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. (shrink)

Atheism has been on the rise in the West for several decades, but its roots, including those belonging to secularism, agnosticism, and freethought, run deep in Western history, philosophy, and thought. Drawing on a multitude of sources from a number of disciplines, S. T. Joshi outlines the natural origins of religious belief in primitive times and charts the slow development of secular accounts of natural phenomena in the Greco-Roman world. Adopting the " Christ myth" theory, he surveys the emergence (...) of a new faith- Christianity- that grew out of Judaism and explores its evolution through the medieval period. He then examines the increasing schisms within the church and conflicts between religious and political entities that caused a fracturing of the monolith of Christianity and the birth of the Renaissance, which not only brought to light the literary glories of the Greco-Roman world but also led to a scientific resurgence and the development of a secular view of the cosmos. By the end of the sixteenth century, as he concludes, the stage was set for the emergence of a worldview free of religion. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

This chapter begins by noting the controversy in the twentieth century over the doctrine of analogia entis, and it points out that Nietzsche advances a variety of arguments against belief: first, the simple fact that, in terms of actual belief and practice, human beings in the West have “killed” God (cf. GS §125), that is, that, as a matter of fact, they have ceased to believe; second, a genealogical argument, that explains how belief in God came into being; and third, (...) a psychological argument that explains the mechanisms underlying belief. The chapter then situates Nietzsche in the surprisingly long history of atheism, covering the ancient Greek period and the modern Enlightenment. It notes that, just as there are varieties of god(s) that are rejected, so there are varieties of unbelief—or, to borrow from the title of the famous work by William James (1842–1910), different varieties of not having “religious experience”: there is (1) overt disbelief or atheism; (2) unbelief or agnosticism; and (3) different forms of atheism and agnosticism that may be (a) pragmatic or practical or (b) philosophical, reflective, and intellectually justifiable. This analytical survey covers the pantheism and atheism controversies of the late eighteenth century in Germany, as well as the figures of Meslier and Holbach, Hegel and Feuerbach, before moving to the twentieth century: Freud and Jung, the so-called New Atheists (i.e., Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, aka the “Four Horsemen”), and Benedict XVI’s engagement with Nietzsche. Throughout anticipations of and parallels with Nietzsche are drawn out, and the chapter concludes with a discussion of Nietzsche and nihilism. (shrink)

This book seeks to explain the critiques of humanism and the "negative" philosophical anthropologies that dominated mid-century philosophy and traces the ...

Historically, many Christians have understood God’s transcendence to imply God’s properties categorically differ from any created properties. For multiple historical figures, a problem arose for religious language: how can one talk of God at all if none of our predicates apply to God? What are we to make of creeds and Biblical passages that seem to predicate creaturely properties, such as goodness and wisdom, of God? Thomas Aquinas offered a solution: God is to be spoken of only through analogy (the (...) doctrine of analogy). Gavin Hyman argues Aquinas’s doctrine of analogy was neglected prior to the early-modern period and the neglect of analogy produced the conception of a god vulnerable to atheistic arguments. Contra Hyman, in this paper, I show early-modern atheism arose in a theological context in which there was an active debate concerning analogy. Peter Browne (1665–1735) and William King (1650–1729) offered two competing conceptions of analogical predication that were debated through the 19th century, with interlocutors such as the freethinker Anthony Collins (1676–1729), theologian/philosopher George Berkeley (1685–1753), and skeptic David Hume (1711–1776). Lastly, I discuss the 18th century debate over theological analogy as part of the background relevant to understanding Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. (shrink)

Calls into question the traditional polarity of theism and atheism.

This book examines the reception of the works of the baron d'Holbach throughout francophone Europe. It insists that d'Holbach's historical importance has been understated, argues the case for the existence of a significant 'Christian Enlightenment', and much more.

Henry More was probably the most important English philosopher between Hobbes and Locke. Described as the 'hammer' of the Cartesians, More attacked Descartes' conception of spirit as undermining its very intelligibility. This work, which analyses an episode in the evolution of the concept of spiritual substance in early modernity, looks at More's rational theology within the context of the great seventeenth century Cartesian controversies over spirit, soul-body interaction, and divine omnipresence. This work argues that More's new, univocal spirit conception, highly (...) influential upon Newton and Clarke, contributed unwittingly to a slow secularisation process internal to theistic culture. It thus fills a lacuna in scholarship by examining how conceptual changes in early modern metaphysics, as opposed to better researched transformations in moral philosophy, were an additional ingredient in the origins of modern speculative atheism. It also suggests that these controversies are by no means merely of historical interest but represent a resource for contemporary philosophical reflection. (shrink)

Looking back to the crisis of the Reformation and beyond, Unbelievers shows how, long before philosophers started to make the case for atheism, powerful cultural currents were challenging traditional faith. These tugged in different ways not only on celebrated thinkers such as Machiavelli, Montaigne, Hobbes, and Pascal, but on men and women at every level of society whose voices we hear through their diaries, letters, and court records. Ryrie traces the roots of atheism born of anger, a sentiment (...) familiar to anyone who has ever cursed a corrupt priest, and of doubt born of anxiety, as Christians discovered their faith was flimsier than they had believed. As the Reformation eroded time-honored certainties, Protestant radicals defended their faith by redefining it in terms of ethics. In the process they set in motion secularizing forces that soon became transformational. Unbelievers tells a powerful emotional history of doubt with potent lessons for our own angry and anxious age. (shrink)

In 1964, Augusto Del Noce assembled in a book some of his best works on Marxism, atheism, and the history of modern philosophy. The result was Il problema dell’ateismo, which he always regarded as foundational to his way of thinking. The book remains his best-known work and is still in print in Italy almost sixty years later. The Problem of Atheism offers the first English translation of this landmark book, one of the earliest works to recognize the new (...) secularizing trends in Western culture following World War II. Del Noce situates atheism historically, reconstructing its philosophical trajectory through European modernity. Documenting the author’s entire intellectual experience, these essays explore the birth of modern philosophy, reckon with the great European crisis of 1917 to 1945 and the Cold War that followed, and mine the opposition between Marxism and the rise of the affluent society. The result is rich with premonitions of the cultural landscape that would take shape throughout the 1960s and the decades that followed. Proving its English translation to be long overdue, The Problem of Atheism remains relevant to contemporary debates about secularization, political theology, and modernity. (shrink)

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were a period of fundamental transformation in the relationship between theology and philosophy. In England during this era, traditional Christian theology sought to present faith as a rational system, consistent with logical necessities. In contrast, a skeptical and naturalistic tradition was emerging, with figures such as Thomas Hobbes representing its most prominent voices. Hobbes, through teachings such as materialism, moral relativism, and the denial of natural religion, paved the way for new approaches to religion, while (...) simultaneously provoking the anger of ecclesiastical authorities. David Hume grew up in this intellectual environment and developed his philosophy both in continuation of, and in critical response to, the rationalist and natural theological traditions. Drawing inspiration from Locke, Berkeley, and Hobbes, Hume established his radical empiricism and, by analyzing concepts such as causation, substance, the self, and God, demonstrated that much of traditional theological doctrine lacked a solid epistemic foundation. In reaction to this approach, early critics labeled Hume an atheist, skeptic, and destroyer of religion. However, interpreters such as Ernest Mossner, Kemp Smith, Passmore, Gaskin, and Paul Russell in later centuries have shown that Hume’s skepticism had a constructive dimension, and that his aim was not the negation of religion but rather the clarification of the limits of human knowledge. Nonetheless, a fundamental question remains: what was Hume’s actual stance regarding God and religion? Should he be considered an atheist or an agnostic? This article argues that both characterizations are inadequate, and that the most accurate description of Hume’s position is God indifference. In this view, the question of God is not a central issue, but rather a topic outside the core domain of human epistemology and ethics. The term God-indifference in this article is neither equivalent to Apatheism nor to theological Indifferentism; rather, it is an interpretive term proposed to accurately represent Hume’s perspective on religion. In this sense, Hume is neither a denier nor a defender of God; instead, by focusing on human psychology and ethics, he removes the question of God from the center of philosophy and reinterprets religion in light of human experience. Materials & Methods This research employs a conceptual-hermeneutical method grounded in historical-philosophical analysis. The study integrates three levels of investigation: -/- Textual Analysis: A close reading of Hume’s primary works—A Treatise of Human Nature, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, and The Natural History of Religion—to identify his treatment of divine and religious themes. Contextual Interpretation: Examination of the intellectual and theological milieu of early modern Britain, including responses to Hobbes, Clarke, Butler, and other figures of natural theology. Conceptual Reconstruction: Introduction of the term God-indifference as an interpretive tool to describe Hume’s stance toward the divine, distinguishing it from related notions such as indifferentism (a theological neutrality) and apatheism (a psychological or practical indifference). -/- The methodology of this research combines historical and philosophical analysis, aiming to reconstruct the structure of Hume’s thought and to determine the place of his philosophy in the development of modern philosophy of religion. Discussion & Results The analysis reveals that Hume’s position cannot be adequately captured by the dichotomy of belief and disbelief. In Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, while Hume’s characters debate the teleological and cosmological arguments, none provides a conclusive proof of divine existence. Even the possibility of a “supreme cause” is left as a mere hypothesis, lacking moral or existential significance. Hume thus neither affirms nor refutes God’s existence; he simply regards the question as lacking epistemic value. Similarly, in A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume dismantles metaphysical concepts—such as causality, substance, and the self—that traditionally underpinned natural theology. His critique of causation, for instance, undermines the logical structure of the cosmological argument. If causal inference rests merely on habit and not on rational necessity, then no argument from the world’s order can lead to a necessary divine cause. Moreover, Hume’s moral philosophy reinforces this perspective. By grounding morality in sentiment rather than divine command, he redefines the basis of ethics as natural, psychological, and social. Religion, in this view, is a byproduct of human imagination and emotional need, not an outcome of rational proof. This interpretive shift culminates in what the present study calls God-indifference a philosophical posture that neither rejects nor affirms divinity but de-centers it. Unlike apatheism, which denotes emotional or practical unconcern about God, Hume’s God indifference is epistemic and philosophical: the belief that the question of God’s existence simply does not matter for human knowledge, ethics, or happiness. Such an interpretation clarifies why labeling Hume as an atheist or agnostic is misleading. The atheist seeks to deny God; the agnostic withholds belief but continues to treat the issue as central; Hume, by contrast, shifts the axis of philosophy altogether—from divine ontology to human experience. Religion thus becomes, for Hume, an object of empirical and psychological inquiry rather than a domain of metaphysical speculation. This reading also explains the constructive side of Hume’s skepticism. His purpose was not to destroy belief but to redefine its limits, showing that meaning, morality, and social order can arise independently of theological foundations. Consequently, Hume’s philosophy paves the way for a new, human-centered philosophy of religion—one that interprets faith as an expression of emotion, imagination, and the search for meaning rather than as a system of proofs about divine reality. Conclusion In light of this analysis, Hume’s religious philosophy should be understood as a form of God-indifference—a reflective detachment from metaphysical claims about God that reorients philosophical inquiry toward human life and experience. He does not advocate atheism, which would still involve a kind of metaphysical commitment to the nonexistence of God, nor does he adopt agnosticism, which continues to treat the divine question as an unsolved problem. Instead, Hume marginalizes the entire issue, regarding it as secondary to the study of human nature, sentiment, and morality. This stance has profound implications for modern philosophy of religion. It challenges the assumption that religious thought must center on belief in a deity and opens the door to a non-theistic but meaning-oriented understanding of faith. Hume’s philosophy thus anticipates later existential and humanistic trends that interpret religion as a function of human emotional and moral life rather than as metaphysical speculation. Ultimately, God-indifference encapsulates Hume’s enduring legacy: a redefinition of the relationship between philosophy, religion, and human experience. In his framework, the divine ceases to be the axis of intellectual inquiry, and human nature—its perceptions, passions, and search for meaning—takes center stage. This transformation marks a pivotal moment in the history of Western thought, moving from the theology of being to the philosophy of living, from metaphysical proofs to existential understanding, and from the question of God to the reality of humanity. (shrink)

Contemporary science presents us with the remarkable theory that the universe began to exist about fifteen billion years ago with a cataclysmic explosion called "the Big Bang." The question of whether Big Bang cosmology supports theism or atheism has long been a matter of discussion among the general public and in popular science books, but has received scant attention from philosophers. This book sets out to fill this gap by means of a sustained debate between two philosophers, William Lane (...) Craig and Quentin Smith, who defend opposing positions. Craig argues that the Big Bang that began the universe was created by God, while Smith argues that the Big Bang has no cause. Alternating chapters by the two philosophers criticize and attempt to refute preceding arguments. Their arguments are based on Einstein's theory of relativity and include a discussion of the new quantum cosmology recently developed by Stephen Hawking and popularized in A Brief History of Time. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Atheism is a pioneering edited volume, exploring atheism--understood in the broad sense of 'an absence of belief in the existence of a God or gods'--in all the richness and diversity of its historical and contemporary expressions. Bringing together an international team of established and emerging scholars, it probes the varied manifestations and implications of unbelief from an array of disciplinary perspectives (philosophy, history, sociology, anthropology, demography, psychology, natural sciences, gender and sexuality studies, literary criticism, (...) film studies, musicology) and in a range of global contexts (Western Europe, North America, post-communist Europe, the Islamic world, Japan, India). Both surveying and synthesizing previous work, and presenting the major fruits of innovative recent research, the handbook is set to be a landmark text for the study of atheism. (shrink)

The reprint of this book by Errol Harris, which collects and integrates a series of lectures on the philosophy of religion delivered in 1977, and which was originally published as Volume XXVI of Tulane Studies in Philosophy, appears to me to be highly commendable and opportune. For the most remarkable event in the world history of the past decade is certainly the world-wide breakdown of Communist regimes. Having adopted Marx’s and Engels’s historical and dialectical materialism as their official ideology, they (...) usually assumed a radically negative attitude towards religion, somewhat paradoxically raising atheism to the status of a sort of state religion. As a consequence of the end of Communism, traditional religions, on the one hand, and an individualist, subjectivist, at its leanings anarchic and nihilistic conception of human existence, on the other, have step by step regained credit and influence in the western world. The careful reader of Atheism and Theism will find in it a firm, enlightening guidance to a rational, unpassionate understanding and assessment of the significance as well as limits of such a historical-spiritual revolution. However, paradoxical it may prima facie appear, the reason for this lies just in the fact that Harris’s philosophical outlook emphatically rejects any scientistic and/or humanistic attempt to compromise the pure immanence and autonomy of metaphysical speculation by making it dependent upon the temporal contingencies of historical-social problematics, or even to do away with it altogether. Scientism, naturalism and humanism, Harris points out. (shrink)

The theism-atheism debate is foreign to many Mahāyāna Buddhist thinkers such as the Japanese Zen Master Dōgen. Nevertheless, his philosophy of ‘expression’ is able to shine a new light on the various incarnations of this debate throughout history. This paper will explore a/theism from Dōgen’s philosophical standpoint. Dōgen introduces the notion of ‘expression’ to describe the concomitant vertical and horizontal relationships of the religious project, namely the relationship between the individual and the divine as well as the relationship among (...) a multiplicity of individuals, each of which Dōgen conceives of as an expression of the divine and/or the oneness of the cosmos. Dōgen’s philosophy presupposes the ‘way of emptiness’ and Chengguan’s ‘four dharma worlds’. To Dōgen, the former indicates the conventional nature of predication and signification, while the latter denotes the existential interwovenness of numerous individuals and the divine oneness of the cosmos. Such a philosophy implies that all truth claims and philosophical positions are mere intellectual and discursive constructions that are formulated against a perceived other. Therefore, Dōgen observes laconically that ‘when one side is expressed, the other is obscured’ or, as Dōgen says elsewhere, ‘when expression is expressed, non-expression is not expressed.’ Dōgen’s philosophical framework provides some interesting insights about one or more discourses on atheism: Again, the basic assumption is that all philosophical paradigms, systems, and positions are devoid of an absolute truth value, framed in a specific cultural and historical context which they express, and formulated vis-à-vis a perceived other. In this paper, I will look at Friedrich Nietzsche’s atheism from the perspective of Dōgen’s philosophical standpoint. Concretely, I will present Nietzsche’s position on his own terms, translate his philosophy into Dōgen’s terminology, interpret his philosophy from the standpoint of Dōgen’s philosophical approach, and assess the utility of such an exercise. I believe that such a project enables us to read theism through the eyes of atheism, atheism through the eyes of theism, both through the eyes of Dōgen, and Dōgen through the eyes of the a/theism debate. In this last section, I will introduce the language of Nishida Kitarō who attempted a similar project in his The Logic of Basho and the Religious Worldview. The goal of this project is to determine what atheism denies, what atheism contributes, and why a multi-faceted and multi-cultural engagement of atheism is important today. (shrink)

In order to give a proper estimation of the place of the New Atheism in history, we shall need to have before us an overview of that history. So I shall begin with an appropriate sketch. Then I will try to give an account of the current global state of play, and to indicate some reasons why it seems reasonable to think that the worldview of the New Atheists is currently gaining ground, at least in certain quarters. After examining—and (...) rejecting—some recent claims that the worldview of the New Atheists is actually now in decline, I will then conclude with some cautionary remarks about the difficulties of making longer term predictions about anything involving human affairs. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.2 (2002) 207-224 [Access article in PDF] Atomism, Atheism, and the Spontaneous Generation of Human Beings: The Debate over a Natural Origin of the First Humans in Seventeenth-Century Britain Matthew R. Goodrum The problem of human origins, of how and when the first humans appeared in the world, has been addressed in a variety of ways in western thought. In the seventeenth (...) century the predominant explanation for the origin of the world and the beings that inhabit it, especially human beings, was based on the biblical account of creation. It was almost universally accepted that humans had been created by a supernatural agent using supernatural means. But alternative explanations for the production of the first humans did exist, according to which the first humans were produced by nature through some form of spontaneous generation. Seventeenth-century proponents of this view differed in their conceptions of how spontaneous generation worked, but all relied heavily upon mechanisms first proposed in antiquity. Some followed the example of Aristotle and other early Greek philosophers, who had described how matter, when subjected to the correct conditions, could produce living beings. 1 Others were influenced by the modifications made to these ideas by medieval Islamic philosophers. 2 [End Page 207] A quite different conception of spontaneous generation was derived from the classical atomists, in part from certain notions attributed to Democritus of Abdera but mainly from the philosophical system of Epicurus.While any suggestion that humans might have originated naturally by some kind of spontaneous generation was widely and vigorously rejected by natural philosophers and theologians alike, the most vehement attacks were often directed against the atomists' accounts of the origin of the first humans. The reasons for this were both scientific and religious. Atomism had long been criticized for its materialism, its reliance on chance, and its atheistic tendencies. Thus, the efforts of a small number of natural philosophers to formulate and support a naturalistic explanation of human origins based upon its principles was bound to raise profound theological, philosophical, and scientific difficulties. To these natural philosophers, however, atomism seemed to offer a viable mechanism to explain spontaneous generation. Yet while atomism solved some problems, it raised others; and even if these scientific objections could be overcome, there remained religious objections to both the notion of a natural origin of humans and the atomists' account of the process that had to be addressed. Complicating matters further is the fact that these scientific and religious objections were sometimes intimately connected.This paper investigates the mechanisms proposed by atomists to explain the spontaneous generation of human beings and the kinds of criticisms their hypotheses received in seventeenth-century Britain. This will illuminate a number of interconnected issues relating to the acceptance of atomism as a philosophy of nature and its application to the biological sciences. By analyzing the ways scientific and religious factors interacted in the debate over the spontaneous generation of the first humans we will not only make a contribution to the history of seventeenth-century atomism but also link problems and ideas in the physical sciences with those in the biological and anthropological sciences. At the same time this study illustrates the ways in which scientific ideas were shaped by, or needed to respond to, ideas and concerns that had their roots in religion. Atomism and the Generation of the First Humans The most complete account of the atomic philosophy and the mechanisms it proposed to account for the origin of human beings to survive from antiquity was Lucretius's De rerum natura. Several editions of the text were available during the seventeenth century, including one published at Cambridge in 1675 and an English translation by Thomas Creech that went through four editions [End Page 208] between 1682 and 1699. 3 But Lucretius was not the only source describing the atomists' ideas about the spontaneous generation of the first humans. A more contemporary and perhaps more influential proponent of the atomic... (shrink)

Intellectual history, philosophy, and science’s own self-understanding undermine the claim that science entails or need even tend toward atheism. By definition a radically transcendent creator-God is inaccessible to empirical investigation. Denials of the possibility or actual occurrence of miracles depend not on science itself, but on naturalist assumptions that derive originally from a univocal metaphysics with its historical roots in medieval nominalism, which in turn have deeply influenced philosophy and science since the seventeenth century. The metaphysical postulate of naturalism (...) and its correlative empiricist epistemology constitute methodological self-limitations of science -- only an unjustified move from postulate to assertion permits ideological scientism and atheism. It is entirely possible that religious claims consistent with the empirical findings of the natural and social sciences might be true. Therefore, historians of religion not only need not assume that atheism i. (shrink)

I argue for a new conception of atheism as a practice of self-interpretation. Though atheism is usually conceived as a metaphysical view about the existence of God, I argue that this conception is flawed for two reasons: first, this view of atheism is based on a limited conception of God and does not apply to certain “alternative concepts of God”; second, deflationary accounts of existence entail that atheist denials of God’s existence cannot be absolute but only relative (...) to particular frameworks or language games. I suggest instead that atheism should be seen as the practice of deliberately refusing to use words such as “God” in one’s interpretation of oneself. (shrink)

_The easy way to understand atheism and secular philosophy_ For people seeking a non-religious philosophy of life, as well as believers with atheist friends, _Atheism For Dummies_ offers an intelligent exploration of the historical and moral case for atheism. Often wildly misunderstood, atheism is a secular approach to life based on the understanding that reality is an arrangement of physical matter, with no consideration of unverifiable spiritual forces. _Atheism For Dummies_ offers a brief history of atheist philosophy (...) and its evolution, explores it as a historical and cultural movement, covers important historical writings on the subject, and discusses the nature of ethics and morality in the absence of religion. A simple, yet intelligent exploration of an often misunderstood philosophy Explores the differences between explicit and implicit atheism A comprehensive, readable, and thoroughly unbiased resource As the number of atheists worldwide continues to grow, this book offers a broad understanding of the subject for those exploring atheism as an approach to living. (shrink)

The final chapter discusses the cognitive and evolutionary contexts of atheism and non-belief. While atheism is considered by CSR scholars as a secondary phenomenon which is unnatural and non-intuitive, there are good reasons to study its evolutionary history. This chapter states that there are strong reasons to look for adaptationist explanations of atheism.

Setting out from a debate between two contemporary Lacanians about the religious significance of psychoanalysis, this paper argues that what such analysis really has to offer to a discussion of religion is purloined by the current round of academic polemics about its "revival." This argument is built in three steps: in the first, I demonstrate that the "site" of a meeting of psychoanalysis and religion is the "fundamental fantasy," tracing that concept's history from its Freudian pre-history through Lacan and showing (...) it to coincide closely with both Freud's and Lacan's criticism of religion. In the second step, I show how the "fundamental fantasy" equally supports Johnston's militant anti-religiosity and Žižek's comparably militant argument for a revolutionary, transformed religion. "Following Atheism" traces the critical weaknesses of either position, noting how both lead to internal contradiction, to a failure to live up to the basic ethical claims of psychoanalysis. Based upon such a demonstration, the final step of the argument shows that, between them, these anti- and pro- religion polemics conspire to hide "in broad daylight" a single critical task for psychoanalytic theory today: they do so because what is emerging in our world defies description as either "anti-religion" or "religion." Turning to a deeper thread of Žižek's thought, "Following Atheism" asserts this basic transformation/replacement of fantasy underway in contemporary society. The paper closes with reflections on the nature of this revolution. (shrink)

Atheists, conservative theists, and religious liberals often read the history of science in ways that support their own position. Atheists expect continual mutual support between science and nonbelief, conservatives emphasize theistic metaphysical foundations for science; and liberals find a historical development toward separate spheres for science and religion. The rise of science was more complicated than anticipated by any of these stories. Atheism and science have usually developed almost independently, with weak connections. Today, the naturalism of modern scientific descriptions (...) of the world is consonant with an atheistic position. But even now, significant tensions between science and atheism remain. (shrink)

In this 2007 volume, eighteen of the world's leading scholars present original essays on various aspects of atheism: its history, both ancient and modern, defense and implications. The topic is examined in terms of its implications for a wide range of disciplines including philosophy, religion, feminism, postmodernism, sociology and psychology. In its defense, both classical and contemporary theistic arguments are criticized, and, the argument from evil, and impossibility arguments, along with a non religious basis for morality are defended. These (...) essays give a broad understanding of atheism and a lucid introduction to this controversial topic. (shrink)

The thesis of this book is "that we can meaningfully speak of the task of the Phenomenology; that there is a single coherent argument running through its entirety; and that when properly understood, the Preface can be seen not only as complementary to the Introduction but as growing directly out of it". Specifically, W. wants to show that the "epistemological" and "historical" sides of the PhG are compatible in that the former is finally grounded in the latter. Theoretical-scientific consciousness is (...) not autonomous. History is the development of Geist through man’s work, strife, desires, thought; i.e., W. endorses a "humanistic interpretation" of "Spirit". That this is a "left-Hegelian" approach is clear. Although W. is careful to point out the deficiencies in Marx’s and Feuerbach’s critiques of Hegel, with respect to the foundational role of the "socially-historically conditioned aspect" of man, for example, we find that Marx and Hegel are in agreement. And we are told that Feuerbach’s conception of God is actually not so different from Hegel’s. For both, God is a kind of human "projection". W. defends this psychological concept as a "model for understanding Hegel’s view of religion," so long as it is remembered that this must be a "collective projection". These projections are not simply illusions since they reveal something true about human nature. But there is no transcendent Spirit for Hegel. To speak of Spirit as "absolute" is simply to refer to the transcendence of society to the individual. Thus the argument of the PhG in chapters 6 and 7 "could easily be described as atheism and communism," with the reservations that the "divine" exists in the form of man and that private property is not to be abolished. (shrink)

This paper examines the themes of history, psychology, and epistemology in Hume’s Natural History of Religion. In the first half, I argue that the origin of religion Hume seeks to uncover in this work is psychological rather than chronological: he is looking for religion’s origin in human nature rather than human history. In doing so, I reject the common view, going all the way back to Hume’s near contemporary Dugald Stewart, that the Natural History is a work of “conjectural history”. (...) Examination of the work itself, and of the use of the term “history” at the time, corroborates the view that a “natural history” of religion, for Hume and his contemporaries, was an early form of what we would now call a theory of religious psychology. -/- In the second half, I turn my attention to epistemology, and to the Natural History’s relationship with the Dialogues. A naïve reading would see these two works as simply complementary, the former examining the origin of religious belief in an epistemically neutral way, and the latter addressing the question of its rationality. In contrast, I argue that the psychological account Hume offers in the Natural History is far from epistemically neutral (nor was it seen as such at the time). On the one hand, his account of the origin of “superstitious” religious belief emphasises its irrationality and dangerous moral consequences; and on the other, his references to “genuine theism” insist on its truth and rationality. These latter professions of faith are disingenuous, certainly, but less because Hume doesn’t believe what he says, and more because “genuine theism” is, in this work, effectively atheism in disguise. (shrink)

New Atheism declares God to be “a scientific hypothesis” that can be tested like any other. An examination of their claim, and the approaches they employ to substantiate it, reveals a particular understanding of God and causality, where God’s action would entail an observable rupture of causal closure. The modern Western intelligent design (ID) movement posits very specific ID arguments, all of which, under examination, share assumptions about an external designer and the nature of the designing act. The argument (...) from irreducible complexity entails more than an object’s irreducibility, but particularly the idea that natural causal mechanisms are inadequate to account for the complex object. Specified complexity argues that certain patterns of information cannot come about by natural processes alone. The fine-tuning argument also presupposes a lack of plausible naturalistic explanations for the universal constants identified by science. It becomes clear that they share an underlying assumption of the New Atheists’ “God hypothesis,” that a complete, natural causal account would render the resulting phenomena unconvincing as evidence for an external designer’s existence. These assumptions are compared with the concept of God’s action in the divine action models (DAMs) of the three Sunnī theological schools: Ashʿarī, Māturīdī, and Salafī. Upon examination, all three models assume a maximally active God and allow natural phenomena to be accounted for by continuous and unbroken natural causal processes. The paper concludes that Sunnī concepts of God’s divine action are immune to New Atheist critiques, particularly their manner of weaponizing science against religion, because the underlying assumptions about God are different. Moreover, the responses to New Atheism made by the Western ID movement are equally inapplicable from the standpoint of Sunnī DAMs, since those responses share with New Atheism metaphysical assumptions the DAMs dismiss. (shrink)

The thinker today who wishes to understand the phenomenon of contemporary atheism must take some account of the general development of speculation about God that took place in the modern centuries and particularly since the time of Immanuel Kant. The reason for this is obvious enough, for it is only against the background of its development and in the light of the various influences which caused it that the peculiar character of present-day atheism and its precise significance can (...) be adequately explained. Why is it that proofs for God’s existence, if they are considered at all, are normally given such short shrift by the contemporary atheist. How did he come to find such difficulty about accepting the properties traditionally attributed to God, particularly that of infinity? What has belief in God got to do with human alienation? Answers to these and similar questions lie in the history of philosophical ideas that maturated in the minds of a long line of philosophers from Descartes, through Kant, to contemporary atheistic existentialists. (shrink)

Atheists in general need share no particular political or metaphysical views, but atheists of the most modern, Western, militant sort, escaping from a merely nihilistic mind-set, are usually humanists of an especially triumphalist kind. In this paper I offer a critical analysis and partial history of their claims, suggesting that they are members of a distinctivelyChristianheretical sect, formed in reaction to equally heretical forms of monotheistic idolatry.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Varieties of Atheism: Connecting Religion and Its Critics ed. by David NewheiserPaul K. MoserThe Varieties of Atheism: Connecting Religion and Its Critics. Edited by David Newheiser. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022. 216 pp. $32.50 paper; $99.00 hardcover.There are two general ways to approach a controversial topic. The first way defines the key terms for the topic as clearly as possible, in order to give (...) contributors a common focus. This manner of approach keeps participants on the same page, with a shared topic of conversation and debate. The second way does not bother to formulate shared definitions of key terms. Instead, it notes multiple uses of key terms in history, and it allows contributors to proceed with their preferred uses, despite considerable variation in uses.This book, emerging from a 2018 conference on religion and its critics, opts for the second way, leaving readers with a wide range of understandings of “atheism.” Its eight essays therefore often treat different topics, with little sense of a common query. Editor Newheiser looks for a common feature as follows: “These essays explore the complex relations of sympathy and resistance that connect particular atheisms with particular religious traditions” (2). He hopes that “the collection opens new possibilities for conversation between those who are religious and those who are not” (2).We naturally might ask what the hoped-for conversation is about. If it is about the truth of theism, we are faced with a potential belief about whether God exists. Many people are concerned about that matter, even if atheism includes components beyond a mere belief about God’s existence. Atheism, Newheiser proposes, “is a polyphonic assemblage that develops in conversation with religious traditions” (8). He also claims that the collection is helpful in “bracketing the timeworn debate over the existence of God” (9). Even if the debate is “timeworn,” it still could be vital to understanding many religious traditions, theistic and nontheistic. In addition, it could be central to an adequate understanding of atheism even if atheism includes many noncognitive features. Such important prospects deserve more attention than Newheiser and his contributors suggest.An Afterword by Constance M. Furey, “The Drama of Atheism,” tries to find some unity in the book’s essays. She reports that the contributors are “united in our interest in atheism’s diversity, and intrigued by the possibility that new studies of atheism might unravel the single thread linking religion to belief” (200). She adds that the book’s authors “collectively confirm that [End Page 94] atheism’s multifaceted drama has often been overshadowed by the huckster out front, luring passersby with a simple cry, ‘God! Alive or Dead? True or False?’” (201). I fail to see why the latter questions should be associated with a “huckster.” That seems to assign guilt by association, without needed good reasons.I cannot recall anyone, philosopher or theologian, arguing that historical atheists hold only that it is false that God exists. Interest in the issue of “True or False?” is prominent among philosophers and theologians, because they are interested in the nature of reality, with respect to the existence of a divine being. Such interests, however, are no threat to other areas of commitment and practice among atheists. Those other areas can get due attention while one maintains a keen interest in the question of God’s existence. I suggest, then, that the book has a misplaced emphasis in its (attempt at) jettisoning issues about the existence of God in connection with atheism. Such issues are central to historical atheism, even though other concerns and features accompany it.Furey looks for a special kind of “hope” in the collection’s essays. She cites the book’s editor in endorsing “a commitment to thoughtful life and living thought that holds ‘affirmation and negation together in tension,’... in ‘an ethical practice of openness to the unexpected’” (202). She exclaims: “What better place to find this hope, the holding of affirmation and negation together, than in a volume devoted to open inquiry and unexpected conclusions about atheism” (202). She does not say, however, what the praised “negation” consists in. Is this the negation of God’s existence... (shrink)

The concept of evolution is widely considered to be a foundational building block in atheist thought. Leaders of the New Atheist movement have taken Darwin's work and used it to diminish the authority of religious institutions and belief systems. But they have also embraced it as a metaphor for the gradual replacement of religious faith with secular reason. They have posed as harbingers of human progress, claiming the moral high ground, and rejecting with intolerance any message that challenges the hegemony (...) of science and reason. Religion, according to the New Atheists, should be relegated to the Dark Ages of superstition and senseless violence. Yet Darwin did not see evolution as a linear progression to an improved state of being. The more antagonistic members of the New Atheist movement who embrace this idea are not only employing bad history, but also the kind of rigid, black-and-white thinking they excoriate in their religious opponents. Indeed, Stephen LeDrew argues, militant atheists have more in common with religious fundamentalists than they would care to admit, advancing what LeDrew calls secular fundamentalism. In reaction to fundamentalist Christianity and Islamism, this strain of atheism has become an offshoot of the religion it tries so hard to malign. The Evolution of Atheism outlines the essential political tension at the heart of the atheist movement. The New Atheism, LeDrew shows, is part of a tradition of atheist thought and activism that promotes individualism and scientific authority, which puts it at odds with atheist groups that are motivated by humanistic ethics and social justice. LeDrew draws on public relations campaigns, publications, podcasts, and in-depth interviews to explore the belief systems, internal logics, and self-contradictions of the people who consider themselves to be atheists. He argues that evolving understandings of what atheism means, and how it should be put into action, are threatening to irrevocably fragment the movement. (shrink)

Jon Stewart’s most recent monograph offers a highly accessible introduction to nineteenth-century treatments of nihilism. The book’s focus is not restricted to the usual suspects (e.g. Schopenhauer, Ivan Turgenev, and Nietzsche). Stewart also examines works by lesser-known figures, including August Klingemann, Georg Büchner, and Poul Martin Møller. This makes A History of Nihilism in the Nineteenth Century a welcome contribution to existing studies of nihilism’s intellectual history. Stewart’s introduction tentatively defines nihilism as “the troubling idea that nothing is ultimately valuable (...) or meaningful” (2). After discussing common causes of nihilism (e.g. death, fear of being forgotten, suffering, atheism, and... (shrink)