Religion’s future, an idea provocative to atheists, is compellingly re-imagined as self-dissolution in the name of love and indifference, offering a highly attractive vision, even for those like me who long for us to leap over “necessary illusions” of absolute experiences like unconditional love
- Andrea Hurst, Professor of Philosophy, Nelson Mandela University, South Africa,
<i>Atheism and Love in the Modern Era</i> is a courageous and thoughtful book: courageous, because it involves letting go of any and all claims to certainty and security; thoughtful, because it is written with a sensitivity to what such letting go actually involves. Dickinson writes with profound compassion for those who always and already find themselves excluded from our narratives of love, both religious and secular - if we can, anymore, sustain this distinction. His call for a love that is at once both less and so much more than we have imagined is a challenge to embrace detachment daily as a form of life.
- Robyn Horner, Professor of Theology, Australian Catholic University, Australia,
This book offers an intriguing look at the decline of faith and the rise of love in contemporary societies. Colby Dickinson believes that recovering God as "non-absolute" - as a fragile, weak, and charitable God - will help us acknowledge what religious traditions can still offer and how we can live better existences. He works through Agamben, Žižek, and Irigaray, among others, to demonstrate that the future of atheism depends upon a complete indifference to religion , wheareas religion's future in letting go of its institutions and claims to power.
- Santiago Zabala, ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain,