Fish on Eagleton on Ditchkins

In the opening sentence of the last chapter of his new book, “Reason, Faith and Revolution,” the British critic Terry Eagleton asks, “Why are the most unlikely people, including myself, suddenly talking about God?” His answer, elaborated in prose that is alternately witty, scabrous and angry, is that the other candidates for guidance — science, reason, liberalism, capitalism — just don’t deliver what is ultimately needed. “What other symbolic form,” he queries, “has managed to forge such direct links between the most universal and absolute of truths and the everyday practices of countless millions of men and women?”

- Stanley Fish, "God Talk".

Michael Jensen has also been reading Eagleton's new book, in which he defends the intellectual complexity and importance of Christian theology, belief and practice (or aspects of them at least) against the new atheism of Dawkins and Hitchens (to whom he refers collectively as "Ditchkins"). Sounds like an interesting book. But I mainly put up this post for the title.