Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate by Terry Eagleton

Terry Eagleton’s Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate is a 21^st Century update of William James’ classic The Will to Believe.  Both works face down an aggressive atheism, and Eagleton grapples specifically with those “neo-atheists” who go beyond a reasonable stance that God does not exist and that we might be better off without religion to a fundamentalist stance that belief in God is inherently harmful and that religion is the root of all evil.  The popular published neo-atheists, specifically Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, hold that reason has rendered the question of God definitively answered in the negative.  Eagleton, like James before him, understands that reason alone can never pretend to answer the question of God, and that its better use is in grasping what religious belief truly offers (and understanding the harm it has wrought) as each individual faces the question of God that remains open for all to consider, Dawkins and Hitchens (or “Ditchkins”, as Eagleton comically conflates the two) notwithstanding.

Eagleton, a Marxist who appears to personally hold to that more reasonable version of atheism, nevertheless takes the gloves off in an inspired defense of religious belief, highlighting the sundry ways in which segments of the religion most familiar to Eagleton, Christianity, stand for the poor and dispossessed left behind by globalized capitalism.  And, even more so than religion, it is the state of the globalized world that is ultimately in question in Reason, Faith, and Revolution.  Eagleton captures the current unnerving vulnerability of our collective plight as we stare down religious fundamentalism of all stripes, terrorism wrought by extremists and states alike, staggering inequality of wealth, and ecological catastrophe.  Reading Eagleton, it is clear that the history of western civilization is not the upward arc out of religious irrationalism that the neo-atheists paint it to be.  In fact, it is not clear in which direction the arc is currently heading.  Eagleton’s genius here is that whatever his personal beliefs as to the question of God may be, he understands that what direction that arc ultimately takes depends in large part on the actions of our believers. 

Whatever our individual beliefs, we all must carve out a healthy space in our midst for our believers and their contributions.  Closing the question of God, as the neo-atheists would have us, just might give us the end to the human story, and I’m not talking about Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history.”   I think I’ll take The Neverending Story, even if the end of the story that I’ll never get to is rational certainty as to the answer to the question of God.  I’m almost certain that it’s more fun not knowing how things turn out.