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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Alternative belief systems > Humanist & secular alternatives to religion
Young people are doing faith differently. They are redefining
community, ministry and ritual for a new era. In the face of
planetary crisis, the next generation no longer see faith as a
private matter, instead they are integrating it with activism and
the need for systemic change. Influenced by the wealth of different
teachings and traditions available around them, their identities
are increasingly multifaceted and emphatically global. This
collection of stories and interviews with young adults and their
allies explores this new landscape, reflecting both the energy and
inspiration of the next generation and the tremendous challenges
they face. It points towards an exciting evolution in the way we
are relating to the sacred. With stories from: Adam Bucko,
Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, Kara Moses, Abbas
Zahedi, Camille Barton, Bruna Kadletz, Dekila Chungyalpa, Matt
Youde, Amrita Bhohi, Sun Kaur, and many others. With supporting
stories from senior leaders including: His Holiness the 17th
Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Dr John
Sentamu, Archbishop of York, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Rabbi Laura
Janner Klausner, Bhai Sahib Dr Mohinder Singh, and more.
Over the past decade the Religion vs. Atheism debate has generated
a lot more heat than light. With passionate advocates on both
sides, it is possible we have lost sight of the real people and
problems behind the controversies and conflicts. Where does the
truth lie? In Faitheism Krish Kandiah asks us to take a long hard
look at ourselves - and a more understanding look at each other.
Written for both committed Christians and committed Atheists and
everyone in between, this accessible and practical book can help
all of us find a way to talk about the things that really matter to
us in ways that encourage empathy, mutual understanding and respect
and yet that don't shy away from tackling the hard topics. The
ideas in this book can transform our relationships, our workplaces
and our nation as it lays down a path for a genuinely more
inclusive, hospitable and understanding society. Krish contends
that whether you are a Christian, an Atheist or somewhere in
between, we can all grow in our own beliefs and understand each
other better. In this challenging exploration of the myths about
Christianity and Atheism, time and again we will find the evidence
shows that the truth on the ground is not what one might expect -
and the potential for genuine understanding is far greater than the
antagonists on either side would have you believe.
A humane and sensible guide to and for the many kinds of Americans
leading secular lives in what remains one of the most religious
nations in the developed world. The New York Times Book Review Over
the last twenty-five years, no religion has become the
fastest-growing religious preference in the United States. Around
the world, hundreds of millions of people have turned away from the
traditional faiths of the past and embraced a moral yet
nonreligious or secular life, generating societies vastly less
religious than at any other time in human history. Revealing the
inspiring beliefs that empower secular culture alongside real
stories of nonreligious men and women based on extensive in-depth
interviews from across the country Living the Secular Lifewill be
indispensable for millions of secular Americans. Drawing on
innovative sociological research, Living the Secular
Lifeilluminates this demographic shift with the moral convictions
that govern secular individuals, offering crucial information for
the religious and nonreligious alike.Living the Secular Lifereveals
that, despite opinions to the contrary, nonreligious Americans
possess a unique moral code that allows them to effectively
navigate the complexities of modern life. Spiritual self-reliance,
clear-eyed pragmatism, and an abiding faith in the Golden Rule to
adjudicate moral decisions: these common principles are shared
across secular society. Living the Secular Lifedemonstrates these
principles in action and points to their usage throughout daily
life. Phil Zuckerman is a sociology professor at Pitzer College,
where he studied the lives of the nonreligious for years before
founding a Department of Secular Studies, the first academic
program in the nation dedicated to exclusively studying secular
culture and the sociological consequences of America s
fastest-growing faith. Zuckerman discovered that despite the
entrenched negative beliefs about nonreligious people, American
secular culture is grounded in deep morality and proactive
citizenship indeed, some of the very best that the country has to
offer. Living the Secular Lifejourneys through some of the most
essential components of human existence child rearing and morality,
death and ritual, community and beauty and offers secular readers
inspiration for leading their own lives. Zuckerman shares
eye-opening research that reveals the enduring moral strength of
children raised without religion, as well as the hardships
experienced by secular mothers in the rural South, where church
attendance defines the public space. Despite the real sorrows of
mortality, Zuckerman conveys the deep psychological health of
secular individuals in their attitudes toward illness, death, and
dying. Tracking the efforts of nonreligious groups to construct
their own communities, Zuckerman shows how Americans are building
institutions and cultivating relationships without religious
influence. Most of all, Living the Secular Lifeinfuses the
sociological data and groundbreaking research with the moral
convictions that govern secular individuals and demonstrates how
readers can integrate these beliefs into their own lives. A
manifesto for a booming social movement and a revelatory survey of
this overlooked community Living the Secular Lifeoffers essential
and long-awaited information for anyone building a life based on
his or her own principles."
The atheists Daniel Dennett in Breaking the Spell and Richard
Dawkins in The God Delusion talk down to believers. Sam Harris in
The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation insults believers
outright. All three assume that believers are not very bright.
Their approach is not productive of much understanding. In The
Philosopher's Enigma, Richard Watson explains to believers in
temperate and readable prose why he and many others are not
believers. His discussion is based on strict Augustinianism, the
foundation of seriously argued Christianity. God is hidden - that
is, the concept of God is unintelligible - as discussed at length
by Leszek Kolakowski in his Religion If There Is No God (St.
Augustine's Press) - in the sense that there are no known rational
arguments for God's existence. Moreover, Augustine argues that
finite human beings cannot understand God's infinite perfections.
Augustine concludes that God has omniscient knowledge of every
human being's behavior, which after all, is predetermined by God
prior to His creation of the world. Most difficult to accept, as
Calvin later stresses, is the inference that because humans do not
determine their own behavior, God predetermines who is saved and
who is damned with no reference to this behavior. A foundation of
Christianity is that because of the Fall of Man, we are all
sinners, and thus there is no reason why God should pick this
person for salvation and that one for damnation. But most
Christians believe that faith, God's grace, Jesus' sacrifice, being
born again, and in particular, good works, can earn one salvation.
But Augustine and later Calvin see no evidence for these views.
Even if, or perhaps even because, God gives a sinner the grace to
be good - a person's good works do not assure salvation. After all,
even before God created the world, God predetermined the behavior
of every human being. Thus because humans cannot determine their
own behavior, they cannot be saved or damned with reference to this
behavior.A major difficulty in understanding and accepting the
story of the Creation, then, is that even though God determines
Adam's behavior, God punishes Adam for disobedience by decreeing
that all Adam's progeny will be born sinners. Watson begins his
book with the steel-trap objections made by his daughter, when she
was seven years old, as he read the Bible to her. To the story of
the Garden, she objected: "But God made Adam! God made Adam sin!
God is not fair!" She slid off his lap, and he had to bribe her to
return.In The Philosopher's Enigma, Watson also discusses in detail
the concepts of the soul, angels, ghosts, mind, and body. He argues
that the classic Cartesian mind/body problem of how an immaterial
mind or soul and a material body can interact will eventually be
superseded by a concept of a human being according to which, even
though a person's body/mind is bound by physical laws, it still
makes its own considered decisions, and to that extent a human
being is free. And because the mind/body is one entity, there is no
problem about two different things - a mind and a
body-interacting.Watson concludes that this means there is no such
thing as a disembodied mind or soul, and so no such things as
angels and ghosts that could help or harm you. Basing this
discussion in the context of contemporary neurophilosophy, his
conclusions about the relationships of mind/soul follow those of
Kolakowski in being reminiscent of Spinoza.
The essays collected in this volume represent many years of
Professor Nauert's research and teaching on the history of
Renaissance humanism, and more particularly on humanism north of
the Alps. Much of the early work involved the significant but
often-overlooked history of humanism at the University of Cologne,
notoriously the most anti-humanist of the German universities.
Later essays deal with the most famous humanist of the early
sixteenth century, Erasmus of Rotterdam, and natural philosophy, a
broad term covering many subjects now associated with natural
science, is the topic of three of the pieces published here. Taken
as a whole, the book presents a detailed study of intellectual
development among European elites.
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.
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
Throughout the sixteenth century, political and intellectual
developments in Britain and The Netherlands were closely
intertwined. At different times religious refugees from one or
other country found a secure haven across the Channel, and a
constant interchange of books, ideas and personnel underscored the
affinity of lands which both made a painful progress towards
Protestantism during the course of the century. This collection of
ten new studies, all by specialists active in the field, explores
the full ramifications of these links, from the first intellectual
contacts inspired by the growth of Humanism to the planting of
established Protestant churches. With contributions from
specialists in art history, literary studies and history, the
volume also underscores the vitality of new research in this field
and points the way to several new departures in the field of
Reformation and Renaissance studies.
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.
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."
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.
Islam is often treated as an inextricable part of Arab culture, and
in the minds of many in both the west and the Arab world, to be an
Arab is to be a Muslim by default. While many religious minorities,
notably the Druze, Jews and Christians, have found ways of
reconciling their Arab identity with their beliefs, a far greater
challenge faces the growing number of Arabs who identify as
atheists, agnostics, or sceptics. Emboldened by the political
upheavals of the Arab spring and facilitated by the growth of
social media, these predominantly young men and women are becoming
an increasingly vocal and assertive presence in Arab societies,
despite facing the risk of imprisonment, ostracism, and death.
Arabs Without God explores the roots and consequences of this
phenomenon, as well as the experiences of those living as
'non-believers' in Muslim countries. Beginning with an examination
of the history of atheism in the Arab world, it goes on to consider
the circumstances which led these Arab Muslims to question their
faith. It also examines the pressures they face in attempting to
assert and defend their stance, both in Muslim countries and in the
west, where they often find themselves caught between political
Islamists who deride them as 'westernised' apostates, and a far
right which regards all people from Muslim backgrounds as potential
extremists. Arabs Without God argues passionately that these
developments, previously ignored by western observers, are of vital
importance to the future of Arab societies. For as the author says
it is only 'when an atheist can be accepted and respected as a
normal human being' that liberty will truly have arrived.
The Taylor Effect presents an original and diverse collection of
essays addressing Charles Taylor's magisterial A Secular Age.
Ranging from close and critical readings of Taylor's formulations
and suppositions; to comparative studies of Taylor and various
'interlocutors'; to applied approaches utilizing Taylor's concepts;
to explorations launched from a Taylorian foundation; the 13
chapters comprise a multifaceted exploration of Taylor's
multifaceted achievement. Given the vast, synoptic sweep of
Taylor's magnum opus, the contributors represent a suitably diverse
range of interests, backgrounds and expertise-members of
departments of philosophy, literature, philosophical theology,
systematic theology, moral theology, education, and political
science, whose interests stretch from Plato to Girard, phronesis to
pedagogy, Deism to dogmatics, medical ethics to aesthetics...
Accordingly, The Taylor Effect is not only one of the first major
responses to A Secular Age: the astonishing breadth as well as the
quality of contributions will ensure that it remains a central
reference point in any future discussion of Taylor's work.
Edward Said and Jacques Derrida: Reconstellating Humanism and the
Global Hybrid features essays that invoke Said and Derrida's
intellectually rigorous examination of humanism in their works; yet
by shifting Said and Derrida out of their contexts-by dis-engaging
them from their respective habitats of postcolonial studies and
deconstruction-and by placing them in each other's company, the
collection reconstellates those traces of their works that open the
question of ethics, criticism, and the political in order to
reconsider the status of the human subject in the global
moment.These fourteen interdisciplinary essays by leading
international scholars address present social change and political
questions and analyze humanism from the perspectives of literature,
theory, history, gender studies, and art in view of the
intellectual impact of Said and Derrida on contemporary philosophy.
In rethinking the question of humanism, these essays pursue the
analysis of pivotal concepts that are theoretically and politically
imperative in the global age such as the "human subject",
"hybridity", "community", "philology", "secularism", "planetary
humanism", "ethical antihumanism", "inhabitancy", "exceptionalism",
"utopia", and others.
In this volume, Mark Bevir argues that postfoundationalism is
compatible with humanism and historicism. He shows how
postmodernists, especially Derrida and Foucault, drew on
structuralism and the avant-garde in ways that led them to downplay
human agency and historical context. He then explores how we today
might recover and rethink humanism and historicism. And, finally,
he discusses the critical and ethical practices that such ideas
might inspire.
Islam is often treated as an inextricable part of Arab culture, and
in the minds of many in both the west and the Arab world, to be an
Arab is to be a Muslim by default. While many religious minorities,
notably the Druze, Jews and Christians, have found ways of
reconciling their Arab identity with their beliefs, a far greater
challenge faces the growing number of Arabs who identify as
atheists, agnostics, or sceptics. Emboldened by the political
upheavals of the Arab spring and facilitated by the growth of
social media, these predominantly young men and women are becoming
an increasingly vocal and assertive presence in Arab societies,
despite facing the risk of imprisonment, ostracism, and death.
Arabs Without God explores the roots and consequences of this
phenomenon, as well as the experiences of those living as
'non-believers' in Muslim countries. Beginning with an examination
of the history of atheism in the Arab world, it goes on to consider
the circumstances which led these Arab Muslims to question their
faith. It also examines the pressures they face in attempting to
assert and defend their stance, both in Muslim countries and in the
west, where they often find themselves caught between political
Islamists who deride them as 'westernised' apostates, and a far
right which regards all people from Muslim backgrounds as potential
extremists. Arabs Without God argues passionately that these
developments, previously ignored by western observers, are of vital
importance to the future of Arab societies. For as the author says
it is only 'when an atheist can be accepted and respected as a
normal human being' that liberty will truly have arrived.
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