The Twilight of Atheism

I don't know whether my standards for books have dropped or whether I've just been reading a lot of good books recently but I've just finished what I consider to be another cracker. It's called The Twilight of Atheism by Alister McGrath.

It's a survey of the rise and fall of atheism over the past 200 years or so. It looks at the various historical and social factors that caused it to arise as a movement, how it gained approval, how it appealed to people through the arts and the natural sciences. It was a very good read, taught me a lot of stuff. For example I'd always assumed that Nietzche was the ultimate critic of God, but he wasn't really, he criticised Christianity, but said that it was our cultural preference that God should not exist rather than actually making a philosophical argument that that was the case.

He comes to the conclusion that atheism is currently being undermined by two things. One is that atheism is very much linked to a modernist view of the world whereas Western thought is now dominated by postmodernism. The other was that 100 years ago atheism portrayed itself as the great liberator from the oppression and hatred that religion brought. However the 20th century revealed that atheists were at least as capable of oppression and hatred as their religious counterparts, with the Soviet Union being the classic example.

For me, fascinating stuff, very well written, challenging conclusions...