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Summary: The origins, history, and effects of atheism
Review: With the title playing off the title of Nietzsche's "Twilight of the Idols," McGrath goes into the grounds and development of atheism in Western society. Nietzsche is dealt with in a few places, but McGrath locates the sources of atheism mainly in the period leading up to the French Revolution of the late 1800s when the centuries-old place of the Catholic Church, along with the place of the monarchy, was challenged, and drastically minimalized by subsequent revolutionary events and related political and cultural changes. Darwin and later Freud are seen as prime expressions of the atheism in the European cultural milieu after the French Revolution. Recognizing the extent of atheism in its various forms in the era of modernism down to today as well as its strong appeal considering the failures of religion and government, McGrath nonetheless detects that atheism has reached its limits, and that large numbers of persons in postmodern society are being prompted to "explore...the forbidden fruit of spirituality." The religious fundamentalism of many American Christians or Islamic radicals is ordinarily pointed to as evidence of the limitations and deficiencies of atheism and the secularism that is closely related to it in the contemporary world. But McGrath goes beyond this to lay out the reasons for and attractions of atheism as a vital force which could continue to play a central role in the culture if today's religious fundamentalism repeats the errors of religion in the past which gave rise to atheism and made it such a powerful, and in some ways a hopeful, restorative force.
Rating: 
Summary: An interesting, if wrongheaded, study.
Review: Despite the off-putting smugness of this book's title Professor McGrath proves to be a genial writer who has some interesting insights on theism and atheism. Unfortunately, the book is also marred by misconceptions that are surprising given the author's obvious intellect and learning. To start, I am not sure that atheism is entering the twilight that the good professor claims. In the industrialized world, secularism seems entrenched in Europe and Japan, and is increasing even in that swamp of Christian piety, the United States. To be sure, membership in evangelical and fundamentalist Protestant sects has also increased, as has the number of Catholics, but as any sociologist of religion knows, figures on denominational membership are imprecise to say the least. The result of carefully designed and overlapping public opinion polls indicates that unbelief continues to gain ground in the U.S. Turning to the underdeveloped world, Professor McGrath has a solid case (backed up by historian Philip Jenkins in his book, "The Next Christendom"), but surely the burgeoning numbers of third-world Christians has a great deal to do with the truly desperate conditions under which many of them live. If I may modify remarks about Communism made by President Harry Truman before a joint session of Congress: "(Religion is) nurtured by misery and want. It spreads and grows in the evil soil of poverty and strife. It reaches its full potential when the hope of a people for a better life has died." In the face of wide-scale social breakdown and the alienation felt by formerly rural populations jammed into anonymous megacities, is it any wonder that religion serves as a source of community and help? On the other side of the coin, one might ask if religion will decline in third world societies as they transform into developed nations.
Professor McGrath brings an interesting perspective to the growth of atheism in the nineteenth century. He correctly notes that Karl Marx did not call for religious persecution; Marx simply thought religion would die off naturally in the envisaged workers' state because its consolations would no longer be needed. (How wrong that was!) He accurately quotes one of Marx's comments on religion: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." However he wrongly states that this complete quotation is Marx's most famous statement about religion. Typically, only the last sentence is cited, and that is used to smear anyone to the left of Pat Robertson as hostile to religion. There are several more consequential mistakes about the views of Sigmund Freud. While Freud did compare religion to a mass neurosis, he chiefly viewed theistic religion as an illusion. (The title of his most extended work on religion was his book, "The Future of an Illusion".) An illusion is a misperception (as when someone mistakes a coil of rope in a darkened room for a snake, or thunder for the voice of the gods), in contrast to a delusion (a false idea) or a hallucination (a false perception originating entirely in the mind). Illusions are not in themselves a psychiatric condition. Contrary to what Professor McGrath implies, it would be considered a terrible breach of professional ethics for a psychotherapist to try to talk a client out of their religious beliefs. Psychotherapists, like plumbers, are hired (or invited) by clients to perform the job at hand--not to give extraneous opinions. Freud, whatever else one thinks of him, was entirely clear about that. Certainly there are therapists so caught up in their hostility to theistic religion that they commit the malpractice of overstepping their bounds; certain fervid Christians who hang out a psychotherapist's shingle (e.g., practitioners of "reparative therapy") can be charged with similar offenses.
An entire chapter is devoted to the noisy career (and terrible end) of Madalyn Murray O'Hair; but to what end? I did not need Professor McGrath's account to know that Mrs. O'Hair was a dreadful shrew who loved the sound of her own voice. Had she lived in a world of quiet agnostics, no doubt she would have wound up being a loud, obnoxious Christian, instead of a loud, obnoxious atheist. She is no more representative of atheists then the carrion-faced Reverend Fred Phelps is typical of Christians. Professor McGrath disapprovingly notes--among other unlovely traits--Mrs. O'Hair's antipathy towards homosexuals. At this, I can only recommend to the Professor and other Christians some prudent prescriptions regarding motes, beams, and eyes. In much of the United States today, it is still as dangerous for a known gay person (or someone merely thought to be such) to be out walking alone as it was (and sometimes still is) for an African American during the high noon of segregation. Perhaps individual Christians cannot be blamed for this state of affairs, but it was not Mrs. O'Hair or other atheists who poisoned the atmosphere with incessant attacks on gays as putative `menaces' to the family, the nation, the Earth, the Moon, the Solar System, and the Universe beyond.
Finally, and most bizarrely, the author pins his hopes for the return of religion on the rise of postmodernism. To think it was the redoubtable C.S. Lewis who wrote that, "Radical subjectivism is the death of the society that embraces it." A descent into an abyss of irrationality and it's companion, superstition, is a wholly bad thing--especially in an age that has religious enthusiasts such as Osama bin-Laden eagerly combing the world in search of fissionable material to construct a bomb. Unfortunately, Christians are not exempt from outbreaks of religious enthusiasm that start off commendably, but can degenerate quickly into hunts for scapegoats when the New Jerusalem fails to arrive on cue. (See Norman Cohn's book, "Pursuit of the Millennium" for a fascinating-and sometimes grotesque-history of medieval millennialism.) True, after the "witches" or Jews are burned, or the gay kid beaten to death, remorse may set in. Then Christians swear a mighty oath not to do it again, which holds until they do it again. Christians in search of corroboration of these points may wish to query gay or Jewish acquaintances, if they have any.
Professor McGrath insists that atheism must fade because religion has lost its oppressiveness and atheism is increasingly seen as flogging a dead horse. On the contrary, I predict that fanatical religion, armed with weapons from AK-47's to anthrax to tactical nukes, will produce (and is producing) a Golden Age of worldwide conflicts that will rival-if not surpass-the death tolls of the twentieth century from secular totalitarianism. (Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sudan are just curtain raisers.) Secular, democratic societies should beware of conservative Christians and radical Muslims joining forces against them the way German Communists and Nazis joined forces against the Weimar Republic, or the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany allied against western democracies from 1939 to 1941. The observation Lucretius made before the time of Christ still holds: "Numberless are the evils spawned by religion."
Rating: 
Summary: Comprehensive
Review: Alister McGrath is a moderately conservative Evangelical theologian who was born in Northern Ireland. After a period of atheism, he became a Christian and is now one of the most prolific theologians in the world. In this book, he traces the rise of atheism from the time of the French revolution to its gradual decline in recent years. Prof. McGrath is a good storyteller. Along with a discussion the seminal thinkers of atheism such as Nietzsche, Freud, Marx and Feuerbach, we get a political, historical and social overview of the entire movement. For example, Prof. McGrath discusses recent political issues such as the turbulence of the 60s and Madeline Murray O'Hair's crusade for atheism. While this book is no substitute for more detailed studies on atheism, it provides a historical and political background that other studies generally don't. Prof. McGrath is, as I said, an incredibly prolific author. He has probably written, edited, or revised over 15 books since 2000. Because of this, it would appear that a few too many errors and editing problems creep into his books. For example, Robert Ingersoll is described as the "great atheist" when he was the "great agnostic." The former Episcopal bishop of Newark is not James Spong, but rather John Spong. The same quote from Augustine appears twice within a few pages, etc. In spite of these defects, THE TWILIGHT OF ATHEISM is an enjoyable work.
Rating: 
Summary: Well-Meaning But Shallow
Review: Alister McGrath's "The Twilight of Atheism" is a well-meaning but shallow attempt to prove that atheism is on its way out. It doesn't come close to making its case.
I thought McGrath's previous book, "In the Beginning," about the creation of the King James translation of the Bible, was well-written and nicely done, if not quite up to the intellectual heft of competing books on the same subject published around the same time. But here he just falls on his face completely. To give just the most risible example, he claims that one of the more convincing examples of the rise in religiosity can be found in the trend toward more spiritually minded episodes of "Star Trek." The rest of the book doesn't get more profound than that.
McGrath is a former atheist/Communist turned Protestant convert, which might help explain his "more Anglican than the Archbishop of Canterbury" attitude, but the fact is that not only does he fail to make his case, he doesn't even seem to realize that the data he employs to make his case (such as the fact that "liberal" Christian denominations are hemorrhaging members while the more mindless branches of Christianity are thriving) can be adduced to prove exactly the opposite contention - that what we're seeing today in the rise of brain-dead Evangelical Christianity is a case of Christianity running around like a chicken with its head cut off, and that it's the sign of a dead-end rather than a renewal. I wouldn't presume to say that Christianity is on its way out (as Chou En-Lai once said about the French Revolution, it's too soon to tell), but the fact that Europe is now aggressively secular, while the Catholic Church among others is off desperately trolling for converts in the Third World, is not a particularly hopeful sign.
If you'd like to read a book that makes the argument for the existence of a supreme being, and does it in a way that's far more cogent and intellectually respectable, I would suggest you try Hans Kung's "Does God Exist?," which goes over much the same ground as this book and does it much better. Unless you're prepared to be satisfied with very simplistic answers to very knotty questions, give this one a pass.
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Summary: A third-rate writer
Review: Although this writer is a professor of history at Oxford University, he did not know that James II was the brother of Charles II, he apparently had never read Rene Descartes, he was completely unaware of the intricacies of the feudal entanglements in France which led to the French Revolution, but through all of this ignorance he could assert that his (Pentacostal) view of history is correct. I was really astounded by the idiocy of the book since from the reviews listed I thought it would be a good analysis of a complex problem written by a legitimate scholar. It is not. Caveat emptor.
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Summary: uh, hello, atheism is on an unstoppable increase
Review: As prior reviewers have mentioned, McGrath completely ignores demographic data which shows, beyond any doubt, that atheism is on the increase in the U.S. and Western Europe. Just recently a British Poll concluded that only 44% of Britons believe in a god, down from 77% in 1968. That's a huge drop ! In the U.S., the percentage of god-believers has dropped to approximately 75%, younger Americans being less inclined to believe than older Americans.
By the way, a stunningly huge percentage of the elite scientists in the U.S. who are members of the National Academy of Sciences lack belief in a god: 93% ! Compare this to 58% in 1914 and 67% in 1934. So even among these top scientists, atheism is on the increase.
McGrath's book might be reassuring to those who are fearful of atheists and atheism, but is reassurance that misinforms something we should applaud ? I think not.
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Summary: To call this book dull would be an understatement
Review: Even from a conservative Christian point of view is a waste of time.It sticks to meaningless emotional arguments rather than rational ones.
Rating: 
Summary: Scholarly, Well-Researched, and Boring
Review: First of all, let me confess that I am an atheist and therefore completely disagree with almost every word of this book. So do take that into consideration. (Give me credit for honesty.) Second, I'll have to admit that this book does have a legitimately scholarly tone and the author is no doubt a highly intelligent man. HOWEVER, this is the most boring book I've ever read. Perhaps my opinion is shaped by my own beliefs (or lack of beliefs). But, objectively speaking, it was all I could do to finish reading the book. Instead of this volume, may I recommend "Atheist Universe" by David Mills, or Dan Barker's book "Losing Faith in Faith". Either of these two books is superior, more logical, more accurate, and ENJOYABLE to read.
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Summary: A Missed Opportunity
Review: In spite of the extensive bibliography this is really a book for the non-academic reader - at least I think it is. On what is an important and timely subject the author has produced a book that is, sadly, inconsistent in tone and philosophically thin. There is too much arcane (and often only peripherally interesting) historical detail, and too little hard argument. The dogmatic and often not-too-well read atheist would have been given much more to think about had McGrath offered discussions of the philosophy of science (Kuhn on scientific revolutions for instance, or the sociology of science questioning the very idea of "objective" fact) rather than an extended history lesson. But it is the tone of the book that frustrates: it lurches from the sketchily abstract to the downright dumbed-down: there are too many cliches, and the populist tone is somewhat undercut by the howler referring to a Star Trek character called "Dr" Spock: that should be "Mr." Spock of course - "Dr" Spock being someone quite other. Although the author is a Briton (the blurb helpfully tells us that he lives "in Oxford, UK.", presumably to differentiate with - what? - Oxford, Arkansas? Oxford, Minnesota?) the book appears to be aimed squarely at an American audience: apart from far too much space being given to a single American case of a single American atheist, the author refers always to "Britain", when actually "England" would have been both more natural and in some cases more strictly accurate. One can only agree with McGrath that Dawkins et.al., are alarmingly ignorant of both the history and philosophy of science: and they are, frankly, long overdue a serious drubbing. Unfortunately, this book flatters to deceive, and ultimately frustrates, irritates, and disappoints. It is over-long where it needs to be concise, and sketchy where it should have been substantive.
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Summary: Basic Yet Misunderstood?
Review: McGrath's book is not exasperatingly complex or densely written, and was indeed conceived for Joe Layman to read and understand readily. Thus he may not flesh out his thesis to the level of rigorous detail that historians of Western civilization would prefer. Nevertheless, his point his adequate: atheism is on the decline. But what does he mean by atheism and what does he mean by decline? A number of reviews posted here cite demographics to show that the percentage of the world's population identified as nonreligious is growing. Atheism, they say, is alive and well, and McGrath is just a brain-dead evangelical spewing poppycock.
But reading McGrath's book carefully and completely, one realizes he is not arguing for the end of secularism. Throughout his work he sticks to a consistent definition of "atheism" as an intellectual and philosophical movement of reaction against established religious traditions and authorities. Atheism as such a movement sought to overthrow the old order and replace it with a "brotherhood of man" built on the foundations of reason and science, emptied of spiritual reference. That dynamism and promise has long since left atheism, which, as a hard-core rejection of the value of religion or belief in deities, remains even a minority in the "secular/nonreligious" camp. Perhaps that's why McGrath subtitled his book as "The Rise and Fall of Disbelief" as opposed to merely "Unbelief." In other words, the atheism movement offered a secular postmillennialism that has broken down just as its theological counterpart fell apart in the early twentieth century.
But what of the growing numbers of irreligious? That may not be a worrying trend for the theist, as most people in this group are not principled atheists but are merely passive about or unidentified with any religious tenets. It may be the case that what we are seeing in the Western world is a collective shift into a more sophisticated stage of development in which unblinking adherents to old institutional forms of religion is rejected. But if what M. Scott Peck has said about individuals is true for social groups as well, the Western world may see its spirituality reborn with renewed vigor. And if McGrath is correct, then postmodernism will lead us forward into that strange new land.
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