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A review by kevin_shepherd
Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt by Alec Ryrie
3.0
“Suppress reason too harshly and it will eventually revolt.”
Alec Ryrie is a man of faith. In fact, he is a lay minister in the Church of England. When I read this in the introduction to this book I prepared myself for a chastisement. Being an “unbeliever” I am intimately familiar with the micro-aggressions and disapproving subtleties of Christian authors when they write about skeptics, secularists, humanists, agnostics, and (gulp!) outright atheists. I waded into Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt, highlighter in hand, preparing myself to write an equally emotional rebuttal.
The Good…
‘Turns out, my misgivings were largely unwarranted. This is not the bashing I thought it might be. It is more of a philosophical and reasoned accounting of doubters and skeptics from about the thirteenth century onward. Color me dutifully impressed.
…The Bad…
Still, there are bugaboos in Ryrie’s delivery. While he writes eloquently about individual acts of dissent, he frequently glosses over the consequences. Were the crusades and inquisitions violent and unjust? You could hardly glean that from biographical paragraphs with “he was later executed for heresy” seemingly thrown in for good measure.
…and The Ugly
Somewhere around the year 1660, all pretense of Ryrie’s objectivism starts to dissolve. He asserts that the mid seventeenth century is when nonbelief came out of the closet and claimed “philosophical respectability.” The closer he gets to the twenty first century the more dismissive and cynical his narrative becomes, especially when he makes mention of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and “the rest of the horsemen.”
Okay, here it is. This is the polemic I expected in the beginning but one that didn’t manifest itself until the very end. I have to give the author a measure of credit—at least he tried to be objective, even if he ultimately failed.
Alec Ryrie is a man of faith. In fact, he is a lay minister in the Church of England. When I read this in the introduction to this book I prepared myself for a chastisement. Being an “unbeliever” I am intimately familiar with the micro-aggressions and disapproving subtleties of Christian authors when they write about skeptics, secularists, humanists, agnostics, and (gulp!) outright atheists. I waded into Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt, highlighter in hand, preparing myself to write an equally emotional rebuttal.
The Good…
‘Turns out, my misgivings were largely unwarranted. This is not the bashing I thought it might be. It is more of a philosophical and reasoned accounting of doubters and skeptics from about the thirteenth century onward. Color me dutifully impressed.
…The Bad…
Still, there are bugaboos in Ryrie’s delivery. While he writes eloquently about individual acts of dissent, he frequently glosses over the consequences. Were the crusades and inquisitions violent and unjust? You could hardly glean that from biographical paragraphs with “he was later executed for heresy” seemingly thrown in for good measure.
…and The Ugly
Somewhere around the year 1660, all pretense of Ryrie’s objectivism starts to dissolve. He asserts that the mid seventeenth century is when nonbelief came out of the closet and claimed “philosophical respectability.” The closer he gets to the twenty first century the more dismissive and cynical his narrative becomes, especially when he makes mention of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and “the rest of the horsemen.”
Okay, here it is. This is the polemic I expected in the beginning but one that didn’t manifest itself until the very end. I have to give the author a measure of credit—at least he tried to be objective, even if he ultimately failed.