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 Žižek, 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.
