Kerry Walters. Atheism: A Guide for the Perplexed. Continuum, 2010 / Michael Bergmann, Michael Murray and Michael Rea (Eds.) Divine Evil: e Moral Character of the God of Abraham. Oxford University Press, 2011 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Atheism in The Universal Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Studia Gilsoniana, 2018
The author considers the problem of atheism. She discusses the history of atheism, forms of atheism, and the causes and motives of atheism. She concludes that (a) the history of the negation of God indirectly confirms the endurance of the idea of God and the affirmation of God throughout time; although there are various forms of the negation of God, the idea of God persists, for there is no ultimate negation that could resolve this question once and for all; (b) an erroneous conception of God could be a motivation for seeking a better understanding and expression of the truth about God in a more suitable and more easily understood language; (c) systems that presuppose absolute atheism (like those of Marx, Nietzsche, Sartre) show that with the negation of God all other values collapse and are supplanted by relativism and, ultimately, nihilism; (d) the myth of the “deified” man has not been verified in practical Marxism nor in the “supermanhood” of certain nations; the various absolutes that man has established—Man, Humanity, Nature, Science, History—are not sufficient, and ultimately along with the “death of God” they lead to the “death of man.”
Atheism: Its Logical and Philosophical Foundations
American Atheist, 2000
A lecture given by Frank R. Zindler at the 26th National Convention of American Atheists in San Francisco, Saturday, 22 April 2000. "Weak Atheism" and "Strong Atheism" are defined in terms of the verifiability/falsifiability/testability theory of meaning.
The Varieties and Revisions of Atheism
Zygon�, 2005
The philosopher Antony Flew has argued for decades that theistic arguments cannot meet criteria of truth. In this essay I respond to Flew's recent announcement that research into the emergence of DNA provides grounds for rational belief in an intelligent orderer, a "God." Flew's theistic turn is important for philosophers of religion and the wider science-and-religion dialogue. It becomes apparent, however, that Flew's "conversion" is not as decisive as one might imagine. While he admits growth in scientific and philosophical understanding, he rejects the idea of growth in religious understanding. Further, he endorses a version of "theoretical theism" while denying the practical importance of belief. Such denial of practical conviction is part of a modernist mindset that separates freedom from the embeddedness of human beings in the natural world. I conclude by noting that the entanglement of human action and wider physical processes, an entanglement seen emblematically in the environmental crisis, requires not only considering the importance of intelligence and order in the emergence of life but also the significance of human agency in claims about the divine and the natural world.
Varieties of Atheism, 2022
This introduction argues that defining atheism narrowly in terms of belief makes it into an abstraction that misrepresents atheism as it actually exists. To this end, I develop a brief genealogy of atheism - from the premodern period into the present - which indicates that atheism has encompassed ethical commitments, political aims, and emotional experiences. This expanded understanding opens the possibility of a complex conversation between particular forms of atheism and particular religious traditions - which is the possibility that this collection explores.
Varieties of Unbelief: A Taxonomy of Atheistic Positions
In this article, we offer an overview of different version of contemporary atheism from the viewpoint of positive beliefs that are joined together with atheistic worldview. Our four main classes of atheism are scientistic atheism, philosophical atheism, tragic atheism and humanistic atheism, which can then be divided to various subclasses. With this classification, we aim to challenge the view according to which atheism is not a belief system but merely a lack of belief in some transcendent being. Moreover, there seems to be no atheism per se, but it always appears with some positive beliefs.