Atheism is increasing, but as a phenomenon continues to be at the fringe of current research. Atheist groups and ideologies represent a wide range of attitudes, behaviour and ways of acting towards religion. The lack of a clear definition of what being atheist (or an unbeliever) means today invites us to study the issue in greater depth. This volume represents a first attempt at understanding and scrutinizing atheism, offering both a global perspective as well as specific case studies.

The Western World is becoming atheist. In the space of three generations churchgoing and religious belief have become alien to millions. We are in the midst of one of humankind's great cultural changes. How has this happened? Becoming Atheist explores how people of the sixties' generation have come to live their lives as if there is no God. It tells the life narratives of those from Britain, Western Europe, the United States and Canada who came from Christian, Jewish and other backgrounds to be without faith. Based on interviews with 85 people born in 18 countries, Callum Brown shows how gender, ethnicity and childhood shape how individuals lose religion. This book moves from statistical and broad cultural analysis to use frank, humorous and sometimes harrowing personal testimony. Becoming Atheist exposes people's role in renegotiating their own identities, and fashioning a secular and humanist culture for the Western world.

Does life have meaning if one rejects belief in God? This book responds affirmatively to that question. Paul Kurtz, America's leading secular humanist, provides a powerful defense of the humanist alternative, rejecting both religious spirituality and nihilism. In this inspirational book, Kurtz outlines the basic virtues of the secular humanist outlook. These virtues include courage, not simply to be or to survive, but to overcome and become; that is, to fulfill our highest aspirations and ideals in the face of obstacles. The two other virtues Kurtz identifies are cognition (reason and science in establishing truth) and moral caring (compassion and benevolence in our relationships with others.) Kurtz offers an optimistic appraisal of the "human prospect" and outlines a philosophy both for the individual and the global community.

This book reflects the wide-spread belief that the twenty-first century is evolving in a significantly different way to the twentieth, which witnessed the advance of human rationality and technological progress, including urbanisation, and called into question the public and cultural significance of religion. In this century, by contrast, religion, faith communities and spiritual values have returned to the centre of public life, especially public policy, governance, and social identity. Rapidly diversifying urban locations are the best places to witness the emergence of new spaces in which religions and spiritual traditions are creating both new alliances but also bifurcations with secular sectors. "Postsecular Cities" examines how the built environment reflects these trends. Recognizing that the 'turn to the postsecular' is a contested and multifaceted trend, the authors offer a vigorous, open but structured dialogue between theory and practice, but even more excitingly, between the disciplines of human geography and theology. Both disciplines reflect on this powerful but enigmatic force shaping our urban humanity. This unique volume offers the first insight into these interdisciplinary and challenging debates. The relationship between religion and politics is both fascinating and challenging, and recent years have seen substantial changes in the way this relationship is studied.

Since the Second Vatican Council (1962-5), the Catholic Church has formally declared the possibility of salvation for atheists: 'those who, without fault, have not yet arrived at an express recognition of God' (Lumen Gentium 16). However, in the very same document, the Council also reiterates the traditional doctrine of the necessity of faith, baptism, and the mediation of Church in order for someone to be saved (Lumen Gentium 14). This monograph explores how these two seemingly contradictory claims may satisfactorily be reconciled. Specifically, it asks - and ultimately answers - the question: How, within the parameters of Catholic dogmatic theology, is it possible for an atheist to be saved? As the first full-length study of this topic since Vatican II, the book discusses crucial foundational issues - the understanding of 'atheist' in Catholic theology; the developing views on both unbelief, and the salvation of non-Christians, in the decades preceding the Council - before tackling the conciliar teaching itself. Considerable attention is then given to the classic solution of imputing an 'implicit' faith to righteous atheists, best known from Karl Rahner's theory of 'anonymous Christians' (though the basic idea was advocated by many other major figures, including Ratzinger, Schillebeeckx, de Lubac, Balthasar, and Kung). After discussing Rahner's specific proposals in detail, this kind of approach is however shown to be untenable. In its place, a new way of understanding Vatican II's optimism for atheists is developed in detail, in light of scripture, tradition, and magisterium. This draws principally on Christ's descent into Hell, a renewed understanding of invincible ignorance, and a literal interpretation of Matthew 25.

In this classic treatise on atheism,George H. Smith sets out to demolish what he considers the most widespread and destructive of all the myths devised by human beings - the concept of a supreme being. With painstaking scholarship and rigorous arguments, Mr. Smith examines, dissects, and refutes the myriad "proofs" offered by theists - sophisticated, professional theologians - as well as the average religious layperson. He explores the historical and psychological havoc wrought by religion in general and concludes that religious belief cannot have any place in the life of modern, rational man. "It is not my purpose to convert people to atheism . . . (but to) demonstrate that the belief in God is irrational to the point of absurdity. If a person wishes to continue believing in a god, that is his prerogative, but he can no longer excuse his belief in the name of reason and moral necessity."

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"Clear-eyed and judicious." --"The Women's Review of Books"

""The Atheist" belongs on the short shelf of books on American atheism, church-state relations, and school prayer."--"The Journal of American History"

""The Atheist" is especially instructive today as issues of the separation of chruch and state continue to reverberate throughout our culture...well documented."--"BOOK LOOK"

"Le Beau offers an informative and melancholy portrait of self-promotion and folly."--"American Historical Review"

"Le Beau's biography is the longer and better researched of two recently published lives of Murray."
--"The New Republic"

"O'Hair's story is especially instructive today as issues of the separation of chruch and state continue to reverberate throughout our culture."
--"Crosswinds Weekly"

"Le Beau presents a well-rounded and thoughtful treatment of O'Hair's life and times, and his knowledge and research are evident throughout."
-- "Library Journal"

"Yet The Atheist is a rewarding book, for the sight of Le Beau, a Missourian and a thoroughly professional historian, at work. He assembles and evaluates sweeping detail, narrates lucidly, leaving you to choose your side."
--"The Baltimore Sun"

.,."thoughtful and vigorous portrait drawn of an extraordinary women."
--"Journal of American Studies"

"Assessing O'Hair's legacy, Le Beau is skeptical, ungenerous and...mostly correct."
--"Reason"

"Le Beau's skillful treatment of the issues of personality, public perception, and constitutional principle makes this books, if not required, then at least strongly recommended reading for all who are interestedin issues of constitutional development."
--"Journal of Church and State"

In 1964, "Life" magazine called Madalyn Murray O'Hair "the most hated woman in America." Another critic described her as "rude, impertinent, blasphemous, a destroyer not only of beliefs but of esteemed values."

In this first full-length biography, Bryan F. Le Beau offers a penetrating assessment of O'Hair's beliefs and actions and a probing discussion of how she came to represent both what Americans hated in their enemies and feared in themselves. Born in 1919, O'Hair was a divorced mother of two children born out of wedlock. She launched a crusade against God, often using foul language as she became adept at shocking people and making effective use of the media in delivering her message. She first gained notoriety as one of the primary litigants in the 1963 case "Murray v. Curlett" which led the Supreme Court to ban school prayer. The decision stunned a nation engaged in fighting "godless Communism" and made O'Hair America's most famous--and most despised--atheist.

O'Hair led a colorful life, facing assault charges and extradition from Mexico, as well as the defection of her son William, who as an adult denounced her. She later served as "Hustler" publisher Larry Flynt's chief speech writer in his bid for President of the United States.

Drawing on original research, O'Hair's diaries, and interviews, Le Beau traces her development from a child of the Depression to the dictatorial, abrasive woman who founded the American Atheists, wrote books denouncing religion, and challenged the words "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, "In God We Trust" on American currency, the tax exempt status ofreligious organizations, and other activities she saw as violating the separation of church and state.

O'Hair remained a spokesperson for atheism until 1995, when she and her son and granddaughter vanished. It was later discovered that they were murdered by O'Hair's former office manager and an accomplice.

Fast-paced, engagingly written, and sharply relevant to ongoing debates about school prayer and other religious issues, The Atheist tells the colorful life-story of a woman who challenged America's most deeply held beliefs.

"Edward Said's Rhetoric of the Secular" provides an important new reading of Edward W. Said's work, emphasizing not only the distinction but also the fuzzy borders between representations of 'the religious' and 'the secular' found within and throughout his oeuvre and at the core of some of his most customary rhetorical strategies.

Mathieu Courville begins by examining Said's own reflections on his life, before moving on to key debates about Said's work within Religious Studies and Middle Eastern Studies, and his relationship to French critical theorists.

Through close attention to Said's use of the literal and the figurative when dealing with religious, national and cultural matters, Courville discerns a pattern that illuminates what Said means by secular. Said's work shows that the secular is not the utter opposite of religion in the modern globalized world, but may exist in a productive tension with it.

Who are the "Nones"? What does humanism say about race, religion and popular culture? How do race, religion and popular culture inform and affect humanism? The demographics of the United States are changing, marked most profoundly by the religiously unaffiliated, or what we have to come to call the "Nones". Spread across generations in the United States, this group encompasses a wide range of philosophical and ideological perspectives, from some in line with various forms of theism to those who are atheistic, and all sorts of combinations in between. Similar changes to demographics are taking place in Europe and elsewhere. Humanism: Essays on Race, Religion and Popular Culture provides a much-needed humanities-based analysis and description of humanism in relation to these cultural markers. Whereas most existing analysis attempts to explain humanism through the natural and social sciences (the "what" of life), Anthony B. Pinn explores humanism in relation to "how" life is arranged, socialized, ritualized, and framed. This ground-breaking publication brings together old and new essays on a wide range of topics and themes, from the African-American experience, to the development of humanist churches, and the lyrics of Jay Z.

A former African American minister reveals his unusual journey from faith to atheism.
Anthony Pinn preached his first sermon at age twelve. At eighteen he became one of the youngest ordained ministers in his denomination. He then quickly moved up the ministerial ranks. Eventually he graduated from Columbia University and then received a Master of Divinity in theology and a PhD in religion from Harvard University.
All the while, Pinn was wrestling with a growing skepticism. As his intellectual horizons expanded, he became less and less confident in the theism of his upbringing. At the same time, he became aware that his church could offer only anemic responses to the
acute social needs of the community. In his mid-twenties, he finally decided to leave the ministry and committed the rest of his life to academia. He went on to become a distinguished scholar of African American humanism and religious history.
The once fully committed believer evolved into an equally committed nonbeliever convinced that a secular approach to life offers the best hope of solving humanity's problems.

This is the first anthology ever published to feature the writings of leading eighteenth-century thinkers on the subjects of atheism, religion, freethought, and secularism.
Editor S. T. Joshi has compiled notable essays by writers from Germany, France, England, and early America. The contributors include Denis Diderot (a principal author of the multivolume French "Encyclopedie)," Baron d'Holbach ("System of Nature," 1770), Voltaire ("Philosophical Dictionary"), David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Ethan Allen, Thomas Paine, and other lesser-known thinkers.
With a comprehensive introduction providing the intellectual and cultural context of the essays, this outstanding compilation will be of interest to students of philosophy, religious studies, and eighteenth-century intellectual history.

Atheists generated widespread anxieties between the Reformation and the Enlightenment. In response to such anxieties a distinct genre of religious apologetics emerged in England between 1580 and 1720. By examining the form and the content of the confutation of atheism, Anti-Atheism in Early Modern England demonstrates the prevalence of patterned assumptions and arguments about who an atheist was and what an atheist was supposed to believe, outlines and analyzes the major arguments against atheists, and traces the important changes and challenges to this apologetic discourse in the early Enlightenment.

Hundreds of millions of people believe that Jesus came back from the dead. This cogent, forcefully argued book presents a decidedly unpopular view --namely, that the central tenet of Christianity, the resurrection of Jesus, is false. The author asks a number of probing questions:
Is the evidence about Jesus as it has been relayed to us over the centuries of sufficient quantity and quality to justify belief in the resurrection? How can we accept the resurrection but reject magic at the Salem witch trials? What light does contemporary research about human rationality from the fields of behavioral economics, empirical psychology, cognitive science, and philosophy shed on the resurrection and religious belief? Can we use contemporary research about the reliability of people's beliefs in the supernatural, miracles, and the paranormal to shed light on the origins of Christianity and other religions? Does it make sense that the all-powerful creator of the universe would employ miracles to achieve his ends? Can a Christian believe by faith alone and yet reasonably deny the supernatural claims of other religions? Do the arguments against Christianity support atheism?
By carefully answering each of these questions, this book undermines Christianity and theism at their foundations; it gives us a powerful model for better critical reasoning; and it builds a compelling case for atheism. Without stooping to condescension or arrogance, the author offers persuasive arguments that are accessible, thoughtful, and new.

For about two decades John W. Loftus was a devout evangelical Christian, an ordained minister of the Church of Christ, and an ardent apologist for Christianity. With three degrees--in philosophy, theology, and philosophy of religion--he was adept at using rational argumentation to defend the faith. But over the years, doubts about the credibility of key Christian tenets began to creep into his thinking. By the late 1990s he experienced a full-blown crisis of faith.
In this honest appraisal of his journey from believer to atheist, the author carefully explains the experiences and the reasoning process that led him to reject religious belief. The original edition of this book was published in 2006 and reissued in 2008. Since that time, Loftus has received a good deal of critical feedback from Christians and skeptics alike. In this revised and expanded edition, the author addresses criticisms of the original, adds new argumentation and references, and refines his presentation. For every issue he succinctly summarizes the various points of view and provides references for further reading. In conclusion, he describes the implications of life without belief in God, some liberating, some sobering.
This frank critique of Christian belief from a former insider will interest freethinkers as well as anyone with doubts about the claims of religion.

This collection of satirical poems homes in on the inconsistencies and downright perversities of what passes in our culture as "Holy Writ." Turning to satire, with its long and distinguished record of exposing folly and bringing enlightenment through humor, the author leaves no doubt that primitive religion posing as eternal truth is just the sort of folly that satire is meant to correct.
He lets his poetic imagination roam widely, as he takes on the roles of Eve, Noah, Sarah, Jonah, David, Mary, Jesus, Judas, and even the biblical Jehovah Himself, ("I never apologize, never explain."). We also hear from priests, televangelists, and faith healers, as well as some sensible contemporaries, commenting on what it means to live a life of reason.
At the conclusion to the introduction, the author says: "Intelligent and well-meaning people have argued for centuries against the fatal attraction of foolishness, but their efforts have been largely unproductive, partly because many people seem impervious to rational discussion. So perhaps satire is our most effective way of lighting candles in the darkness and communicating effectively to those who are immune to reason. That is, at any rate, the hope, and the rationale, of this book."
In this age of suicide bombers and resurgent fundamentalism, we need these lighted candles like never before.

A recent poll from the University of Minnesota finds that atheists are America's least trusted social group. Perhaps compounding this negative impression is the attack-dog persona taken on in the past decade by the "New Atheists." Not only have they been quite public about their disbelief, but they've also stridently lambasted religious belief generally in a number of bestselling books.
Disturbed by this negative public perception and the deterioration in the tone of open debate, the authors of this eminently reasonable work attempt to introduce a note of civility and rational clarity. To both religious believers and fellow atheists they counsel a measured approach that combines serious intellectual engagement with respect for the reasonableness of the other side's position.
The heart of the book is the authors' moral case for atheism. Atheism, they contend, manifests a decidedly moral concern for others and their wellbeing. The authors further argue that atheism is driven by the kinds of moral considerations that should be familiar to all religious believers. Atheists are motivated by a moral concern for others, a desire to alleviate suffering and combat evil, and an appreciation for the value of life, freedom, and responsibility.
In the end, the authors make not only a compelling case for atheism but also for the value and necessity of mutual respect in a democratic society composed of diverse citizens.

Atheism, once a minority view, is now openly embraced by an increasing number of scientists, philosophers, politicians, and celebrities. How did this formerly closeted secular perspective gain its current prominence as a philosophically viable and challenging worldview? In this succinct history of modern atheism, a prolific author, editor, and scholar traces the development of atheist, agnostic, and secularist thought over the past century and a half.
Beginning in the nineteenth century, when intellectuals first openly voiced skepticism about long-standing Christian beliefs, Joshi considers the impact of several leading thinkers: Thomas Henry Huxley ("Darwin's Bulldog"), Leslie Stephen, John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Mark Twain. Each of these writers, in different ways, made searing criticisms of such religious conceptions as the immortality of the soul, the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, and the existence of God, at a time when such notions were largely taken for granted.
Next, the author examines prominent atheist thinkers of the early twentieth century: attorney Clarence Darrow, journalist H. L. Mencken, philosopher Bertrand Russell, and horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. Around the same time as Darrow and Mencken were involved in the celebrated Scopes trial in America, which resulted in a triumph for the theory of evolution, Bertrand Russell in England was becoming well known as a forthright atheist. And Lovecraft was championing atheism in his novels and tales.
Turning to recent decades, the author considers the uproar caused by outspoken atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair and the controversial 1962 "school prayer" Supreme Court decision. Finally, he evaluates the work of best-selling authors Gore Vidal, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. In each case, he carefully dissects the views of the writers in question and points out both the strengths and fallacies or ambiguities in their arguments.
This excellent intellectual history will be a welcome addition to the libraries of readers of both secular and religious orientations seeking a greater understanding of contemporary atheism.