Last time I reviewed a lecture at the ICA, I received a barrage of messages from all sorts of strongly opinionated people. Check out the comments at the bottom of What Science Can't Tell Us: an anonymous acolyte of Saint Richard Dawkins accuses me of spouting 'ridiculous fluffy rubbish', whilst 'undrgrndgirl' describes Dawko as appearing 'possessed', after which 'trimtrab' asks 'Are you a troll, or should I call Poe's law?' Meanwhile, in charmingly understated fashion, 'fuckin realist' asks if everyone is 'remedial'. Lol.
What can we learn from all this? Well, firstly, that the internet is full of strange people; and secondly, that religion is still a highly inflammatory topic of conversation. In search of reasons for this latter point I returned to the ICA to listen to a lecture from leftist literary theorist Terry Eagleton. Eagleton is a complex figure, about whom I am currently undecided. My problems, I think, stem from his apparent attempts to appropriate critical theories such as deconstruction in order to add nuance to his broadly Marxist/Christian beliefs.
But Eagleton is always fun. He writes sharply and speaks eloquently. He's also not averse to a spot of controversy, having had very public spats with a number of well-known figures. This evening he lays into Christopher Hitchens, Salman Rushdie, Martin and Kingsley Amis, Michael Jackson and – joy of joys! – The Most Blessed Father, Richard Dawkins.
Broadly, Eagleton's argument is that the world today is 'suddenly divided between those who believe too little and those who believe too much'. The former camp is made up of Western consumerism, liberal democracy, cynicism and moral relativism – the empty self-satisfied shell that is the product of what we like to call civilisation. In the latter camp is religious fundamentalism, characterised (primarily in our media at least) by Muslim extremism.
As a good Marxist/Structuralist thinker, Eagleton identifies the dialectical relationship between the two. And having read a good deal of Derrida, he is also quick to point out the ironies and contradictions in this relationship. Western culture, in theory at least, is now post-ideological: it's exactly thirty years since Jean-Francois Lyotard characterised postmodernity as an 'incredulity towards metanarratives'. Yet, as Eagleton points out, the very announcement of the death of the metanarrative gave birth – hydra-like – to a whole legion of new ones. The War on Terror anyone? Religious fundamentalism emerges then as a direct response to the apparent rootlessness of much contemporary Western thought.
And this is where Dawkins comes in. Using a trope similar to Derrida's dismissal of John Searle in Limited Inc, Eagleton conflates Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. Ditchkins, Eagleton says, acts with 'an appalling combination of smugness, arrogance and ignorance'. 'He sets up pathetic caricatures of religious faith in order to take pleasure in bowling them over.' Eagleton sees Dawkins as epitomising 'a new form of cultural supremacism' and consequently he 'has become a weapon in the War on Terror'.
There's not really much doubt that Dawkins is forceful and opinionated, and that he is more happy to engage in public debate with redneck evangelical loons than with those, like Eagleton, who actually possess a degree of theological knowledge. But is he really a weapon in the War on Terror? If as many believe, Dawkins is in the right, then surely it's not his fault that he's so strident. Don't shoot the messenger, even if they forget to knock.
Well, the problem is that Dawkins isn't always right. Many scientists – check out Fern Elsdon-Baker's recently published The Selfish Genius, for example – are unconvinced by Dawkins' form of neo-Darwinism. Dawkins seems to think that science has done away with faith. But, as Eagleton points out, this is like arguing that 'thanks to the electric toaster we can now dispense with Chekhov'. Science and Religion were never meant to answer the same questions, so the one can never resolve the arguments of the other. Dawkins' mistake, Eagleton says, is to 'assume that all faith is blind faith.' In fact 'true' faith incorporates reason: 'faith is not exclusive of reason, but neither is it reducible to it'.
One of Eagleton's key assertions is that aggression is not rooted in hatred but in fear. We fear the dogmatism of Muslim fundamentalism, whilst it in turn fears the emptiness and decadence of Western culture. I'd add that aggression is also rooted in misunderstanding. Dawkins doesn't understand religion, only a very select view of it. He merely argues against a caricature, a strawman. This is how opinion is polarised and extremism emerges (on both sides). And in this way, Dawkins is perhaps no better than those shouty weirdos who post their silly opinions all over the internet. Lol.
'Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate' by Terry Eagleton is out now, published by Yale.
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