TY - BOOK AU - Erdozain,Dominic TI - The soul of doubt: the religious roots of unbelief from Luther to Marx SN - 9780199844616 (cloth : alk. paper) AV - BJ1278.C66 E73 2016 U1 - ARCH YNDC 234.23 E66S KW - Conscience KW - Religious aspects KW - Christianity KW - History of doctrines KW - Faith N1 - Includes bibliographical references (pages [299]-312) and index; Introduction: Desecularizing doubt -- The prophets armed: Luther and the making and breaking of conscience -- "To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine. It is to kill a man": the wars of religion and the virtues of doubt -- The metaphysics of mercy: Calvin and Spinoza -- In search of a father: Voltaire's Christian Enlightenment -- "A damnable doctrine": Darwin and the soul of Victorian doubt -- The God that failed: Feuerbach, Marx, and the politics of salvation -- Conclusion: In Augustine's shadow N2 - "It is widely assumed that science is the enemy of religious faith. The idea is so pervasive that entire industries of religious apologetics converge around the challenge of Darwin, evolution, and the 'secular worldview.' This book challenges such assumptions by proposing a different cause of unbelief in the West: the Christian conscience. Tracing a history of doubt and unbelief from the Reformation to the age of Darwin and Karl Marx, Dominic Erdozain argues that the most powerful solvents of religious orthodoxy have been concepts of moral equity and personal freedom generated by Christianity itself. Revealing links between the radical Reformation and early modern philosophers such as Baruch Spinoza and Pierre Bayle, Erdozain demonstrates that the dynamism of the Enlightenment, including the very concept of 'natural reason' espoused by philosophers such as Voltaire, was rooted in Christian ethics and spirituality. The final chapters explore similar themes in the era of Darwin and Marx, showing how moral revolt preceded and transcended the challenges of evolution and 'scientific materialism' in the unseating of religious belief. The picture that emerges is not of a secular challenge to religious faith, but a series of theological insurrections against divisive accounts of Christian orthodoxy."--Book jacket ER -