, Marxists, Dadaists, anarchists and feminist separatists are not likely to be fans of one another (how many can you even be at once, three?).
The actual trouble with Dawkins' book, as he'd presumably admit, is that it isn't particularly well-organized. Partly this is because he does get emotional, partly because he wants to come across as a human voice (dispelling the fear that atheists are robots in black sweaters), mostly because the opposition is all over the map and he has to go chasing it. Harris' is tighter, excepting his highly unfortunate digressions toward the end.