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Author: Gavin Hyman Publisher: ISBN: 9780755625352 Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
"The last few years have seen a remarkable surge of popular interest in the topic of atheism. Books about atheism by writers like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have figured prominently in bestseller lists and have attracted widespread discussion in the media. The ubiquity of public debates about atheism, especially in conscious opposition to the perceived social threat posed by faith and religion, has been startling. However, as Gavin Hyman points out, despite their prevalence and popularity, what often characterises these debates is a lack of nuance and sophistication. They can be shrill, ignorant of the historical complexity of debates about belief, and tend to lapse into caricature. What is needed is a clear and well informed presentation of how atheistic ideas originated and developed, in order to illuminate their contemporary relevance and application. That task is what the author undertakes here. Exploring the rise of atheism as an explicit philosophical position (notably in the work of Denis Diderot), Hyman traces its development in the later ideas of Descartes, Locke and Berkeley. Drawing also on the work of contemporary scholars like Amos Funkenstein and Michael J Buckley, the author shows that, since in recent theology the concept of God which atheists negate is changing, the triumph of its advocates may not be quite as unequivocal as Hitchens and Dawkins would have us believe."--Bloomsbury Publishing.
Author: Gavin Hyman Publisher: ISBN: 9780755625352 Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
"The last few years have seen a remarkable surge of popular interest in the topic of atheism. Books about atheism by writers like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have figured prominently in bestseller lists and have attracted widespread discussion in the media. The ubiquity of public debates about atheism, especially in conscious opposition to the perceived social threat posed by faith and religion, has been startling. However, as Gavin Hyman points out, despite their prevalence and popularity, what often characterises these debates is a lack of nuance and sophistication. They can be shrill, ignorant of the historical complexity of debates about belief, and tend to lapse into caricature. What is needed is a clear and well informed presentation of how atheistic ideas originated and developed, in order to illuminate their contemporary relevance and application. That task is what the author undertakes here. Exploring the rise of atheism as an explicit philosophical position (notably in the work of Denis Diderot), Hyman traces its development in the later ideas of Descartes, Locke and Berkeley. Drawing also on the work of contemporary scholars like Amos Funkenstein and Michael J Buckley, the author shows that, since in recent theology the concept of God which atheists negate is changing, the triumph of its advocates may not be quite as unequivocal as Hitchens and Dawkins would have us believe."--Bloomsbury Publishing.
Author: David Berman Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1135975574 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 272
Book Description
Probably no doctrine has excited as much horror and abuse as atheism. This first history of British atheism, first published in 1987, tries to explain this reaction while exhibiting the development of atheism from Hobbes to Russell. Although avowed atheism appeared surprisingly late – 1782 in Britain – there were covert atheists in the middle seventeenth century. By tracing its development from so early a date, Dr Berman gives an account of an important and fascinating strand of intellectual history.
Author: Michael Ruse Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1009040219 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 1307
Book Description
The two-volume Cambridge History of Atheism offers an authoritative and up to date account of a subject of contemporary interest. Comprised of sixty essays by an international team of scholars, this History is comprehensive in scope. The essays are written from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including religious studies, philosophy, sociology, and classics. Offering a global overview of the subject, from antiquity to the present, the volumes examine the phenomenon of unbelief in the context of Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, and Jewish societies. They explore atheism and the early modern Scientific Revolution, as well as the development of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and its continuing implications. The History also includes general survey essays on the impact of scepticism, agnosticism and atheism, as well as contemporary assessments of thinking. Providing essential information on the nature and history of atheism, The Cambridge History of Atheism will be indispensable for both scholarship and teaching, at all levels.
Author: Tim Whitmarsh Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 0307958337 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 304
Book Description
How new is atheism? Although adherents and opponents alike today present it as an invention of the European Enlightenment, when the forces of science and secularism broadly challenged those of faith, disbelief in the gods, in fact, originated in a far more remote past. In Battling the Gods, Tim Whitmarsh journeys into the ancient Mediterranean, a world almost unimaginably different from our own, to recover the stories and voices of those who first refused the divinities. Homer’s epic poems of human striving, journeying, and passion were ancient Greece’s only “sacred texts,” but no ancient Greek thought twice about questioning or mocking his stories of the gods. Priests were functionaries rather than sources of moral or cosmological wisdom. The absence of centralized religious authority made for an extraordinary variety of perspectives on sacred matters, from the devotional to the atheos, or “godless.” Whitmarsh explores this kaleidoscopic range of ideas about the gods, focusing on the colorful individuals who challenged their existence. Among these were some of the greatest ancient poets and philosophers and writers, as well as the less well known: Diagoras of Melos, perhaps the first self-professed atheist; Democritus, the first materialist; Socrates, executed for rejecting the gods of the Athenian state; Epicurus and his followers, who thought gods could not intervene in human affairs; the brilliantly mischievous satirist Lucian of Samosata. Before the revolutions of late antiquity, which saw the scriptural religions of Christianity and Islam enforced by imperial might, there were few constraints on belief. Everything changed, however, in the millennium between the appearance of the Homeric poems and Christianity’s establishment as Rome’s state religion in the fourth century AD. As successive Greco-Roman empires grew in size and complexity, and power was increasingly concentrated in central capitals, states sought to impose collective religious adherence, first to cults devoted to individual rulers, and ultimately to monotheism. In this new world, there was no room for outright disbelief: the label “atheist” was used now to demonize anyone who merely disagreed with the orthodoxy—and so it would remain for centuries. As the twenty-first century shapes up into a time of mass information, but also, paradoxically, of collective amnesia concerning the tangled histories of religions, Whitmarsh provides a bracing antidote to our assumptions about the roots of freethinking. By shining a light on atheism’s first thousand years, Battling the Gods offers a timely reminder that nonbelief has a wealth of tradition of its own, and, indeed, its own heroes.
Author: Mitchell Stephens Publisher: Macmillan ISBN: 1137002603 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 338
Book Description
Looks at the role of atheism in the history and cultural development of the West, examining the accomplishments of often courageous atheists that have promoted science, expanded human liberties, and otherwise advanced culture.
Author: Leigh Eric Schmidt Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691183112 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 360
Book Description
A compelling history of atheism in American public life A much-maligned minority throughout American history, atheists have been cast as a threat to the nation’s moral fabric, barred from holding public office, and branded as irreligious misfits in a nation chosen by God. Yet village atheists—as these godless freethinkers came to be known by the close of the nineteenth century—were also hailed for their gutsy dissent from stultifying pieties and for posing a necessary secularist challenge to the entanglements of church and state. In Village Atheists, Leigh Eric Schmidt explores the complex cultural terrain that unbelievers have long had to navigate in their fight to secure equal rights and liberties in American public life. He rebuilds the history of American secularism from the ground up, giving flesh and blood to these outspoken infidels. Village Atheists demonstrates that the secularist vision for the United States proved to be anything but triumphant in a country where faith and citizenship were—and still are—closely interwoven.
Author: David Eller Publisher: Amer Atheist Press ISBN: 9781578849208 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 352
Book Description
Everything is here to help those who are already atheists better understand the logic of their lives and see Atheism's social and political implications. Those who are not yet atheists will be helped by this scientist's common-sense analysis of the so-called 'proofs of God' to see the irrationality, indeed, the meaninglessness of god-beliefs. What is belief? What is knowledge? As Pilate is alleged to have asked, "What is truth"? Understandable and clear answers to all these questions are given by a seasoned anthropologist who has been able to see around the blinders imposed by Judaeo-Christian cultures.
Author: Julian Baggini Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 9780192804242 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 137
Book Description
Do you think of atheists as immoral pessimists who live their lives without meaning, purpose, or values? Think again! Atheism: A Very Short Introduction sets out to dispel the myths that surround atheism and show how a life without religious belief can be positive, meaningful, and moral.
Author: Gavin Hyman
Author: Gavin Hyman
Author: David Berman
Author: Michael Ruse
Author: Tim Whitmarsh
Author: Mitchell Stephens
Author: John Stuart Blackie
Author: Leigh Eric Schmidt
Author: David Eller
Author: Julian Baggini
Author: Robin Le Poidevin