At the Origins of Modern Atheism
At the Origins of Modern Atheism

Author: Michael J. Buckley

Publisher:

Published: 1990-01-01

Total Pages: 450

ISBN-13: 9780300048971

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In this book, Michael J. Buckley investigates the rise of modern atheism, arguing convincingly that its roots reach back to the seventeenth century, when Catholic theologians began to call upon philosophy and science-rather than any intrinsically religious experience-to defend the existence of god. Buckley discusses in detail thinkers such as Lessius, Mersenne, Descartes, and Newton, who paved the way for the explicit atheism of Diderot and D'Holbach in the eighteenth century. [A] capaciously learned and brilliantly written book...This is one of the most interesting and closely argued works on theology that i have read in the last decade.-Lawrence S. Cunningham, Theology Today

The Evolution of Atheism
The Evolution of Atheism

Author: Stephen LeDrew

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 0190225173

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In The Evolution of Atheism, Stephen LeDrew argues that militant atheists have more in common with religious fundamentalists than they would care to admit, advancing what LeDrew calls secular fundamentalism. LeDrew draws on public relations campaigns, publications, podcasts, and in-depth interviews to explore the belief systems, internal logics, and self-contradictions of 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.

Denying and Disclosing God
Denying and Disclosing God

Author: Michael J. Buckley

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2004-01-01

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 9780300093841

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Reflecting on the development of atheism from the beginnings of modernity to the present day, the author suggests that atheism originated in the denial that the various forms of interpersonal religious experience possess any cognitive cogency.

Imagine There's No Heaven
Imagine There's No Heaven

Author: Mitchell Stephens

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2014-02-25

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 1137002603

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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.

Suspicion and Faith
Suspicion and Faith

Author: Merold Westphal

Publisher: Fordham Univ Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13:

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Are there legitimate uses for atheists' critiques of religion? Westphal says yes, if we take a closer look not at the atheists' arguments against the existence of God, but at their observations about the sometimes disreputable functions of religious practice and belief, as demonstrated in the "atheism of suspicion", put forth by Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche.

Nonsense of a High Order
Nonsense of a High Order

Author: Rabbi Moshe Averick

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2016-07-17

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 9781535018340

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Is Atheism more rational than Monotheism? Atheists claim so, but this fascinating, original and meticulously researched masterpiece proves otherwise. Exploring the Modern Atheistic movement in its failed attempts to confront the baffling scientific mysteries of the Origin of Life and Human Consciousness, Man's Search for Meaning, and the relentless human drive to seek coherent abstract Moral Principles; Rabbi Averick demonstrates conclusively that nearly everything that modern atheist thinkers have to say about God is simply nonsense. A powerful and compelling presentation that reclaims the intellectual high ground for the rational believer in God in the 21st Century. Using razor-sharp logic, a rapier wit, and irony-laced humor, Rabbi Averick exposes the gaping flaws in atheistic ideology in general, and in the modern "militant atheism" of writers like Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris, in particular. Talk show host and best-selling author Dr. Diane Medved (The American Family) put it this way: "If you've ever felt bullied by schoolyard atheists like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, I have good news...your big brother, in the person of Rabbi Moshe Averick, has just stepped onto the playground!" "A compelling read...In his section on the Origin of Life, Rabbi Averick has dramatically spiked the ball back into the court of the non-believer." -DR. EDWARD PELTZER, Senior Research Specialist, Ocean Chemistry (California)

The Urban Myths of Popular Modern Atheism
The Urban Myths of Popular Modern Atheism

Author: Paul E. Hill

Publisher: John Hunt Publishing

Published: 2019-02-22

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1789040337

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How Atheists rely on urban myths about religion to buttress their case against God. God, and the whole business of being dependent upon him, is being downgraded, downsized, downplayed, and most of all, just plain dismissed in the modern, cultured, educated parts of Europe and in academia. This process is powered and driven by a whole, growing series of interlocked urban myths about what is supposed to be involved in being a religious (and often specifically Christian) believer. This book examines and critiques those myths, showing how the Christian faith can be intelligent and supported by reason.

Seven Types of Atheism
Seven Types of Atheism

Author: John Gray

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2018-10-02

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 0374714266

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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.

The New Atheism, Myth, and History
The New Atheism, Myth, and History

Author: Nathan Johnstone

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-06-11

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 3319894560

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This book examines the misuse of history in New Atheism and militant anti-religion. It looks at how episodes such as the Witch-hunt, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust are mythologized to present religion as inescapably prone to violence and discrimination, whilst the darker side of atheist history, such as its involvement in Stalinism, is denied. At the same time, another constructed history—that of a perpetual and one-sided conflict between religion and science/rationalism—is commonly used by militant atheists to suggest the innate superiority of the non-religious mind. In a number of detailed case studies, the book traces how these myths have long been overturned by historians, and argues that the New Atheism’s cavalier use of history is indicative of a troubling approach to the humanities in general. Nathan Johnstone engages directly with the God debate at an academic level and contributes to the emerging study of non-religion as a culture and an identity.

The Cambridge Companion to Atheism
The Cambridge Companion to Atheism

Author: Michael Martin

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006-10-30

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 1139827391

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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.