Areopagus Book Review Forum Presents . . .

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Areopagus Book Review Forum Presents . . .
The Twilight of Atheism By Alister McGrath
Presented by Dennis Fuller
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The Empires of the Future will be Empires of the
Mind Winston Churchill

• Alister McGrath says that the greatest empire of
  the modern mind is Atheism.

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• This Book will not settle anything but at least
  it can further discussion of one of the greatest
  issues of our time. (P. xiii)

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• The book is not traditional apologetic theology,
  but instead examines how Atheism has failed to
  deliver on the promises of its proponents.
• Our story concerns those who believed the only
  way to liberate humanity from its bondage was to
  launch an attack on the institution that was the
  ultimate cause of the oppression the Church.
  (P.11)

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• The Seventeenth Century
• The role of religion in public life
• begins to change

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• The English Civil War (1642-49)
• Monarchy is overthrown and the Puritan
  Commonwealth imposes unpopular religious
  prohibitions. When the Monarchy is restored,
  England adopts its own principles of church-state
  separation.
• Under Charles II.The Church of England would be
  expected to be submissive to the expectations of
  the people. (P.13)

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• Letter Concerning Toleration
• John Locke, 1689
• Freedom of conscience and religious expression
• Avoid use of force in religious matters
• Limit religions involvement in public life

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• The Age of Enlightenment
• By the 18th Century, Atheism was seen as one of
  its crowning achievements

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• John Wesley and Pietism
• Atheisms advance was forestalled by Wesley and
  others who promoted a deeply personal faith,
  independent of the institutional church. Thus it
  became possible to criticize the Church while
  valuing the faith it embodied.

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• The Golden Age of Atheism
• From the Bastille to the Berlin Wall

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• The French Revolution, 1789
• Hostility toward the King and the Church
• The new state of mind wished to be grounded in
  nature and reason

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• Voltaire
• Critic of a Corrupt Church
• Voltaire, along with Rousseau and Diderot, were
• Deists who called for a Natural Religion
  free of an institutional church.
• Voltaire is often misidentified as an atheist,
  while a careful study of his writings reveal that
  he didnt reject God but only the French Catholic
  Church

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• The American Revolution
• Radical Reform without Atheism
• Americans demanded the purification of religion,
  not its elimination.

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• The Rise of French Atheism
• La Mettrie, dHolbach and Helvetius were truly
  atheistic writers of of enlightenment France.
  They saw a scientific worldview as invariably
  leading to atheism.

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• Rene Descartes
• Founded philosophical modernity
• Established a criterion for scientific truth
• Attempted to prove God with scientific certainty
  
• The English experience suggested that nobody
  really doubted the existence of God until
  theologians tried to prove it. (P.31)

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• The French revolution established the seeds of
  change, inviting radical new ideas. Three major
  atheistic figures arose in Europe
• Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-72)
• Karl Marx (1818-83)
• Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• Feuerbach God as Invention
• The Christian belief in Heaven, Feuerbach
  argued, thus impoverishes the one and only life
  we have by distracting us from its joys and
  concerns (P. 54)

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• Marx God as an Opiate
• The idea of God is a human attempt to cope with
  the harshness of material life and the pain
  resulting from social and economic deprivation.
  (P.63)

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• Freud God as Illusion
• For Freud, religious ideas are Illusions,
  fulfillments of the oldest, strongest and most
  urgent wishes of mankind. . (P.69)

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• Warfare Science vs. Theology
• Misrepresenting Christians and Christianity (P.80)

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• The Natural Sciences and an
• Atheistic Worldview
• Three Major Aspects (P.83)
• The Natural Sciences are seen as liberators
• Science is believed to offer conclusive proof
• Darwinism is seen as necessitating Atheism

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• A Failure of the Religious Imagination
• The Victorian Crisis of Faith

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• The Death of God
• The Dream of a Godless Culture
• Dostoyevsky
• Nietzsche
• Camus
• Liberal Christianity
• The Atheist State

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• The Unexpected Resurgence of Religion

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• The Authors Journey from Atheist to Christian

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• The Stalled Case against God

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• The Suffering of the World and Atheism

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• The Atheists Revolt

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• End of Empire
• The Fading Appeal of Atheism

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• McGraths Critics

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath

• Discussion and Conclusion

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The Twilight of Atheism-McGrath
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