What a ripper of an article! As I recall, Eagleton was a Marxist literary and cultural critic, and no doubt under the new syllabus his works will be banned and burned in the main street.

There are, I suspect, three things about religion that no one can really deny.

The first is that even for us unbelievers the Judeo-Christian value set provided a guide to life and to relationships (social, personal, business) that was good in the sense that it emphasized care, humility, honesty, and respect for others. As that value set evaporates, we have little to replace it with.

Second, in a time when some of us wonder about a Grand Unified Theory, about a time before time, about what preceded the big bang and why, there is a whole lot of mystery out there, and it is hard not to have a feeling akin to religiosity about it.

Third, one of the worst developments of the c20 was the removal of mystery from religion. Priests riding motor scooters and playing guitars, the abolition of Latin, the idea that religion was just really a form of smiling, unctuous, rubbery social work, and that religion had to be relevant (why? why on earth should a god’s ideas be “relevant” to us? Are my ideas relevant to the frittata I made yesterday?) all of these have gutted and filleted religion, and have thrown out with the bathwater the essence of standing before a mystery - which is a sense of humility.

btw: I am not to be understood as arguing for, or accepting, Christianity.

But this soft-nosed argument is ripped to shreds later on by a James Farrell in this comment:

I can’t agree with you on this one, Nicholas. Dawkins is a brilliant expositor of science, and his criticisms of religion are spot on. So what if he isn’t an expert on theology? Here’s a challenge: if you read a scathing and hilarious critique of astrology written by an author who wasn’t himself steeped in astrological wisdom, would you really be cross and indignant about all the simplifications and strawman demolitions in the book?

The only people who are going to get upset about this book are ones who have an emotional loyalty to religion and can’t stand seeing it rubbished. This obviously applies to Eagleton, and I can’t for the life me understand why you say ‘it’s not done on behalf of religion’. A bit of googling on Eagleton tells me he is or was religious.

Nor do I agree, being as objective as I can (as an admirer of Dawkins) that it’s a particularly clever or persuasive review - far less with Richard Phillipps conclusion that it’s a ‘ripper’. It’s bad tempered and unreasonable, and quite incoherent in key places where it’s pretending to clinch the argument. What on earth does this mean, for example:

He seems to imagine God, if not exactly with a white beard, then at least as some kind of chap, however supersized. He asks how this chap can speak to billions of people simultaneously, which is rather like wondering why, if Tony Blair is an octopus, he has only two arms.

And this doesn’t seem to make any sense at all:

Even Richard Dawkins lives more by faith than by reason. We hold many beliefs that have no unimpeachably rational justification, but are nonetheless reasonable to entertain.

Is he really saying that Dawkins’ faith that, say, his wife is not really is biological sister, is on a par with religious faith simply because neither is ‘unimpeachable?’

And where does Eagleton stand, anyway? Does he think that belief in the God of Moses is any more reasonable than in Baal or Zeus? If so, on what grounds? If not, would he take exception to an uninformed attack on any of these beliefs?

And this comment is followed up by a comment from a Gaby:

Emphatically what James said. Beat me to the punch.

First, I haven’t read Dawkins’s book. But Eagleton’s review wouldn’t dissuade me from doing so.

I thought generally a poor review as a book review. One example from his own “molehill” is that he doesn’t tell us what Dawkins’s intentions are. Perhaps it is a piece of agitprop aimed at refuting and ridiculing the more common, in both senses of the word, religious falsities prevalent. The “pinhead” differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus may not just be relevant to this task.

Further Eagleton’s positive views don’t really illuminate. Why is belief in God not like belief in the tooth fairy? Asserting God’s “transcendence” doesn’t help nor saying that it is a “condition of possibility” and that it sustains all things “by love”. More or less these are things attributed to the old guy in the sky with the white beard, so I’m happy to lose that image.

El Tel, however, does give a good description of my favored view of Jesus as basically an “A.D.” hippie preachin’ peace’n’love Baby. Was he a vegun as well? Probably not given the “loaves and fishes” supposed prestidigitation.

But still a little later in the discussion a soft-nosed comment by an Ingolf appears:

Gaby, I think Nicholas was alluding to the meaninglessness of being dogmatic when dealing with “ultimate” questions. It’s all very well to flay the more literal religious or spiritual responses that merely paste a poster called “God” over the void, but in doing so one is no nearer to answering the questions for which these various belief systems have through the ages sought to be an answer. The simple truth, at least as I see it, is that not only do we not know the right answers, we don’t even know the right questions and are unlikely to ever do so. As Nicholas says, the very least this realization ought to engender is some sense of humility.

On my reading, the more sophisticated forms of all the major spiritual traditions have throughout the ages been only too aware of the absurdities and dangers lurking in any and all attempts to define God. Indeed, many of them prefer to avoid doing so altogether. The awe we properly feel before the sheer immensity of our ignorance can at times combine with a sense of transcendence, a pull towards the divine that lies at the core of all spirituality. (Both these concepts are of course equally difficult to define but not perhaps always so hard to feel).

Any determined atheist is in my experience at least as much in the grip of a belief system as the most fervent believer. For the scientist who feels no sense of the divine — which is obviously just fine — agnosticism seems to me the only honest stance. It is Dawkins’ fanaticism that many, including me, find so disagreeable, that and the way he arrogates to himself the cloak of reason, not aware, it would seem, of the inherent absurdity of his own position.

Well, needless to say this soft-nosed comment is taken to task later on by the hard-nosed group. If you’ve waded through this far, why not just read the whole thing? There are 52 comments in all and the whole discussion took place and ended in 2006.

Certain products of modern physics that I did not find mentioned at all by these posters are the baffling, one might say a-rational, findings of quantum theory; i.e. the duality of particles and waves, the inability to define a quantum state until it is measured, the phenomena of non-locality, and other such paradoxes. Considering these things, one wonders how we can know anything at all. Yes, the mathematics works, but not the underlying reality. Makes one question what reality is after all. And we haven’t even gotten to questions such as what came before the big bang, and how come we have an Anthropic principle which states that even the slightest deviation in physical constants from their present values would make life as we know it on earth impossible. OK, enough for now. I’m stumped.

In this NYRB article Dyson reviews two books on global warming and provides his own prologue to the piece. In this prologue he shows that there is a rapid (twelve years) exchange of carbon between the atmosphere and vegetation which is very important for the long range future of global warming. Neither of the two books he reviews mentions it, he says. But he devotes considerable space to the book by Nordhaus who concludes that a “low-cost backstop” might provide the best climate policy. However, Nordhaus is reluctant to discuss this in any detail, partly because, as an economist and not a scientist, he does not wish to question the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which considers the science of climate change to be settled.

Dyson shows that the “low-cost backstop” option of Nordhaus has considerable potential in view of the evidence for rapid exchange of carbon between the atmosphere and plants. He considers it likely that genetically engineered carbon-eating trees could be developed within twenty years. These carbon-eating trees would convert the carbon from the atmosphere into root systems which are then buried underground so that the carbon is not returned to the atmosphere. Here is a great potential solution to the problem of reducing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

He spends less time on the book by Zedillo which covers a wider range of topics than the Nordhaus book. This book provides the minority opinions of Richard Lindzner of MIT who answers the question of whether the alarm of global warming is founded on fact with a resounding no. The majority opinions, most dogmatically presented by Howard Dalton of Great Britain, state that urgent action is needed now across the world to avert a major threat to the environment and human society. Dyson clearly questions this view.

After reading the NYRB article, I found an even more fascinating article by Dyson on the subject of climate change in which he goes deeper into his views on the subject. It reads very well and I strongly recommend it to any interested parties.

Finally, I was fortunate this morning to find a wonderful interview with Freeman Dyson by Robert Wright. It’s interesting what he says about religion. To him, religion is a way of life and not a matter of belief. He claims he is a Christian without the theology. What is left of Christianity when you take the theology away?, he is asked. Well almost the whole thing, he says, it’s a community of people in a church who are taking care of each other, and also there’s a great deal of beautiful language and there’s a great deal of music; it’s an art form much more than a philosophy. (Sounds a lot like humanistic UUism!) But he does believe there is some instinct of a mind at work in the universe. Not only that, but quantum physics shows that matter at the micro level is clearly not anything we can have experience of. The mathematical theory works just fine, but the reality of it is quite literally out of our world. He has much to say about the macro level as well. His bottom line is that the universe is filled with enormous mysteries of which we know very little indeed. One such mystery is the almost daily bursts of extremely intense gamma rays from completely unknown origins. But there are countless others. The universe is unimaginably amazing and mysterious.

David Brock and Paul Waldman show how the media has enabled McCain’s rise from the Keating Five scandal to the underdog hero of the 2000 primaries to his roller-coaster run for the 2008 nomination. They illuminate how the press falls for McCain’s “straight talk” and how the Arizona senator gets away with inconsistencies and misrepresentations for which the media skewers other politicians. This is a fascinating study of how the media shape the political debate, and an essential book for every political junkie.

The book starts simply enough: two friends, Anthony and Quentin, are waiting for a bus on a dusty road and decide instead to walk when the bus doesn’t come. They then discover people trying to locate the escaped lion which is nowhere in sight. But they walk on with no problem. Things rapidly get more complicated, however, and I won’t go into that, only to say it gets mysteriouser and mysteriouser. A coldly intellectual woman, named Damaris, who Anthony is in love with, becomes involved in the story, and a butterfly addict loses it when he, with Anthony, sees a gigantic and beautiful butterfly (obviously an archetype). An enormous snake which can move the earth appears, as well as the most massive lion you’ve ever seen! Rumblings in the distance, ignored by many as thunder, are really roars of the gigantic lion. An enormous and beautiful eagle helps Anthony, and in the end he wins the love of Damaris. Many more complexities weave in and out of the story: Quentin loses it completely and is saved by Damaris, and a woman is unsuccessfully turned into a snake. Great fodder for a fantasy movie.

There are also some pretty deep relgious-philosophical discussions in the book which I found I had to struggle with. There is a reconciliation in the end, primarily caused by Anthony who learns the right balance of the archetypes. All in all, it’s an exciting and completely unusual book which I think could be made into a great movie.

Update:Let me thank Steve Hayes for recommending this book, and for introducing me to Charles Williams, a person associated with C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as a member of the Inklings.

The story describes both a spiritual and physical battle over the Holy Grail, called Graal in the book. The occult forces launched by a wicked person named Persimmons, and his even wickeder supporters, battle the protective forces of a seemingly complacent priest, called the Archdeacon, and his two youthful defenders.

I think there’s a bit of satire, or irony, in the choice of these names: the word persimmon suggests to me astringent tasting fruit, whereas Gregory Persimmons is glibly smooth talking, and Archdeacon is sort of a pun on Archbishop; how can anybody be an Archdeacon? The book also includes a murder mystery and has supporting characters portrayed as conventional people unaware of the battles of good and evil, and therefore helpless to ward off the evil or take advantage of the good. At least that’s my interpretation of Barbara and Lionel Rackstraw, the latter name being also somewhat comical. And there’s a precocious small child, named Adrian, who becomes the focus of the attempted evil use of the Graal. A number of minor characters, including policemen and servants, add to the complexity, suspense and, yes, humor in the story. Finally, the Prester John character appears near the end to save the day.

Although I can’t bring myself to “believe in” the supernatural, I was very strongly affected by the detailed descriptions of the occult influences, especially, the effects of the transforming ointment on Gregory Persimmons, and the ritualized transformations of the atmosphere surrounding the Graal during its attempted evil uses. The overwhelming of Barbara Rackstraw’s personality caused by the ointment was eerily frightening. She was poised on the brink of the “pit” and only saved by Prestor John (invisibly) at the last moment.

The shimmering and shaking of the Graal during its attempted destruction as the Archdeacon held it in his hands was a critical and crucial moment, saved again by the invisible Prestor John nearby but also by the quiet steadfastness of the Archdeacon. Finally, in the last battle all the stops are out and glorious music of angelic choruses together with triumphant trumpets, suggesting to me the overarching trumpets in the Tuba Mirum section of the Verdi Requiem, unquestionably vanquish the enemies. Gregory gives himself up, as instructed by Prestor John, and the other two wicked ones are crouched on the floor in utter defeat and destruction of their personalities.

Well, I’ve given away the key points of the story but these are the things that really affected me. So, what would be the overall message? Perhaps that evil contains the seeds of its own destruction and good will triumph only if it faces evil with steadfast calmness and trust in heavenly powers. It would be nice if this were true; perhaps it is in some circumstances.

Now, on to the next Charles Williams book Steve recommended, The Place of the Lion.

UPDATE 8/14/2007: My apologies to all the Archdeacons of the world. My “pun” was totally inapplicable. In checking on wiki, as suggested by Steve Hayes, I see that Archdeacons have higher status in the Church of England than those who are referred to as “The Reverend”.

Perhaps not. John Stewart Bell was an Irish physicist who proposed an experiment that would test for possible nonlocal effects. His experiment was carried out by two groups, each of which obtained the same positive result: nonlocality exists! So, what is this nonlocality? Nonlocality is when one quantum event must excite another quantum event BUT, and this is a big BUT, there is no time for the one event to effect the other.

It’s as though everything is connected together just as it was in the beginning. It suggests that a memory exists in the universe, a memory of the great unity that once was.

For a deeper discussion of this, and other equally weird interpretations of nonlocality, see the book by Timothy Ferris, “The Whole Shebang”, pages 283 -289. I’m on my second, or maybe third, reading of this book which is written for the lay person. It’s well worth a read.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, combining as it does tough-guy Brooklynese lingo with hilarious stories of folly and tragi-comic events; yet it offers messages of hope and shows how love saves us. Just 306 pages and it’ll hold your interest all the way, I think. At least it did me, and my friend Prof. Dr. John J. Kelly, who being Irish speaks Dutch fluently, and yet still understands the Brooklyn culture. Way to go, John! Ahh, to be a Renaissance Man!