About the Atheism and Contemporary Unbelief course
The course will open up new perspectives on atheism that might enable Christians to better understand the relationship between belief and unbelief.
Ours is perhaps the first age that has declared itself ‘secular’, needing no form of religious belief to give meaning to human life. Increasingly the word ‘God’ evokes no response among people and perhaps is becoming as irrelevant to modern life as the gods of ancient Greece and Rome: a symbol of an earlier culture, but not a feature of modern life.
Recent studies into the roots of modern atheism and unbelief see them as an unintended consequence of a certain kind of Christian belief.
Is it possible that our inherited religious culture feeds into the emergence of atheism? If so, then perhaps atheism needs to be viewed not as something ‘outside’ Christianity but as something that makes sense only ‘inside’ that religious culture.
About the Tutor
Dr John McDade has been concerned with the importance of Christian-Jewish relations for Christian self-understanding, and in recent years has written about, and taught courses on, contemporary atheism as well as religion and violence. His particular interests include Blaise Pascal, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
McDade is a Jesuit whose career focused on teaching Christology, Trinity, and Salvation, editing The Month, a Jesuit journal of current affairs, and being involved in priestly formation. He was twice President of the Catholic Theological Association.
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