Terry Eagleton
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Terry Eagleton is a liberal British literature professor, author and literary critic. He is currently teaching English and creative writing at Lancaster.[1]
During four days of talks at Yale University's Terry Lectures in April 2008, he spoke of a fictitious person, Ditchkins, which is derived from the merger of the two last names Hitchens and Dawkins (Etymology: Dawkins + Hitchens). In these lectures Eagleton often caricaturizes the two famed writers and outspoken atheists, routinely drawing Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins as one single, formidable debate opponent who lamentably commits various logical fallacies.
- "...someone like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, a couplet I will henceforth reduce to the solitary signifier Ditchkins..." (April 1, 2008 Christianity Fair and Foul)
- "It would, I think, do no harm to Ditchkins comically intemperate politic against religion, indeed it would reinforce it, to approach the subject as the liberal rationalist that he is rather to subject us as he does to the kind of indiscriminate condemnation which is neither liberal nor rational. It would be greatly to the benefit of Ditchkins' moral integrity and intellectual honesty, I think, to intersperse his mildly monomaniac diatribes on the topic—we’re speaking here of monotheism versus monomania, if you like—with the odd glancing allusion, I mean even if he relegated it to some shy footnote nestling beneath his text.[2] (April 3, 2008 The Limits of Liberalism[3])
- "Another familiar mistake by the Ditchkins of this world" (April 8, 2008 Faith and Reason)
- "Moral relativism is an attempt to defuse conflict among other things. And so among other things, I think is, multi-culturalism. Multi-culturalism is extraordinarily coy of calling other people's beliefs errant nonsense, or unmitigated garbage. There are huge amounts of garbage around the place that we need to name for what it is. One of the most admirable aspects of Chris Hitchens's God is not great—a superbly stylish and well-argued book—is that Hitchens believes religion is disgusting and has absolutely no qualms about saying so. I mean he may be right or wrong about that, but he's properly unafraid to announce it and to take the consequences of it, including getting snagged off by me, his old comrade. [*Eagleton smiles*]" (April 10, 2008 Culture and Barbarism[4])[5]
Notes
- ↑ uni bio
- ↑ Continuation of talk in order to understand quote's entire context: To say, you know, the work in alleviating human suffering which Christianity and other faiths have carried out for centuries among the wretched of the earth or its efforts in the cause of global peace or the readiness that some religious types have shown to lay down their lives for others. All those clergy who have given their lives as martyrs not least in Latin America in the struggle against U.S. supported autocracies. Acknowledging all this would not necessarily mean for Ditchkins sustaining a fatal wound in the ideology. Many western liberals are, as I've said before, careful to distinguish their criticisms of so-called Islamism from criticisms of Islam itself. They're really [not] so scrupulous however when it comes to home-based faiths like religion. It seems not to be the case that liberalism begins at home. I live in Ireland and the Irish have been shamefully abused and exploited by the Roman Catholic Church in many tediously familiar ways. I won't go through them, but the way the Irish are perhaps the least aware of the way they have been exploited by the Catholic Church is the fact that they have not really been offered given a version of the gospels which took in even the slightest effort to reject for even half decent civilized person so like a lot of people they have been able to buy their atheism or agnosticism on the cheap. And this is a form of deprivation against which one ought properly I think to protest even if it’s a more subtle and less important form of deprivation than being locked up life by psychopathically sadistic nuns for having born a child out of wedlock justifiably bad odor in Ireland today that people sometimes cross the street when they catch sight of a Catholic priest approaching. In the old days it used to be a landlord. Yet the cruelties and stupidities, which the Irish church has perpetrated don't prevent me from recalling how without it generations of my own ancestors in Ireland would have gone unschooled, un-nursed , un-consoled, and unburied. One of my own forebears in late 19th century Ireland—father Mark Eagleton—got into hot water with his Bishop for denouncing the local landlord from the pulpit but I supposed Dawkins wouldn't take kindly to the case required political caricature characteristics can be genetically transmitted permissible but this does seem to be somewhat of an example of it.</span>
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- ↑ video timestamp range 41 minutes 00 seconds to 45 minutes 45 50 seconds
- ↑ video timestamp range 29 minutes 45 seconds to 30 minutes 49 seconds
- ↑ "Faith and Fundamentalism: Is Belief in Richard Dawkins Necessary for Salvation?", April 1, 3, 8, 10, 2008
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