Download or read book Atheists and Empty Spaces written by Michael Thomas and published by Austin Macauley Publishers. This book was released on 2022-08-31 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The poems in Atheists and Empty Spaces explore the quintessential aspect of humanity – the need of having something in which to believe. Modern humanity attempts to fill the empty spaces in the psyche with emotional and psychological sustenance that was once provided by communal connections, religion, and the worship of deities or even nature. These poems explore how, in many ways, people have all become atheists because they no longer know how to connect to natural and supernatural forces, and they simply no longer believe in them. Humanity is now lacking a connection to the impulses that once nurtured human desires. However, the poems also suggest that art can provide a path back to those vital connections. Some poems are simple explorations of personal pain that cannot be soothed. Others are thorough considerations of how warped or misguided humanity’s attempts really are at solving an elusive and unidentified misery. Most of these poems take traditional forms of verse and song, but some find their unique rhythms in contemporary free verse. Others use examples from ancient cultures to comment on contemporary culture while some ideas spring from news headlines of today. Each poem in this collection reflects on the ways that modern humans seek to fill their empty spaces, whether atheist or not.
Download or read book Atheists and Empty Spaces written by Michael Thomas and published by Austin Macauley. This book was released on 2022-08-31 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The poems in Atheists and Empty Spaces explore the quintessential aspect of humanity - the need of having something in which to believe. Modern humanity attempts to fill the empty spaces in the psyche with emotional and psychological sustenance that was once provided by communal connections, religion, and the worship of deities or even nature. These poems explore how, in many ways, people have all become atheists because they no longer know how to connect to natural and supernatural forces, and they simply no longer believe in them. Humanity is now lacking a connection to the impulses that once nurtured human desires. However, the poems also suggest that art can provide a path back to those vital connections. Some poems are simple explorations of personal pain that cannot be soothed. Others are thorough considerations of how warped or misguided humanity's attempts really are at solving an elusive and unidentified misery. Most of these poems take traditional forms of verse and song, but some find their unique rhythms in contemporary free verse. Others use examples from ancient cultures to comment on contemporary culture while some ideas spring from news headlines of today. Each poem in this collection reflects on the ways that modern humans seek to fill their empty spaces, whether atheist or not.
Download or read book A Sacred Space Is Never Empty written by Victoria Smolkin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Bolsheviks set out to build a new world in the wake of the Russian Revolution, they expected religion to die off. Soviet power used a variety of tools--from education to propaganda to terror—to turn its vision of a Communist world without religion into reality. Yet even with its monopoly on ideology and power, the Soviet Communist Party never succeeded in overcoming religion and creating an atheist society. A Sacred Space Is Never Empty presents the first history of Soviet atheism from the 1917 revolution to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Drawing on a wealth of archival material and in-depth interviews with those who were on the front lines of Communist ideological campaigns, Victoria Smolkin argues that to understand the Soviet experiment, we must make sense of Soviet atheism. Smolkin shows how atheism was reimagined as an alternative cosmology with its own set of positive beliefs, practices, and spiritual commitments. Through its engagements with religion, the Soviet leadership realized that removing religion from the "sacred spaces" of Soviet life was not enough. Then, in the final years of the Soviet experiment, Mikhail Gorbachev—in a stunning and unexpected reversal—abandoned atheism and reintroduced religion into Soviet public life. A Sacred Space Is Never Empty explores the meaning of atheism for religious life, for Communist ideology, and for Soviet politics.
Download or read book Atheist Identities Spaces and Social Contexts written by Lori G. Beaman and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-12-04 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this book not only examine the variety of atheist expression and experience in the Western context, they also explore how local, national and international settings may contribute to the shaping of atheist identities. By addressing identity at these different levels, the book explores how individuals construct their own atheist—or non-religious—identity, how they construct community and how identity factors into atheist interaction at the social or institutional levels. The book offers an interdisciplinary comparative approach to the analysis of issues relating to atheism, such as demography, community engagement, gender politics, stigmatism and legal action. It covers such themes as: secularization; the social context of atheism in various Western countries; the shifting of atheist identities based on different cultural and national contexts; the role of atheism in multicultural settings; how the framework of “reasonable accommodation” applies to atheism; interactions and relationships between atheism and religion and how atheism is represented for political and legal purposes. Featuring contributions by international scholars at the cutting edge of atheism studies, this volume offers unique insights into the relationship between atheism and identity. It will serve as a useful resource for academics, journalists, policy makers and general readers interested in secular and religious studies, identity construction and identity politics as well as atheism in general.
Download or read book Why God Won t Go Away written by Alister Mcgrath and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2011-05-17 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An accessible discourse written by a trusted expert and scholar critiquing the new atheism on its own merits and claims. The rise of the new atheism, which includes the manifestos of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, has created a public willingness in today's marketplace to talk about God and religion. Yet the debate up to this point has focused largely on rebutting the new atheist critique of Christianity. Why God Won't God Away moves into new territory by challenging the new atheism on its own grounds. Chapters include discussion on: What is the new atheism The problem of religion The problem of human nature Believing only what can be proved Dealing with imagined worlds and myths The new humanism and the new enlightenment Violence and dogmatism This book is written by a theology professor and Christian apologist who not only has a best-selling book rebutting the new atheist critique of Christianity but has debated Richard Dawkins in Oxford, Christopher Hitchens in Washington, and Daniel Dennett in London.
Download or read book God Is Not Great written by Christopher Hitchens and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2008-11-19 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christopher Hitchens, described in the London Observer as “one of the most prolific, as well as brilliant, journalists of our time” takes on his biggest subject yet–the increasingly dangerous role of religion in the world. In the tradition of Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian and Sam Harris’s recent bestseller, The End Of Faith, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case against religion. With a close and erudite reading of the major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos. With eloquent clarity, Hitchens frames the argument for a more secular life based on science and reason, in which hell is replaced by the Hubble Telescope’s awesome view of the universe, and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty and symmetry of the double helix.
Download or read book Everybody Is Wrong About God written by James A. Lindsay and published by Pitchstone Publishing (US&CA). This book was released on 2015-12-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A call to action to address people's psychological and social motives for a belief in God, rather than debate the existence of God With every argument for theism long since discredited, the result is that atheism has become little more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs. Thus, engaging in interminable debate with religious believers about the existence of God has become exactly the wrong way for nonbelievers to try to deal with misguided—and often dangerous—belief in a higher power. The key, author James Lindsay argues, is to stop that particular conversation. He demonstrates that whenever people say they believe in "God," they are really telling us that they have certain psychological and social needs that they do not know how to meet. Lindsay then provides more productive avenues of discussion and action. Once nonbelievers understand this simple point, and drop the very label of atheist, will they be able to change the way we all think about, talk about, and act upon the troublesome notion called "God."
Download or read book Making Sense of God written by Timothy Keller and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-09-20 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in an age of skepticism. Our society places such faith in empirical reason, historical progress, and heartfelt emotion that it’s easy to wonder: Why should anyone believe in Christianity? What role can faith and religion play in our modern lives? In this thoughtful and inspiring new book, pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller invites skeptics to consider that Christianity is more relevant now than ever. As human beings, we cannot live without meaning, satisfaction, freedom, identity, justice, and hope. Christianity provides us with unsurpassed resources to meet these needs. Written for both the ardent believer and the skeptic, Making Sense of God shines a light on the profound value and importance of Christianity in our lives.
Download or read book Is Atheism Dead written by Eric Metaxas and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is Atheism Dead? is an entertaining, impressively wide-ranging, and decidedly provocative answer to that famous 1966 TIME cover that itself provocatively asked “Is God Dead?” In a voice that is by turns witty, muscular, and poetic, Metaxas intentionally echoes C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton in cheerfully and logically making his astonishing case, along the way presenting breathtaking—and often withering—new evidence and arguments against the idea of a Creatorless universe. Taken all together, he shows atheism not merely to be implausible and intellectually sloppy, but now demonstrably ridiculous. Perhaps the only unanswered question on the subject is why we couldn’t see this sooner, and how embarrassed we should be about it.
Download or read book Religion for Atheists written by Alain De Botton and published by Signal. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of The Architecture of Happiness, a deeply moving meditation on how we can still benefit, without believing, from the wisdom, the beauty, and the consolatory power that religion has to offer. Alain de Botton was brought up in a committedly atheistic household, and though he was powerfully swayed by his parents' views, he underwent, in his mid-twenties, a crisis of faithlessness. His feelings of doubt about atheism had their origins in listening to Bach's cantatas, were further developed in the presence of certain Bellini Madonnas, and became overwhelming with an introduction to Zen architecture. However, it was not until his father's death -- buried under a Hebrew headstone in a Jewish cemetery because he had intriguingly omitted to make more secular arrangements -- that Alain began to face the full degree of his ambivalence regarding the views of religion that he had dutifully accepted. Why are we presented with the curious choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle and effective rituals and practices for which there is no equivalent in secular society? Why do we bristle at the mention of the word "morality"? Flee from the idea that art should be uplifting, or have an ethical purpose? Why don't we build temples? What mechanisms do we have for expressing gratitude? The challenge that de Botton addresses in his book: how to separate ideas and practices from the religious institutions that have laid claim to them. In Religion for Atheists is an argument to free our soul-related needs from the particular influence of religions, even if it is, paradoxically, the study of religion that will allow us to rediscover and rearticulate those needs.
Download or read book Theology for Atheists written by Gerald Robinson and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2019-09-12 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THEOLOGY FOR ATHEISTS is a joyful romp in the fields of the Lord. It opens up the possibility for atheists to join in the celebrations of a religious community; to share in their rituals and devotions without having to adopt their beliefs. Here they can join with other atheists who are already there. . . and the church needs them because it is the atheists who hold the future of the church and the survival of the planet in their hands. The text creates a common ground for atheists and people of faith - by offering secular explanations for sacred mysteries and miracles, while revering their value as myths. It provides cogent answers to the three Cosmic FAQ’s: Where do we come from? Why are we here? and Where are we going?
Download or read book Theists and Atheists written by Thomas Steven Molnar and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 1980 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sinceits founding by Jacques Waardenburg in 1971, Religion and Reason has been a leading forum for contributions on theories, theoretical issues and agendas related to the phenomenon and the study of religion. Topics include (among others) category formation, comparison, ethnophilosophy, hermeneutics, methodology, myth, phenomenology, philosophy of science, scientific atheism, structuralism, and theories of religion. From time to time the series publishes volumes that map the state of the art and the history of the discipline.
Download or read book Atheism For Dummies written by Dale McGowan and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-03-18 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book A Universe from Nothing written by Lawrence Maxwell Krauss and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a provocative account of the astounding new answers to the most basic philosophical question: Where did the universe come from and how will it end?
Download or read book Seven Types of Atheism written by John Gray and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the provocative author of Straw Dogs comes an incisive, surprising intervention in the political and scientific debate over religion and atheism When you explore older atheisms, you will find that some of your firmest convictions—secular or religious—are highly questionable. If this prospect disturbs you, what you are looking for may be freedom from thought. For a generation now, public debate has been corroded by a shrill, narrow derision of religion in the name of an often vaguely understood “science.” John Gray’s stimulating and enjoyable new book, Seven Types of Atheism, describes the complex, dynamic world of older atheisms, a tradition that is, he writes, in many ways intertwined with and as rich as religion itself. Along a spectrum that ranges from the convictions of “God-haters” like the Marquis de Sade to the mysticism of Arthur Schopenhauer, from Bertrand Russell’s search for truth in mathematics to secular political religions like Jacobinism and Nazism, Gray explores the various ways great minds have attempted to understand the questions of salvation, purpose, progress, and evil. The result is a book that sheds an extraordinary light on what it is to be human.
Download or read book The Quotable Atheist written by Jack Huberman and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2006-12-21 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surprisingly, no book of quotations on God and religion by atheists and agnostics exists. Luckily, for the millions of American nonbelievers who have quietly stewed for years as the religious right made gains in politics and culture, the wait is over. Bestselling author Jack Huberman’s zeitgeist sense has honed into the backlash building against religious fundamentalism and collected a veritable treasure trove of quotes by philosophers, scientists, poets, writers, artists, entertainers, and political figures. His colorful cast of atheists includes Karen Armstrong, Lance Armstrong, Jules Feiffer, Federico Fellini, H. L. Mencken, Ian McKellen, Isaac Singer, Jonathan Swift, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Virginia Woolf and the Marquis de Sade.
Download or read book The Delusion of Atheism written by Patrick Mooney and published by LifeRich Publishing. This book was released on 2020-09-29 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both atheistic materialism and organized religion have been the two great forces which have had the greatest mind control over Western Civilization’s perception and value system. Both systems have used their power to keep humanity in subjugation and slavery through the tactics of fear and terror. Both systems have denied humanity the dignity of its true Divine identity. When social systems exist for the sole purpose of strengthening and propelling their own self-interest rather the welfare of its citizens, then the matrix in which humanity lives becomes corrupt and decadent. When a people are denied the understanding of their own self-concept as a unique person and a child of God, they become disassociated from their own holographic identity. Nature does not tolerate a vacuum. Dystopia rushes in to replace the void caused by the split or the dualism which both atheism and organized religion cause in world which some non-local Supreme Intelligence created for a more noble purpose. Atheistic Materialism denies the existence of A Creator and is pessimistically Nihilistic. Organized Religion while admitting an Omega or an absolute, divides the soul from the body and turns this world Into a vale of tears. The New Science of Quantum Physics teaches that the Whole is greater than the sum of its parts and the substrata of the atom is consciousness. Quantum teaches the Cosmos is one. There is no separation. All that exists is linked together in the one reality of interdependence, interconnection and interrelationship. Consciousness is eternal. It carries on after the atoms of our bodies have deteriorated and gone. Consciousness tells us, that despite the momentary reality of our bodies we are spiritually eternal. Materialistic Atheism is temporary and built of the false promise of economy and profit. It proposes tragedy instead of ecstasy. Consciousness joins body and soul together. Life in this world in other world is a continuum. Life here is sacred and must be lived in this respect. Whether we like it or not we are doomed to be spiritual. It is the human spirit which is primary. Consciousness teaches us this. Terribly, Atheism has inverted this. It makes the body and its temporality primary. It forgets and denies humanity's need for transcendence. Atheism stultifies. It concerns itself with grasping rather than reaching. Atheism is greedy. It is anti-compassion. This world will surely fail unless we begin to become aware that love is our highest electromagnetic capability and selfishness our lowest.
