In this stimulating book distinguished theologian Michael J. Buckley, S.J., reflects upon the career of atheism from the beginnings of modernity to the present day. Extending the discussion he began in his highly acclaimed At the Origins of Modern Atheism, the author argues that atheism as ideology was generated neither by the rise of hostile sciences in the Renaissance nor by the medieval and inferential theology of Thomas Aquinas.
Professor Buckley locates the origins of atheistic consciousness in modernity's bracketing of interpersonal religious experience as of no cognitive value. Atheism was generated by the very strategies formulated to counter it. This dialectical character of modern atheism suggests the further possibility of the negation of this negation, thereby bringing about the retrieval of the religious in form and content along with a new admission of the cogency of religious experience.
- ISBN10 0300093845
- ISBN13 9780300093841
- Publish Date 10 September 2004
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 4 March 2021
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Yale University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 192
- Language English