THE FUTURE OF UNBELIEF
By
The unbeliever has always had a certain place in each society discussed here- pagan, polytheistic, monotheistic, natural, or metaphysical. Who, asks Szczesney, are the unbelievers today, now that most of society does not believe in the traditional manner, and to what place are those former non-conformists now relegated? These questions are the nucleus about which he builds a somewhat tenuous structure, at times theologic, at times anti- religious in the extreme. It may be the fault of E. B. Garside's translation from the German, but The Future of Unbelief frequently skates on thin terminological ice, especially in the usage of ""objectivism"" and ""subjectivism."" Interpretation becomes a problem; hair-splitting tends to lead to hair-pulling. On superficial examination this tract looks like the work of a crafty ex-Jesuit whose dialectics are first-rate. ""It is a challenge to intellectual and moral honesty"", says the author, ""to take our origins and history seriously."" More careful scrutiny of one chapter after another provokes the conclusion that this book is a hodgepodge of semi-related half-truths jumbled together like a carelessly shuffled pack of cards.