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Unbelievers : an emotional history of doubt / Alec Ryrie.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Cambridge, Massachusetts. : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, [2019]Copyright date: ©2019Edition: First Harvard University Press editionDescription: 262 pages ; 22 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780674241824
  • 0674241827
Subject(s):
Contents:
1. An age of suspicion: Impostors, drunkards and flat-earthers -- The fool's heart -- Physicians, 'naturians' and 'Nulla fidians' -- From ancient to modern -- 2. The Reformation and the battle for credulity: Calvin and the Epicures -- Between superstition and impiety -- 'Doubt wisely': from innocence to experience -- 3. The atheist's comedy: Incest, thunder and wishful thinking -- Shaking off the yoke -- The good atheist -- 4. The Puritan atheist: 'The monster of the creation' -- Horrid temptations -- Fear of flying -- Unbelievers -- 5. Seeking and losing faith: 'It's a great matter to believe there is a God' -- The spiritualists' progress -- Farther up and farther in -- Seeking a rock to build on -- 6. The abolition of God: The three impostors -- From then to now, I: anger -- From then to now, II: anxiety -- From Jesus to Hitler.
Summary: "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"-- Provided by publisher.
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Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 211.709 R995 Available 33111009551603
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

"How has unbelief come to dominate so many Western societies? The usual account invokes the advance of science and rational knowledge. Ryrie's alternative, in which emotions are the driving force, offers new and interesting insights into our past and present."--Charles Taylor, author of A Secular Age

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.

"First published in Great Britain in 2019 by William Collins"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"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"-- Provided by publisher.

1. An age of suspicion: Impostors, drunkards and flat-earthers -- The fool's heart -- Physicians, 'naturians' and 'Nulla fidians' -- From ancient to modern -- 2. The Reformation and the battle for credulity: Calvin and the Epicures -- Between superstition and impiety -- 'Doubt wisely': from innocence to experience -- 3. The atheist's comedy: Incest, thunder and wishful thinking -- Shaking off the yoke -- The good atheist -- 4. The Puritan atheist: 'The monster of the creation' -- Horrid temptations -- Fear of flying -- Unbelievers -- 5. Seeking and losing faith: 'It's a great matter to believe there is a God' -- The spiritualists' progress -- Farther up and farther in -- Seeking a rock to build on -- 6. The abolition of God: The three impostors -- From then to now, I: anger -- From then to now, II: anxiety -- From Jesus to Hitler.

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