The Centre Cannot Hold

As the title suggests, it doesn’t have a lot to do with agnosticism - although it does treat doubt with more courtesy and respect than Dawkins seems capable of. It’s a fascinating read, too, which again scores it above “The God Delusion” - and it has some interesting ideas about both faith and doubt, and the historical context of both.

But I feel it misses the point of its own arguments.

McGrath argues quite convincingly that modern atheism is very much a product of its Enlightenment roots.  He reaches from this to say that now that the project of the Enlightenment either has been achieved or has failed (he does try it both ways), atheism has lost its way and serves no further purpose.

He goes on to propose that there is a cyclical movement from belief to atheism and back to belief again, without stopping to consider what his own choice of metaphor implies, i.e. that the cycle will only continue.  Interestingly, he does note in an offhanded remark that there will be some people who will choose agnosticism as a means of breaking free of this cycle - but the idea that as the cycle continues throughout history, those people will only grow in number (as each iteration of the cycle makes the pointlessness of the whole thing ever more obvious) is also one he cannot reach for.

Ultimately, this is a book that makes some very interesting points about the origins of atheism - points I have yet to see any atheist address, I might add - but which is a little too willing to engage in wishful thinking in drawing its conclusions, or indeed, in thinking that the argument between belief and disbelief will ever be concluded.