Britain's new cultural divide is not between Christian and Muslim, Hindu and Jew. It is between those who have faith and those who do not.

[bossykate]

fascinating article in today's guardian.

here

Oh Terry Eagleton just hates Richard Dawkins in a frothing at the mouth sort of way, and loves to insult him. It is clearly his little hobby, poor love.
And what nonsense to say you must study 'theology' (the study of imaginary friends) in the way you study, say, 'the goepolitics of South Asia', rather ignoring the point that South Asia differs from God in, um, actually existing. And yes, you can say God is invisible, just like love, and think you have made some profound point, but if people went around seriously asserting that feeling love could make seas part, get corpses out of graves and make physically people live forever, then it would be reasonable to a/ask those people exactly how that would work and b/if they couldn't provide any kind of reasonable to answer, to assume they were wrong.
As for the statement that 'God just wants to be allowed to love us', well what on earth does that mean? What's stopping him? Also, that claim is contradicted very strongly by the so-called Biblical 'evidence'. God actually likes to spend a lot of time killing people, asking for human sacrifices, getting in a hideous temper and generally behaving in the most appalling way possible. The day I start taking moral lessons from deities or prophets with a history of cold-blooded murder, I will have sunk very low indeed.

Aloha - I'm so pleased you came back with a critique of Terry Eagleton's review. I have twice tried to read it and all I see is 'blah, de, blad, de, blah' It seems like a long piece that says nothing at all - to me anyway.

It seriously pisses me off that he accuses Dawkins of ignorance when actually Dawkins deals with the whole issue of theology in his book. You can read endless philosophers talking about 'grace' but it doesn't make one bit of difference to the fact that there is no evidence for gods existing whatsoever, and that everything we learn about the universe contradicts the so-called 'word of god' in every religious text there has ever been. We now know that the world was not churned into being with a great butter-churn in the sky, for example. I find it truly offensive that Bishops get to sit in the house of lords just because they are bishops and can use their particular superstition/belief to make laws that affect all of us. Dawkins doesn't want that kind of power over other people, but the Church will cling on to any way of pushing their particular belief onto the rest of us in an absolutely desperate manner, hence the bitter battle to keep compulsory worship in schools etc etc.

I really shouldn't read Terry Eagleton. He's so idiotic and spiteful he makes me unreasonably irritated! Off to make soothing cup of tea.

but the study of theology does not insist on a belief in God Aloha. You can approach it in the same way that you would approach philosophy, or music. There is a huge range of argument, complexity of thought in theology - and room for a large amount of doubt. Dawkins really does know nothing about theology, because like you, he dismisses it as irrelevant because God does not exist. Doubt is a huge part of Faith. I don't know if God exists. Some of the most interesting discussions I have about God is with an Astrophysicist friend, who is also an agnostic [verging on a believer] She doesn't know if there is life in other universes either.But she doesn't rule it out. I find the many of the athiest arguments on here incredibly reductive and shockingly arrogant. Sorry. And i love the old chestnut that always gets churned out about God being a mass murderer or something and therefore it is immoral to believe in her/him/it. As if it is impossible to distinguish between human beings and their social evolution [and their parallel evolution in understanding/perceiving God] and God itself. Yes, I am prepared for the rabid backlash calling me a superstitious/fluffy wuffy/ poor foolish idiot etc etc.

One can be interested in faiths and their evolution, and in the myths produced by various cultures - study them, even - without believing that a word of it is true. I'd love DD and DS to read about Greek, Egyptian and Norse myths when they are older, as well as Bible stories. It's daft to ignore them, given how ingrained they are into culture and history.

But there is a big difference between that and "believing", even if your belief is tinged with doubt. We don't seriously expect universities and scholars to study fairy-ology, or tealeaf-reading-ology, or the Celestial Teapot, or the effects of crystal healing. (Actually, depressingly, I bet someone, somewhere, has a grant to study crystal healing...) There is as much - or as little - evidence for these as there is for God. We are blinded into accepting theology as we are currently mired in Western Christian culture.

One thing Christians and atheists can agree on is that Christianity is a young religion, still growing , and still finding converts all over the world. 2000 years is nothing. This is interesting for Christians, because it means Christianity hasn't peaked yet and it can be used as evidence of its strength (millions of people believe it, therefore it must be true, right?). It's also interesting for atheists, because we can speculate how different things may be in 5000 years or so, when Christian monotheism is regarded with interest as a product of its time, just as the Egyptian and Greek polytheistic myths are today.

i really think the comparison between pink jellyfish in the garden/fairyology and the oldest world religions belies two things. One, ignorance. Two, the failure of Christianity, in the West anyway, to properly represent and communicate what it stands for.

That's very patronising, ruty - "ignorance". of what, exactly??

and there is also a huge misunderstanding from the athiests here on what Faith means. Of course it includes a huge amount of dialogue and doubt. i would suggest reading something like Julian of Norwich. But of course you don't need to read that do you, because that would be like reading about the fairies.
And theology is a study of human though in a similar way to philosophy, though it centres more on our ideas of Creation and a Creator. It is again an open dialogue. How on earth can you be blinded in to accepting it? That shows a large misunderstanding of what theology actually is.

If you don't believe in the gods of the texts then basically don't you think you are just making up the kind of god you would like to exist - one in your own image, probably. That's really called wishful thinking, surely?
And Dawkins book is not about what people who believe in gods believe about their god's personal attributes. His book is about how incredibly unlikely it is that there are any gods at all, about the total lack of any credible evidence, querying why belief is popular in humans, and criticising the way the religious wish to impose their beleifs on everyone else. Not about whether if one particular god existed he would be nice to animals or not. It's like saying Einstein's theory of relativity is worthless because it doesn't include a good chocolate cake recipe.

ignorance of what theology is for a start Unquiet Dad. The athiest postion here has been hugely patronising as it always is, BTW. and it does piss me off.

YOu find it patronising that some people think your god has as much truth in it as say, Thor or Athene. But that's the simple truth.

The ancient Egyptians absolutely believed in Bastet et al. It's a fascinating belief system, very beautiful in a way and extremely interesting to read about. But that doesn't prevent me thinking it is all made up.

The atheist position is what it always has been - that there are "almost certainly" no gods, and no evidence for any. I don't see how that is any more patronising than believing there are "almost certainly" no giant pink invisible unicorns.

Well Aloha it is possible that we have always created God in our own image and that is why he is a he and a violent vengeful old git in the Old Testament. But it is also possible that as we evolve we perceive God differently. Certainly there are enough clues in the New Testament for a valid argument about a different kind of God as you may know from previous discussions. And for a God who is both Male and Female.

More to the point, perhaps, YOU believe it is all made up. Is that patronising to the people of Egypt?

Nope Aloha that's not what i find patronising actually. Anyway must look after ds now so will retire with the other liberal tea drinkers

But what if you've read the New Testament and you're not convinced by any of the "clues"? What if you think it's a collection of interesting stories and variations on a story: a mixture of debatable fact, invention, hagiography, myth and fantasy?

The thing is Ruty, you clearly do not believe in 99% of the gods that were once beleived in. I spend a happy few hours with ds reading creation myths on the internet and marvelling at how inventive and completely insane most of them were. I just go, to paraphrase Dawkins, a few gods further.

I can see that to religious people, saying that gods dont' exist can seem patronising because the logical conclusion is that people who do believe in god are deluded. But obviously the converse is true. People who believe a particular god think that people who don't share that belief are deluded or evil and are possibly/probably going to suffer eternal torment in hell. I really don't see that is a very different position, just rather worse.

I'm an atheist too, but I'm with ruty on this. I've been banging on about the lack of engagement with the complexities involved for a while on this thread and that's exactly what annoys me about Dawkins. He asks us to take seriously his notions about evolution, which I think we all do, but he cannot, or will not accept that there are many thousands of years of philosophical dialogue which he must try to understand if he is to begin to appreciate what understanding by Faith means. Ruty suggests Julian of Norwich, a well-known female mystic of the Middle Ages. I've suggested Anselm. There's Aquinas, Descartes....the list goes on.

But his book is NOT about the intricacies of the personal nature of one particular man-made god. Why not bang on about why he should study the theology of the ancient Egyptians? Or the Norse people? Or the ancient Greeks? I know the answer to that - it's because you don't believe in them!

And comparing evolution to Julian of Norwich's musings is just ridiculous IMO. One is a proper explanation of everything in the world for which there is evidence, the other, well, isn't.

I don't believe in God or gods either. And I have no faith. He's supposed to be an intellectual. He doesn't engage with those he criticises on their own terms.

And we wonder why universities struggle to fill places in science departments....