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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Alternative belief systems > Humanist & secular alternatives to religion > Agnosticism & atheism
"Atheism Explained" explores the claims made both for and against
the existence of God. On the pro side: that the wonders of the
world can only be explained by an intelligent creator; that the
universe had to start somewhere; telepathy, out-of-body
experiences, and other paranormal phenomena demonstrate the
existence of a spirit world; and that those who experience God
directly provide evidence as real as any physical finding. After
disputing these arguments through calm, careful criticism, author
David Ramsay Steele presents the reasons why God cannot exist:
monstrous, appalling evils; the impossibility of omniscience; and
the senseless concept that God is a thinking mind without a brain.
He also explores controversial topics such as Intelligent Design,
the power of prayer, religion without God, and whether a belief in
God makes people happier and healthier. Steele's rational,
easy-to-understand prose helps readers form their own conclusions
about this eternally thorny topic.
A radically new way of understanding secularism which explains why
being secular can seem so strangely religious For much of
America’s rapidly growing secular population, religion is an
inescapable source of skepticism and discomfort. It shows up in
politics and in holidays, but also in common events like weddings
and funerals. In The Secular Paradox, Joseph Blankholm argues that,
despite their desire to avoid religion, nonbelievers often seem
religious because Christianity influences the culture around them
so deeply. Relying on several years of ethnographic research among
secular activists and organized nonbelievers in the United States,
the volume explores how very secular people are ambivalent toward
belief, community, ritual, conversion, and tradition. As they try
to embrace what they share, secular people encounter, again and
again, that they are becoming too religious. And as they reject
religion, they feel they have lost too much. Trying to strike the
right balance, secular people alternate between the two sides of
their ambiguous condition: absolutely not religious and part of a
religion-like secular tradition. Blankholm relies heavily on the
voices of women and people of color to understand what it means to
live with the secular paradox. The struggles of secular
misfits—the people who mis-fit normative secularism in the United
States—show that becoming secular means rejecting parts of life
that resemble Christianity and embracing a European tradition that
emphasizes reason and avoids emotion. Women, people of color, and
secular people who have left non-Christian religions work against
the limits and contradictions of secularism to create new ways of
being secular that are transforming the American religious
landscape. They are pioneering the most interesting and important
forms of secular “religiosity” in America today.
Today atheists, it seems, are everywhere. Nonbelievers write
best-selling books and proudly defend their views in public; they
have even hired a lobbyist. But, as political scientist Richard J.
Meagher shows, atheist political activism is not a new phenomenon.
From the "Freethought" movement of the late 1800s, to postwar
"rationalists" and "humanists," to today's proud atheists,
nonbelievers have called for change within a resistant political
culture. While atheist organizing typically has been a relatively
lonely and sad affair, advances in technology and new political
opportunities have helped atheists to finally gain at least some
measure of legitimacy in American politics. In Atheists in American
Politics, one of the first works to take atheism seriously as a
social movement, Meagher highlights key moments within the
political history of atheism and freethought, and examines how the
changing circumstances that surround the movement help explain
political mobilization. In doing so, this book also highlights the
ways that social movements in general gain momentum, and how a
number of interlocking factors are often necessary to enable a
movement to "take off" in American politics.
Should we believe in God? In this new book, written for a new
generation, the brilliant science writer and author of The God
Delusion, explains why we shouldn't. Should we believe in God? Do
we need God in order to explain the existence of the universe? Do
we need God in order to be good? In twelve chapters that address
some of the most profound questions human beings confront, Dawkins
marshals science, philosophy and comparative religion to
interrogate the hypocrisies of all the religious systems and
explain to readers of all ages how life emerged without a Creator,
how evolution works and how our world came into being. For anyone
hoping to grapple with the meaning of life and what to believe,
Outgrowing God is a challenging, thrilling and revelatory read.
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Seeking Common Ground
(Paperback)
Andrew Fiala, Peter Admirand; Foreword by Jack Moline
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R894
R772
Discovery Miles 7 720
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Calmly engaging the philosophical arguments posed by best-selling
authors Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins, and to a lesser extent,
Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, Gregory Ganssle's A Reasonable
God is a nuanced, charitable, and philosophically well-informed
defense of the existence of God. Eschewing the rhetoric and
provocative purposes of the New Atheists, Ganssle instead lucidly
and objectively analyzes each argument on its own philosophical
merits, to see how persuasive they prove to be. Surveying topics
including the relationship between faith and reason, moral
arguments for the existence of God, the Darwinian theories of the
origin of religion, he pays particular attention to, and ultimately
rejects, what he determines is the strongest logical argument
against the existence of god posed by the new atheists, put forth
by Dawkins: that our universe resembles more of what an atheistic
universe would be like than it does with what a theistic universe
would be like.
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God is Good
(Paperback)
Martin G Kuhrt; Foreword by Alex Jacob
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R837
R576
Discovery Miles 5 760
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A fascinating exploration of the breadth of social, emotional, and
spiritual experiences of atheists in America Self-identified
atheists make up roughly 5 percent of the American religious
landscape, comprising a larger population than Jehovah's Witnesses,
Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus combined. In
spite of their relatively significant presence in society, atheists
are one of the most stigmatized groups in the United States,
frequently portrayed as immoral, unhappy, or even outright angry.
Yet we know very little about what their lives are actually like as
they live among their largely religious, and sometimes hostile,
fellow citizens. In this book, Jerome P. Baggett listens to what
atheists have to say about their own lives and viewpoints. Drawing
on questionnaires and interviews with more than five hundred
American atheists scattered across the country, The Varieties of
Nonreligious Experience uncovers what they think about morality,
what gives meaning to their lives, how they feel about religious
people, and what they think and know about religion itself. Though
the wider public routinely understands atheists in negative terms,
as people who do not believe in God, Baggett pushes readers to view
them in a different light. Rather than simply rejecting God and
religion, atheists actually embrace something much more
substantive-lives marked by greater integrity, open-mindedness, and
progress. Beyond just talking about or to American atheists, the
time is overdue to let them speak for themselves. This book is a
must-read for anyone interested in joining the conversation.
The Athiest's Primer is a concise but wide-ranging introduction to
a variety of arguments, concepts, and issues pertaining to belief
in God. In lucid and engaging prose, Malcom Murray offers a
penetrating yet fair-minded critique of the traditional arguments
for the existence of God. He then explores a number of other
important issues relevant to religious belief, such as the problem
of suffering and the relationship between religion and morality, in
each case arguing that atheism is preferable to theism. The book
will appeal to both students and professionals in the philosophy of
religion, as well as general audiences interested in the topic.
Recently, the "new" atheists have been putting out books, articles,
bus ads, and TV programs in attempts to sway people to their cause.
Through these tactics they've managed to gain a large amount of
public attention and media exposure--but do their arguments really
hold water? Using the analogy put forward by esteemed philosopher
Anthony Flew, Michael Poole examines the new atheists' use of the
"10 leaky buckets" tactic of argumentation--presenting readers with
a sum of arguments that are each individually defective, as though
the cumulative effect should be persuasive. This closer look at the
facts reveals that the buckets are, indeed, leaky.
The Atheist Coloring and Activity Book is a complete course on the
world view of Atheism meant for adults.
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