Emotional Unbelief

I have only so far read the introduction to Alec Ryrie's, Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt (William Collins, 2019).

It is of course far too early to say how persuasive is his central thesis that modern Western atheism is largely a product of anger and anxiety working on Christendom given the fuel of the Protestant Reformation.

However, Ryrie is surely correct that most of us hold most of our beliefs and attitudes not as a result of a series of conscious logical steps, but by a kind of emotional intuition influenced by the society we inhabit.

In the Middle Ages in England, atheism seemed almost crazy and impossible. In Britain today it seems quite likely, especially to the more educated / Middle Class, perhaps. Certainly practical atheism seems pretty normal. It is plausible to live as if God did not exist, or as if it did not matter, or as if we could not know.

None of this on its own establishes whether belief or unbelief is true, but it warns us that most of the atheism we encounter will be strictly speaking irrational.

Ryrie suggests the emotional shape tends to come first. Some of us then like to dress it up in philosophical arguments to make it seem justified. The ideas matter, but rather less than we sometimes imagine.

This is something the pastor will recognise. Arguments against the reliability of the New Testament documents can certainly seem more persuasive if you're keen to sleep with your girlfriend.