Research Associate LeRon Shults
Syndicate: A New Forum of Theology
Response to a Symposium on Theology after the Birth of God
May 11, 2015
Intro: Many readers of Syndicate will know that I was a (more or less) progressive Christian theologian for the first quarter century of my career. Although my “atheist turn” had already become clear in several earlier articles, the publication of both Theology after the Birth of God: Atheist Conceptions in Cognition and Culture (Palgrave-Macmillan) and Iconoclastic Theology: Gilles Deleuze and the Secretion of Atheism (Edinburgh University Press) in 2014 offered a fuller presentation of some of the scientific findings and philosophical reflections that contributed to my further progression into atheism. For reasons that I tried to make clear in those books, I still consider myself a “theologian,” albeit a radically atheist one. Over the next few years I plan to continue contributing to (and integrating) the bio-cultural sciences of religion and the naturalistic philosophical trajectories opened up by Deleuze and others. I am grateful to Syndicate and to the six commentators for this opportunity to respond to critical engagements with my first major forays in this direction.
