“The Age of Doubt: Tracing the Roots of Our Religious Uncertainty” by Christopher Lane
Can doubt be a catalyst for growth?
The Victorian era was the first major “Age of Doubt” and a critical moment in the history of Western ideas.
Leading intellectuals such as Darwin, Huxley, and Chambers battled the Church and struggled to absorb radical scientific discoveries that upended everything the Bible had taught them about the world.
Excerpt
Read an excerpt from the book, “The Benefit of Doubt,” first published in The New Humanist.
Description
Can doubt be a catalyst for growth? In the nineteenth century, leading intellectuals battled the Church and struggled to absorb radical scientific discoveries that upended everything the Bible had taught them about the world. The Age of Doubt tells the fascinating story of a society under strain as virtually all aspects of life changed dramatically.
In deft portraits of scientific, literary, and intellectual icons who challenged the prevailing religious orthodoxy, from Robert Chambers and Anne Brontë to Charles Darwin and Thomas H. Huxley, Christopher Lane shows how they and other Victorians succeeded in turning doubt from a religious sin into an ethical necessity.
The dramatic adjustment of Victorian society has echoes today as technology, science, and religion grapple with moral issues that seemed unimaginable even a decade ago. Yet the Victorians’ crisis of faith generated a far more searching engagement with religious belief than has evolved today. More profoundly than any generation before them, the Victorians came to view doubt as inseparable from belief, thought, and debate, and a much-needed antidote to fanaticism and extremism. By contrast, a look at today’s extremes—from biblical literalists to new atheists—highlights our modern-day inability to embrace doubt.
Review
“… returns us to [a time] when the absence of God was a new idea”—The Chicago Reader
“… argue[s that] the explosion of questioning in the Victorian era transformed the idea of doubt from a sin or lapse to necessary exploration”—New York Times
“Erudite and highly readable”—Victorian Studies
“Lane has hit upon something interesting … the very important fact that theological and philosophical squabbles over these subjects are nothing new (and indeed, far more fierce than some of our debates today).”—PopMatters
“A welcome and timely entry into the discussion … A very readable volume in which these struggles of faith and doubt come to life … Compelling.”—Englewood Review of Books
“Provocative … well worth the read.”–Bernard Lightman, York University
“Stimulating … Asks whether acknowledging how science, religion, and society have produced a growing chasm between faith and doubt, and even destroyed belief, can offer a way forward.”—Keith Thomson, author of Before Darwin
“Elegantly written … insightful … about the nature of belief and ‘what it felt like to lose one’s religious faith—as an individual and, more broadly, as a people and society’”—Victorian Studies
“A well-written work, … very clear and honest. [A] feast for the eye and the mind. Highly recommended.”—Kroniek
“Asks the right questions of the doubting pundits, past and present… Altogether admirable.”—Literary Review