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Loading... The Age of Atheists: How We Have Sought to Live Since the Death of God (edition 2014)by Peter Watson
Work InformationThe Age of Atheists: How We Have Sought to Live Since the Death of God by Peter Watson
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Once again Peter Watson has surveyed the literature of a major idea and presented a brilliant compilation of the development of that idea. In this case atheism in the world where the death of god has been pronounced is the great idea under discussion. ( ) How has the cultural shift away from theistic beliefs been reflected in literature, art, and philosophy? Historian Peter Watson provides a painfully detailed response to this question. Admittedly, I ended up skimming a lot, well, most of this book after the first 200 pages. The overall insight I inferred from all of the minutia presented here is that there must be some kind of instinctive human aversion to uncertainty about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Abandoning one seemingly nonsensical explanation leaves a kind of vacuum that makes a person susceptible to other, often equally nonsensical, explanations. Watson provides an historical account of several of these (although, oddly, not the most succinct: 42). They are like examples that demonstrate a conclusion that Watson never explicitly states (not that I noticed, but I did skim most of the book)—Humans are extremely good at creative rationalization and fooling themselves. I found the author's "The Modern Mind" and "The German Genius" two of the most satisfying books I've read in recent decades. "The Age of Atheists" is not, for me, in the same category. Perhaps the problem is that the people and cultural and intellectual movements in this book are less recognizable by a general reader. But somehow this book simply does not have the flare and excitement of the two books mentioned above.
Science uncovers new, often counter-intuitive facts, while as Peter Watson puts it in his new book The Age of Nothing: How we have sought to live since the death of God, literature and poetry “clarify … thoughts we have almost had, that we wish we had had.” “The Age of Atheists” frequently makes for an exhilarating ride through the cerebra of disparate men (few women feature here) who have tried to fashion a Godless yet nonetheless ordered and sustaining worldview. It is a topical book, to be sure, but also one that will stand the test of time as a masterful account of its subject. The Age of Atheists will likely stay confined to certain intellectual circles: The casual philosopher, the dogmatic non-believer, the coffee-table book collector. But insofar as its argument represents a broader pathology in contemporary conversations about belief, this book matters. Most people form their beliefs and live their lives somewhere in the middle of the so-called "culture divide" that outspoken atheists and believers shout across. The more these shouters shout, the more public discourse veers away from the subtle struggle of the average person's attempt to be human. In many parts of the world at present, there is no sign of religion dying away: quite the reverse. Yet Watson is not mistaken in thinking that throughout much of the 20th century “the death of God” was a cultural fact, and he astutely follows up the various ways in which the Nietzschean imperative – the need to construct a system of values that does not rely on any form of transcendental belief – shaped thinking in many fields. A history of modern atheism—what did Voltaire say to Diderot? what did Comte mean to Mill? who was Madalyn Murray O’Hair, anyway?—would be nice to have. The British popular historian Peter Watson’s “The Age of Atheists: How We Have Sought to Live Since the Death of God” (Simon & Schuster) could have been that book, but it isn’t. ... The problem is that godlessness as a felt condition is very different from atheism as an articulate movement. Watson doesn’t distinguish clearly, or at all, between the two, and so his book manages to feel at once breathless and long-winded—much too rushed in its parts and too diffuse as a whole. Even his chronology of ever-growing disbelief seems off. Distinctions
Explores the way atheism has evolved, deepened, matured, and gained unprecedented resonance and popularity as it has sought to replace an unknowable God in the afterlife with the voluptuous detail and warmth of this life, woven into art, philosophy, science, and a rational, secular morality. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)211.8Religions Natural Theology and Secularism Deism and Atheism AtheismLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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