Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 0230013422
Published in paperback in 2007
After Atheism
Science, Religion And the Meaning of Life
By Mark Vernon
Read Chapter 1 Amazon UK Amazon
A substantially revised and extended edition of After Atheism was published in the UK as How To Be An Agnostic in March 2011 and will be published in the US later in the year.
The broadside against religion launched by a new breed of evangelical atheists has generated much heat but little light. Locked in battle against their Christian opponents the argument goes nowhere fast, and in an age of extremism, nurtures the dangerous vice of intolerance. Mark Vernon was an Anglican priest, left a conviction atheist, but now finds himself to be a committed and increasingly passionate agnostic. Part personal story, part philosophical search, After Atheism argues that the contemporary lust for certainty is demeaning of our humanity. The key to wisdom - as Socrates, the great theologians and the best scientists know - is understanding the limits of our knowledge.
Praise
‘For twenty years I have been waiting for a book that exposes the empty certainties of religious fundamentalism and its secular twin: scientific triumphalism. Mark Vernon has delivered that and much, much more.’
- Mark Dowd, broadcaster and film-maker
‘He defends ambiguity and undecidability with an almost Evangelical zeal. And because he writes with such a delicate blend of deft coolness on the one hand, and fervour on the other, many are likely to be both enchanted and persuaded by his apologetics.’
- Martyn Percy, Church Times
‘The strength of the book...is in challenging false certainties, whether pseudo-scientific or pseudo-religious.’
- Dolan Cummings, The Institute of Ideas
‘This book is more than a well-reasoned argument for agnosticism; it is a timely reminder of the recognition of human limits, in all areas, and a suggestion that the possibility of living within the mystery that is the world can be a good thing.’
- Robert L. Smith, Jr., International Journal of Public Theology