Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt

Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt
Alec Ryrie

Why have Western societies that were once overwhelmingly Christian become so secular? Looking to the feelings and faith of ordinary people, the award-winning author of Protestants Alec Ryrie offers a bold new history of atheism. We think we know the history of faith: how the ratio of Christian believers has declined and a secular age dawned. In this startlingly original history, Alex Ryrie puts faith in the dock to explore how religious belief didn’t just fade away. Rather, atheism bloomed as a belief system in its own right. Unbelievers looks back to the middle ages when it seemed impossible not to subscribe to Christianity, through the crisis of the Reformation and to the powerful, challenging cultural currents of the centuries since. As this history shows, the religious journey of the Western world was lived and steered not just by published philosophy and the celebrated thinkers of the day – the Machiavellis and Michel de Montaignes – but by men and women at every level of society. Their voices and feelings permeate this book in the form of diaries, letters and court records. Tracing the roots of atheism, Ryrie shows that our emotional responses to the times can lead faith to wax and wane: anger at a corrupt priest or anxiety in a turbulent moment spark religious doubt as powerfully as any intellectual revolution. With Christianity under contest and ethical redefinitions becoming more and more significant, Unbelievers shows that to understand how something as intuitive as belief is shaped over time, we must look to an emotional history – one with potent lessons for our still angry and anxious age.

UNBELIEVERS

An Emotional History of Doubt

Alec Ryrie

Copyright (#ulink_abf72be3-7c2e-52d6-8f1d-4819ee46e1a3)

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com (http://www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com)

This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2019

Copyright © Alec Ryrie 2019

Cover design by Jack Smyth

Cover images © Shutterstock

Alec Ryrie asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780008299811

Ebook Edition © October 2019 ISBN: 9780008299835

Version: 2019-09-23

Dedication (#uf1acb4c3-c5e7-55ce-8589-553f51a697c0)

for Victoria, my believer

Epigraph (#uf1acb4c3-c5e7-55ce-8589-553f51a697c0)

‘Most of us, I suspect … make an instinctive decision, then build up an infrastructure of reasoning to justify it. And call the result common sense.’

Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

Contents

Cover (#u37be014b-abaf-5bd6-b44c-eb37a5df0ac0)

Title Page (#uc8e1f9b3-dee8-588c-b996-7829f878018e)

Copyright (#uc409f34c-c76d-53c5-82b2-9eeb31561ec1)

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction (#u7885a98c-20ad-5497-8257-4bd0d0591d10)

1. An Age of Suspicion (#ue6905295-ae72-56e4-8284-bc3f7956c32d)

Impostors, Drunkards and Flat-Earthers (#ulink_2a975e7d-7aca-5a3b-ae4d-6f18faa03080)

The Fool’s Heart (#ulink_9250060e-6802-51b3-be95-7c7d1d5948c7)

Physicians, ‘Naturians’ and ‘Nulla Fidians’ (#ulink_93cd20c8-c9b5-5312-aa25-8cfaf48fddad)

From Ancient to Modern (#ulink_3d3461e5-0192-5fb5-9ea5-bbd3574b989a)

2. The Reformation and the Battle for Credulity (#uedb938a0-176b-50f5-925b-2cbaa97c9dda)

Calvin and the Epicures (#ulink_dd6ff82f-59f5-5596-9641-acf8e83ecba7)

Between Superstition and Impiety (#ulink_69661b41-8a5e-5a8e-8812-1af8381b50f3)

‘Doubt Wisely’: From Innocence to Experience (#ulink_a23763ba-6aba-541a-9dc4-6c68e9f0d57c)

3. The Atheist’s Comedy (#litres_trial_promo)

Incest, Thunder and Wishful Thinking (#litres_trial_promo)

Shaking Off the Yoke (#litres_trial_promo)

The Good Atheist (#litres_trial_promo)

4. The Puritan Atheist (#litres_trial_promo)

‘The Monster of the Creation’ (#litres_trial_promo)

Horrid Temptations (#litres_trial_promo)

Fear of Flying (#litres_trial_promo)