Download or read book Atheism Advanced written by David Eller and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An anthropological and philosophical deconstruction of religion, religious language, and the danger of relying on belief or faith instead of knowledge. Athyeism is shown to lead to discredism a rejection of belief as well as a rejection of gods.
Download or read book Atheism for Beginners written by Michael Palmer and published by Lutterworth Press. This book was released on 2013-02-28 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Hurray for Michael Palmer!' is how Michael Martin, the distinguished American philosopher, greeted Palmer's The Atheist's Primer (Lutterworth, 2012). Atheism for Beginners, by providing a 'coursebook for schools and colleges,' differs from its predecessor in being designed specifically for teachers and their students. Yet, although different in focus and format, the intention remains the same: to reinstate the importance of philosophy within the debate about God's existence and to act as a corrective tothe largely Darwinian criticisms levelled against religious belief by Richard Dawkins and the so-called 'new atheists'. So, in Palmer's lively history of atheism, extending from the ancient Greeks to the present day, we meet the enduring philosophical arguments against God and the great literature in which they are expressed. Atheism for Beginners is user-friendly and presumes no special grounding in philosophy. Throughout assistance is given by numerous aids to learning: there are exercises, marginal notes, essay questions, bibliographies and a glossary. Also provided are fourteen short biographies of famous atheists. In these respects Palmer follows the format first presented in his widely-read Moral Problems of 1991, long established as a core text inthe teaching of philosophy. In Atheism for Beginners, Palmer covers the main atheistic arguments, discussing issues such as creation, morality, evil, miracles and the motivations of belief. Particular attention is paid to the work of Hume, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, with a special chapter devoted to the development of 'disproof atheism'. Atheism is often criticized for being unduly pessimistic: that without God there is nothing to look forward to, no life after death, no final righting of wrongs and no hope of salvation. But this, Palmer argues, is 'a slander against the atheistic outlook'. He concludes, therefore, on a positive note, explaining that happiness and personal fulfilment are to be found in the very materialism that religious belief rejects.
Download or read book Battling the Gods written by Tim Whitmarsh and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Natural Atheism written by David Eller and published by Amer Atheist Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Progressive Atheism written by J. L. Schellenberg and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-08-08 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Progressive Atheism shows how atheism can make progress in humanity's future. It presents a new way of arguing that God doesn't exist, based on a portrayal of God so positive that you may sometimes wonder whether you're reading the thoughts of a believer. Starting with the simple idea that our understanding of what it takes to be a good person has changed and grown over time, J. L. Schellenberg argues that our understanding of the goodness of God must now change too. Masculine images of God as haughty King or distant Father have to be replaced by God as a paragon of nonviolence and relational openness. This more evolved conception of God is incredibly attractive and admirable. But by the same token it has become less believable. Each moral advance, applied to God, makes it even clearer that such a being would never create a world like ours. Atheists have often approached the subject of God with disdain. Progressive Atheism proves that admiration will be far more powerful.
Download or read book Atheism A Very Short Introduction written by Julian Baggini and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-06-26 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Atheism written by Alexandre Kojève and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the twentieth century’s most brilliant and unconventional thinkers, Alexandre Kojève was a Russian émigré to France whose lectures on Hegel in the 1930s galvanized a generation of French intellectuals. Although Kojève wrote a great deal, he published very little in his lifetime, and so the ongoing rediscovery of his work continues to present new challenges to philosophy and political theory. Written in 1931 but left unfinished, Atheism is an erudite and open-ended exploration of profound questions of estrangement, death, suicide, and the infinite that demonstrates the range and the provocative power of Kojève’s thought. Ranging across Heidegger, Buddhism, Christianity, German idealism, Russian literature, and mathematics, Kojève advances a novel argument about freedom and authority. He investigates the possibility that there is not any vantage point or source of authority—including philosophy, science, or God—that is outside or beyond politics and the world as we experience it. The question becomes whether atheism—or theism—is even a meaningful position since both affirmation and denial of God’s existence imply a knowledge that seems clearly outside our capacities. Masterfully translated by Jeff Love, this book offers a striking new perspective on Kojève’s work and its implications for theism, atheism, politics, and freedom.
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 149 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 Positive Atheism written by Charles Devellennes and published by EUP. This book was released on 2022-11-30 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Devellennes looks at the the religious, social and political thought of the first four thinkers of the French Enlightenment: Pierre Bayle, Jean Meslier, Paul-Henri Thiry d'Holbach and Denis Diderot to explicitly argue for atheism as a positive philosophy. He shows how atheism evolved considerably over the century that spans the works of these four authors: from the possibility of the virtuous atheist in the late 17th century, to a deeply rooted materialist philosophy with radical social and political consequences by the eve of the French revolution. The metamorphosis of atheism from a purely negative phenomenon to one that became self-aware had profound consequences for establishing an ethics without God and the rise of republicanism as a political philosophy.
Download or read book When Atheism Becomes Religion written by Chris Hedges and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-03-10 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critiques the radical mindset that rages against religion and faith, and identifies the pillars of the new atheist belief system, revealing that the stringent rules and rigid traditions in place are as strict as those of any religious practice. The new atheists, led by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, do not make moral arguments about religion. Rather, they have created a new form of fundamentalism that attempts to permeate society with ideas about our own moral superiority and the omnipotence of human reason. Journalist Hedges makes a case against both religious and secular fundamentalism.--From amazon.com.
Download or read book Dawkins Dilemmas written by Michael Austin and published by Xulon Press. This book was released on 2008-02 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Will Richard Dawkins' atheism grip millions, fade, or stir lingering doubts? In this text, Austin shows how biblical Christianity uncovers Dawkins' dilemmas and why atheism does not rest on rational foundations. (Christian)
Download or read book A Manual for Creating Atheists written by Peter Boghossian and published by Pitchstone Publishing (US&CA). This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For thousands of years, the faithful have honed proselytizing strategies and talked people into believing the truth of one holy book or another. Indeed, the faithful often view converting others as an obligation of their faith—and are trained from an early age to spread their unique brand of religion. The result is a world broken in large part by unquestioned faith. As an urgently needed counter to this tried-and-true tradition of religious evangelism, A Manual for Creating Atheists offers the first-ever guide not for talking people into faith—but for talking them out of it. Peter Boghossian draws on the tools he has developed and used for more than 20 years as a philosopher and educator to teach how to engage the faithful in conversations that will help them value reason and rationality, cast doubt on their religious beliefs, mistrust their faith, abandon superstition and irrationality, and ultimately embrace reason.
Download or read book Atheism written by Michael Martin and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Michael Martin provides logical reasons for being an atheist. Carefully examining the current debate in Anglo-American analytic philosophy regarding God's existence, Martin presents a comprehensive critique of the arguments for the existence of God and a defense of arguments against the existence of God, showing in detail their relevance to atheism. Claiming that atheism is a rational position while theistic beliefs are not, he relies both on logic and evidence and confines his efforts to showing the irrationality of belief in a personal supreme being who is omniscient, omnipotent, perfect, and the creator of heaven and earth. The author's approach is two-fold. By presenting and criticizing arguments that have been advanced in favor of belief, he makes a case for "negative atheism." By offering arguments against atheism and defending it from these attacks, he presents a case for "positive atheism." Along the way, he confronts the views of numerous philosophers—among them Anselm, Aquinas, Plantinga, Hick, and Swinburne—and refutes both classical and contemporary arguments that have been advanced through the history of this debate. In his conclusion, Martin considers what would and would not follow if his main arguments were widely accepted, and he defines and distinguishes atheism from other "isms" and movements. Building on the work of religious skeptics and atheists of the past and present, he justifies his reconstruction of this philosophical dispute by citing some of the most interesting and important arguments for atheism and criticisms of arguments for the existence of God that have appeared in recent journal articles and have yet to be systematically addressed. Author note: Michael Martin is Professor of Philosophy at Boston University and author of several books, including The Legal Philosophy of H.L.A. Hart: A Critical Appraisal and The Case Against Christianity (both from Temple).
Download or read book Imagine There s No Heaven written by Mitchell Stephens and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The historical achievements of religious belief have been large and well chronicled. But what about the accomplishments of those who have challenged religion? Traveling from classical Greece to twenty-first century America, Imagine There's No Heaven explores the role of disbelief in shaping Western civilization. At each juncture common themes emerge: by questioning the role of gods in the heavens or the role of a God in creating man on earth, nonbelievers help move science forward. By challenging the divine right of monarchs and the strictures of holy books, nonbelievers, including Jean- Jacques Rousseau and Denis Diderot, help expand human liberties, and influence the early founding of the United States. Revolutions in science, in politics, in philosophy, in art, and in psychology have been led, on multiple occasions, by those who are free of the constraints of religious life. Mitchell Stephens tells the often-courageous tales of history's most important atheists— like Denis Diderot and Salman Rushdie. Stephens makes a strong and original case for their importance not only to today's New Atheist movement but to the way many of us—believers and nonbelievers—now think and live.
Download or read book Answering Atheism written by Trent Horn and published by Catholic Answers. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today's New Atheists don't just deny God's existence (as the old atheists did) - they consider it their duty to scorn and ridicule religious belief. We don't need new answers for this aggressive modern strain of unbelief: We need a new approach. In Answering Atheism, Trent Horn responds with a fresh and useful resource for the God debate, based on reason, common sense, and more importantly, a charitable approach that respects atheists' sincerity and good will, making this book suitable not just for believers but for skeptics and seekers too. Meticulously researched, and street-tested in Horn's work as a pro-God apologist, it tackles all the major issues of the debate, including: -Reconciling human evil and suffering with the existence of a loving, all-powerful God -Whether the empirical sciences have eliminated the need for God, or in fact point to him -How atheists usually deny moral laws (and thus a moral lawgiver) in theory
Download or read book In Good Faith written by Scott A. Shay and published by Post Hill Press. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 582 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prominent atheists claim the Bible is a racist text. Yet Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. read it daily. Then again, so did many ardent segregationists. Some atheists claim religion serves to oppress the masses. Yet the classic text of the French Revolution, What is the Third Estate?, was written by a priest. On the other hand, the revolutionaries ended up banning religion. What do we make of religion’s confusing role in history? And what of religion’s relationship to science? Some scientists claim that we have no free will. Others argue that advances in neurobiology and physics disprove determinism. As for whispering to the universe, an absurd habit say the skeptics. Yet prayer is a transformative practice for millions. This book explores the most common atheist critiques of the Bible and religion, incorporating Jewish, Christian, and Muslim voices. The result is a fresh, modern re-evaluation of religion and of atheism. Scott A. Shay is a Co-Founder and Chairman of Signature Bank and a longstanding Jewish community activist. Shay started a Hebrew school, an adult educational program, and chaired several Jewish educational programs. He is the author of Getting our Groove Back: How to Energize American Jewry and has been thinking about religion, reason, and modernity since wondering why his parents sent him to Hebrew school.
Download or read book The Aesthetics of Atheism written by Kutter Callaway and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To really understand God, you have to understand atheism. Atheism and Christianity are often placed at polar opposite ends of a spectrum, forever in stark conflict with each other. In The Aesthetics of Atheism, Kutter Callaway and Barry Taylor propose a radical alternative: atheism and theism need each other. In fact, atheism offers profound and necessary theological insights into the heart of Christianity itself. To get at these truths, Callaway and Taylor dive into the aesthetic dimensions of atheism, using everything from Stranger Things to Damien Hirst's controversial sculptures to the music of David Bowie, Nick Cave, and Leonard Cohen. This journey through contemporary culture and its imagination offers readers a deeper understanding of theology, culture, and how to engage faith in a chaotic and complex world where God is present in the most unexpected place: atheism.
