The twilight of atheism : the rise and fall of disbelief in the modern world / Alister McGrath.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McGrath, Alister E., 1953-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Atheism--History.

Atheism.

History.

Physical Description:

xiii, 306 pages ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Doubleday, [2004]

Summary:

Atheism is one of the most important movements in modern Western culture. For the last two hundred years, it seemed to be on the verge of eliminating religion as an outmoded and dangerous superstition. Recent years, however, have witnessed the decline of disbelief and a rise in religious devotion throughout the world. In The Twilight of Atheism, the distinguished historian and theologian Alister McGrath examines what went wrong with the atheist dream and explains why religion and faith are destined to play a central role in the twenty-first century.

A former atheist who is now one of Christianity's foremost scholars, McGrath traces the history of atheism from its emergence in eighteenth-century Europe as a revolutionary worldview that offered liberation from the rigidity of traditional religion and the oppression of tyrannical monarchs, to its golden age in the first half of the twentieth century. Blending thoughtful, authoritative historical analysis with incisive portraits of such leading and influential atheists as Sigmund Freud and Richard Dawkins, McGrath exposes the flaws at the heart of atheism, and argues that the renewal of faith is a natural, inevitable, and necessary response to its failures.

The Twilight of Atheism will unsettle believers and nonbelievers alike. A powerful rebuttal of the philosophy that, for better and for worse, has exerted tremendous influence on Western history, it carries major implications for the future of both religion and unbelief in our society.

Contents:

1 The Dawn of the Golden Age of Atheism 1

The Critics of the Gods: Classical Greek Atheism 4

The Transition to the Modern Era 10

An Age of Revolution: The Eighteenth Century 12

Part 1 The High Noon of Atheism 19

2 The French Revolution 21

Voltaire: Critic of a Corrupt Church 24

The American Revolution: Radical Reform without Atheism 28

The Rise of French Atheism 29

The Failed Philosophical Attempts to Defend God 31

The Marquis de Sade and the Origins of Erotic Atheism 33

The Critique of Christianity: The First Phase 36

Institutional Atheism? The Program of Dechristianization 39

The French Revolution and Atheism: An Assessment 45

3 The Intellectual Foundations: Feuerbach, Marx, and Freud 48

A Secular Priesthood: The Rise of the Intellectual 49

God as an Invention: Ludwig Feuerbach 51

God as an Opiate: Karl Marx 60

God as Illusion: Sigmund Freud 67

4 Warfare: The Natural Sciences and the Advancement of Atheism 79

The Origins of the Warfare of Science and Religion 84

Atheism as a Science: The Demand for Religious Proof 89

The Blind Watchmaker: Darwin and a Godless Universe 98

5 A Failure of the Religious Imagination: The Victorian Crisis of Faith 112

The Birth of Intentional Atheism in Britain 113

Nature: Affirming the Transcendent without God 116

Shelley and the Necessity of Atheism 122

The Unconvert: George Eliot 127

A. C. Swinburne: The Imaginative Appeal of the Profane 133

The Life of Jesus Movement 138

A Culture in Crisis: The Loss of Faith 141

6 The Death of God: The Dream of a Godless Culture 144

Dostoyevsky and the Revolt against God 145

Nietzsche and the Death of God 149

Camus and the Absurd Silence of God 154

The Death of God Theology 158

The Suicide of Liberal Christianity 161

The Execution of God: The Atheist State 165

Part 2 Twilight 171

7 The Unexpected Resurgence of Religion 173

A Loss of Faith: A Personal Narrative 175

The Stalled Intellectual Case against God 179

The Suffering of the World and Atheism 183

The Imaginative Failure of Atheism 185

The Rebirth of Interest in the Spiritual 189

The Remarkable Case of Pentecostalism 192

8 Disconnection from the Sacred: Protestantism and Atheism 198

The Divorce of the Sacred and the Secular 200

The Imaginative Failure of Protestantism 207

The Atheist Challenge and the Future of Protestantism 213

9 Postmodernity: Atheism and Radical Cultural Change 217

The Birth of Modernity 220

The Postmodern Respect for Diversity 224

Atheism and the Challenge of Postmodernity 227

The Embarrassing Intolerance of Atheism 230

10 The Atheist's Revolt: Madalyn Murray O'Hair and others 238

Father and Son: Edmund Gosse 238

Daughters and Sons: Ivy Compton-Burnett 240

Mother and Son: Madalyn Murray O'Hair 242

11 End of Empire: The Fading Appeal of Atheism 257

Liberators and Oppressors: On Atheist Role Reversal 258

Religion and the Creation of Community 264

Institutional Atheism: A Failure of Vision 269

The Permanent Significance of Atheism 273.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [281]-296) and index.

ISBN:

0385500610

OCLC:

52705976

Online:

Publisher description