Opening Doors: Thought from

Rethinking Religion makes a special effort to reach readers who are either hostile to or indifferent to religion—with the aim not of converting them, but of encouraging them to rethink religion. In the last few years a number of best-selling books by writers like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have been credited with establishing the so-called New Atheism as a force to be reckoned with. Watson’s book opens by delivering a broadside against Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris, convincingly arguing that while they may deserve some credit for opening the subject up to the general public we should turn to a number of much less well known thinkers (Derrida, Levinas, Agamben) and bring them into conversation with such novelists as D.H.Lawrence and Joseph Conrad if we are looking for true illumination. Even though he writes from a position outside of any organized religion, part of Watson’s argument is that we are deluding ourselves if we believe that we are not in one way or another implicated in religion. The choice we face is not religion or no religion: it is which religion—one of the traditionally recognized religions or one of those (patriotism, sports, career etc.) that usually don’t recognize themselves as religions?
Read more