The last few years have seen a remarkable surge of popular interest in the topic of atheism. Books about atheism by writers like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have figured prominently in bestseller lists and have attracted widespread discussion in the media. The ubiquity of public debates about atheism, especially in conscious opposition to the perceived social threat posed by faith and religion, has been startling. However, as Gavin Hyman points out, despite their prevalence and popularity, what often characterizes these debates is a lack of nuance and sophistication. They can be shrill, ignorant of the historical complexity of debates about belief, and tend to lapse into caricature. What is needed is a clear and well informed presentation of how atheistic ideas originated and developed, in order to illuminate their contemporary relevance and application. That task is what the author undertakes here. Exploring the rise of atheism as an explicit philosophical position (notably in the work of Denis Diderot), Hyman traces its development in the later ideas of Descartes, Locke, and Berkeley. Drawing also on the work of contemporary scholars like Amos Funkenstein and Michael J Buckley, the author shows that, since in recent theology the concept of God which atheists negate is changing, the triumph of its advocates may not be quite as unequivocal as Hitchens and Dawkins would have us believe.

Can we do without religion? Can we have ethics without God? Is there such thing as 'atheistic spirituality'? In this powerful book, the internationally bestselling author Andre Comte-Sponville presents a philosophical exploration of atheism - and reaches startling conclusions. Atheists, Comte-Sponville argues, are no less interested in a spiritual life than religious believers. But by allowing the concept of spirituality to become intertwined with religion and dogma, humanity has lost touch with the nature of a true spiritual existence. Using rigorous, reasoned arguments and clear, concise, and often humorous prose Comte-Sponville draws on both Eastern and Western philosophical traditions to propose the atheistic alternative to religion, based on the human need to connect to each other and to the universe. In doing so, he offers a convincing treatise on a new form of spiritual life.

From the "New York Times" bestselling author of "American Fascists" and the NBCC finalist for "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" comes this timely and compelling work about new atheists: those who attack religion to advance the worst of global capitalism, intolerance and imperial projects.
Chris Hedges, who graduated from seminary at Harvard Divinity School, has long been a courageous voice in a world where there are too few. He observes that there are two radical, polarized and dangerous sides to the debate on faith and religion in America: the fundamentalists who see religious faith as their prerogative, and the new atheists who brand all religious belief as irrational and dangerous. Both sides use faith to promote a radical agenda, while the religious majority, those with a commitment to tolerance and compassion as well as to their faith, are caught in the middle.
The new atheists, led by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, do not make moral arguments about religion. Rather, they have created a new form of fundamentalism that attempts to permeate society with ideas about our own moral superiority and the omnipotence of human reason.
"I Don't Believe in Atheists" critiques the radical mindset that rages against religion and faith. Hedges identifies the pillars of the new atheist belief system, revealing that the stringent rules and rigid traditions in place are as strict as those of any religious practice.
Hedges claims that those who have placed blind faith in the morally neutral disciplines of reason and science create idols in their own image -- a sin for either side of the spectrum. He makes an impassioned, intelligent case against religious and secular fundamentalism, which seeks to divide the world into those worthy of moral and intellectual consideration and those who should be condemned, silenced and eradicated. Hedges shatters the new atheists' assault against religion in America, and in doing so, makes way for new, moderate voices to join the debate. This is a book that must be read to understand the state of the battle about faith.

""Godless Communists"" offers a fresh interpretation of early Soviet efforts to create an atheistic, scientific society. Husband shows that religion, contrary to Bolshevik assertions, was not merely an expression of gullibility and ignorance but a firmly entrenched system for ordering family and community relationships. The Bolsheviks' efforts to abolish the Church failed because they underestimated how tightly religious beliefs were woven into the fabric of the Russians' daily lives.
Exploring the confrontation between secularism and the lower classes' traditional beliefs, ""Godless Communists"" illustrates how developments between 1917 and 1932 shaped the attitudes toward religion and atheism that endure in Russia today.

In this important new book, David O'Connor discusses both logical and empirical forms of the problem of inscrutable evil, perennially the most difficult philosophical problem confronting theism. Arguing that both a version of theism ('friendly theism') and a version of atheism ('friendly atheism') are justified on the evidence in the debate over God and evil, O'Connor concludes that a warranted outcome is a philosophical d_tente between those two positions. On the way to that conclusion he develops two arguments from evil, a reformed version of the logical argument and an indirect version of the empirical argument, and deploys both against a central formulation of theism that he describes as orthodox theism. God and Inscrutable Evil makes a valuable contribution to contemporary debates in the philosophy of religion.

Funerals are among the most important life events in Western society, and fashioning a personalized ceremony for yourself or for a loved one is often the most meaningful way to celebrate the life of the deceased. For those wanting non-religious or secular funeral ceremonies, this step-by-step guide begins by identifying what you want from the funeral and showing how you can make it happen. With sections on society's views of mortality, our need for rituals and crafting the actual ceremony, this guide provides the tools and philosophy to understand, plan and tailor a funeral for individuals. Includes all the tools necessary for the creation of a ceremony, such as a Ritual Profiles, checklists, and many other handy resources.

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.

Are atheists immoral? Does religion cause conflict? Is religion always opposed to science? Boldly paving the way for constructive dialogue between atheists and religious believers, Paul Hedges tackles issues such as the treatment of women, the idea of a pure and empirical realm of 'science', and the association of religion with violence and warfare, debunking the myths and exposing the futility of the battle between 'reason' and 'belief'. Threading deftly between atheism, the major world religions of Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, and smaller groups such as Paganism, Hedges demonstrates a vast scope for agreement and interaction between them which will call to every open minded reader.

A militant Marxist atheist and a "Radical Orthodox" Christian theologian square off on everything from the meaning of theology and Christ to the war machine of corporate mafia. "What matters is not so much that Zizek is endorsing a demythologized, disenchanted Christianity without transcendence, as that he is offering in the end (despite what he sometimes claims) a heterodox version of Christian belief."-John Milbank "To put it even more bluntly, my claim is that it is Milbank who is effectively guilty of heterodoxy, ultimately of a regression to paganism: in my atheism, I am more Christian than Milbank."-Slavoj Zizek In this corner, philosopher Slavoj Zizek, a militant atheist who represents the critical-materialist stance against religion's illusions; in the other corner, "Radical Orthodox" theologian John Milbank, an influential and provocative thinker who argues that theology is the only foundation upon which knowledge, politics, and ethics can stand. In The Monstrosity of Christ, Zizek and Milbank go head to head for three rounds, employing an impressive arsenal of moves to advance their positions and press their respective advantages. By the closing bell, they have not only proven themselves worthy adversaries, they have shown that faith and reason are not simply and intractably opposed. Zizek has long been interested in the emancipatory potential offered by Christian theology. And Milbank, seeing global capitalism as the new century's greatest ethical challenge, has pushed his own ontology in more political and materialist directions. Their debate in The Monstrosity of Christ concerns the future of religion, secularity, and political hope in light of a monsterful event-God becoming human. For the first time since Zizek's turn toward theology, we have a true debate between an atheist and a theologian about the very meaning of theology, Christ, the Church, the Holy Ghost, Universality, and the foundations of logic. The result goes far beyond the popularized atheist/theist point/counterpoint of recent books by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and others. Zizek begins, and Milbank answers, countering dialectics with "paradox." The debate centers on the nature of and relation between paradox and parallax, between analogy and dialectics, between transcendent glory and liberation. Slavoj Zizek is a philosopher and cultural critic. He has published over thirty books, including Looking Awry, The Puppet and the Dwarf, and The Parallax View (these three published by the MIT Press). John Milbank is an influential Christian theologian and the author of Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason and other books. Creston Davis, who conceived of this encounter, studied under both Zizek and Milbank.

Frank Schaeffer has a problem with the New Atheists. He also has a problem with the religious fundamentalists. The problem is that he doesn't see much of a difference between the two camps. Sparing no one and nothing, including himself and his fiery evangelical past, and invoking subtleties too easily ignored by the pontificators, Schaeffer adds much-needed nuance to the existing religious conversation as he challenges atheists and fundamentalists alike.

What if notorious atheist Christopher Hitchens, bestselling author of God Is Not Great, had a Christian brother? He does. Peter Hitchens details a very personal story of how he left the faith but dramatically returned. And like many of the Old Testament saints whose personal lives were intertwined with the life of their nation, so Peter s story is also the story of modern England and its sad spiritual decline. Peter brings his work as an international journalist to bear as he documents firsthand accounts of atheistic societies, specifically in Communist Russia, where he lived in Moscow during the collapse of the Soviet Union. He shows that the world s bloodiest century, the 20th, entailed nothing short of atheism s own version of the Crusades and the Inquisition. The path to a secular utopia, pursued by numerous modern tyrants, is truly paved with more violence than has been witnessed in any era in history. Hitchens provides hope for all believers whose friends or family members have left Christianity or who are enchanted by the arguments of the anti-religious intellects of our age."

The New Atheist Novel is the first study of a major new genre of contemporary fiction. It examines how Richard Dawkins's so-called New Atheism' movement has caught the imagination of four eminent modern novelists: Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Philip Pullman. For McEwan and his contemporaries, the contemporary novel represents a new front in the ideological war against religion, religious fundamentalism and, after 9/11, religious terror: the novel apparently stands for everything freedom, individuality, rationality and even a secular experience of the transcendental that religion seeks to overthrow. In this book, Bradley and Tate offer a genealogy of the New Atheist Novel: where it comes from, what needs it serves and, most importantly, where it may go in the future. What is it? How does it dramatise the war between belief and non-belief? To what extent does it represent a genuine ideological alternative to the religious imaginary or does it merely repeat it in secularised form? This fascinating study offers an incisive critique of this contemporary testament of literary belief and unbelief.

Kenny writes By profession I am a philosopher: and in the present century philosophers in this country have been keen to emphasise not only the difficulty of stating God's will on particular issues but the difficulty for human beings of saying anything intelligible at all about the nature of God. It is probably true to say that the majority of philosophers in this country in the last fifty years have been atheists of one kind or another. In his masterly introduction, Kenny explains the autobiographical background to this important new book. For some years, Kenny was a Roman Catholic priest, he lost his faith and resigned from the priesthood. This was something of a cause celebre and Kenny gave a full account of this development in his book The Path From Rome. But, as this book demonstrates, he has never been able to let go of God and he continues to struggle with the intellectual problems of theism and the possibility of believing in God, especially in an intellectual climate dominated by Logical Positivism. In this book Kenny revisits the Five Ways of Aquinas and argues that they are not so much proofs as definitions of God.; He is also in constant dialogue with Wittgenstein for, K