The Age of Atheists: How We Have Sought to Live Since the Death of God

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 show more 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. show less

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.

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.