The Soul of Doubt : The Religious Roots of Unbelief From Luther to Marx

It Is Widely Assumed That Science Is The Enemy Of Religious Faith. The Idea Is So Pervasive That Entire Industries Of Religious Apologetics Converge Around The Challenge Of Darwin, Evolution, And The 'secular Worldview.' This Book Challenges Such Assumptions By Proposing A Different Cause Of Unbelief In The West: The Christian Conscience. Tracing A History Of Doubt And Unbelief From The Reformation To The Age Of Darwin And Karl Marx, Dominic Erdozain Argues That The Most Powerful Solvents Of Religious Orthodoxy Have Been Concepts Of Moral Equity And Personal Freedom Generated By Christianity Itself. Revealing Links Between The Radical Reformation And Early Modern Philosophers Such As Baruch Spinoza And Pierre Bayle, Erdozain Demonstrates That The Dynamism Of The Enlightenment, Including The Very Concept Of 'natural Reason' Espoused By Philosophers Such As Voltaire, Was Rooted In Christian Ethics And Spirituality. The Final Chapters Explore Similar Themes In The Era Of Darwin And Marx, Showing How Moral Revolt Preceded And Transcended The Challenges Of Evolution And 'scientific Materialism' In The Unseating Of Religious Belief. The Picture That Emerges Is Not Of A Secular Challenge To Religious Faith, But A Series Of Theological Insurrections Against Divisive Accounts Of Christian Orthodoxy.--jacket. Introduction: Desecularizing Doubt -- The Prophets Armed: Luther And The Making And Breaking Of Conscience -- To Kill A Man Is Not To Defend A Doctrine. It Is To Kill A Man: The Wars Of Religion And The Virtues Of Doubt -- The Metaphysics Of Mercy: Calvin And Spinoza -- In Search Of A Father: Voltaire's Christian Enlightenment -- A Damnable Doctrine: Darwin And The Soul Of Victorian Doubt -- The God That Failed: Feuerbach, Marx, And The Politics Of Salvation -- Conclusion: In Augustine's Shadow. Dominic Erdozain. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 299-312) And Index. From Freud to the new atheists, it is widely assumed that science is the enemy of religious faith. The idea is so pervasive that whole industries of religious apologetics converge around the challenge of Darwin, evolution, and the "secular worldview." This book challenges such assumptions by proposing a different cause of unbelief in the West: the Christian conscience. Tracing a history of doubt and unbelief from the Reformation to the age of Darwin and Karl Marx, 'The soul of doubt' argues that the most powerful solvents of religious orthodoxy have been concepts of moral equity and personal freedom generated by Christianity itself. The book demonstrates that the radical criticism of philosophers as influential as Spinoza, Voltaire and Ludwig Feuerbach was not the product of science. It emerged from a collision between religious values and religious practices, preeminently acts of persecution. This study offers a bold interpretation of the Enlightenment as a movement of vigorous spirituality, and it turns on its head conventional wisdom about the impact of Darwin and scientific naturalism.0The "nemesis of faith" was not science or secular reason: it was an ethical intuition that a dangerous God cannot be real Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Abbreviations 13 Introduction 18 1 The Prophets Armed 27 2 “To Kill a Man Is Not to Defenda Doctrine. It Is to Kill a Man 51 3 The Metaphysics of Mercy 86 4 In Search of a Father 135 5 “A Damnable Doctrine” 190 6 The God that Failed 238 Conclusion 279 Notes 284 References 316 Index 329 Dominic Erdozain argues that the real solvents of orthodoxy in the modern period have been concepts of moral equity and personal freedom generated by Christianity itself.