Atheism and Faith in the Modern World: Loving While Not Believing

Discussing the decline of faith and the

rise of love in the modern era, Colby

Dickinson proposes a critique of religious

belief which addresses how a secular

world can continue to mine religious

traditions for their conceptual and

emotional riches. Atheism and Love in

the Modern Era argues that theism and

atheism taken together can peel back

the layers of abstraction, alienation, and

disillusionment that always accompany

our humanity in order to help us really

see how it is to exist in this world. To

illuminate this vision, Dickinson takes up

the notion of love as a cultivation and

practice of indifference, as a letting go

of one’s identity-a crucial concept that

unites both religion and atheism through

a concerted effort to detach from

them both.

In dialogue with a variety of thinkers,

including Zizek, Agamben, Derrida,

Irigaray, Fromm, and Taylor, this is

essential reading for those interested

in popular debates around theism and

atheism, as well as those concerned with

the ways in which continental and analytic

philosophy have addressed the continued

significance of religious traditions.

Colby Dickinson is Associate Professor of Theology at Loyola University in Chicago, USA.