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William Godwin's Religious Sense
Author(s) -
WESTON ROWLAND
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal for eighteenth‐century studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.129
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1754-0208
pISSN - 1754-0194
DOI - 10.1111/j.1754-0208.2009.0218.x
Subject(s) - superstition , faith , nonconformist , christianity , religious studies , dissenting opinion , resentment , mythology , solidarity , philosophy , value (mathematics) , anabaptists , religious life , christian ministry , theology , law , political science , machine learning , politics , computer science
The anarchist philosopher, novelist and historian William Godwin (1756‐1836) began life in a devout Dissenting or nonconformist family. As a young man he trained for the ministry, before losing his faith and turning atheist in 1792. Over the subsequent years of his long life Godwin continued to ponder the moral value of religious belief in general and of Christianity in particular. In his later religious writings Godwin insists that myth, superstition and religious belief are not intrinsically defective but are problematic only to the extent to which they undermine personal integrity and social solidarity.