Brilliant!

That’s so true…
I know there are plenty who are mesmerized by Dawkins’ rhetoric and thus follow his vapid (and error laden) historical and philosophical arguments…but I’m personally tired of it. It’s time for our intellectuals (Eagleton, Gray, D.B. Hart, et. al.) to move beyond Dawkins and his ilk, leaving them as the cultural relic of late-2006 that they are. There are far too many vastly more important topics to deal with than the tired screeds of intolerant pseudo-intellectuals.
Dawkins is a brilliant biologist, and an excellent rhetorician. These two qualities neither make him a qualified historian, philosopher or theologian. In each of these fields, his arguments hold no more weight than, and are on par with, those of the high school and semi-college educated masses he attracts.
It’s time for society to move on.

Eagleton is rhetorically clever but I would not want to carry that line of thought into a serious debate. It is like saying that without Nessie, those who do research and offer some alternate explanation for her sitings would be out of a job? So what? Dawkin’s arguments are hopelessly flawed on their own. All we have to do is point them out. We don’t need to offer logially flawed arguments of our own, no matter how emotionally cathartic they might be.

Rhetoric indeed! No idea what point you are making for as far as Alan is concerned and correctly so, “We don’t need to offer logically flawed arguments of our own…”.
Why not follow Alan’s suggestion and point out exactly how flawed but without recourse to the usual reliance and position of last resort, “faith”.
Kyle, why not lay bare these “vapid (and error laden) historical and philosophical arguments”. Sorry, your tired of them aren’t but I suppose the comments made above do qualify Eagleton and yourselves in the role of “qualified historians, philosophers and theologians”.
Use your historical knowledge, philisophical logic and theology to prove exactly why Dawkins would be out of a job.
Reread para 2 here before starting!

Rob, huh? I’m not exactly sure what you’re attempting to say but after rereading your second paragraph (as you suggested. Actually I reread it several times as your syntax made it difficult to decipher) I’d say you’ve played right into Dawkins’ hands. The faith that you suggest we should not resort to is exactly what Dawkins seeks to dismantle. If we must give up on faith in order to adequately defend it then what exactly is the point? Take Eagleton’s comment for what it is: A clever push back, not a serious argument.

I’ve always appreciated Eagleton’s moral center and intelligence. Is this quote part of a piece he wrote recently for the NYTimes on God and Dawkins? I was amazed at the vitriol of the comments that went with that one, that people would be so angry at him for defending God. It is always an irony that the people who most want to destroy God (and Jesus) are those most willing to benefit from the social justice Jesus’ revelation has brought us. And I would argue that Dawkins has a lot of anxiety about his writing–it might make one laugh out loud to read his (silly) book, but he’s not so lacking in insight as to miss the implications of getting rid of Jesus. I’ve seen pictures of him sporting an “Atheists for Jesus” t-shirt. Now of course, that opens another set of problems … but … a step in the right direction.

Diane, it’s from his new book, lectures at Yale, called Reason, Faith, and Revolution.

Rob,
I’m not going to play this silly word game. There are plenty of historical works which show Dawkins errors, as well as plenty of qualified atheists and believers (in fields of science, philosophy and history) who have criticized the immaturity of his arguments. It doesn’t take long to find solidly thorough rebuttals. Dawkins may call them “fleas,” but the enormous numbers of responses (from atheists and believers alike) may actually be due to the fact that he made poor arguments.
I’ll give a brief example of a historical myth that Dawkins continues to promote because it serves his agenda. Dawkins continually pits the history of faith against reason, and science. He frequently argues that Christianity suppresed scientific progress. He even pulls out the old “Christianity would have stopped Kepler and Galileo if it could” argument. Has he read anything on the true story behind these events? If not, then I will excuse his ignorance. If so, then he is purely dishonest. Why not ask a Harvard historian of science like Owen Gingerich about the actual facts of the matter? Is he too afraid that the actual situation was much more complex and that probably as many Christians were in support of Galileo as against him? Is he afraid to find out that the situation was more political than religious? In fact, without the Christian worldview, they would not have even been making their speculations. His typical response of “well, in that period everyone believed in God” is neither a true historical representation nor a solid argument. The underpinnings of the worldview provided the ethos for scientific exploration. Remove the underpinnings and you remove the possibility of exploration.
Thus, in this regard, Dawkins shows great historical ignorance. For instance, he appears to be ignorant of the majority of historical work in the last 100 years (dating back to A.N. Whitehead and even before) helping define this cultural mileu that led to science. He can attempt to use rhetoric to chase away the historical realities of the Christian underpinnings in the rise of science, but it doesn’t change the facts (something you think Dawkins would be concerned with). The reality is that it was the Christian worldview, and the massive amounts of progress during the so-called (but mythical) “Dark Ages” that led to the scientific revolution.
Historian and Sociologist Rodney Stark (who was agnostic at the time of writing) ends his book “The Victory of Reason” with a pertinent quote. He says:
“Christianity created Western Civilization. Had the followers of Jesus remained an obscure Jewish sect, most of you would not have learned to read and the rest of you would be reading from hand-copied scrolls. Without a theology commited to reason, progress and moral equality, today the entire world would be about where non-European societies were in, say, 1800: A world with astrologers and alchemists but no scientists. A world of despots, lacking universities, banks, factories, eyeglasses, chimneys, and pianos. A world where most infants do not live to the age of five and many women die in childbirth – a world truly living in the ‘dark ages.’”
Therefore, based on the work of Stark and countless other historians from the last 100 years, without Christianity, Dawkins would be out of a job, because there would be almost certainly be no biology department at Oxford University.

I wonder if a similar observation might be “Without Dawkins and people like him, the Discovery Institute would be out of a job?”
Seems like those who promote “warfare” between science and faith, on both sides of the battle lines, feed off each other and get all the attention, often drowning out “third way” voices (Owen Gingerich, Alister McGrath, Denis Alexander, Francis Collins, RJS, maybe Eagleton who I’m not that familiar with) who don’t view the findings of science and Christian faith as mutually exclusive.

Kyle; You wrote :
I’ll give a brief example of a historical myth that Dawkins continues to promote because it serves his agenda. Dawkins continually pits the history of faith against reason, and science. He frequently argues that Christianity suppresed scientific progress. ”
I am curious that in the paragraph ‘Faith and Christianity” seem to be interchangeable terms.
Does Dawkins alone do that?
Is it accepted on all sides that ‘faith and Christianity’ can easily be interchanged?
The reason I ask is because it is my experience that one can adopt a Religion and yet have a wide range of understanding and acceptance as to ‘faith’ as expressed in that religion.
One can accept the tenets and dogma, and perhaps the theology of the religion at many different levels from ultra-orthodoxy to fringe liberal.
I guess I am asking is: What historically has been the ‘foe’ of science; has it been ‘faith’ versus reason or Religions with power and influence versus science or anything that may ‘threaten their power and influence?

G, #10 “What historically has been the ‘foe’ of science; has it been ‘faith’ versus reason or Religions with power and influence versus science or anything that may ‘threaten their power and influence?”
Aha! now we’re getting somewhere

G.,
Great question! Since this is a site about orthodox Christianity, I used the term interchangeably. Often in Western society the two have been interchangeable, and much history has been written to ask why science emerged in a Christian context (in different locales), while not in Taoist, pagan, etc.
Based on the inference of your final question I would say that the foe of science would be any power structure that uses its power and influence to hinder research due to fear. I would also say that faith has often been hindered by power structures that use their power and influence to hinder belief due to fear (my personal experiences in China confirm this).
I wonder as well how much scientific research has been hindered by power structures within itself that fear new research which might conflict with its already “settled” paradigms. I have read enough to know the vast influence of political groups and pharmaceutical companies over American scientific research, but I wonder if this was also true in previous generations. One of these days I’m going to get around to reading Kuhn, haha…