Ditchkins and the yeti view of God

Here is a series of clips of Terry Eagleton talking in a humorous and engaging way about his latest book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution:Reflections on the God debate. According to Eagleton, it was "sheer irritation at the ignorance and illiteracy" of "Ditchkins'" (an amalgamation of "Dawkins" and "Hitchens") atheism that drove him to write this book. Interestingly, Eagleton was at Oxford with "Chris" Hitchens and in their Trotskyite days they used to leaflet car factories together. Eagleton gives a sophisticated critique of Dawkins' "good old fashioned Victorian rationalism" and his unwitting commitment to fideism. He also makes some nice points about the sheer naivety of Dawkins' theory of God as a sort of yeti, and the weaknesses in Dawkins' worldview. Unlike either Dawkins or Hitchens, Eagleton is a serious thinker and at times talks movingly about the radical nature of the New Testament and the realism which takes the suffering and crucified Christ as the truly authentic starting point of history.