Pre-Owned The Great War and the Death of God: Cultural Breakdown, Retreat from Reason, and Rise of Neo-Darwinian Materialism in the Aftermath of World War I (Paperback) 0989916995 9780989916998

The catastrophic Great War left humanity in a world no longer trustworthy and reassuring but seemingly meaningless and indifferent. Instead of redressing humanity¿s cosmic alienation, postwar Western culture abandoned its concern for metaphysical meaning, lost its confidence in human reason, and enabled the scientific worldview of neo-Darwin- ian materialism to emerge and eventually dominate the Western mind. This book attributes the remarkable and unwarranted success of this atheistic cosmology in displacing the deeply rooted belief in nature¿s divine governance to the First World War and its effect on Western theology, philosophy, literature, and art. ¿O¿Connor¿s readable new book is a timely critique of scientific materi- alism and the cheapening effect it has had on contemporary culture.¿ What this book has and many other such critiques generally lack, is a polished awareness of how the Great War contributed to the enshrine- ment of materialism as an authoritative and influential cultural motif in twentieth and twenty-first century thought and artistic expression.¿ Strongly recommended.¿ ?John F. Haught, Professor Emeritus of Theology, Georgetown University. ¿We live in a world that has largely expelled both mind and meaning from the citadels of serious intellectual pursuit, and O¿Connor¿s book is a fascinating and scholarly expedition into the ¿how" and "why¿ of that troubling development. Atheists, agnostics, and religious people alike will find much to contemplate in O¿Connor¿s carefully argued work...¿ ?Carter Phipps, author of Evolutionaries