The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World Paperback – February 21, 2006

McGrath helped me to get a much-needed picture of the history of atheism from the 1700's to about 2000. It has provided me with much food for thought. Here are my takeaways:1. Atheism as a movement was born largely during the time of the French Revolution. (David Hume said at one time that he'd never met a living atheist!) The church and state were in cahoots in France, perceived as up to little good and stifling to human rights and individual freedom. The spirit of the age said revolution was in order, and it stood to reason that the basis of the entire political structure should be reconsidered.2. Atheism was thus a very attractive alternative, offering freedom - freedom from the church, freedom of thought, the freedom to base a governments on rational and scientific truth rather than religious myths. It was the feeling of America's 1960s on steroids. Out with the old! In with the new!(McGrath shared a taste of this exuberance as an atheist in Northern Ireland with all the Protestant versus Catholic mess. He occasionally shares his wistful memories of that period of his life. It can be exciting to be an atheist, rebelling against the perceived wrongs of the status quo. He rethought his atheism while studying the history of science at Oxford.)3. So the experiment with atheism went forward. The revolutionaries in Russia felt it was important to base their revolution on an atheist base. They felt religion was based upon the lower, helpless classes needing something to make them feel significant - i.e., that the humble would be exalted in heaven. The revolutionaries felt that after the revolution, when classes were equalized, religion would naturally die out, and they could establish their atheist utopia based on reason.4. Religion didn't die out on its own; it needed some help. Thus, they tried to wipe out religion by force. It wasn't till after the fall of communism in 1989 that scholars could get at the data and find that those killed by Communist leaders (institutionalized atheism) numbered between 85 million and 100 million (almost 1/3 the population of the USA - far more than murdered under Nazism.)5. Thus, the grand institutionalized atheist experiment, spanning a large portion of the inhabited world, in retrospect, was an abject failure. The worldview they thought would bring freedom brought loss of freedom, academic limitations, loss of human rights, intolerance to any who believed differently. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's early warnings were prophetic - if there's no God, then anything's allowed.6. Atheism wasn't popular in England and America at the time of the French Revolution. Why? Because in England they didn't consider the church repressive. And revivalist movements gave alternatives to and challenged the status quo Christianity of the Church of England. Thus, Hume couldn't get a reading in England, (one of his books, as he describes it, fell stillborn from the press) but was a hero in France. Americans wanted to get away from the state religions of France and England. Since religion wasn't institutionalized, atheism wasn't needed as a corrective.7. Also bursting the bubble of atheist euphoria were the existentialists. They didn't CAUSE the "death of God" in European society. They just assumed His death and forced people to look at the horrific implications. Atheism seemed to imply that there's no purpose in life, no right and wrong, etc. Yet, these seem necessary to make life meaningful. Thus, we live in despair in a universe that's doomed to one day die with a whimper.8. By the 1960's, the intelligentsia (American and European) pretty much agreed that religion would soon disappear. Philosophical arguments for God's existence were deemed destroyed by Kant. Arguments for miracles and religion were destroyed by Hume. The bible was destroyed by German higher criticism. Feuerbach, Freud and others explained Christianity as a delusion. The leadership of the mainline denominations sided with those predicting the death of spirituality and tried to reinvent themselves to accommodate secularism. Thus, Altizer taught that God was dead (at Emory) and the Time Magazine cover asked on "Is God Dead?" The spirit of Modernism, which was wed to atheism, seemed firmly and irrevocably entrenched. Religion was on its last leg. It was just a matter of time....9. But hmmm...the death of religion never happened. In fact, even with a huge influx of people from India and Muslim countries into England, the 2001 census found 72 percent of the population identifying themselves as Christian. The experiment of the mainline American denominations with modernism failed, with more conservative churches (Evangelicalism and charismatics) making their impact. Worldwide, Christianity continues to grow in numbers and influence. Korea, which had hardly any Christians in the 1800s, grew to 50% of the population by the end of the 1900's.10. Atheism thrives where churches have become dead, sterile and aligned with the ill-viewed status quo or with a corrupt government. As such, atheism can provide a helpful challenge to point out shortcomings of churches and help them change. The church thrives when it is seen as a positive force, as it was in Korea during their struggles with Japanese oppression.11. Criticism #1 - McGrath puts no stock in arguments for God's existence. He seems to accept the Modernist assessment that these arguments go nowhere. Although he notes the shortcomings of many atheist arguments, he makes no attempt to evaluate more contemporary arguments for theism. Although he probably sees this as outside the scope of his book, I'd suggest that the growth of apologetics in the past decade is in large part due to answering the more vocal new atheism. If he were writing in 2012 rather than 2004, this would warrant assessment.12. Criticism #2 - He seems to credit experiential religion, especially Pentecostalism, for the vibrant faith of today. While this has certainly been a powerful global phenomenon, I'd suggest that he should consider the impact of strong theological education in the United States and the surprising growth of evangelicalism as a viable intellectual position. I believe it was during the 70's that places like Harvard wanted to have evangelicals at least represented on their religious faculties. Note also the impact of evangelical scholars on the academic study of the bible, and upon theism with scholars such as Craig, Plantinga and Swinburne.Taught by many reputable scholars, many of today's ministers present a religion that not only feels good, but makes sense to people.13. Criticism #3 - I'd like to see more of an evaluation of the impact of church renewal and the church morphing into more relevant forms of worship. He mentions this, but I believe it's significant. Atheism thrives when religion seems irrelevant. The way the church was originally set up in the New Testament, it never gave formal strictures such as style of music or types instruments or length of sermons, etc. Rather, the apostle Paul taught and modeled "becoming all things to all men" as far as methodology was concerned. Thus, it's not surprising that times of renewal and growth are often accompanied by rethinking worship, particularly incorporating relevant music (the musical "language" or "heart language" of the target group).Also a part of today's renewal is a strong focus on "acts of kindness" and bettering the community, with no religious strings attached. When local churches become the first call of communities during times of crisis, the church is perceived as a valuable social institution. Since many atheists say that they make no positive claim, but merely are negative about religion, they obviously have less impact when the group they rave against is perceived as a group that's doing massive good in the community.14. Criticism #4 - Why didn't the author use endnotes to document his sources? This book would have been much more valuable if we could more easily explore the original sources.

McGrath's is not a polemic against atheism, but an account of it as a cultural phenomenon that arose and declined in a specific historical period and context. That historically concrete (as Marxists say) perspective naturally irritates atheists who want to treat atheism as the default position independent of time and place. Many atheist writers have assumed that atheism is the truth and have sought to explain Christianity or religion in general, not seeing their own disbelief as a cultural-historical phenomenon in need of explanation. (Feuerbach, Marx, and Freud, for example, do not trouble themselves with the truth claims of Christianity but assume its falsity as their starting point.)Hence the claim that atheism does not need explaining because it is simply an absence of belief (not believing). But it is really a positive "belief that something is not the case." Since 1) this disbelief has a distinct history of rise and decline; and 2) it is, unlike Christianity or theism, a rare and until the 19th century an eccentric belief, it is a perfectly proper subject for the kind of study McGrath conducts. It is true that in the late 20th century, half the world's population lived under officially atheist regimes, but this temporary political success and its consequences in themselves are part of the explanation of atheism's subsequent decline.One reviewer gives the impression that the dictionary definition of atheism is absence of belief in God or gods. I did not do an exhaustive search, but the Merriam-Webster online definition I found corresponds to McGrath's use and everyone else's until very recently: a)a disbelief in the existence of deity; b) the doctrine that there is no deity. McGrath well describes the attempt by some recent atheists to expand the definition to include those who have no particular opinion, those who are searching and questioning but undecided, and those (agnostics) who consider the answer unknowable. It is an indication of atheists' demoralization in face of the failure of the old secularization thesis, the loss of atheism's appeal, and the resurgence of religious (especially Christian) belief throughout the world and the confident militancy of Islam, that they go to such lengths to puff up their numbers.The importance of the book is the way McGrath takes atheism seriously as a social, cultural, and historical phenomenon in its own right. It deserves examination in sociological, historical, and cultural terms no less than the religions to which it responds. It played an important historical role in the critique of established religion and the oppressive role it played, for example, in 18th century France. In this context or that of 19th century Russia, atheism could reasonably be seen as a liberating force and much was made of the blood shed in the name of religion through the centuries. This argument lost much of its force in the 20th century given the record of anti-Christian forces like Nazism (which adopted much of Nietzsche's critique of Christianity and Christian morality as a vapid and servile restraint on the amoral Superman) and the officially atheist and even bloodier regimes of Stalin and Mao. These regimes, unrestrained by Christian morality or the universal proscription on intentionally killing the innocent, shed massively more innocent blood than all previous religions and religious states combined. Atheism was no longer the liberator but the oppressor. As McGrath points out, atheism has at least as much to answer for as any major religion, yet it has not begun to do its own soul-searching (if that's the word!).McGrath arguably spends too much time on "organized atheism" in the form of Madalyn Murray O'Hair and her organizations and the English National Secular Society. But the account of these relentlessly dreary and unappealing outfits serves a purpose as well as being amusing. It shows how atheists can be just as corrupt, prejudiced (O'Hair was fiercely homophobic, as Hitler and Stalin were anti-semitic), and nasty as religious organizations But one could argue that atheism is by its nature a diffuse, unorganized and unorganizable cultural current, and most atheists have always been embarrassed by such operations. Of course, to that extent the failure of atheism to meet the human need for community (a central strength of religion) is all the more a challenge for its adherents.To me, the most interesting part of the book is the discussion of Protestantism as a precursor of atheism. Protestantism (to which McGrath himself adheres) "disenchanted" nature (the earth no longer being "charged with the grandeur of God," divorced sacred from secular/profane, the religious from everyday experience, the verbal (preaching and Scripture) from the sacraments and sacramentals that gave physical expression to the divine and united heaven and earth, most fully in the Eucharist. It denounced artistic depiction of God, stripped the altars, destroyed statues, and laid waste to the cultural treasures of Christendom. The churches became bleak and grim, and God absent, distant, and disagreeable. As McGrath says, "...it is a small step from declaring that God cannot be pictured to suggesting that he cannot be conceived as a living reality in the rich imaginative life of humanity" (p.212). It is no accident that it is in a very different form, Pentecostalism, that Protestant Christianity is thriving today among the poor and oppressed of the world.

It's nice to see a well researched and balanced counter view put to the new atheist viewpoint which has monopolized public attention via the western media during the last two decades. There is a sense of fairness here and an understanding of how atheism was historically a positive force in reforming the bad behaviour and toxic power of western religious institutions. It's good to be reminded that atheism and the certainties of science as propagated by the new atheist fraternity are themselves faith positions subject to change which mustn't degenerate into hardened dogmas. His analysis of the notion of the centre around which all things evolve and the challenge post modernity has made to this idea are also fascinating. A heavy read, but a very good and enjoyable one!

Covers a wide historical period and well researched and huge reference list. Makes assumptions about understanding ofdefinitions and terms. Makes some very broad statements which are irritating. Whilst many of the issues are fairly presented the authors underlying assumption is that atheism has had its day Whilst the book appears .academic; it lacks some real rigor when it comes to conclusions. It concentrates of the intellectual manifestations of atheism and in particular the Christian religion. I feel it lacks a world view - what about Athiesm in Islam or Hinduism.It is worth a read but beware of the assumptions and bias

Enjoyed reading this. McGrath combines deep and broad scholarship with a keen eye for social trends and excellent choice of anecdotes to illustrate his points. Interesting comparison of atheistic and church movements in the US. As we begin to reflect on the twighlight of the new atheism, and the emergence of an even newer "new atheism" this book will, I'm sure, become to be regarded as highly prescient.

Alistair McGrath has studied the subject very thoroughly and passes on the knowledge he has gained in an easily understood fashion.

thoughtful historical background to belief and non belief. Very engaging.