HOME
WEEKLY COLUMNS
The First Fifteen
Column One
Column Two
Column Three
Column Four
Column Five
Coming up...
Schedule 2005
Terms & Rates
Subscribe
BASICS
About GBWAA
Why subscribe?
Definitions
Atheism
Faith
God(s)
Religion
etc
Analysis
The meaning of life
Morality
etc
NEXT STEPS
Buy
Discuss
Join
Read
REVIEWS
CONTACT
January 10, 2005
All Rights Reserved
World Copyright
© Martin Foreman
|
Review The Twilight of Atheism Alister McGrath Doubleday, New York / London etc (2004) After a century or two in the headlines, atheism is beating a retreat as "religion and faith are destined to play a central role in the twenty-first century." Such is Alister McGrath's thesis in this tendentious, sometimes informative but often misleading book. McGrath's historical perspective begins in ancient Greece, where he argues the charge of "atheism" against Socrates implied not that the philosopher did not believe in a deity, but that he denied the specific gods worshipped in Athens. |
|
From there it is a quick leap to eighteenth-century France and the claim that Diderot, Rousseau and Voltaire were not atheists in the modern sense of the term, but deists who rejected the Christian god. The bulk of the book then takes us through the usual nineteenth- and twentieth-century suspects of Darwin, Nietzsche, Camus and their ilk.
So far so good, but this approach to the subject means that McGrath focuses not on the central tenet of atheism - the non-existence of God - but on the deficiencies of the various individuals, organizations and societies which openly deny God.
Thus he is eager to inform readers about the eccentricities of Madalyn Murray O'Hair, founder of American Atheists, he assures us that the British National Secular Society is dull and reminds us of the mundane and monstrous crimes of the Soviet Union.
And so by attacking the messenger rather than the message, McGrath easily convinces himself and his less demanding readers that "atheism" is in decline.
In other words, despite or because of his Oxford professorship of historical theology, McGrath has a poor understanding of what atheism actually is. He commits the cardinal sin of ignorance in equating it with theism, even describing it as a religion at one point (the point where this reviewer threw up his hands in despair).
The fact is that atheism is no more a belief system than synergy, the color blue, George Bush's left toe or Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction. Atheism is not belief in no God or disbelief in God; it is acceptance of the world we live in and the physical laws which govern it.
Atheism is an absence, a nothingness. It has no divisions, no system, nothing to be believed or argued over. It is in essence a redundant concept, equivalent to other absences and nothingnesses, such as aclausism (there is no Santa) adentanimism (there is no tooth fairy) and ahobbitism. Those who do not understand that simple point do not understand atheism.
Nor does McGrath realize that the O'Hairs and the National Secular Societies and all of us who "promote" atheism are not typical. Most atheists have better things to do than to spend their time reacting to the pronouncements of theists amongst us. True atheism, I suggest, consists of a life untroubled by the concept of God and arguments for or against his existence.
McGrath leaves one potentially interesting topic unexplored - the story of his own conversion to and from atheism. He hints that growing up in Northern Ireland, where religion was closely identified with violence, led to the reaction of "a plague on both your houses" but he gives no indication as to why his atheism lapsed.
I suspect that his denial of God was based on emotion more than reason and his relapse into Christianity was merely the pendulum on its return swing. I suggest that a book that critically examined these two important stages in his life, interspersed with discussions on the whys and wherefores with quiet, rather than aggressive, atheists and theists would provide McGrath and his readers with more nutritious food for thought than is provided in The Twilight of Atheism.
WEEKLY COLUMN NOT YET AVAILABLE IN YOUR AREA?
Readers: e-mail me the name of the publication you would like to see carry GWBAA... (and / or contact the editor directly)
Editors: check out the introductory offers for free trial and low-cost syndication
atheism.about.com
