God's Funeral
Wilson, A.N.
Date finished: 2001-06-12
This is an exposition of the growth of religious doubt in 19th-century England. The earlier chapters start out unpromisingly dry, but Wilson warms to his theme, and by the end he's hurling amusing invective at George Bernard Shaw ("Shaw's giggling brand of modishness showed how far the automobile could run on marsh gas instead of fuel."), though the two successive references to Shaw's admiration for Hitler make me wonder if Godwin's Law should apply to books. Wilson makes no bones about playing favorites; he likes William James and John Ruskin, hates Shaw and is lightly dismissive of Matthew Arnold. I was surprised to discover how common atheism was, how old the roots of disbelief ran, all the way back to Hume and Gibbon, and how fractured the religious picture was, with lengthy controversies between High Church, Low Church, and Catholicism over theological points. (Wilson doesn't attempt to explain the details, considering them historical trivia, so I have no clear idea what the issues were.)
On the other hand, I don't think Wilson really understands science well enough to understand its appeal -- his references to DNA and modern cosmology seems at the level of a hastily-written newspaper article -- or how the unreasonable usefulness of mathematics can produce an impression of order arising from fixed laws, equations neatly meshing together. Early on, Wilson argues that you can't really write about or analyse religious experience without having experienced it. Perhaps, but if so, I think much the same thing is true of science.