Scientific Atheism and its Deputies between the 19 th -21 st Centuries: Religion's Substitutes, Irreligious Rights Movement and Anti-creationism Non-Fiction (original) (raw)
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Scientism and atheism then and now: the role of science in the Monist and New Atheist writings
Culture and Religion, 2016
We examine how the authors who represent ‘New Atheism’ refer to science, and we compare these references to how science was viewed in earlier Continental forms of atheism, namely in Ernst Haeckel’s writings and his Monist movement. We analyse and compare these references in five key areas: the general reference to science, the use of science as an argument against religion, reference to a scientific mode of knowledge, scientific theories about religion and science as a means of giving meaning to life. While there are many similarities that clearly position New Atheism within the history of scientism, we find that the form of scientism the New Atheists employ owes at least as much to the current state of the religious field as to their scientistic predecessors.
'SCIENTIFIC ATHEISM' AS AN IDEOLOGICAL CONSTRUCT AND EDUCATIONAL PROJECT s s
Religiski-Filozofiski Raksti, 2021, XXXI, 2021
The main goal of this article is to identify the socio-historical context of the emergence of the ideologically loaded concept of 'scientific atheism', constructed in the USSR in the 1950s-1980s during the period of the announced transition from socialism to the construction of communism. The article uses the method of the historical sociology of concepts, which makes it possible to identify the connection between semantic contexts and institutional practices and to show how the conceptual category around which the corresponding discourse was formed became an instrument that produces socially significant meanings used in the practice of ideological production. The classics of Marxism did not consider atheism as a separate doctrine from materialism; despite this in the late 1970s, scientific atheism in the Soviet academic space turned into a separate science with its own subject of research. At the same time, scientific atheism was opposed to all other forms of atheism as the most consistent and the only true one.
'SCIENTIFIC ATHEISM' AS AN IDEOLOGICAL CONSTRUCT AND EDUCATIONAL PROJECT
Religiski-Filozofiski Raksti, 2021
The main goal of this article is to identify the socio-historical context of the emergence of the ideologically loaded concept of 'scientific atheism', constructed in the USSR in the 1950s-1980s during the period of the announced transition from socialism to the construction of communism. The article uses the method of the historical sociology of concepts, which makes it possible to identify the connection between semantic contexts and institutional practices and to show how the conceptual category around which the corresponding discourse was formed became an instrument that produces socially significant meanings used in the practice of ideological production. The classics of Marxism did not consider atheism as a separate doctrine from materialism; despite this in the late 1970s, scientific atheism in the Soviet academic space turned into a separate science with its own subject of research. At the same time, scientific atheism was opposed to all other forms of atheism as the most consistent and the only true one.
The paper was presented at the 10th Conference of the European Society for the History of Science (ESHS) took place in Brussels (Belgium) from 7 to 10 September 2022.
Over the last twenty years, the study of the history of science and religion in Greece is gradually advancing. Some accounts illustrate Orthodoxy’s stances toward specific scientific theories, especially Darwinism, or classify the representative agents of these attitudes. Other accounts investigate the perception of science in general and its relationship to Orthodox Christianity by the involved actors, who were interested in theological and scientific issues. Project At.H.O.S introduces for the very first time the notion of atheism in the study of the science-religion relationship in Greece. Specifically, the project explores how both religious unbelief (here political-laden atheism) and belief (the Orthodox Christian doctrine) have interacted with the Natural Sciences, from the early 1930s to 1974. The project mainly intends to show what other accounts ignore: that atheism played a concrete – not insubstantial – role in the shaping of the depiction of the science and religion relationship. In this perspective, the paper will explore the very idea of atheism and how it was perceived by Greek Orthodox Christian authors during the said period. How did they define atheism? What were the types of atheism they referred to? How did they describe the categories of religion and science? And in what way and degree did they connect science with atheism? It should be stressed that the question of the role of atheism in the science-religion relationship will not be directly examined through a case study of atheism, but rather against the religious convictions of those who define themselves as Orthodox Christian believers and usually accuse the non-believers of being the enemies of religion.
The new atheism: old scientism with a new name
The old scientism comes to us with the same old agenda and slogans, though not without some twists and turns – and with a new name. Not only so, it has also deployed a new army of propagandists and evangelists, equally, if not more, vigorous and desperate to win new converts to its creeds and dogmas from every street corner the world over by every means. No doubt, the new atheism, as it is called today, has been gaining grounds in the lecture halls of some ivory tower academicians of the philosophical materialistic stream as well as the popular media. For which the so-called four horsemen of the anti-theistic apocalypse – Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens – must be credited.
The evolution of atheism: Scientific and humanistic approaches
Atheism has achieved renewed vigor in the West in recent years with a spate of bestselling books and growing membership in secularist and rationalist organizations, but what exactly is the nature of this peculiar form of non-belief? This article sets the context for the emergence of the 'New Atheism' with a review of the dominant theory of atheism's dialectical and theological origins, and an examination of major historical episodes in atheistic thought. The author argues that a significant development has received insufficient attention: the 19th-century split in atheism that produced two distinct streams of criticism. The first is scientific atheism, closely associated with Darwinism and Enlightenment rationalism. The second is humanistic atheism, aligned with the rise of the social sciences and pioneered by Marx and Feuerbach. The contemporary atheist movement is primarily rooted in the scientific tradition, excluding the humanistic approach on epistemological and political grounds, though emerging tensions within the movement suggest that the humanistic tradition still plays a role. The relationship between these two approaches within the movement should be a focus of future research.
There is a long history of atrocities committed in the name of religion, likewise there is an equally long committed by atheists. There central trait that it shares, is fundamentalism. Which this report will argue that new atheism is oriented with. The rise of the new atheist movement in the recent years can be argued to be a natural phenomenon of modernity. The emphasis of science and reason as a worldview claimed by the new atheist slogans offer a charming and intriguing worldview to its followers. However, a closer enquiry into the abundance of texts and comparative analysis to the history of ideas, will prove that the ideas advocated by new atheist movement isn’t in any way new nor prevalent to modernity as previous predecessors have been advocating atheist ideals at a much more philosophical level .Closer analysis of new atheism under sociological and philosophical perspectives will be argued in this report to be a revitalization from its previous predecessors. However, unlike its predecessor, the new atheists militancy and disturbingly lack of tolerance towards critiques, but most central, the new atheists claim to the objective truth and knowledge presents a threat to society in which is similar to that of fundamentalist religious movements.
The Church in Dialogue with New Scientific Atheism, The Way, Vol. 53, No. 1 January 2014, 7-22.
How should the respond to the new scientific atheism proposed by leading scientists such as Richard Dawkins and, latterly, Stephen Hawking? Is it a matter of science to be discussed only among scientists? Or should the Church seek to challenge the philosophical assumptions that underpin it? I should like to argue that the Church has a vital role in widening the horizon of the debate surrounding the new scientific atheism and questioning the coherence of its presuppositions. The problem at the heart of the new scientific atheism is a failure to address the origin of the reason and intelligence that underlie and sustain the universe. Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow’s recent book The Grand Design (which I shall be treating as interlocutor for this discussion) asserts that the fundamental question of reality is why the laws of nature are what they are and are not otherwise. By asking this specific question, Hawking and Mlodinow avoid the truly fundamental question, namely, why there are laws of nature at all. The issue at the heart of my discussion here is not why there is something rather than nothing. It is, rather, a search and a demand for congruence within intellectual discourse. Can laws of nature arise from nothing, or do they presuppose or necessitate a lawgiver or creator?