Nice article, and I look forward to reading Eagleton's latest, but please stop using the phrase "Judeo-Christian tradition". There is no such thing. There is Jewish tradition, there is Christian tradition, and they have influenced each other, but they are not of a piece. One could speak of Monotheistic tradtion or Abrahamic traditions, which would have the added benefit of including Islam, but Judeo-Christian seems to include Jews only up to the point of the development of Christianity. No Jewish theologians are cited in the article so maybe don't use the word "religion" when you mean "Christianity", please.

I don't believe in Odin, Zeus, Huitzilopochtli, Cthulhu, Allah or JHVH. There are probably a thousand gods I don't think are real. And yet it's always just about the Christian one when people write books.

For that matter, I imagine that I believe in one fewer deity than Terry Eagleton does. He's very nearly an atheist himself.

It's nice to see someone actually defend religion from religion's social value, not 'BECAUSE IT'S THE TRUTH!!!' Atheists who argue religion is a lie because science prohibits the stories in the Bible/Torah/Koran/etc. and Fundamentalists who argue scientists, liverals or whatever are liars because said books are Literal Truth have both missed the damn point. If you read the bible as literal truth...you simple ignore any and all deeper meaning to it. Both are absurdities.

One can be religious without being a literalist zealot and one can be an atheist while still finding value in religion. I don't personally believe in 'God' but the teachings of the vast majority of religions have value, whoever said it, and saying the authors of holy books are pulling a fast one is disingenuous, and frankly small minded.

On a different topic: if god had wanted to tell us how the world was made, and it is is complicated as science tells us...God may well still be explaining the basics of unified field theory to the great (repeated ad nauseum) grandson of his first prophet. From a matter of practicality, it would make more sense for God to tell his prophet some simple story about Adam and Eve just to keep the poor sod's head from exploding in confusion. And I have to think, if God exists and is omnipotent/omniscient, He would think of that and do humanity a favor by giving us the idiots' version and letting us figure it out for ourselves afterward.

..jthere are only a tiny percentage of people with enough intellectual sophistication to understand the theology of someone like Eagleton.

For practical purposes Christianity equals fundamentalism, and that is what Dawkins and Hitchens are mainly concerned about.

What Eagleton says about American religion is true enough. It is basically a franchise system for musical right-wing social clubs, even if there are some exceptions. Jesus would turn in his grave. Oh, wait, he already did!

No sane person anywhere believe in Cthulhu. Lovecraft made him up for a story based ona composite of some 2 dozen different gods/demons/monsters from around the world.

And everything on this topic is from the Judeo-Christian perspective simply because it's American Christians that make the biggest fundementalist stink. Most other religions don't even try to present themselves as 'science' In fact, in the 'dark ages', Islam was the religion OF science, having the most advanced research techniques and longest lasting successes on Earth. In generically, Buddhism doesn't -care- about the 'how' we came to be, just that we make sure to be good while we're here and strive to reach Nirvana or Heaven at the least. (disclaimer: individual branches of Buddhism very on these views tremendously; but the core books common to all branches don't even touch Creation and similar stuff with a ten foot pool)

Much like Christianity itself. Whether either holds up or not remains to be seen.

The problem is, there are many professed Christians, possibly even a majority in the US (going on the declining numbers of high-church Protestants and possibly even Roman Catholics), who believe in exactly the kind of Christianity pilloried by "Ditchens." In Europe, Christianity is withering on the vine, becoming a thing of culture rather than faith. In the developing world, the versions of Christianity with increasing market-share are precisely those that loath the theological traditions espoused by Eagleton, eschewing cerebral faith for an emotion-filled, personal "experience," casting out demons and hollering to the rafters.

If the majority of believers profess such a "low-church" and anti-intellectual faith that sees science and religion as overlapping, even competing, magisteria, then what of Eagleton's high-flown, cerebral take on Christianity? Does majority rule in religion, or at least win the right to define terms? If so, then Eagleton is at best an oddity, and at worst a dupe, because the majority of his coreligionists would not recognize their creeds in his bloodless cerebration.

I'm not familiar with Eagleton's work, but if the summary given here is accurate, then I could not endorse its viewpoint strongly enough. I feel extremely grateful to Eagleton for condensing the work of many tireless philosophers of religion into a book that has a chance to be widely read and understood. The theological movement within which these discussions are most vibrantly contested is known as Radical Orthodoxy, and those interested in learning more can find reading lists at http://www.calvin.edu/~jks4/ro/

Eagleton can't even grasp the simple and fundamental distinction between atheism and anti-theism, so why should we take anything else he has to say on the subject seriously? The book is nothing but a long-winded God of the Gaps argument, which does nothing but try to morph "god" and "religion" into whatever form will make them immune from criticism or factual inquiry, even if that form bears no resemblance to the way many people actually think about them.

The argument that atheists and anti-theists only attack the looney literalist versions of religion that supposedly exist only on the fringes of society has been brought up and demolished so many times that Eagleton should be ashamed to trot it out again. Ditto for the argument that people like Dawkins and Hitchens haven't spent their whole lives studying the (intellectual vacuum) of theology, so they are utterly incapable of pointing out what an intellectual vacuum it is.