Exploring European changes in religious and secular beliefs and practices related to life passages, this book provides a deeper understanding of the impacts of social change on personal identity and adjustment across the life course, According to latest research, Europeans who consider religious services appropriate to mark life passages significantly outnumber those who declare themselves as believers. Drawing on fascinating oral histories of older people's memories in both Eastern and Western Europe, this book presents illuminating views on peoples' quests for existential meaning in later life. Ageing, Ritual and Social Change presents an invaluable resource for all those exploring issues of ageing, including those looking from perspectives of sociology and psychology of religion, social and oral history and East-Central European studies.

In this volume, Marks offers a defense of amorality as both philosophically justified and practicably livable. In so doing, the book marks a radical departure from both the new atheism and the mainstream of modern ethical philosophy. While in synch with their underlying aim of grounding human existence in a naturalistic metaphysics, the book takes both to task for maintaining a complacent embrace of morality. Marks advocates wiping the slate clean of outdated connotations by replacing the language of morality with a language of desire. The book begins with an analysis of what morality is and then argues that the concept is not instantiated in reality. Following this, the question of belief in morality is addressed: How would human life be affected if we accepted that morality does not exist? Marks argues that at the very least, a moralist would have little to complain about in an amoral world, and at best we might hope for a world that was more to our liking overall. An extended look at the human encounter with nonhuman animals serves as an illustration of amorality's potential to make both theoretical and practical headway in resolving heretofore intractable ethical problems.

Sonja Luehrmann explores the Soviet atheist effort to build a society without gods or spirits and its afterlife in post-Soviet religious revival. Combining archival research on atheist propaganda of the 1960s and 1970s with ethnographic fieldwork in the autonomous republic of Marij El in Russia s Volga region, Luehrmann examines how secularist culture-building reshaped religious practice and interreligious relations. One of the most palpable legacies of atheist propaganda is a widespread didactic orientation among the population and a faith in standardized programs of personal transformation as solutions to wider social problems. This didactic trend has parallels in globalized forms of Protestantism and Islam but differs from older uses of religious knowledge in rural Russia. At a time when the secularist modernization projects of the 20th century are widely perceived to have failed, Secularism Soviet Style emphasizes the affinities and shared histories of religious and atheist mobilizations."

This book offers a wide range of critical perspectives on how secularism unfolds and has been made sense of across Europe and Asia. The book evaluates secularism as it exists today - its formations and discontents within contemporary discourses of power, terror, religion and cosmopolitanism - and the focus on these two continents gives critical attention to recent political and cultural developments where secularism and multiculturalism have impinged in deeply problematical ways, raising bristling ideological debates within the functioning of modern state bureaucracies. Examining issues as controversial as the state of Islam in Europe and China's encounters with religion, secularism, and modernization provides incisive and broader perspectives on how we negotiate secularism within the contemporary threats of terrorism and other forms of fundamentalism and state-politics. However, amidst the discussions of various versions of secularism in different countries and cultural contexts, this book also raises several other issues relevant to the antitheocratic and theocratic alike, such as: Is secularism is merely a nonreligious establishment? Is secularism a kind of cultural war? How is it related to "terror"? The book at once makes sense of secularism across cultural, religious, and national borders and puts several relevant issues on the anvil for further investigations and understanding.

God and Evidence presents a new set of compelling problems for theistic philosophers. The problems pertain to three types of theistic philosopher, which Lovering defines here as 'theistic inferentialists,' 'theistic non-inferentialists,' and 'theistic fideists.' Theistic inferentialists believe that God exists, that there is inferential probabilifying evidence of God's existence, and that this evidence is discoverable not simply in principle but in practice. Theistic non-inferentialists believe that God exists, that there is non-inferential probabilifying evidence of God's existence, and that this evidence is discoverable not simply in principle but in practice. Theistic fideists believe that God exists, that there is no discoverable probabilifying evidence (inferential or non-inferential) of God's existence, and that it is nevertheless acceptable-morally if not otherwise-to have faith that God exists. Lovering argues that each type of theistic philosopher faces a problem unique to his type and that they all share two particular problems. Some of these problems take us down an entirely new discursive path; others down a new discursive path branching off from an old one.

Within contemporary Western European academic, media, and socio-political spheres, Muslims are predominantly seen through the lens of increased religiosity. This religiosity is often seen as problematic, especially in the context of securitised discourses of Islamist terrorism. Yet, there are clear indications that a growing number of people who grew up in Muslim families no longer subscribe to Islam or call themselves religious at all. Drawing on fieldwork in the UK and the Netherlands, this study examines the experiences of people moving out of Islam. It rigorously questions the antagonistic nature of the debate between 'the religious' and 'the secular', or who is in and who is out, and argues for recognition of the ambiguity that most of us live in. Revealing many complex forms of moving out, this study adds much-needed nuance to understandings of secularity and Muslim identities in Europe.

Scientology is arguably the most persistently controversial of all contemporary New Religious Movements. The Church of Scientology has been involved in battles over tax issues, a ten-year conflict with the Food and Drug Administration, extended turmoil with a number of European governments, and has even been subjected to FBI raids in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles.
Negative publicity, however, has not prevented the Church from experiencing remarkably steady growth. Official national census figures indicate that the number of Scientologists grew significantly in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia throughout the 1990s, and studies show that the Church gained 10,000 members in the United States during that decade. This has led Scientology to begin referring to itself as "The World's Fastest Growing Religion." But despite its highly public profile, recently enhanced by celebrity spokespersons like Tom Cruise and Isaac Hayes, little has been published about the Church, its history, theology, and mission.
The present volume brings together an international group of top scholars on New Religious Movements to offer an extensive and even-handed overview and analysis of all of these aspects of Scientology, including the controversies to which it continues to give rise. The book's six parts take a detailed look at the Church through its similarities to and differences from other religions, conflicts with various groups, overseas missions, and its theology, history, and sociology.
James R. Lewis has assembled an unusually comprehensive anthology, incorporating a wide range of different approaches. This volume is a welcome and long-overdue resource for scholars, students, and others interested in this controversial and little-understood religious movement.

The contemporary world is witness to an intense controversy about secularism. This controversy has intensified due to the presence of fundamentalism, which challenges secular society and the secularization of philosophical ideas and ethical values.

Secularists maintain that the state should not impose a religious creed upon citizens and should respect freedom of conscience, the right to believe or disbelieve in the prevailing orthodoxy. This right is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution and the Rights of Man enunciated in the French Revolution. Yet many powerful religious institutions do not accept this principle.

Paul Kurtz argues that secularism needs to be allied to the emergence of democratic institutions that respect individual freedom and the pluralistic society. He argues that a defense of secularism entails a defense of the civic virtues of democracy, which include the toleration of dissent and alternative lifestyles and the willingness to negotiate differences. Consequently, secularism will take different forms in different societies; the term multi-secularism best describes that. Many people believe that it is impossible to maintain a moral order without the support of religion. Kurtz vigorously denies that, and this volume attempts to explicate the values and principles of secular morality, which he sees as the cornerstone of the open democratic society.

Kurtz was involved in the campaign for secularism throughout his career as a philosopher. This book reflects his participation in this battle and extends his thinking to new areas.

"50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists presents" a collection of original essays drawn from an international group of prominent voices in the fields of academia, science, literature, media and politics who offer carefully considered statements of why they are atheists. Features a truly international cast of contributors, ranging from public intellectuals such as Peter Singer, Susan Blackmore, and A.C. Grayling, novelists, such as Joe Haldeman, and heavyweight philosophers of religion, including Graham Oppy and Michael TooleyContributions range from rigorous philosophical arguments to highly personal, even whimsical, accounts of how each of these notable thinkers have come to reject religion in their livesLikely to have broad appeal given the current public fascination with religious issues and the reception of such books as "The God Delusion" and "The End of Faith"

MSIA, the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, has been called the Cadillac of cults and the leader was once dubbed the "Hollywood guru." Those interested in new religions only know MSIA from these kinds of labels. However, when looked at from a qualitative sociological perspective, a more complex story of religious innovation and cultural change emerges. An important study in religious syncretism, A Study of the Movement of Inner Awareness analyzes the ways MSIA exemplifies the blending of Eastern and Western religion with therapeutic self-help traditions in pop psychology and New Age thought and presents a sensitive portrayal of its leaders and members.

Religion in Europe is currently undergoing changes that are reconfiguring physical and virtual spaces of practice and belief, and these changes need to be understood with regards to the proliferation of digital media discourses. This book explores religious change in Europe through a comparative approach that analyzes Atheist, Catholic, and Muslim blogs as spaces for articulating narratives about religion that symbolically challenge the power of religious institutions. The book adds theoretical complexity to the study of religion and digital media with the concept of hypermediated religious spaces. The theory of hypermediation helps to critically discuss the theory of secularization and to contextualize religious change as the result of multiple entangled phenomena. It considers religion as being connected with secular and post-secular spaces, and media as embedding material forms, institutions, and technologies. A spatial perspective contextualizes hypermediated religious spaces as existing at the interstice of alternative and mainstream, private and public, imaginary and real venues. By offering the innovative perspective of hypermediated religious spaces, this book will be of significant interest to scholars of religious studies, the sociology of religion, and digital media.

Agnosticism - the philosophical argument that it is impossible to know whether God exists or not - has been the point of view of many distinguished thinkers from the 19th century to the present. In contrast to atheism, which asserts that God does not exist, agnosticism holds that reason and the best scientific evidence do not allow one to reach a decisive conclusion regarding the existence of God. This reader prints selections of some of the most profound and pioneering discussions of agnosticism over the past two centuries. Beginning with early formulations of the agnostic perspective by Thomas Henry Huxley (who coined the term), Bertrand Russell, and others, editor S. T. Joshi shows how agnosticism received a strong boost in the later 19th century from the so-called higher criticism of the Bible. Selections from Edward Burnett Tylor, Arthur Schopenhauer, Robert G. Ingersoll, and Edward Westermarck made a strong case that religion was a natural product of primitive development and that the Bible was the product of an age of scientific ignorance and superstition. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Christianity in Europe was in a state of decline among the intellectual classes. The writings of W. E. H. Leckey, Leslie Stephen, and Walter Lippmann show that leading commentators were openly pondering a European society in which Christianity was a thing of the past. The increasing success of the natural sciences during this same time period supported the agnostic viewpoint by accounting for phenomena on a natural, rather than a supernatural, basis. Selections from John William Draper, Albert Einstein, Isaac Asimov, and others demonstrate the scientific respectability of agnosticism. Finally, selections from such thinkers as Frederic Harrison, H. L. Mencken, and Corliss Lamont emphasise how living with agnosticism can be intellectually and morally satisfying, even exhilarating. Overall, "The Agnostic Reader" shows how agnosticism can provide a framework for living with courage and dignity.

With the rise of religious fundamentalism worldwide, express disbelief in God(s) has become a taboo. In the last few years, however, atheism has witnessed a resurgence. This book contributes to the reassertion of godlessness as a philosophical and moral stance. Part One includes historic defenses of atheism (from Baron d'Holbach, Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Marx, Emma Goldman, Bakunin, Paine, Russell, and Freud), while contributions from contemporary nonbelievers from the political and arts communities make up Part Two. Andrea Levy has published widely on the ecology and peace movements. Dimitri Roussopoulos is an author and editor whose most recent work documents the New Left.

In this book, Marek Sullivan challenges a widespread consensus linking secularization to rationalization, and argues for a more sensual genealogy of secularity connected to affect, race and power. While existing works of secular intellectual history, especially Charles Taylor's A Secular Age (2007), tend to rely on rationalistic conceptions of Enlightenment thought, Sullivan offers an alternative perspective on key thinkers such as Descartes, Montesquieu and Diderot, asserting that these figures sought to reinstate emotion against the rationalistic tendencies of the past. From Descartes's last work Les Passions de l'Ame (1649) to Baron d'Holbach's System of Nature (1770), the French Enlightenment demonstrated an acute understanding of the limits of reason, with crucial implications for our current 'postsecular' and 'postliberal' moment. Sullivan also emphasizes the importance of Western constructions of Oriental religions for the history of the secular, identifying a distinctively secular-yet impassioned-form of Orientalism that emerged in the 18th century. Mahomet's racial profile in Voltaire's Le Fanatisme, ou Mahomet (1741), for example, functioned as a polemic device calibrated for emotional impact, in line with Enlightenment efforts to generate an affective body of anti-Catholic propaganda that simultaneously shored up people's sense of national belonging. By exposing the Enlightenment as a nationalistic and affective movement that resorted to racist, Orientalist and emotional tropes from the outset, Sullivan ultimately undermines modern nationalist appeals to the Enlightenment as a mark of European distinction.

This book interrogates the ways in which new technological advances impact the thought and practices of humanism. Chapters investigate the social, political, and cultural implications of the creation and use of advanced forms of technology, examining both defining benefits and potential dangers. Contributors also discuss technology's relationship to and impact on the shifting definitions we hold for humankind. International and multi-disciplinary in nature and scope, the volume presents an exploration of humanism and technology that is both racially diverse and gender sensitive. With great depth and self-awareness, contributors offer suggestions for how humanists and humanist organizations might think about and relate to technology in a rapidly changing world. More broadly, the book offers a critical humanistic interrogation of the concept of "progress" especially as it relates to technological advancement.

This book provides the first comprehensive overview of atheism, secularity and non-religion in Central and Eastern Europe in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In contrast to scholarship that has focused on the 'decline of religion' and secularization theory, the book builds upon recent trends to focus on the 'rise of non-religion' itself. While the label of 'post-communism' might suggest a generalized perception of the region, this survey reveals that the precise developments in each country before, after and even during the communist era are surprisingly diverse. A multinational team of contributors provide interdisciplinary case studies covering Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria. This approach utilises perspectives from social and intellectual history in combination with sociology of religion in order to cover the historical development of secularity and secular thought, complemented with sociological data. The study is framed by methodological and analytical chapters. Offering an important geographical perspective to the study of freethought, atheism, secularity and non-religion, this wide-ranging book will be of significant interest to scholars of twentieth-century social and intellectual history, sociology of religion and non-religion, cultural and religious studies, philosophy and theology.

In "The Pale God", Katz deals with the relationship between secularism and religious tradition. Katz begins with a description of the secular options as expressed by Israeli intellectuals, which he claims have led to a dead-end, and that new options must be sought. One of the key sources for this option is the works of Spinoza, which Katz explains is unlike Nietzsche's catchphrase 'the death of God'. In his view, Spinoza tried to undermine the authority of religious virtuosos and establish the image of a rational "Pale God". Such changes could channel religious tradition to the basic principles of secular political rule. Katz then sums up his discussion by showing that the secular option is inherent in Israeli society, and fits the type of secularism that Zionism instilled in the Jewish people and complements the traditional trends already deeply rooted there.

The issue of whether or not there is a God is one of the oldest and most widely disputed philosophical questions. It is a debate that spreads far across the range of philosophical questions about the status of science, the nature of mind, the character of good and evil, the epistemology of experience and testimony, and so on. In this book two philosophers, each committed to unambiguous versions of belief and disbelief, debate the central issues of atheism and theism. Smart opens the debate by arguing that theism is philosophically untenable and seeks to explain metaphysical truth in the light of total science. Haldane continues the discussion by affirming that the existence of the world, and the possibility of our coming to have knowledge of it, depend upon the existence of a creating, sustaining, personal God. This is followed by replies, where each philosopher has the chance to respond and to defend his position. This second edition contains new essays by each philosopher, responding to criticisms and building on their previous work.

The Celebration of Death in Contemporary Culture investigates the emergence and meaning of the cult of death. Over the last three decades, Halloween has grown to rival Christmas in its popularity. Dark tourism has emerged as a rapidly expanding industry. "Corpse chic" and "skull style" have entered mainstream fashion, while elements of gothic, horror, torture porn, and slasher movies have streamed into more conventional genres. Monsters have become pop culture heroes: vampires, zombies, and serial killers now appeal broadly to audiences of all ages. This book breaks new ground by viewing these phenomena as aspects of a single movement and documenting its development in contemporary Western culture. This book links the mounting demand for images of violent death with dramatic changes in death-related social rituals. It offers a conceptual framework that connects observations of fictional worlds-including The Twilight Saga, The Vampire Diaries, and the Harry Potter series-with real-world sociocultural practices, analyzing the aesthetic, intellectual, and historical underpinnings of the cult of death. It also places the celebration of death in the context of a longstanding critique of humanism and investigates the role played by 20th-century French theory, posthumanism, transhumanism, and the animal rights movement in shaping the current antihumanist atmosphere. This timely, thought-provoking book will appeal to scholars of culture, film, literature, anthropology, and American and Russian studies, as well as general readers seeking to understand a defining phenomenon of our age.

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 characterises 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.

Civilizations of the Supernatural: Witchcraft, Ritual, and Religious Experience in Late Antique, Medieval, and Renaissance Traditions brings together thirteen scholars of late-antique, medieval, and renaissance traditions who discuss magic, religious experience, ritual, and witch-beliefs with the aim of reflecting on the relationship between man and the supernatural. The content of the volume is intriguingly diverse and includes late antique traditions covering erotic love magic, Hellenistic-Egyptian astrology, apotropaic rituals, early Christian amulets, and astrological amulets; medieval traditions focusing on the relationships between magic and disbelief, pagan magic and Christian culture, as well as witchcraft and magic in Britain, Scandinavian sympathetic graphophagy, superstition in sermon literature; and finally Renaissance traditions revolving around Agrippan magic, witchcraft in Shakespeare's Macbeth, and a Biblical toponym related to the Friulan Benandanti's visionary experiences. These varied topics reflect the multifaceted ways through which men aimed to establish relationships with the supernatural in diverse cultural traditions, and for different purposes, between Late Antiquity and the Renaissance. These ways eventually contributed to shaping the civilizations of the supernatural or those peculiar patterns which helped men look at themselves through the mirror of their own amazement of being in this world.

The whole work will be in three volumes . This first volume explores the social, intellectual, and political conditions behind the establishment of the new system in the great schools of learning in France and Italy, and the rewards that attracted experts who could both administer the system and make it known and acceptable to the generality of people whose lives were affected by it.

Best known for having declared the death of God, Nietzsche was a thinker thoroughly absorbed in the Christian tradition in which he was born and raised. Yet while the atheist Nietzsche is well known, the pious Nietzsche is seldom recognised and rarely understood.Redeeming Nietzsche examines the residual theologian in the most vociferous of atheists.
Fraser demonstrates that although Nietzsche rejected God, he remained obsessed with the question of human salvation. Examining his accounts of art, truth, morality and eternity, Nietzsche's thought is revealed to be a series of experiments in redemption.

This is an accessible guide to the basic principles underlying humanism in Elizabethan literature.

A unique account of Elizabethan humanism, dedicated specifically to the Elizabethan period of Renaissance writing Alan Pincombe offers an entirely new approach to the topic by using sixteenth century records of the words humanity and humanist to establish an Elizabethan meaning for the word humanism. It covers an extensive range of material including sources, background, authors and genre in order that the reader may gain a broader picture. The author looks closely at major texts of the Elizabethan period which include Spenser's, 'The Shepherd's Calendar'; Marlowe's 'Faustus' and Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'.

"This is a book that is stimulating, provocative, as well as very enjoyable reading."-Modern Age