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Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt
The award-winning author of Protestants offers a new vision of the birth of the secular age, looking to the feelings of ordinary men and women--so often left out of the history of atheism.
Why have societies that were once overwhelmingly Christian become so secular? We think we know the answer, but in this lively and startlingly original reconsideration, Alec Ryrie argues that people embraced unbelief much as they have always chosen their worldviews: through their hearts more than their minds.
Looking back to the crisis of the Reformation and beyond, Unbelievers shows how, long before philosophers started to make the case for atheism, powerful cultural currents were challenging traditional faith. These tugged in different ways not only on celebrated thinkers such as Machiavelli, Montaigne, Hobbes, and Pascal, but on men and women at every level of society whose voices we hear through their diaries, letters, and court records.
Ryrie traces the roots of atheism born of anger, a sentiment familiar to anyone who has ever cursed a corrupt priest, and of doubt born of anxiety, as Christians discovered their faith was flimsier than they had believed. As the Reformation eroded time-honored certainties, Protestant radicals defended their faith by redefining it in terms of ethics. In the process they set in motion secularizing forces that soon became transformational. Unbelievers tells a powerful emotional history of doubt with potent lessons for our own angry and anxious age.
Why have societies that were once overwhelmingly Christian become so secular? We think we know the answer, but in this lively and startlingly original reconsideration, Alec Ryrie argues that people embraced unbelief much as they have always chosen their worldviews: through their hearts more than their minds.
Looking back to the crisis of the Reformation and beyond, Unbelievers shows how, long before philosophers started to make the case for atheism, powerful cultural currents were challenging traditional faith. These tugged in different ways not only on celebrated thinkers such as Machiavelli, Montaigne, Hobbes, and Pascal, but on men and women at every level of society whose voices we hear through their diaries, letters, and court records.
Ryrie traces the roots of atheism born of anger, a sentiment familiar to anyone who has ever cursed a corrupt priest, and of doubt born of anxiety, as Christians discovered their faith was flimsier than they had believed. As the Reformation eroded time-honored certainties, Protestant radicals defended their faith by redefining it in terms of ethics. In the process they set in motion secularizing forces that soon became transformational. Unbelievers tells a powerful emotional history of doubt with potent lessons for our own angry and anxious age.
272 pages, Hardcover
Published November 19, 2019
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802 people want to read
About the author
Alec Ryrie
30 books40 followersAlec Ryrie is a prize-winning historian of the Reformation and Protestantism. He is the author of Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt and Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World. Ryrie is Professor of the History of Christianity at Durham University and Professor of Divinity at Gresham College, London.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 65 reviews
November 25, 2021
"And so the years around 1660 are when our main story ends: for this is when unbelief finally came out into the open and claimed philosophical respectability for itself."
The author argues that behind and beneath the intellectual history of atheism that has started since around the late seventeenth century lies the emotional history. Alec Ryrie attempts to trace it. According to the scholar, the emotional story of unbelief or doubt consisted of two streams that at some point mingled and reinforced one another. On one side was the stream of anger, on the other - the stream of anxiety.
First, the author shows that belief and unbelief have been closely intertwined over the centuries. Second, he observes that unbelief was emotional and intuitional before it was intellectual and argumentative.
Mr. Ryrie focuses on two things - the history of unbelief in the Middle Ages and early modern period and the humanist ethics that dates back to 1945.
In the early modern period, the word ‘atheist’ was reserved for blasphemers, libertines and others whose behavior was back then considered shocking. But they did not represent a threat to the Christian churches and "were a part of the moral equilibrium of a Christian society."
Moreover, they tended to validate a majority culture by offering it the kind of predictable opposition.
The author attributes this kind of doubt to the unbelief of anger. This unbelief was not directed against God. It was a revolt against priests, their hypocrisy, and the attempt of the Church to regulate all aspects of secular life as well as a show of boldness.
With the unbelief of anger coexisted what the author calls the unbelief of anxiety. He sees the unbelief of the anxiety mainly as a by-product of the Protestant Reformation which urged Christians to deepen and purify their faith. This encouraged self-examination instead of relying on the preachings of priests and authority of the Churches. In their desire to become closer to God and be worthy of his grace, many genuine believers started asking themselves too many questions. Among other things, they questioned their own worthiness and chances of getting into Heaven.
While it is true that most of those seekers having faced a moral dilemma finally returned to their faith and relative peace of mind, their spiritual quest was not without consequences. This kind of religious anxiety contributed to skepticism which, for its part, would influence the development of modern consciousness.
The author considers the Reformation that began in the early sixteenth century a key event in the history of belief and unbelief.
Most of those people plagued with doubts were not true unbelievers. Indeed, they did not deny God, many of them sought to purify their personal faith (hence, doubts regarding their worthiness in the eyes of God).
Mr. Ryrie goes on to compare atheists or unbelievers of the past with modern flat-earthers. Today, to be a flat-earther, one has to insulate oneself from the mainstream culture, let alone science. Otherwise, they would not be able to defy self-evident common sense and basic truisms. This comparison, the author believes, can help us understand how an atheist of the past may have felt and how he or she may have been perceived by society. Perhaps so, but I have some doubts regarding the relevance of such a parallel.
Only in the late seventeenth century did the situation begin to change. A different, intellectual approach to unbelief has been inaugurated with the philosophy of such men as Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza (who might be called an intellectual founder of modern atheism).
However, the author does observe that religion has withstood a number of ‘direct frontal assaults' in the past few centuries. At least it was so until after the Second World war.
The traumatic experience of WWII with its mass-scale violence against innocent civilians shocked the public consciousness and resulted in a drastic shift in ethical norms. This assertion of Mr. Ryrie seems to corroborate Steven Pinker's theses about human progress.
The Second World War’s lessons did result in an emergence of the new ethics that was to replace the old Christian doctrines as an absolute moral reference point. This ethical framework is sometimes called ‘humanism’.
Some elements of humanist ethics are borrowed from Christianity, for example, a moral principle saying “Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you.” However, a sort of ethical yardstick against which the cultural notions, such as “good” and “evil”, "decent" and "unworthy", are to be measured has changed. Since the end of WWII, Nazism has begun to epitomize an absolute evil that must be avoided at all costs. This is reflected in popular culture and even in Godwin’s Law.
"Once the most potent moral figure in Western culture was Jesus Christ. Believer or unbeliever, you took your ethical bearings from him, or professed to. To question his morals was to expose yourself as a monster. Now, the most potent moral figure in Western culture is Adolf Hitler. It is as monstrous to praise him as it would once have been to disparage Jesus. He has become the fixed reference point by which we define evil.
<...> In the seventeenth century, arguments tended to end with someone calling someone else ‘atheist’, marking the point at which the discussion hit a brick wall. In our own times, as Godwin’s Law notes, the final, absolute and conversation-ending insult is to call someone a Nazi."
The humanist ethics encompasses certain ideas that seem to us intuitively and self-evidently true. Today we, regardless of our personal views, accept that the fact that cruelty, discrimination and murder are much worse than fornication, blasphemy and impiety is not up for debate.
In the end, the author gives a warning about the future pointing out that nothing is stable when it comes to ethical frameworks and moral currencies.
"The intuitions which make it [the humanist surge] possible will not flow peacefully, steadily and indefinitely. Our cultures’ moral frameworks have shifted before and they will do so again. Our beliefs will, inevitably, follow. Believers and unbelievers alike share an interest in where that story goes next."
The author argues that behind and beneath the intellectual history of atheism that has started since around the late seventeenth century lies the emotional history. Alec Ryrie attempts to trace it. According to the scholar, the emotional story of unbelief or doubt consisted of two streams that at some point mingled and reinforced one another. On one side was the stream of anger, on the other - the stream of anxiety.
First, the author shows that belief and unbelief have been closely intertwined over the centuries. Second, he observes that unbelief was emotional and intuitional before it was intellectual and argumentative.
Mr. Ryrie focuses on two things - the history of unbelief in the Middle Ages and early modern period and the humanist ethics that dates back to 1945.
In the early modern period, the word ‘atheist’ was reserved for blasphemers, libertines and others whose behavior was back then considered shocking. But they did not represent a threat to the Christian churches and "were a part of the moral equilibrium of a Christian society."
Moreover, they tended to validate a majority culture by offering it the kind of predictable opposition.
The author attributes this kind of doubt to the unbelief of anger. This unbelief was not directed against God. It was a revolt against priests, their hypocrisy, and the attempt of the Church to regulate all aspects of secular life as well as a show of boldness.
With the unbelief of anger coexisted what the author calls the unbelief of anxiety. He sees the unbelief of the anxiety mainly as a by-product of the Protestant Reformation which urged Christians to deepen and purify their faith. This encouraged self-examination instead of relying on the preachings of priests and authority of the Churches. In their desire to become closer to God and be worthy of his grace, many genuine believers started asking themselves too many questions. Among other things, they questioned their own worthiness and chances of getting into Heaven.
While it is true that most of those seekers having faced a moral dilemma finally returned to their faith and relative peace of mind, their spiritual quest was not without consequences. This kind of religious anxiety contributed to skepticism which, for its part, would influence the development of modern consciousness.
The author considers the Reformation that began in the early sixteenth century a key event in the history of belief and unbelief.
The Reformation, by choosing scepticism as its key religious weapon, in effect required believers to transition to a different kind of post-sceptical faith, a journey many of them struggled to complete.
Most of those people plagued with doubts were not true unbelievers. Indeed, they did not deny God, many of them sought to purify their personal faith (hence, doubts regarding their worthiness in the eyes of God).
Mr. Ryrie goes on to compare atheists or unbelievers of the past with modern flat-earthers. Today, to be a flat-earther, one has to insulate oneself from the mainstream culture, let alone science. Otherwise, they would not be able to defy self-evident common sense and basic truisms. This comparison, the author believes, can help us understand how an atheist of the past may have felt and how he or she may have been perceived by society. Perhaps so, but I have some doubts regarding the relevance of such a parallel.
Only in the late seventeenth century did the situation begin to change. A different, intellectual approach to unbelief has been inaugurated with the philosophy of such men as Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza (who might be called an intellectual founder of modern atheism).
However, the author does observe that religion has withstood a number of ‘direct frontal assaults' in the past few centuries. At least it was so until after the Second World war.
The traumatic experience of WWII with its mass-scale violence against innocent civilians shocked the public consciousness and resulted in a drastic shift in ethical norms. This assertion of Mr. Ryrie seems to corroborate Steven Pinker's theses about human progress.
The Second World War’s lessons did result in an emergence of the new ethics that was to replace the old Christian doctrines as an absolute moral reference point. This ethical framework is sometimes called ‘humanism’.
Some elements of humanist ethics are borrowed from Christianity, for example, a moral principle saying “Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you.” However, a sort of ethical yardstick against which the cultural notions, such as “good” and “evil”, "decent" and "unworthy", are to be measured has changed. Since the end of WWII, Nazism has begun to epitomize an absolute evil that must be avoided at all costs. This is reflected in popular culture and even in Godwin’s Law.
"Once the most potent moral figure in Western culture was Jesus Christ. Believer or unbeliever, you took your ethical bearings from him, or professed to. To question his morals was to expose yourself as a monster. Now, the most potent moral figure in Western culture is Adolf Hitler. It is as monstrous to praise him as it would once have been to disparage Jesus. He has become the fixed reference point by which we define evil.
<...> In the seventeenth century, arguments tended to end with someone calling someone else ‘atheist’, marking the point at which the discussion hit a brick wall. In our own times, as Godwin’s Law notes, the final, absolute and conversation-ending insult is to call someone a Nazi."
The humanist ethics encompasses certain ideas that seem to us intuitively and self-evidently true. Today we, regardless of our personal views, accept that the fact that cruelty, discrimination and murder are much worse than fornication, blasphemy and impiety is not up for debate.
In the end, the author gives a warning about the future pointing out that nothing is stable when it comes to ethical frameworks and moral currencies.
"The intuitions which make it [the humanist surge] possible will not flow peacefully, steadily and indefinitely. Our cultures’ moral frameworks have shifted before and they will do so again. Our beliefs will, inevitably, follow. Believers and unbelievers alike share an interest in where that story goes next."
October 6, 2023
“Suppress reason too harshly and it will eventually revolt.”
Alec Ryrie is a man of faith. In fact, he is a lay minister in the Church of England. When I read this in the introduction to this book I prepared myself for a chastisement. Being an “unbeliever” I am intimately familiar with the micro-aggressions and disapproving subtleties of Christian authors when they write about skeptics, secularists, humanists, agnostics, and (gulp!) outright atheists. I waded into Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt, highlighter in hand, preparing myself to write an equally emotional rebuttal.
The Good…
‘Turns out, my misgivings were largely unwarranted. This is not the bashing I thought it might be. It is more of a philosophical and reasoned accounting of doubters and skeptics from about the thirteenth century onward. Color me dutifully impressed.
…The Bad…
Still, there are bugaboos in Ryrie’s delivery. While he writes eloquently about individual acts of dissent, he frequently glosses over the consequences. Were the crusades and inquisitions violent and unjust? You could hardly glean that from biographical paragraphs with “he was later executed for heresy” seemingly thrown in for good measure.
…and The Ugly
Somewhere around the year 1660, all pretense of Ryrie’s objectivism starts to dissolve. He asserts that the mid seventeenth century is when nonbelief came out of the closet and claimed “philosophical respectability.” The closer he gets to the twenty first century the more dismissive and cynical his narrative becomes, especially when he makes mention of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and “the rest of the horsemen.”
Okay, here it is. This is the polemic I expected in the beginning but one that didn’t manifest itself until the very end. I have to give the author a measure of credit—at least he tried to be objective, even if he ultimately failed.
Alec Ryrie is a man of faith. In fact, he is a lay minister in the Church of England. When I read this in the introduction to this book I prepared myself for a chastisement. Being an “unbeliever” I am intimately familiar with the micro-aggressions and disapproving subtleties of Christian authors when they write about skeptics, secularists, humanists, agnostics, and (gulp!) outright atheists. I waded into Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt, highlighter in hand, preparing myself to write an equally emotional rebuttal.
The Good…
‘Turns out, my misgivings were largely unwarranted. This is not the bashing I thought it might be. It is more of a philosophical and reasoned accounting of doubters and skeptics from about the thirteenth century onward. Color me dutifully impressed.
…The Bad…
Still, there are bugaboos in Ryrie’s delivery. While he writes eloquently about individual acts of dissent, he frequently glosses over the consequences. Were the crusades and inquisitions violent and unjust? You could hardly glean that from biographical paragraphs with “he was later executed for heresy” seemingly thrown in for good measure.
…and The Ugly
Somewhere around the year 1660, all pretense of Ryrie’s objectivism starts to dissolve. He asserts that the mid seventeenth century is when nonbelief came out of the closet and claimed “philosophical respectability.” The closer he gets to the twenty first century the more dismissive and cynical his narrative becomes, especially when he makes mention of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and “the rest of the horsemen.”
Okay, here it is. This is the polemic I expected in the beginning but one that didn’t manifest itself until the very end. I have to give the author a measure of credit—at least he tried to be objective, even if he ultimately failed.
January 15, 2020
This book is just brilliant. I learned more from this than I did taking all the courses in religion I did when I was in college. The author summarizes the entire history of Protestant Christianity and even some of Roman Catholic Christianity in one book that summarizes scores of historical, religious, literary, philosophical, political, and cultural threads. The book concludes that morality today is based on opposition to Nazism, the philosophy that current world culture concedes is the worst system of morality or belief in the history of the world.
He compares this to the long shadow of Christianity and how the Reformation broke out from two general trends: anger against authoritarianism, which expressed itself in Roman Catholicism--the reaction came about through lay observers' disgust and disbelief in the clergy and their strictures for parishioners' lives, and anxiety that Christians weren't sure of such concepts as heaven and hell and how a person could live a moral life, with or without Christianity.
The book compares Luther, Erasmus, Spinoza, and Dostoevsky, among many other thinkers, philosophers and writers and how each tried to develop and define a system of morality that would become self-evident to the average person. The philosophical upheaval of the reformation also resulted in the political upheaval in Europe as each nation decided that the version of Christianity that they held to was the Only True Faith, and some Christian denominations became so closely configured with certain European countries that tribalism was added into the mix.
I can't possibly do justice to this book because it encompasses so much history and synthesizes so many disparate viewpoints. The author writes in a style that is easy for the layperson to understand, yet his endnotes constitute about 40 percent of the overall text. He describes himself as an Anglican lay reader with a soft spot in his heart for atheism.
I read this whole book in one day. It is, as I said, brilliant and absorbing and synthesizes great bodies of knowledge.
He compares this to the long shadow of Christianity and how the Reformation broke out from two general trends: anger against authoritarianism, which expressed itself in Roman Catholicism--the reaction came about through lay observers' disgust and disbelief in the clergy and their strictures for parishioners' lives, and anxiety that Christians weren't sure of such concepts as heaven and hell and how a person could live a moral life, with or without Christianity.
The book compares Luther, Erasmus, Spinoza, and Dostoevsky, among many other thinkers, philosophers and writers and how each tried to develop and define a system of morality that would become self-evident to the average person. The philosophical upheaval of the reformation also resulted in the political upheaval in Europe as each nation decided that the version of Christianity that they held to was the Only True Faith, and some Christian denominations became so closely configured with certain European countries that tribalism was added into the mix.
I can't possibly do justice to this book because it encompasses so much history and synthesizes so many disparate viewpoints. The author writes in a style that is easy for the layperson to understand, yet his endnotes constitute about 40 percent of the overall text. He describes himself as an Anglican lay reader with a soft spot in his heart for atheism.
I read this whole book in one day. It is, as I said, brilliant and absorbing and synthesizes great bodies of knowledge.
Read
July 11, 2020I can't finish. His dismissive tone, his leaps in logic, his wild assumptions, his inability (refusal?) to turn his critical gaze onto his own beliefs... I just can't. I tried.
February 15, 2023
On the one hand, the author does a good job of showcasing atheism/irreligiousness outside the intellectual sphere of early modern Europe.
His argument that atheism also manifested from emotions like anger is well illustrated.
However, after that he made several missteps.
Firstly, he makes too rigid a differentiation between the intellectual and the emotional. Emotions can inform the intellect. He seems to miss that connection.
Secondly, he does not try to really historicize why people were angry against religion. It's really odd how so many of these angry people ended up being burnt(!) and how the author just passes that fact by. Emotional atheism did not exist in a vacuum. Early modern Europe was a particularly bad time to have non-conforming religious views. The author even remarks on the greater intrusiveness of the Church authorities, but does not seem to think it necessary to emphasize the sheer levels of violence that had become normalized.
Thirdly, a study on emotion should at least attempt to analyze the origin and nature of that emotion. There are multiple case studies on 17th century English women who were absolutely convinced that they were going to go to hell, and one even gave up eating. To me, this seems like religion flavoured depression, coloured with anxiety. These women were traumatized with the fear of hell that Calvinism was talking about so much. Yet, this does not get a mention, let alone a discussion.
Fourthly, coming to the modern period, the author seems eager to point out that any moral criticism of Christianity is more a criticism of the corrupt church than Christianity itself, whose morals apparently deeply influenced the critics. Tied to this is the author's deep reverence for the figure of Jesus Christ the morality of whose teachings are apparently beyond reproach. Such a blanket assertion in a book about atheism, without even attempting to analyze that same Christian morality feels lazy, and a bit smug.
Fifthly, the author very briefly remarks that those people who doubt the historical Jesus belong on the fringe. There is not even an attempt to do a historiographical overview of modern research about Jesus. Instead, he mentions an antisemite and Hitler of all people as examples of those who disbelieved in the historical Jesus.
In conclusion, I felt that while the author's core idea was a good one, the execution was half-hearted, the last part was sloppy, and the conclusion was incomplete.
His argument that atheism also manifested from emotions like anger is well illustrated.
However, after that he made several missteps.
Firstly, he makes too rigid a differentiation between the intellectual and the emotional. Emotions can inform the intellect. He seems to miss that connection.
Secondly, he does not try to really historicize why people were angry against religion. It's really odd how so many of these angry people ended up being burnt(!) and how the author just passes that fact by. Emotional atheism did not exist in a vacuum. Early modern Europe was a particularly bad time to have non-conforming religious views. The author even remarks on the greater intrusiveness of the Church authorities, but does not seem to think it necessary to emphasize the sheer levels of violence that had become normalized.
Thirdly, a study on emotion should at least attempt to analyze the origin and nature of that emotion. There are multiple case studies on 17th century English women who were absolutely convinced that they were going to go to hell, and one even gave up eating. To me, this seems like religion flavoured depression, coloured with anxiety. These women were traumatized with the fear of hell that Calvinism was talking about so much. Yet, this does not get a mention, let alone a discussion.
Fourthly, coming to the modern period, the author seems eager to point out that any moral criticism of Christianity is more a criticism of the corrupt church than Christianity itself, whose morals apparently deeply influenced the critics. Tied to this is the author's deep reverence for the figure of Jesus Christ the morality of whose teachings are apparently beyond reproach. Such a blanket assertion in a book about atheism, without even attempting to analyze that same Christian morality feels lazy, and a bit smug.
Fifthly, the author very briefly remarks that those people who doubt the historical Jesus belong on the fringe. There is not even an attempt to do a historiographical overview of modern research about Jesus. Instead, he mentions an antisemite and Hitler of all people as examples of those who disbelieved in the historical Jesus.
In conclusion, I felt that while the author's core idea was a good one, the execution was half-hearted, the last part was sloppy, and the conclusion was incomplete.
March 30, 2020
Not what I was expecting. The book has too much religion and not enough atheism, not to mention the atheism is treated with condescension. My antennae went up when the author called King Almaric's skepticism "shallow-rooted." All religious beliefs can be called shallow-rooted by someone who believes otherwise. I expected a little more respect for doubters and unbelievers. I sensed this disdain throughout the book. I'm sure it was not easy for King Almaric to express his doubts to his Bishop in the 12th century, He probably only arrived at his skepticism after much inner turmoil, making his beliefs or doubts deep-rooted at the very least. After many other examples of this attitude, I cannot see that the author has an open mind about doubt and the beliefs of non-Christians. This book is for the choir.
October 28, 2021
For an effective book, this one is startlingly misnamed and misblurbed. It's more about doubt than unbelief proper (comparative unbelief, maybe?), but it's quite a slender book for being an emotional history of doubt. I was quite surprised at the small size of the package when I got it in the mail. It's primarily an emotional history of Reformation and post-Reformation doubt (there's an introductory section about the Middle Ages and a concluding chapter about atheism since) that led up to atheism coming out of the closet in the later seventeenth century. A less catchy, more accurate title might be "Less and Less Belief: 1500ish-1650ish."
Ryrie's polemical point is against the triumphalist historians of secularism who trumpet atheism as a product of the Age of Reason. No, he says, the religious and the irreligious alike usually have their convictions generated first by emotion and only secondarily or retrospectively by reason. Religious anger and anxiety led to irreligion and anti-religion, and that anger and anxiety had been percolating a long time, confusing and disorienting many, before atheism full stop emerged. That account of religious orientation seems to me correct, then and now, and the book is both useful and enjoyable (Ryrie is quite a fun writer) as an emotional history of early modern doubt that retains contemporary relevance.
Ryrie's polemical point is against the triumphalist historians of secularism who trumpet atheism as a product of the Age of Reason. No, he says, the religious and the irreligious alike usually have their convictions generated first by emotion and only secondarily or retrospectively by reason. Religious anger and anxiety led to irreligion and anti-religion, and that anger and anxiety had been percolating a long time, confusing and disorienting many, before atheism full stop emerged. That account of religious orientation seems to me correct, then and now, and the book is both useful and enjoyable (Ryrie is quite a fun writer) as an emotional history of early modern doubt that retains contemporary relevance.
December 28, 2019
Very interesting! I disagree with some of its assumptions and conclusions but overall this is a very thoughtful look at late medieval and early modern varieties of doubt and unbelief. It's striking if not surprising how many now-common skeptical ideas already existed in the absence of self-declared atheists; sometimes just as a troubling voice in the head of an anxious Christian. Ryrie is quite right that, like religious belief, much unbelief flowed from emotional sources rather than pure rationality, something I noticed in my PhD research into Canadian unbelief. People believe or disbelieve all sorts of things but it requires emotion, often moral outrage, to take action on those ideas. His point in the concluding chapter about Hitler and the Nazis having become the preeminent negative reference point for morality in Western society doesn't exactly fit the rest of the book but it is thought-provoking. Anyways, I'm glad that the renaissance in subtle, thoughtful work on the history of atheism and unbelief is continuing. I'll put this on my shelf alongside other recent books on the topic by Tim Whitmarsh, Leigh Eric Schmidt, and Nathan Alexander.
March 3, 2023
Self serving narration of 'unbelief' (not of atheism as the marketing suggests) and doubting written by an anglican minister that frames it -with atheism- as an emotional response based on anger and anxiety, not reason. Framing is power, and atheists and the real concerns of believers are their victims here.
His presentation of the emotional aspect of unbelief in christians is loosely connected -to be generous- with his analysis of the origin of unbelief and modern atheism being this in anger and anxiety. It seems as if all the book to the last chapter may be have been written in order to justify a pre-obtained prejudice about atheists. As if this is another public intervention by a minister and a contribution to christian - and ought-to-be Official - history of the past and the present. His work connecting the previous chapters with what he has to say about atheism is very vague and mostly unnecessary and it could have been 'obtained' by some 'christian psychology' exercise into the present. For this work to be more seriously considered, he should have analysed the psyche and vital path of atheists, not only those of 'struggling' believers in long ago times from whom he then derives his conclusion. This would necessary show atheism as a human possibility as a more reasonable conclusion from the diversity of 'atheisms' that will result from such endeavour. For example, why should a life-long atheist who rejected god and all religions as fictions since childhood be linked and explained by a long ideological battle between catholics and protestants or by Machiavelli or any other complicated and educated paths? Atheism is easy to arrive to, easy even for young humans. But maybe this is the possibility a minister needs to reject.
Atheist experience can't be reduced to emotional struggle with faith and church(es) infighting. Atheists and all humans deserve their sense of dignity respected in a way this book never intended, as it reserved all its sympathy for 'struggling' christians and abandoned it the very moment they turned into atheists. The moral of atheists, this atheist, that atheist, the other one, can't be explained solely by a secularised christianity (as this book and many others assert) since humanity have a long and diverse history of cultures and (secular) traditions that many (including christians) value and since their morals can be contrasted against this fake moralizing religious exercise.
The author fails to see in this attempt of general history what in some occasion he did see: survivorship bias, and the forest for the trees. His analysis of christian doubters conduce him to a very specific view of unbelief and atheism, one that draws everything as coming from (the eternal) christianity, a very common mistake by christians. For centuries christianity had ideological and political power over many many europeans, the abandonment of that yoke by these christians can mistake their personal paths -that of christians in europe in specific times- for what atheism really is, was, will or may be. Even if christians ministers declare that humans are free, they work tenaciously to demonstrate that they can't be any other thing that christians or christians in denial. But we already know that religions are full of contradictions and rationalisations for different and often undeclared purposes (something the author can detect but always protecting his ultimate 'truth'). Critical thinking goes so far for some.
The book contains nonetheless valuable information in the form of the personal testimonies of unbelief by christians (I have included several in the Goodreads' quotes page for this book). In them you can find something the author is not willing to concede, that christian beliefs can have a harmful and dangerous psychological impact in people's minds. They don't tell us solely about personal anxiety but also about christian beliefs as actually believed and lived, not as told by expert theologians and apologists in their ideal metaphysics. In different testimonies of doubt or blasphemies the reader may find evidence for the existence of atheist in past societies -long before Enlightenment- dominated by christianity, but the author reject this idea repeatedly. Not only that, but clear attacks on christianity and even religions in general are explained as some emotional outburst or discontent with clergymen but never revealing at least some partial sincerity. This is one of the reasons why I say he does not respect atheists or sceptics. Additionaly he casually drops reinforcing comments on anti-atheist representations common in the past.
In conclusion, the book could be of value for atheists with an awake critical sense and willing to walk through pages written by someone who won't fully respect them but who is not an extremist case or heavy on apologetics against them. It could offer you a not-very-long history of christianity in europe pre and in the era of Reformation from personal perspectives that will enrich a more multifaceted view of christianity and the place some atheists are coming from. The scholar study of unbelievers mentalities is something this book (and the author conferences) shows to be fascinating and I think other scholars -including atheists- should try, this time without using a leash. The references to interesting less known (at least to me) characters and their books is something I'd like to benefit from too.
Be warned that you won't find here a history of atheism but something that could serve as a pre-history of certain strain of atheists, namely those who arrive to atheism from intense religiosity.
His presentation of the emotional aspect of unbelief in christians is loosely connected -to be generous- with his analysis of the origin of unbelief and modern atheism being this in anger and anxiety. It seems as if all the book to the last chapter may be have been written in order to justify a pre-obtained prejudice about atheists. As if this is another public intervention by a minister and a contribution to christian - and ought-to-be Official - history of the past and the present. His work connecting the previous chapters with what he has to say about atheism is very vague and mostly unnecessary and it could have been 'obtained' by some 'christian psychology' exercise into the present. For this work to be more seriously considered, he should have analysed the psyche and vital path of atheists, not only those of 'struggling' believers in long ago times from whom he then derives his conclusion. This would necessary show atheism as a human possibility as a more reasonable conclusion from the diversity of 'atheisms' that will result from such endeavour. For example, why should a life-long atheist who rejected god and all religions as fictions since childhood be linked and explained by a long ideological battle between catholics and protestants or by Machiavelli or any other complicated and educated paths? Atheism is easy to arrive to, easy even for young humans. But maybe this is the possibility a minister needs to reject.
Atheist experience can't be reduced to emotional struggle with faith and church(es) infighting. Atheists and all humans deserve their sense of dignity respected in a way this book never intended, as it reserved all its sympathy for 'struggling' christians and abandoned it the very moment they turned into atheists. The moral of atheists, this atheist, that atheist, the other one, can't be explained solely by a secularised christianity (as this book and many others assert) since humanity have a long and diverse history of cultures and (secular) traditions that many (including christians) value and since their morals can be contrasted against this fake moralizing religious exercise.
The author fails to see in this attempt of general history what in some occasion he did see: survivorship bias, and the forest for the trees. His analysis of christian doubters conduce him to a very specific view of unbelief and atheism, one that draws everything as coming from (the eternal) christianity, a very common mistake by christians. For centuries christianity had ideological and political power over many many europeans, the abandonment of that yoke by these christians can mistake their personal paths -that of christians in europe in specific times- for what atheism really is, was, will or may be. Even if christians ministers declare that humans are free, they work tenaciously to demonstrate that they can't be any other thing that christians or christians in denial. But we already know that religions are full of contradictions and rationalisations for different and often undeclared purposes (something the author can detect but always protecting his ultimate 'truth'). Critical thinking goes so far for some.
The book contains nonetheless valuable information in the form of the personal testimonies of unbelief by christians (I have included several in the Goodreads' quotes page for this book). In them you can find something the author is not willing to concede, that christian beliefs can have a harmful and dangerous psychological impact in people's minds. They don't tell us solely about personal anxiety but also about christian beliefs as actually believed and lived, not as told by expert theologians and apologists in their ideal metaphysics. In different testimonies of doubt or blasphemies the reader may find evidence for the existence of atheist in past societies -long before Enlightenment- dominated by christianity, but the author reject this idea repeatedly. Not only that, but clear attacks on christianity and even religions in general are explained as some emotional outburst or discontent with clergymen but never revealing at least some partial sincerity. This is one of the reasons why I say he does not respect atheists or sceptics. Additionaly he casually drops reinforcing comments on anti-atheist representations common in the past.
In conclusion, the book could be of value for atheists with an awake critical sense and willing to walk through pages written by someone who won't fully respect them but who is not an extremist case or heavy on apologetics against them. It could offer you a not-very-long history of christianity in europe pre and in the era of Reformation from personal perspectives that will enrich a more multifaceted view of christianity and the place some atheists are coming from. The scholar study of unbelievers mentalities is something this book (and the author conferences) shows to be fascinating and I think other scholars -including atheists- should try, this time without using a leash. The references to interesting less known (at least to me) characters and their books is something I'd like to benefit from too.
Be warned that you won't find here a history of atheism but something that could serve as a pre-history of certain strain of atheists, namely those who arrive to atheism from intense religiosity.
August 26, 2021
One of my big takeaways from this was how much those who call themselves atheists or agnostics often justify or explains themselves via moral superiority. This happened when doubt first become popular in the 17th century. People said their doubts were out of their strong morality. (This includes Christians by the way, who often felt that they doubted because they were honest and faithful and walked by faith in spite of doubt).
Fascinatingly he says that we used to have a shared sense in the West (a term he defines and then uses throughout) of what morality was. Now, since WW2, morality is defined by not being Evil, which is associated almost entirely with Nazis. The only thing we all agree on is that Nazis were evil and whatever is opposite of them is Good and that’s where we get morality from.
So interesting.
Fascinatingly he says that we used to have a shared sense in the West (a term he defines and then uses throughout) of what morality was. Now, since WW2, morality is defined by not being Evil, which is associated almost entirely with Nazis. The only thing we all agree on is that Nazis were evil and whatever is opposite of them is Good and that’s where we get morality from.
So interesting.
June 6, 2023
Ryrie insists that the tradition of atheistic thought does not begin with clear thinking rationalists but rather emerges from the specific emotional tensions and strains felt by Christians in the post reformation, puritan, and then separatist religious landscape, as a result of the new theological debates and claims. For Ryrie it is important to understand that we make our religious choices with our whole person, rather than just our intellect, this is as true for the atheist as it is for the Christian (to many atheists horror and chagrin it seems from the reviews). The philosophical backing for a position will come only once the belief is already held. Hence Spinoza, the first major atheistic (at least sort of) philosopher writes only at the end of a long historical process in which beliefs have already been transformed and his philosophy only serves to give a post hoc intellectual justification for the positions already taken.
May 17, 2020
Not especially emotional
Perhaps a bit of somnolence... Ho hum. Tales of those who did not believe according to Hoyle, so to speak. Many were willing to be tortured to death rather than parrot what the knuckleheads wished to hear. What were they thinking about? Pain hurt back then too! When did the first doubt occur? Who cares? There was always someone who was not stupid enough to believe everything that was supposed to be true. And, there were plenty of folks ready to kill anyone and everyone who did not at least pretend to believe the way they did.
All the slaughters, tortures, and attempts of religious/political mind control apparently were perfectly acceptable to The Powers In Heaven Who did not bother to intercede, except for killing off several hundred millions or more indiscriminately by plagues, starvation, and war.
But, some wrote speculations that mostly no one else read. Perhaps, it meant every religious person has his own god that is ever so slightly different from everyone else’s god and every Christian, since this is a book mostly about Christianity, has a Jesus that is ever so different from all the other Jesuses. In fact, it appeared that everyone had their own whacko idea whether it was made public or not.
Well, not everyone. I suspect the vast majority was too busy merely surviving to give a rat’s butt about religious goofiness except to outwardly confirmed to whatever power ruled over them which was merely another ploy in their constant striving to survive.
The examples cited could not seem to stop writing even if it meant arrest or worse. That is apparently what happens when civilization does not have mind numbing devices such as television.
The book was so short. Why did it take so long to read? Why did I keep falling asleep? Why was it so much like Facebook where someone argues this and someone else argues that ad infinitum? Sometimes you just wish people would stay home, drink beer, and shut up.
It is difficult to believe the past “reading public” did not merely fall asleep scrutinizing the religious diatribes. It is harder still to believe innocent persons were so brutalized for differences of opinion, although such behavior still goes on... Even the U.N. still condones such actions.
Sleepy, so very sleepy.
Perhaps a bit of somnolence... Ho hum. Tales of those who did not believe according to Hoyle, so to speak. Many were willing to be tortured to death rather than parrot what the knuckleheads wished to hear. What were they thinking about? Pain hurt back then too! When did the first doubt occur? Who cares? There was always someone who was not stupid enough to believe everything that was supposed to be true. And, there were plenty of folks ready to kill anyone and everyone who did not at least pretend to believe the way they did.
All the slaughters, tortures, and attempts of religious/political mind control apparently were perfectly acceptable to The Powers In Heaven Who did not bother to intercede, except for killing off several hundred millions or more indiscriminately by plagues, starvation, and war.
But, some wrote speculations that mostly no one else read. Perhaps, it meant every religious person has his own god that is ever so slightly different from everyone else’s god and every Christian, since this is a book mostly about Christianity, has a Jesus that is ever so different from all the other Jesuses. In fact, it appeared that everyone had their own whacko idea whether it was made public or not.
Well, not everyone. I suspect the vast majority was too busy merely surviving to give a rat’s butt about religious goofiness except to outwardly confirmed to whatever power ruled over them which was merely another ploy in their constant striving to survive.
The examples cited could not seem to stop writing even if it meant arrest or worse. That is apparently what happens when civilization does not have mind numbing devices such as television.
The book was so short. Why did it take so long to read? Why did I keep falling asleep? Why was it so much like Facebook where someone argues this and someone else argues that ad infinitum? Sometimes you just wish people would stay home, drink beer, and shut up.
It is difficult to believe the past “reading public” did not merely fall asleep scrutinizing the religious diatribes. It is harder still to believe innocent persons were so brutalized for differences of opinion, although such behavior still goes on... Even the U.N. still condones such actions.
Sleepy, so very sleepy.
August 21, 2022
The concluding pages of this book are really, REALLY insightful, so I’ll just start right there. Ryrie says that what we have today is not a positive reference point for morality anymore (Jesus Christ) but a negative one (Adolf Hitler). If you really want to discredit someone, you don’t call them “atheist”, as you might have when religion was still the social norm. You call them “Nazi” because post-war humanism, supposedly divorced from any religious origin, has won the day after the church failed to call out evil and define morality in the Second World War. This humanist ethic…”is almost a precisely inverted image of Nazism.” Yet on a deeper, historical level, it’s also the modern, post-war variation of ancient, *emotional moral revolts against Christian institutions, now expressively dis-embedded from a Christian moral universe. Of course, this is not quite that simple: “humanism continues to be shaped by Christian norms”.
But what’s really fascinating is how this “anti-Nazi narrative” has culturally made its way into our social imaginary through “ersatz Hitlers” such as Sauron, Darth Vade, Lord Voldemort. It has immortalized itself in these mythical figures. Though Ryrie doesn’t quite put it this way, it seems that one implication now is that we don’t know how to define “good”, though we have a pretty good idea of what “evil” is. We don’t know what we are for, but we do now what we are against. It also occurred to me that even the Christian social imaginary tends to be dominated by this framework or way of thinking, as when for example almost anything becomes “our” Bonhoeffer moment. But maybe it’s not all negative, because a (partially helpful) shift from private piety to a systemic consciousness also took place in the post WWII world. Or as Ryrie puts it, “It now seemed plain that cruelty, discrimination and murder were evil in a way that fornication, blasphemy and impiety were not.”
As I said, the conclusion is gold. But back to the beginning of the book. The main criticism is against the commonly held assumption that atheism became a live option because reason did away with faith in the enlightenment period. Or at least it’s saying that this is not the complete picture. Instead, Ryrie argues, the history of unbelief has been driven not so much by ideas as it has been by emotions, particularly anger and anxiety. Anger against oppressive ecclesial structures, for example, which frequently led to anger against God: “Any priest who found himself at odds with an awkward parishioner might naturally fall back on his authority as God’s representative, forcing the parishioner either to give way, or to enlarge his quarrel to include God.”
Anxiety led to widespread unbelief, often when Christian teaching didn’t do its job, for example, when Christendom‘s gatekeepers condemned believers for their "atheism” when they didn’t express complete and consistent certainty over their eternal condition. You do this often enough in a number of other silly parallel scenarios and the alleged “atheism” becomes rampant, and after that, mundane. Commonplace, nothing to be worried about.
So, it all began with a set of emotional, not intellectual reactions against Christianity. Does Ryrie daw an unnecessary distinction between the two? I am no expert in this, so maybe he does. But it seems to me that he is more concerned with getting the historical sequence right, that is, with placing the intellectual narrative within the more elusive and broadly shared experience of complicated emotions towards religion. I wish especially that some of my friends interested in apologetics would pick up a book like this and operate, or at least interact, with the ways in which religious and secular history is depicted here. Checking our assumptions can hardly be problematic…
But what’s really fascinating is how this “anti-Nazi narrative” has culturally made its way into our social imaginary through “ersatz Hitlers” such as Sauron, Darth Vade, Lord Voldemort. It has immortalized itself in these mythical figures. Though Ryrie doesn’t quite put it this way, it seems that one implication now is that we don’t know how to define “good”, though we have a pretty good idea of what “evil” is. We don’t know what we are for, but we do now what we are against. It also occurred to me that even the Christian social imaginary tends to be dominated by this framework or way of thinking, as when for example almost anything becomes “our” Bonhoeffer moment. But maybe it’s not all negative, because a (partially helpful) shift from private piety to a systemic consciousness also took place in the post WWII world. Or as Ryrie puts it, “It now seemed plain that cruelty, discrimination and murder were evil in a way that fornication, blasphemy and impiety were not.”
As I said, the conclusion is gold. But back to the beginning of the book. The main criticism is against the commonly held assumption that atheism became a live option because reason did away with faith in the enlightenment period. Or at least it’s saying that this is not the complete picture. Instead, Ryrie argues, the history of unbelief has been driven not so much by ideas as it has been by emotions, particularly anger and anxiety. Anger against oppressive ecclesial structures, for example, which frequently led to anger against God: “Any priest who found himself at odds with an awkward parishioner might naturally fall back on his authority as God’s representative, forcing the parishioner either to give way, or to enlarge his quarrel to include God.”
Anxiety led to widespread unbelief, often when Christian teaching didn’t do its job, for example, when Christendom‘s gatekeepers condemned believers for their "atheism” when they didn’t express complete and consistent certainty over their eternal condition. You do this often enough in a number of other silly parallel scenarios and the alleged “atheism” becomes rampant, and after that, mundane. Commonplace, nothing to be worried about.
So, it all began with a set of emotional, not intellectual reactions against Christianity. Does Ryrie daw an unnecessary distinction between the two? I am no expert in this, so maybe he does. But it seems to me that he is more concerned with getting the historical sequence right, that is, with placing the intellectual narrative within the more elusive and broadly shared experience of complicated emotions towards religion. I wish especially that some of my friends interested in apologetics would pick up a book like this and operate, or at least interact, with the ways in which religious and secular history is depicted here. Checking our assumptions can hardly be problematic…
June 2, 2024
This book is a difficult one to judge. The historical scholarship comprising its majority is impressive, even if more could have been done to justify Ryrie's central contention: that atheism is the product of two distinct but intermingling emotional impulses, anger and anxiety. More ought to have been done for this, because the author has simply failed to take his reference material seriously enough.
If one chose to read everything in this book apart from its last chapter, they would have reason to feel impressed. Maybe it is not an academically strong text, but it is at least well written and makes an intriguing point which is increasing in popularity (that historians of atheism have started in the wrong place by beginning with intellectual pronouncements of atheism, instead of treating it first as a social and affective phenomenon).
The last chapter can be, and maybe even ought to have been, omitted entirely. Ryrie has said that reading John Gray's 'Seven Types of Atheism' helped him to compose the final part. If that is so, Gray's work is an obviously negative influence. The problem is not that I disagree with Gray, but that his understanding of his subject matter is so poor that disagreement with him is not even edifying. The same cannot be said of Ryrie at least.
Some things struck me in particular in the last chapter, apart from what seemed to me an outdated conception of modern culture which may be the product of his parochial focus as an Anglican priest. One of these is his claim that the morally positive figure of Christ has since been replaced by the strictly morally negative figure of Hitler. I think this is too superficial an assessment. Hitlerism was not historically unique. As Aime Cesaire once argued, fascism was the deployment of strategies upon the people of Europe which Europeans had been inflicting on the people of their colonies. In my experience at least, people often recognise that Nazism was not an unpredictable break in the causal network of international politics, but the fulfilment of an order which is still with us today. And, Ryrie seems to see this too, with his recognition of the complicity of many Churches and religious organisations in the rise of Nazism.
This leads me to one last point. Ryrie suggests that the accusation today of 'Nazi' or 'fascist' is equivalent to the historical accusation of 'atheist.' At a glance, this seems right. Both are, in their historical context, seen as unequivocally bad things to be associated with. But I am of a very different opinion. Accusations of atheism were usually meaningless. Maybe someone will want to say that accusations today of fascism are similarly meaningless (I would disagree). But the closer parallel is between accusations of fascism today and accusations of *tyranny* in the past. To be accused of tyranny in the 18th century was not meaningless: it meant being recognised as an agent of a ruling order whose existence produces death on a(n pre-)industrial scale. Someone accused of atheism was accused of corroding the ruling order. Someone accused of fascism or tyranny is accused of protecting it.
If one chose to read everything in this book apart from its last chapter, they would have reason to feel impressed. Maybe it is not an academically strong text, but it is at least well written and makes an intriguing point which is increasing in popularity (that historians of atheism have started in the wrong place by beginning with intellectual pronouncements of atheism, instead of treating it first as a social and affective phenomenon).
The last chapter can be, and maybe even ought to have been, omitted entirely. Ryrie has said that reading John Gray's 'Seven Types of Atheism' helped him to compose the final part. If that is so, Gray's work is an obviously negative influence. The problem is not that I disagree with Gray, but that his understanding of his subject matter is so poor that disagreement with him is not even edifying. The same cannot be said of Ryrie at least.
Some things struck me in particular in the last chapter, apart from what seemed to me an outdated conception of modern culture which may be the product of his parochial focus as an Anglican priest. One of these is his claim that the morally positive figure of Christ has since been replaced by the strictly morally negative figure of Hitler. I think this is too superficial an assessment. Hitlerism was not historically unique. As Aime Cesaire once argued, fascism was the deployment of strategies upon the people of Europe which Europeans had been inflicting on the people of their colonies. In my experience at least, people often recognise that Nazism was not an unpredictable break in the causal network of international politics, but the fulfilment of an order which is still with us today. And, Ryrie seems to see this too, with his recognition of the complicity of many Churches and religious organisations in the rise of Nazism.
This leads me to one last point. Ryrie suggests that the accusation today of 'Nazi' or 'fascist' is equivalent to the historical accusation of 'atheist.' At a glance, this seems right. Both are, in their historical context, seen as unequivocally bad things to be associated with. But I am of a very different opinion. Accusations of atheism were usually meaningless. Maybe someone will want to say that accusations today of fascism are similarly meaningless (I would disagree). But the closer parallel is between accusations of fascism today and accusations of *tyranny* in the past. To be accused of tyranny in the 18th century was not meaningless: it meant being recognised as an agent of a ruling order whose existence produces death on a(n pre-)industrial scale. Someone accused of atheism was accused of corroding the ruling order. Someone accused of fascism or tyranny is accused of protecting it.
July 23, 2024
A lot of people in the west no longer believe in God, or in Christianity. A common belief, Ryrie writes, is that with Darwin, an explanation for the origins of life without God was provided, thinkers and philosophers have chimed in, and it’s just taken time for the wider culture to catch up. Ryrie believes, though, that for most people, religious belief is an intuitive and inarticulate one. When religion, for whatever reason, has no tangible effect on peoples’ lives, they simply abandon their beliefs. No intellectual reasoning is required.
Much of the book is a survey of how this condition came about. It’s nothing new and goes back 500 years or so . It’s a question of emphasizing belief and doubt in terms of emotions, a condition that often doesn’t get much addressed. However, Ryrie finds the years around 1660 to be a period when it was talked about, maybe for the first time. The Reformation moved people to a new type of religious practice, one much more self-centered than the old one of ritual and priestly intermediaries, but during this period there was an outburst of skepticism about any form of religious practice having much value.
The author is most interesting, I thought, in talking about contemporary times, specifically World War II and its aftermath. WW II was a a moral test which failed in that many churches and Christians found no fault with Nazism and Fascism.
Ironically, Ryrie contends, the post-war west no longer took its moral bearings from Christ, but from Adolph Hitler who became the reference point by which evil is defined. Cruelty, discrimination, and murder are absolute wrong, more powerful as images than Christianity’s images of love, the cross, being a good example. Ryrie writes, “There is no visual image which now packs as visceral an emotional punch as a swastika.” He adds, “Perhaps we still believe that God is good, but we believe with more fervor and conviction that Nazism is evil.” In popular culture our most potent myths are those of Darth Vader and Harry Potter’s Lord Voldemort. True, the forces of good, vaguely Christian, combat them, but it’s the dark figures that haunt our imaginations.
It’s important to emphasize that this is not a question of truth or falsity, rather one of how people feel, when they consider, if at all, how they do feel, about religion. Ryrie has a term, “practical atheist”, for people for whom religion and a belief in God are not disputed, but whose lives are not connected in any meaningful way to what is called religion. What that meaningfulness would look like poses interesting questions but they go beyond the scope of this book. It’s not about believers, or even “anti” or “non” believers which would involve some intellectual dissent, but rather “un” believers who drift away.
Much of the book is a survey of how this condition came about. It’s nothing new and goes back 500 years or so . It’s a question of emphasizing belief and doubt in terms of emotions, a condition that often doesn’t get much addressed. However, Ryrie finds the years around 1660 to be a period when it was talked about, maybe for the first time. The Reformation moved people to a new type of religious practice, one much more self-centered than the old one of ritual and priestly intermediaries, but during this period there was an outburst of skepticism about any form of religious practice having much value.
The author is most interesting, I thought, in talking about contemporary times, specifically World War II and its aftermath. WW II was a a moral test which failed in that many churches and Christians found no fault with Nazism and Fascism.
Ironically, Ryrie contends, the post-war west no longer took its moral bearings from Christ, but from Adolph Hitler who became the reference point by which evil is defined. Cruelty, discrimination, and murder are absolute wrong, more powerful as images than Christianity’s images of love, the cross, being a good example. Ryrie writes, “There is no visual image which now packs as visceral an emotional punch as a swastika.” He adds, “Perhaps we still believe that God is good, but we believe with more fervor and conviction that Nazism is evil.” In popular culture our most potent myths are those of Darth Vader and Harry Potter’s Lord Voldemort. True, the forces of good, vaguely Christian, combat them, but it’s the dark figures that haunt our imaginations.
It’s important to emphasize that this is not a question of truth or falsity, rather one of how people feel, when they consider, if at all, how they do feel, about religion. Ryrie has a term, “practical atheist”, for people for whom religion and a belief in God are not disputed, but whose lives are not connected in any meaningful way to what is called religion. What that meaningfulness would look like poses interesting questions but they go beyond the scope of this book. It’s not about believers, or even “anti” or “non” believers which would involve some intellectual dissent, but rather “un” believers who drift away.
September 20, 2020
Alec Ryrie is an expert on the history of Protestants. In this book, he explored how atheism - not as a system of philosophical ideas but as a world view - evolved into the mainstream. He synthesized historical materials mostly from early modern England. He concluded that Anger and Anxiety as two emotional forces that shaped and continued to shape society (thus the “Emotional History of Doubt”.
Ryrie did a great job writing a very readable, yet deeply thoughtful book. However, as I see it, the treatise summed not to an emotional history, but rather a shattering of social norms catalyzed by the Protestant Reformation. While Christianity was the accepted social norm in the pre-modern periods, atheism always existed, even among the self-claimed believers. As Ryrie pointed out, atheism was particularly rampant among highly educated groups such as physicians - who mostly held naturalist views. Just like the Trump supporters of present day America, atheists had a bad name back then and many of them remained in closets. At the end of the day, Christianity - a revealed religion with its particular set of historical claims such as Bodily Resurrection - does not make intuitive sense to the common mind. Therefore it is conceivable that doubt was perhaps a common phenomenon.
However, those private reservations against Christian beliefs became increasingly public as the Protestant Reformation openly contested doctrinal beliefs. Amidst the competition for market share among a plethora of Protestant groups, even the previous pious became desperate for a sound world view. Who can be saved? How can one be saved? These are no trivial issues. But once the Cathlic Church’s authority was put on trial, the “seekers” became literally lost in conflicting theories. The ultimate desperation, at least in some cases, was putting aside Christianity all together and accepting atheism. Ryrie’s synthesis of events inevitably pointed to the Protestant Reformation as the culprit. As Christianity fragmented, the society slowly shifted. Atheism gradually lost its negative connotations and became pari passu with other belief systems. The closet non-believers safely exited their closets.
The book is quite dense in certain times, but overall Ryrie wrote a very engaging account of how religious views shifted in the society. Although the conclusions are not airtight, the materials generally supported his arguments well. I think It is a good book to reflect on.
Ryrie did a great job writing a very readable, yet deeply thoughtful book. However, as I see it, the treatise summed not to an emotional history, but rather a shattering of social norms catalyzed by the Protestant Reformation. While Christianity was the accepted social norm in the pre-modern periods, atheism always existed, even among the self-claimed believers. As Ryrie pointed out, atheism was particularly rampant among highly educated groups such as physicians - who mostly held naturalist views. Just like the Trump supporters of present day America, atheists had a bad name back then and many of them remained in closets. At the end of the day, Christianity - a revealed religion with its particular set of historical claims such as Bodily Resurrection - does not make intuitive sense to the common mind. Therefore it is conceivable that doubt was perhaps a common phenomenon.
However, those private reservations against Christian beliefs became increasingly public as the Protestant Reformation openly contested doctrinal beliefs. Amidst the competition for market share among a plethora of Protestant groups, even the previous pious became desperate for a sound world view. Who can be saved? How can one be saved? These are no trivial issues. But once the Cathlic Church’s authority was put on trial, the “seekers” became literally lost in conflicting theories. The ultimate desperation, at least in some cases, was putting aside Christianity all together and accepting atheism. Ryrie’s synthesis of events inevitably pointed to the Protestant Reformation as the culprit. As Christianity fragmented, the society slowly shifted. Atheism gradually lost its negative connotations and became pari passu with other belief systems. The closet non-believers safely exited their closets.
The book is quite dense in certain times, but overall Ryrie wrote a very engaging account of how religious views shifted in the society. Although the conclusions are not airtight, the materials generally supported his arguments well. I think It is a good book to reflect on.
March 5, 2023
The only part of this book that held even a sliver of my interest was the conclusion.
June 10, 2024
Very good, very interesting. Truly a history and never an attempt to persuade in either direction. Lots and lots of insight and quotes.
May 6, 2024
A friend told me I wouldn't like this book.
He was right.
He was right.
January 20, 2020
The best pages are the last ones, when Ryrie finally engages, for a few pages, with the growing number of people who claim no religion and examines why this is. Put another way: Hitler was the best part of this book.
April 11, 2025
Alec Ryrie has written a fascinating and engaging book. I think there is a lot to be said for the overall thesis: The move towards atheism and secularism in western societies has not been driven primarily by a heady intellectualism. It is more raw and emotional, caused by political struggles, personal anxieties, and other elements that are more experiential. There is greater realism to this than that old self-congratulatory schtick about 'the brights' becoming 'enlightened' after the 'dark ages' by the 'light of reason'.
Paulos Gregorios is right; the little light of our reason has blinded us to the stars overhead.
Alec's book could be read alongside aforementioned, Charles Taylor's Secular Age, Michael Horton's history of the 'spiritual but not religious' and Ivan Illich's work to get a much more well-rounded and realistic picture. (Let me add David Cayley's series on 'The Myth of the Secular' to those mentioned.)
By examining a mixture of public and private writings and correspondences, under an array of different conditions, Ryrie has managed to identify patterns of 'unbelief' which are often more heretical, or anti-clerical, emotional rather than intellectual, and lacking in metaphysical or theological awareness, or concern. These patterns can be seen in folks whom we now often assume - anachronistically - are atheist or agnostic and we do project a lot on to them. We might also label them with the lazy suggestion that they were 'anti-religious'.... As if 'religion' is just one thing. This is a reified 'false universal', as Dr Alister McGrath communicates in his new book on Meaning.
Alec brings nuance to the conversation and this is all welcome. I think he understates how thoroughly Christian Shakespeare was, even when its not obvious. Joseph Pearce, Peter Leithart and co, have identified his orthodox Christian faith in some detail. There are a few details like that, which I think Alec gets wrong, but the main thrust of his book is sound.
In Unbelievers, Alec has also identified a key point about the world since the great wars of the twentieth century. At a societal level, we have turned away from Jesus as a positive exemplar of good and replaced Him with the negative example of Hitler as bad. We now have a negative secularist mythology, that steals portions of the old Christian morality and uses it as a weapon. This is a perversion of a reformation impulse to condemn and critique arbitrary authorities in order to return to a more Biblical understanding. While Ryrie doesn't state this explicitly, I would suggest this is an example of Illich's idea of the corruption of the best is the worst.
This empty rhetoric has long annoyed me, since I used to listen to Christopher Hitchens as a young man. It is incoherent, but can still bind and blind no less than the old sophists. Ryrie reminds us that it is nothing new, as there is nothing new under the sun, and shows that this kind of moralism has been a constant thorn in the side of Christian societies for centuries now.
For fear that more unthinking traditionalist types might use a work like this to strawman the Protestant Christian faith, I think Alec is right to point out that it was not inevitable that the reformation led to secularism. History doesn't work in this one-dimensional and mechanical manner. However, the Reformation did bring different energies and emphases to the fore and opened spaces for a second-naivete, a mature faith which transcends doubt or social mores. Sadly, not everyone could mature in their Christian faith beyond the former socially conditioned naivete of much of Christendom and some got stuck in 'spiritualist' cul de sac's and threw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater - whether sacramental practices, creeds, or what have you.
Alec finishes the book by asking what comes next, as the post war consensus seems to be fading and the 'strong gods' are returning (R.R. Reno). This is a good question and I'm keen to see how he answers it in his book on Hitler.
Paulos Gregorios is right; the little light of our reason has blinded us to the stars overhead.
Alec's book could be read alongside aforementioned, Charles Taylor's Secular Age, Michael Horton's history of the 'spiritual but not religious' and Ivan Illich's work to get a much more well-rounded and realistic picture. (Let me add David Cayley's series on 'The Myth of the Secular' to those mentioned.)
By examining a mixture of public and private writings and correspondences, under an array of different conditions, Ryrie has managed to identify patterns of 'unbelief' which are often more heretical, or anti-clerical, emotional rather than intellectual, and lacking in metaphysical or theological awareness, or concern. These patterns can be seen in folks whom we now often assume - anachronistically - are atheist or agnostic and we do project a lot on to them. We might also label them with the lazy suggestion that they were 'anti-religious'.... As if 'religion' is just one thing. This is a reified 'false universal', as Dr Alister McGrath communicates in his new book on Meaning.
Alec brings nuance to the conversation and this is all welcome. I think he understates how thoroughly Christian Shakespeare was, even when its not obvious. Joseph Pearce, Peter Leithart and co, have identified his orthodox Christian faith in some detail. There are a few details like that, which I think Alec gets wrong, but the main thrust of his book is sound.
In Unbelievers, Alec has also identified a key point about the world since the great wars of the twentieth century. At a societal level, we have turned away from Jesus as a positive exemplar of good and replaced Him with the negative example of Hitler as bad. We now have a negative secularist mythology, that steals portions of the old Christian morality and uses it as a weapon. This is a perversion of a reformation impulse to condemn and critique arbitrary authorities in order to return to a more Biblical understanding. While Ryrie doesn't state this explicitly, I would suggest this is an example of Illich's idea of the corruption of the best is the worst.
This empty rhetoric has long annoyed me, since I used to listen to Christopher Hitchens as a young man. It is incoherent, but can still bind and blind no less than the old sophists. Ryrie reminds us that it is nothing new, as there is nothing new under the sun, and shows that this kind of moralism has been a constant thorn in the side of Christian societies for centuries now.
For fear that more unthinking traditionalist types might use a work like this to strawman the Protestant Christian faith, I think Alec is right to point out that it was not inevitable that the reformation led to secularism. History doesn't work in this one-dimensional and mechanical manner. However, the Reformation did bring different energies and emphases to the fore and opened spaces for a second-naivete, a mature faith which transcends doubt or social mores. Sadly, not everyone could mature in their Christian faith beyond the former socially conditioned naivete of much of Christendom and some got stuck in 'spiritualist' cul de sac's and threw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater - whether sacramental practices, creeds, or what have you.
Alec finishes the book by asking what comes next, as the post war consensus seems to be fading and the 'strong gods' are returning (R.R. Reno). This is a good question and I'm keen to see how he answers it in his book on Hitler.
August 17, 2022
This was a somewhat interesting book, with an unpersuasive beginning but a convincing ending. Ryrie argues that popular emotion and anxiety, not philosophical arguments, drove the Western shift from strident religiosity (particularly Christianity) to secularism over the past 600ish years. This is an interesting argument but not one that he necessarily supports with his evidence.
Ryrie begins his book by articulating the profound impact of the Protestant Reformation on Western society and religiosity. He argues that in the aftermath of the Reformation, Westerners felt liberated to question established orthodoxy, including key Catholic ceremonies such as the doctrine of transubstantiation. Although this questioning does not in of itself constitute atheism, it allowed an unprecedented level of doubt to surface in Western society. Even as Protestants tried to re-emphasize their dedication to God and Christ, Calvinism's very own doctrine of predestination allowed for further religious doubt and disbelief. In a world in which people were predestined to Heaven or Hell, there was very little motivation for those who believed themself doomed to Hell to act within set Christian morals. Thus, though also not entirely atheistic, Calvinist ethics allowed for the evolution of doubt and unbelief in Western (mostly European) society. To Ryrie, from these angry and anxious emotional roots of religious doubt (in both Catholic ceremony and Protestant predestination), scholarly and written sources of doubt and atheism became more prominent throughout Europe.
Although I think this argument is to some extent true, it seems to me that emotional doubt did not lead to philosophical doubt, but rather, emotional and philosophical doubt have always been intertwined. The English Revolution's "Seekers" (many of whom came to view religion largely as a political hoax – potentially out of pent up political anger) were not the historically more important predecessors to Spinoza but were instead, a group that with the help of the philosophical underpinnings of figures like Machiavelli and Spinoza, allowed for the rise of atheism. Fundamentally, I am skeptical of Ryrie's premise that the emotional and the intellectual can be separated.
However, though I was somewhat unconvinced by Ryrie's sharp distinction between the emotional and intellectual, I appreciated his effort to illuminate emotion in guiding and shaping atheism, especially when the usual narrative places this burden on philosophy. I especially liked his point that moral concerns rather than truth claims have always been the primary vehicles behind atheism. I found it particularly convincing that he writes that a shifting collective morality after WWII initiated the modern shift (1950-present) away from Christianity in the West. Although we have continued to embrace some elements of a Christian morale, we now establish morality based on the horrors of war and genocide (ie. condemnation of disaster and horror) rather than a striving toward Christ. We establish morality based on the evil of fascism and genocide rather than the goodness of Jesus and God. I'm not completely sure if I agree with this argument, but it is quite interesting and made this book a worthy read.
Ryrie begins his book by articulating the profound impact of the Protestant Reformation on Western society and religiosity. He argues that in the aftermath of the Reformation, Westerners felt liberated to question established orthodoxy, including key Catholic ceremonies such as the doctrine of transubstantiation. Although this questioning does not in of itself constitute atheism, it allowed an unprecedented level of doubt to surface in Western society. Even as Protestants tried to re-emphasize their dedication to God and Christ, Calvinism's very own doctrine of predestination allowed for further religious doubt and disbelief. In a world in which people were predestined to Heaven or Hell, there was very little motivation for those who believed themself doomed to Hell to act within set Christian morals. Thus, though also not entirely atheistic, Calvinist ethics allowed for the evolution of doubt and unbelief in Western (mostly European) society. To Ryrie, from these angry and anxious emotional roots of religious doubt (in both Catholic ceremony and Protestant predestination), scholarly and written sources of doubt and atheism became more prominent throughout Europe.
Although I think this argument is to some extent true, it seems to me that emotional doubt did not lead to philosophical doubt, but rather, emotional and philosophical doubt have always been intertwined. The English Revolution's "Seekers" (many of whom came to view religion largely as a political hoax – potentially out of pent up political anger) were not the historically more important predecessors to Spinoza but were instead, a group that with the help of the philosophical underpinnings of figures like Machiavelli and Spinoza, allowed for the rise of atheism. Fundamentally, I am skeptical of Ryrie's premise that the emotional and the intellectual can be separated.
However, though I was somewhat unconvinced by Ryrie's sharp distinction between the emotional and intellectual, I appreciated his effort to illuminate emotion in guiding and shaping atheism, especially when the usual narrative places this burden on philosophy. I especially liked his point that moral concerns rather than truth claims have always been the primary vehicles behind atheism. I found it particularly convincing that he writes that a shifting collective morality after WWII initiated the modern shift (1950-present) away from Christianity in the West. Although we have continued to embrace some elements of a Christian morale, we now establish morality based on the horrors of war and genocide (ie. condemnation of disaster and horror) rather than a striving toward Christ. We establish morality based on the evil of fascism and genocide rather than the goodness of Jesus and God. I'm not completely sure if I agree with this argument, but it is quite interesting and made this book a worthy read.
March 19, 2022
"The heart has its reasons which reason knows not." (You'll see variations on this memorable quote by Blaise Pascal because it was originally written in French: "Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.")
This book is in some ways an in-depth historical exploration of that statement and the truth it is getting at. The author, historian Alec Ryrie, states explicitly that he seeks to counter the prevalent narrative that atheism and secular humanism arose from changes in philosophical reasoning and intellectual beliefs. Rather, he argues that two powerful emotional currents - anger and fear - animated unbelief for centuries before it ever emerged as a coherent set of beliefs. In order to make his point, Ryrie garners evidence from across multiple centuries and the whole of Europe (with a special emphasis on England).
The historical work seems sound to this layman. Ryrie has unearthed dozens of fascinating first-hand accounts. Whatever issues one might take with how Ryrie summarizes the meaning of all the material, I think it's undeniable that he's onto something really worthwhile here. There really does seem to be a powerful emotional current at work in so much unbelief both in the past and today.
I found myself wishing he would apply these insights more thoroughly to our own day. But this was not his stated goal so I cannot fault him for anything except failing to write precisely the book I would have preferred. He does however make some interesting comments in the concluding chapter which are worth repeating and reflecting on.
Ryrie argues that, since WW2, Adolf Hitler now functions as the universally agreed fixed moral point. It is now unthinkable to praise Hitler just like it used to be unthinkable to criticize Jesus in centuries past. This manifests itself in another interesting way also. In the 17th Century, the argument-ending slander was to call someone an "atheist," and Ryrie made clear in previous chapters just how endlessly that insult was hurled from one group to another. Today the argument-ending tactic is to call someone a "Nazi." Lastly, in terms of imagery, the most potent moral symbol in past centuries was the cross. Today it is the swastika.
These reflections are especially timely for us Canadians as some significant political and cultural turmoil related to swastikas and accusations of Nazi-sympathy shook our nation in the first couple months of 2022. It is interesting to step back and see that, in a time of massive moral transformation (one might even say revolution), this is indeed the one fixed moral point. Whatever else we believe is right or wrong, everyone agrees that THAT is wrong. All ends of the political spectrum seem unable to resist the temptation to weaponize that moral certainty to score political points.
This book is in some ways an in-depth historical exploration of that statement and the truth it is getting at. The author, historian Alec Ryrie, states explicitly that he seeks to counter the prevalent narrative that atheism and secular humanism arose from changes in philosophical reasoning and intellectual beliefs. Rather, he argues that two powerful emotional currents - anger and fear - animated unbelief for centuries before it ever emerged as a coherent set of beliefs. In order to make his point, Ryrie garners evidence from across multiple centuries and the whole of Europe (with a special emphasis on England).
The historical work seems sound to this layman. Ryrie has unearthed dozens of fascinating first-hand accounts. Whatever issues one might take with how Ryrie summarizes the meaning of all the material, I think it's undeniable that he's onto something really worthwhile here. There really does seem to be a powerful emotional current at work in so much unbelief both in the past and today.
I found myself wishing he would apply these insights more thoroughly to our own day. But this was not his stated goal so I cannot fault him for anything except failing to write precisely the book I would have preferred. He does however make some interesting comments in the concluding chapter which are worth repeating and reflecting on.
Ryrie argues that, since WW2, Adolf Hitler now functions as the universally agreed fixed moral point. It is now unthinkable to praise Hitler just like it used to be unthinkable to criticize Jesus in centuries past. This manifests itself in another interesting way also. In the 17th Century, the argument-ending slander was to call someone an "atheist," and Ryrie made clear in previous chapters just how endlessly that insult was hurled from one group to another. Today the argument-ending tactic is to call someone a "Nazi." Lastly, in terms of imagery, the most potent moral symbol in past centuries was the cross. Today it is the swastika.
These reflections are especially timely for us Canadians as some significant political and cultural turmoil related to swastikas and accusations of Nazi-sympathy shook our nation in the first couple months of 2022. It is interesting to step back and see that, in a time of massive moral transformation (one might even say revolution), this is indeed the one fixed moral point. Whatever else we believe is right or wrong, everyone agrees that THAT is wrong. All ends of the political spectrum seem unable to resist the temptation to weaponize that moral certainty to score political points.
December 21, 2022
I read this purely on the strength of its earlier sibling Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World which I thought was one of the best books written covering that subject matter. This fact should be kept in mind in case you are reading this to get ammunition in your future arguments against believers.
The book title pretty much covers its contents, this is an emotional history of doubt and if you are looking for dry philosophical treatises against faith you'll have to check elsewhere. The content centers almost exclusively on Christian faith concentrating around the 17th century in areas where protestant faith was sitting side by side with Catholicism. I had suspected the book was a remnant of his research from the earlier book and Alec confirmed the same in his acknowledgements
This is a good book but it requires a particular mindset to enjoy it. It might help if you had been or are a practicing christian and can thereby empathize with the struggles the characters covered in the book are going through. The conversational manner of the book might not sit well with people who speak of this premise or that fallacy but it sat well with me. There are moments of humor like the ensuing chaos when whole communities were undergoing a crisis of faith and charlatans arose claiming to be the new disciples, one even claimed to be John the Baptist.
Faith and the notion of God is a complex topic with lots of nuance and shepherding by personal experience and this should help the potential reader to navigate through the book, still it's a good book though I suspect it to be a niche read. Highly recommended.
The book title pretty much covers its contents, this is an emotional history of doubt and if you are looking for dry philosophical treatises against faith you'll have to check elsewhere. The content centers almost exclusively on Christian faith concentrating around the 17th century in areas where protestant faith was sitting side by side with Catholicism. I had suspected the book was a remnant of his research from the earlier book and Alec confirmed the same in his acknowledgements
This is a good book but it requires a particular mindset to enjoy it. It might help if you had been or are a practicing christian and can thereby empathize with the struggles the characters covered in the book are going through. The conversational manner of the book might not sit well with people who speak of this premise or that fallacy but it sat well with me. There are moments of humor like the ensuing chaos when whole communities were undergoing a crisis of faith and charlatans arose claiming to be the new disciples, one even claimed to be John the Baptist.
Faith and the notion of God is a complex topic with lots of nuance and shepherding by personal experience and this should help the potential reader to navigate through the book, still it's a good book though I suspect it to be a niche read. Highly recommended.
January 15, 2021
Alec Ryrie is a readable and incisive historian of whom we should hear more. His large, and excellent, volume Protestants is followed up by a smaller companion book that covers much of the same period although from the obverse of the coin (or perhaps not even that).
Eschewing an intellectual history of atheism, of which there have been a slew over recent years, Unbelievers seeks to get under the skin of early modern "atheism" (a word that until the late seventeenth century should always be treated with caution. He divines two causes or aspects of doubt, or unbelief: anger and anxiety. The former is more familiar to us and perhaps fulfils our own stereotype of the die-hard atheist - bitter towards the church, God and all forms of organised religion. The second, more unfamiliar to us but perhaps more significant in the long run, is the existential angst and spiritual uncertainty caused by the unmooring of Protestantism from Catholicism and the freedom to live or be damned by one's own beliefs or doubts. As Ryrie puts it so well, whereas some doubting Protestants fought Giant Despair, Bunyan-style, and overcame, others in digging down to the foundations did not find the bedrock that they sought.
This then, is not a history of Bayle, Spinoza and the French Philosophes. It ends in 1660 before the full flourishing of atheism became evident. It is an analysis of the causes of doubt and spiritual uncertainty in early Modern England, a survey of the terrain in which full-blown unbelief would find its roots 200 years later.
The final chapter is excellent. Ryrie is very good on modern cultural analysis from a historical perspective, but knowing that his strengths lie in the early modern period wisely keeps his analysis brief.
Eschewing an intellectual history of atheism, of which there have been a slew over recent years, Unbelievers seeks to get under the skin of early modern "atheism" (a word that until the late seventeenth century should always be treated with caution. He divines two causes or aspects of doubt, or unbelief: anger and anxiety. The former is more familiar to us and perhaps fulfils our own stereotype of the die-hard atheist - bitter towards the church, God and all forms of organised religion. The second, more unfamiliar to us but perhaps more significant in the long run, is the existential angst and spiritual uncertainty caused by the unmooring of Protestantism from Catholicism and the freedom to live or be damned by one's own beliefs or doubts. As Ryrie puts it so well, whereas some doubting Protestants fought Giant Despair, Bunyan-style, and overcame, others in digging down to the foundations did not find the bedrock that they sought.
This then, is not a history of Bayle, Spinoza and the French Philosophes. It ends in 1660 before the full flourishing of atheism became evident. It is an analysis of the causes of doubt and spiritual uncertainty in early Modern England, a survey of the terrain in which full-blown unbelief would find its roots 200 years later.
The final chapter is excellent. Ryrie is very good on modern cultural analysis from a historical perspective, but knowing that his strengths lie in the early modern period wisely keeps his analysis brief.
August 19, 2023
When I was young my life was marred by religion. Son of a devoted father and Opus Dei member, I had no choice but to follow the precepts to avoid being beaten, harassed or even thrown out of my house. Thus I was a missionary, I belonged to various Christian groups, a religion teacher and an avid reader of ecclesiastical materials.
The bad examples, the hypocrisy of the Catholic hierarchs, my discovery of other religious forms and the lack of added value that all my old beliefs brought me, made me distance myself from the Catholic religion (and from all others) forever.
This book marks the process of why humanity has moved away from religion (at least the West) in such a way that today those who profess a religion are a minority in many countries and devotees are being lost every day.
God was an excellent invention that kept control of people for many centuries, but now it seems unnecessary, as men agree on laws and ways of living that would have seemed impossible before.
Today those who are religious or those who are not are not persecuted. According to the author, what changed everything was the Second World War. Before, Jesus was a benchmark of goodness and an example to follow. Today Hitler and Nazi ideas are a reference and an example of what not to do: racism, destruction of the opposite, etc.
The bad thing is that the idea has not reached many peoples, and they continue with old and primitive ideas of evil and destruction of those who do not think like them.
Personally, one of the advantages and values of this historic moment for me is the total freedom to think and profess the religion that one wishes. And so, I respect those who think differently and I have Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist and of course atheist friends.
The bad examples, the hypocrisy of the Catholic hierarchs, my discovery of other religious forms and the lack of added value that all my old beliefs brought me, made me distance myself from the Catholic religion (and from all others) forever.
This book marks the process of why humanity has moved away from religion (at least the West) in such a way that today those who profess a religion are a minority in many countries and devotees are being lost every day.
God was an excellent invention that kept control of people for many centuries, but now it seems unnecessary, as men agree on laws and ways of living that would have seemed impossible before.
Today those who are religious or those who are not are not persecuted. According to the author, what changed everything was the Second World War. Before, Jesus was a benchmark of goodness and an example to follow. Today Hitler and Nazi ideas are a reference and an example of what not to do: racism, destruction of the opposite, etc.
The bad thing is that the idea has not reached many peoples, and they continue with old and primitive ideas of evil and destruction of those who do not think like them.
Personally, one of the advantages and values of this historic moment for me is the total freedom to think and profess the religion that one wishes. And so, I respect those who think differently and I have Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist and of course atheist friends.
December 11, 2021
The author wants to undercut the more conservative religious narrative that Christendom has been eroded by modern humanist thought and all those pesky kids who didn’t vote for Trump or Brexit by showing that doubt has always been there. He succeeds in this to a degree - the relatively limited literacy in the Middle Ages means that the voices of the educated are those we hear most of still but this is a history of doubt rather than atheism.
The journey is fascinating, and in terms of showing that doubt historically is emotional / psychological as much as rational , yes, I can concur. It’s good to show that doubt didn’t begin with Rousseau and Darwin. Like Dostoevsky’s inquisitor , who gets much airtime here, who argued that people don’t really want freedom, the author argues that the reformation gathered pace by offering choice, and splintering old certainties. Maybe. That isn’t a new argument though. And refreshingly, as a Protestant writer, he’s not afraid to say that the churches moral failings have played their part, which we believers can’t hide from.
The Bible commends kindness to doubters. The psalms tell us the fool says there is no God. Agree with that or not as you see fit but it shows doubt has always dwelt alongside faith.
I think those who criticise the book for not treating unbelief as more rational have missed its point - it is making a point about his doubt can be rooted in human fear, anger and uncertainty rather than just rationally thought out argument. It’s thoughtful and for those of us who’ve had a belly full of the madness of crowds narrative , this is a good nuanced take.
The journey is fascinating, and in terms of showing that doubt historically is emotional / psychological as much as rational , yes, I can concur. It’s good to show that doubt didn’t begin with Rousseau and Darwin. Like Dostoevsky’s inquisitor , who gets much airtime here, who argued that people don’t really want freedom, the author argues that the reformation gathered pace by offering choice, and splintering old certainties. Maybe. That isn’t a new argument though. And refreshingly, as a Protestant writer, he’s not afraid to say that the churches moral failings have played their part, which we believers can’t hide from.
The Bible commends kindness to doubters. The psalms tell us the fool says there is no God. Agree with that or not as you see fit but it shows doubt has always dwelt alongside faith.
I think those who criticise the book for not treating unbelief as more rational have missed its point - it is making a point about his doubt can be rooted in human fear, anger and uncertainty rather than just rationally thought out argument. It’s thoughtful and for those of us who’ve had a belly full of the madness of crowds narrative , this is a good nuanced take.
April 16, 2024
Informative, but myopic in the way Christian screeds usually are. The author seems to imagine that skeptics are Christianity's chief antagonist. In fact, it's probably apathy that's undermining religion in the western world. In the US (long the most religious western country), close to half of people now rank religion as being low priority or of no importance at all to them. That number has risen dramatically in recent years -- more quickly than social trends usually shift. Which suggests that many respondents may not have cared much about religion in the first place, but now feel freer to say so. Even those who mouth pieties when questioned by pollsters often seem unwilling to bestir themselves on Sunday morning, as declining attendance and membership figures show.
The author also seems uninformed about genuine atheist scholarship. Or maybe he's just straw-manning atheists, hoping his Christian readers won't notice. For example, he mentions Joseph Atwill's ridiculous _ Caesar's Messiah_, but fails to note Richard Carrier's much better researched _On the Historicity of Jesus_.
Meanwhile, the spiritual action that remains among the non-geriatric seems to involve either Pentecostal looniness (for the poor and less educated) or New Age fruitcakery (for the middle classes). Which is OK by me. As long as there are many competing cults, none of them is likely to gain enough power to burn me at the stake.
The author also seems uninformed about genuine atheist scholarship. Or maybe he's just straw-manning atheists, hoping his Christian readers won't notice. For example, he mentions Joseph Atwill's ridiculous _ Caesar's Messiah_, but fails to note Richard Carrier's much better researched _On the Historicity of Jesus_.
Meanwhile, the spiritual action that remains among the non-geriatric seems to involve either Pentecostal looniness (for the poor and less educated) or New Age fruitcakery (for the middle classes). Which is OK by me. As long as there are many competing cults, none of them is likely to gain enough power to burn me at the stake.
November 27, 2022
While I can uncategorically recommend Ryrie's Youtube series from Gresham College on the history of atheism, I find the presentation in book form slightly less compelling. It's undoubtedly done well, but his own narration on Youtube gives it verve and scope.
I was hoping to gain insight in this book to something Ryrie mentions in his talks, that the history of unbelief is not one where the philosophers and rationalists proposed arguments, and then suddenly atheism made sense - but rather that it's the other way around. People were emotionally not connecting with theism, and then found rational reasons to explain it.
I think it's a very potent point, and really wanted to dive into an analysis of what makes people have these emotional pivot-points that they then try to make sense of. But this book focuses much more on presenting a cogent argument that chronologically it is the case - rather than digging into why. I think he proves that point very well and charismatically. It just isn't the following on to the next step which I was really hoping to find.
His summary of the two pulling forces, though, I find nothing less than brilliant - "The conundrum that our lives feel as if they mean something, while the world looks as if it means nothing, confronted them as it confronts us all."
I was hoping to gain insight in this book to something Ryrie mentions in his talks, that the history of unbelief is not one where the philosophers and rationalists proposed arguments, and then suddenly atheism made sense - but rather that it's the other way around. People were emotionally not connecting with theism, and then found rational reasons to explain it.
I think it's a very potent point, and really wanted to dive into an analysis of what makes people have these emotional pivot-points that they then try to make sense of. But this book focuses much more on presenting a cogent argument that chronologically it is the case - rather than digging into why. I think he proves that point very well and charismatically. It just isn't the following on to the next step which I was really hoping to find.
His summary of the two pulling forces, though, I find nothing less than brilliant - "The conundrum that our lives feel as if they mean something, while the world looks as if it means nothing, confronted them as it confronts us all."
August 3, 2020
A well-written, engaging story with many vignettes along the way. Ryrie argues that as impressive as rational arguments for and against the existence of God might be, most people have become unbelievers for emotional reasons. He names two that have ancient historical roots: anger (especially at religious institutions, rather than at God) and anxiety (especially surrounding how one can know this or that, given the many opinions out there).
So, well done. I was disappointed in the book's ending, however. He offers, in brief, an analysis of secular society's turn away from the church, and it largely abandons the foundations he has laid in anger and anxiety. He roots modern unbelief (as indeed many others have) in a society-wide reaction against Nazism as the ultimate evil, and the adoption of an anti-nazi sort of humanism (as an intuition) instead. Perhaps Ryrie is correct. But it doesn't connect with the rest of the book. I'd have preferred a longer explanation of how history and myth-making make or unmake faith.
Still, a good read. Loved the research, the voices from the past, the attempt to give other than scholars their voices. All the while mixing in how scholars made an impact emotionally as well. Read this!
So, well done. I was disappointed in the book's ending, however. He offers, in brief, an analysis of secular society's turn away from the church, and it largely abandons the foundations he has laid in anger and anxiety. He roots modern unbelief (as indeed many others have) in a society-wide reaction against Nazism as the ultimate evil, and the adoption of an anti-nazi sort of humanism (as an intuition) instead. Perhaps Ryrie is correct. But it doesn't connect with the rest of the book. I'd have preferred a longer explanation of how history and myth-making make or unmake faith.
Still, a good read. Loved the research, the voices from the past, the attempt to give other than scholars their voices. All the while mixing in how scholars made an impact emotionally as well. Read this!
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