Does God Have a Future? Summary and Analysis

In the last chapter in the book, Karen Armstrong starts with a pessimistic survey of the modern world as it enters the second millennium. She notes that, in Europe, the churches are emptying and atheism and secular ideas are becoming more and more prevalent. In the current trend towards the rejection of the traditional ideas of God, throughout the three main monotheistic religions, more and more writers and philosophers struggle to develop ideas which might replace the old religions. In a wide-ranging survey of modern writing and philosophies, Karen Armstrong describes and discusses the ideas of approximately twenty authors and provides a suggested reading list of thirty-two books.

Though her survey spans such a large body of work, from Nietzsche to Sartre, from the Logical Positivists to Liberal Protestantism, Armstrong provides no clear-cut...