Fading Faith

A historic transition is occurring, barely noticed. Slowly, quietly, imperceptibly, religion is shriveling in America, as it has done in Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan and other advanced societies. Supernatural faith increasingly belongs to the Third World. The First World is entering the long-predicted Secular Age, when science and knowledge dominate. The change promises to be another shift of civilization, like past departures of the era of kings, the time of slavery, the Agricultural Age, the epoch of colonialism, and the like. Such cultural transformations are partly invisible to contemporary people, but become obvious in retrospect. Read on…

Atheist to Baptist: We Need To Talk.

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Editor’s Introduction:  The Eloquent Atheist has decided to publish comments by Ronald Aronson, (who was interviewed by co-editor Marilyn Westfall about a month ago), which were made in response to a critique of “The New Atheists” by Baptist Center for Ethics Executive Director Robert Parham.  In his critique of the New Atheism, Parham labeled atheists in general as “God despisers” and the “faithless” who pluck sympathy from “the liberal media, a significant slice of the hedonistic entertainment culture and angry … Read on…

An Interview with Ronald Aronson

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Ronald Aronson is the author of Living Without God New Directions for Atheists, Agnostics, Secularists and the Undecided. Ronald Aronson is Distinguished Professor of the History of Ideas at Wayne State University and the author or editor of nine books, including Camus & Sartre: The Story of a Friendship and the Quarrel that Ended It, After Marxism, and “Stay out of Politics!” A Philosopher Views South Africa. He has published articles in The Nation, Bookforum, The Yale Review, The Chronicle … Read on…