Terry Eagleton has a long list of academic accolades and publications. A great thinker of our time, he manages to be contemporary and orthodox at the same time. In Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate he has written a book that is an equal opportunity insulter. I enjoyed it a great deal, even though my thoughts and theology were often one of the targets!

The book came from a series of lectures Eagleton gave on the topic of the “New Atheism”. He finds the weak points in the arguments of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, neo-conservatives, Baptists, Catholics and Islamic leaders … and then pounces on them all. There are truly hilarious lines befitting his English view of the world, like saying that finding a theologically informed atheist is about as easy as finding an American who hasn’t been abducted by aliens. And there are incredibly deep and insightful ideas that make me contemplative.

In the end, I find myself agreeing with about half the book, disagreeing with a bunch of it, and finding a lot of things in the middle that I have no strong feelings about. But it was a great read and one that I’d recommend to anybody who is curious about faith and culture, theology and atheism, or just wants a good laugh from Eagleton’s great sense of humor.