Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review“What does it mean to be an atheist? It’s not just one thing, it’s not just disbelief in god. There’s a positive expression connected to ideas of ethics, our relationship with authority, how reason and experience and the material world inform our lives, when does science become moral–these are big questions that we have to ask. This book points the way to a positive belief.” * Beyond Atheism Podcast *
"Fundamental for anyone interested in the study of atheism." * Reading Religion *
“What is atheism? Neither a mere negation, nor a single (self-evident?) truth: this book makes clear that it is as rich, varied, and nuanced as religion itself. To call yourself an atheist is not to state a position, but to start a conversation—a conversation for which this book is an excellent primer.” -- Alec Ryrie, author of 'Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt'
“An excellent collection of essays by well-established and up-and-coming voices in religious studies, this book is both critical of New Atheism’s reductive critique of religion and constructive with new possibilities—theological, philosophical, ethical, and political. It enriches the debates by giving atheism histories and subtleties that debates themselves frequently lack.” -- Graham Ward, University of Oxford
“Just as contemporary scholars of religion have pushed us to move beyond simplistic equations between religion and belief, this stimulating collection of essays urges us to recognize that atheism also comes in many varieties. By exploring the implications of different forms of atheism and their relation to different conceptions of science, politics, power, ethics, literature, and, indeed, life, this book is a major contribution to the study of religion and its critics. Anyone interested in the relation between religion and the modern world will have much to learn from this exciting collection.” -- Leora Batnitzky, Princeton University
Table of ContentsIntroduction
The Genealogy of Atheism
David Newheiser
1 Atheism and Science: On Einstein’s “Cosmic Religious Sense”
Mary-Jane Rubenstein
2 Atheism and Society: Hume’s Prefiguration of Rorty
Andre C. Willis
3 Atheism and Power: Nietzsche, Nominalism, and the Reductive Spirit
Denys Turner
4 Atheism and Ethics: Recovering the Link between Truth and Transformation
Susannah Ticciati
5 Atheism and Metaphysics: A Problem of Apophatic Theology
Henning Tegtmeyer
6 Atheism and Politics: Abandonment, Absence, and the Empty Throne
Devin Singh
7 Atheism and Literature: Living without God in Dante’s Comedy
Vittorio Montemaggi
8 Atheism and the Affirmation of Life: Dostoevsky’s Response to Russian Nihilism
George Pattison
Afterword: The Drama of Atheism
Constance M. Furey
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Index
