Atheism

The existence of evil, pain and suffering is considered by many philosophers to be the most vexed question concerning the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect deity. Why would a loving God permit wanton acts of cruelty and misery on the scale witnessed throughout human history? In this essay, Leslie Allan evaluates four common theistic responses to this problem, highlighting the benefits and challenges faced by each approach. He concludes with a critical examination of a theistic defence designed (...) to show that the problem of evil is not a problem at all. (shrink)

The soul-making theodicy seeks to explain how belief in the existence of God is compatible with the evil, pain and suffering we experience in our world. It purports to meet the problem of evil posed by non-theists by articulating a divine plan in which the occurrence of evil is necessary for enabling the greater good of character building of free moral agents. Many philosophers of religion have levelled strong objections against this theodicy. In this essay, Leslie Allan considers the effectiveness (...) of the counterarguments advanced by theist philosopher, Clement Dore, to two key objections to the soul-making theodicy. (shrink)

This paper deals with the theme of Atonement. It is a rudimentary paper which has been prepared in a hurry in these trying times; especially for the use of students all over the world during the ongoing pandemic of COVID 19. It deals with the title of Atonement. The article should be cited properly if referred to by anyone. It is made open access since the author believes any knowledge worth sharing should be freely available to all.

Descartes argues that, apart from the existence of a veracious God, we can have no reason to believe that we possess reliable cognitive faculties, with the result that, if atheism is true, not even our seemingly most certain beliefs can count as knowledge for us. Since the atheist denies the existence of God, he or she will be precisely in this position. I argue that Descartes' argument is sound, and that atheism is therefore self-refuting.

Atheists sometimes use Bertrand Russell's teapot argument, and its variants with other objects in place of the teapot, to argue for the rationality of atheism. In this paper I show that this use of the teapot argument and its variants is unacceptably circular. The circularity arises because there is indirect evidence against the objects invoked in the arguments.

William James wrote about varieties of religious experience (See http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/JamVari.html) but I don't know of anyone who has documented the varieties of atheism. Unlike James I don't here attempt to collect data about what atheists say and do, and how they came by their atheism. This is, instead, an analytical paper describing how various sorts of atheistic position can arise in opposition to various sorts of theistic position. Clarity about this could help to make debates about atheism and theism more (...) fruitful. -/- This document attempts to make clear that there are several forms of atheism, of varying ’strength’ in their opposition to theism, and that there are several types of theism to which each type of atheism can be opposed. This means that instead of atheism being just a single viewpoint it covers a multitude of cases, each definable by a type of theism and a type of objection to that form of theism. -/- The document is freely available online here: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/varieties-of-atheism.html. (shrink)

This paper is a critique of Richard Dawkins’ “argument from improbability” against the existence of God. This argument, which forms the core of Dawkins’ book The God Delusion, provides an interesting example of the use of scientific ideas in arguments about religion. Here I raise three objections: (1) The argument is inapplicable to philosophical conceptions of God that reduce most of God’s complexity to that of the physical universe. (2) The argument depends on a way of estimating probabilities that fails (...) for the probability of an entity that creates natural laws. (3) The argument supposes that complexity arises from past physical causes; however, some forms of complexity known to mathematics and logic do not arise in this way. After stating these three criticisms, I show that some of these same considerations undermine Dawkins’ critique of agnosticism. I close the paper with some remarks on Dawkins’ conception of God. (shrink)

The intuitions of Raimundus Lullus religious metaphysics are in this article explicated according to the opportunities of the convergence between the medieval and the new time philosophy. Such approach to the creativity of the thinker is possible, because his conception is one sides associated with the mystical symbolic theologism, that is typical for the medieval tradition, over sides develops Lullus the new understanding of the infinity of the world, inherent in the newtime philosophy. This opposition conditions some of the features (...) of Lullus spiritual quest. This quest connected the respect to the past, that causes the homesickness to the lost ideals, together with the progressivity – the presentation of the future. This presentiment is by Lullus expressed as the desire to change the external world. The aim of this change is the approximation of the rational theological base – the model for the real life. Lullus experiences the combination and the unrealized synthesis of this intentions as the tragedy. The acute and intensive conflict of this intentions triggers the practical atheism, when the stimulation of the external distraction of the evil leads causes the appearance and the activation of the new evil. This disaster of life is determined with some aspects of Lullus metaphysics, in that the infinity of God is realized as the infinity of the world. The infinity of the world is by Lullus given as the rational hierarchical order, leading to the creator of the world. The tragedy of life is for Lullus the marker, that emphasizes the crisis of the medieval philosophy, that was based on the revelation. This crisis discovers the land of new philosophy. This philosophy stresses the autonomy of the human personality. (shrink)

(in lieu of abstract, first paragraphs here) For philosophers, reading Richard Dawkins is often a frustrating experience. Many of Dawkins’ writings treat important philosophical topics, such as the existence of God, the meaning of life, the relationship of randomness to order. Dawkins has original ideas, but he lacks the philosophical training and vocabulary to articulate these ideas properly and to develop them coherently. In Believing in Dawkins, Eric Steinhart sets himself an ambitious task: to use the writings of Dawkins to (...) present a coherent, naturalistic alternative to religious metaphysics, specifically to Christian theism. Using an architectural metaphor, he summarizes the project of Believing in Dawkins as follows -/- It is helpful to think of the Dawkinsian texts in architectural terms. His fragmentary sketches for spiritual naturalism are like architectural drawings. Sometimes they depict little windows, while other times they portray enormous spires reaching towards the stars. The edifice is vast. But these architectural diagrams are often unclear, incomplete, and inconsistent. I want to clarify them, fill in their missing parts, and resolve their conflicts. So I’m using his writings to construct a novel building. … To fit his fragmentary plans into a coherent and self-supporting structure, I will add some large-scale frameworks (10). -/- Steinhart’s wide-ranging book covers many topics: complexity, ontology, possibility, humanity, spirituality, among many others. He does not sneak theism into Dawkins’ writings. In fact, Steinhart argues that many practices and ideas that he uses to construct the edifice of Dawkins’ spiritual naturalism have been hijacked by theism, such as the notion of an afterlife, sacredness, holiness, and even the notion of gratitude. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that sceptical theists have too narrow a focus: they consider only God’s axiological reasons, ignoring any non-axiological reasons he may have. But this is a mistake: predicting how God will act requires knowing about his reasons in general, and this requires knowing about both God’s axiological and non-axiological reasons. In light of this, I construct and defend a kind of sceptical theism—Deontological Sceptical Theism—that encompasses all of God’s reasons, and briefly illustrate how it renders irrelevant (...) certain charges of excessive sceptical and how it evaporates equiprobability objections. Furthermore, I put forth a simple argument in favor of Deontological Sceptical Theism, which shows that everyone (at least currently) ought to endorse it. (shrink)

How important is atheism for Jewish history and Jews for the history of atheism? Modern Jewish histories have tended to focus on Jewish secularization rather than atheism, and historical surveys of atheism in the West have tended to neglect the Jewish experience which is subsumed in the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is possible to make the case that the secularization narrative privileges social change over Jewish intellectual engagement with non-belief, and that just as Jewish and Christian conceptions of theism differ, so (...) do their atheisms. Jewish historical attitudes towards atheism are complicated and have shifted over time. Here, skeptical tendencies, that is, attitudes and ideas that would be associated later with atheism, will be considered alongside claims about atheism per se. (shrink)

For many believers, encounters with evil trigger a deep desire to understand the divine reasons for permitting evil, that is, a desire for theodicy. Very often, however, attempts to find a theodicy fail—a phenomenon called the inscrutability of evil. Skeptical theists attribute this failure to our cognitive limitations as creatures. In this paper, I argue that the clash between the common desire for theodicy and the inscrutability of evil should be analyzed using the concept of absurdity, famously explored by Albert (...) Camus and some contemporary philosophers studying the meaning of life. I then propose that a loving God would not subject human beings to the experience of absurdity, so He would not create a world in which our cognitive limitations prevent us from finding a theodicy. This conclusion has important implications for the plausibility of the skeptical theist’s position. (shrink)

This paper considers the question of “atheism” as it arises in Hume’s _Dialogues_. It argues that the concept of “atheism” involves several signficiant ambiguities that are indicative of philosophical and interpretive disagreements of a more substantial nature. It defends the view that Philo’s general sceptical orientation accurately represents Hume’s own “irreligious” and “atheistic” commitments, both in the _Dialogues_ and in his other (“earlier”) writings. While Hume was plainly a “speculative atheist”, his “practical atheism” was targeted more narrowly against “superstition” - (...) as opposed to deism or religion of a more “philosophical” kind. (shrink)

This introduction provides a brief overview of the issues and arguments that arise in Hume's _Dialogues concerning Natural Religion_ (1779). It also provides a few brief comments relating to the historical context in which this text should be interpreted , as well as an account of the place of the _Dialogues_ in relation to Hume's other philosophical works.

the present article intends to outline feuerbach's humanism in his the essence of christianity in dialogue with the nietzschean notion of the death of god. for it is with the death of god and the fall of all idols that it is possible to glimpse god, not as the absolute transcendent, but as a human creation, all too human. a projection of the self into a safe and magnanimous outside, anchorage of all human desires, from magical and miraculous powers to (...) the rapture of body and soul in a sanctifying and eternal peace. as god, man works the miracle of existing in the comforting fantasy of a supreme being, nothing more than himself. (shrink)

Michael’s Hunter’s latest book serves as something of a capstone. In addition to his well-known work on the Royal Society, Robert Boyle, magic and the occult, Professor Hunter has been an important...

This paper examines whether atheists, who believe that God does not exist, can have faith. Of course, atheists have certain kinds of faith: faith in their friends, faith in certain ideals, and faith in themselves. However, the question we’ll examine is whether atheists can have theistic faith: faith that God exists. Philosophers tend to fall on one of two extremes on this question: some, like Dan Howard-Snyder (2019) and Imran Aijaz (2023), say unequivocally no; others, like Robert Whitaker (2019) and (...) Sam Lebens (2023), say unequivocally yes. Here, I take a middle position: I argue that atheists can have action-focused theistic faith (faith in how they act) but not attitude-focused theistic faith (faith in what attitudes they have). (shrink)

Why does Kant reject atheism in such strong terms despite his denial of the traditional proofs for the existence of God? I take the position that the question of atheism and the problem it entails are not a side issue but the recurring portrait of a figure that haunts Kant not just in the Religion, but throughout his critical philosophy. I seek to expand what Kant criticizes in atheism or, more accurately, to identify atheism as part of a collection of (...) positions that Kant rejects on grounds of what John Hare calls “rational instability,” which is ultimately a moral-rational instability. This includes also certain forms of theism and theological beliefs. I claim that Kant's agenda is to construct a world view in which genuine moral behaviour is possible by preserving the world as a moral space in which individuals are free to be moral, and that the target of his metaphysical criticism is those who over-explain the world so as to deny the possibility of a meaningful self-consciousness of agency. (shrink)

In a series of writings, James Sterba introduces several novel arguments from evil against the existence of God (Sterba, 2019; Sterba Sophia 59, 501–512, 2020; Sterba International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 87, 203–208, 2020b; Sterba International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 87, 223–228, 2020c; Sterba Religions 12, 536, 2021). According to one of these arguments, the problem of natural evil, God must necessarily prevent the horrendous evil consequences of natural evil such as diseases and hurricanes; however, these horrendous evil (...) consequences of natural evils still occur, so God does not exist. In this paper, I reply to Sterba’s argument from natural evil by introducing a naturalistic theodicy, and then demonstrating how it overcomes Sterba’s problem of natural evil. This paper is divided into five sections. First, I unpack Sterba’s problem of natural evil into three parts (Section 1), namely, Sterba’s moral obligation claim about humans, Sterba’s moral obligation claim about non-human life, and Sterba’s arguments from analogy. I then introduce a general naturalistic theodicy to the problem of natural evil (Section 2): naturalists grant that natural forces (entropy, evolutionary pressures, tectonic plate movements, etc.) cause horrendous consequences of natural evil, yet still consider human life in the universe a good better than humans are entitled to, so, if God made this naturalistic universe, God made human life in the universe a good better than humans are entitled to. I then use this naturalistic theodicy to reply to Sterba’s moral obligation claim about humans (Section 3), before bolstering the case by appeal to Sterba’s moral obligation claims about non-human life (Section 4). I then reply to Sterba’s arguments from analogy (Section 5). (shrink)

Despite the characteristically secular and ‘disenchanted’ spirit of our time, many maintain a kind of tolerance apropos to religiosity, provided only that it remains to be an individual and private affair. This nevertheless prepared and eventually led to the rise of a movement committed to the denigration of religion’s frontiers, especially on the grounds of its rationality and moral authority – the new atheism. Compared to its older forms, the neo-atheistic crusade is more aggressive in approaching religious beliefs, proclaiming how (...) their ‘irrationality’ is to be shunned on account of an encompassing scientific understanding and explanation of the world and its phenomena. Its influence owes greatly to the intellectual assurance and vitriolic style of its Four Horsemen whose respective fields account for an elaborate attack on the religious enterprise. Given the neo-atheistic contentions – that religious beliefs are ‘irrational’ and are responsible for an irrational picture of reality, thus, making religion ‘dangerous’ – this study provides an epistemological critique of the aforementioned through the compatible frameworks of Alvin Plantinga and Jacques Maritain. It concludes that with all its merits, the new atheism from the standpoint of the synthesis of Plantinga and Maritain fails to eject religion and religious beliefs from the realm of human knowledge and morality. (shrink)

This paper defends a rigorous reading of Hume’s critiques of arguments for the existence of God and of the belief in God against interpretations that endorse Humean theism, deism, and fideism. The latter include Donald Livingston’s theist reading, J. C. A. Gaskin’s “attenuated deism” reading, and Edward Kanterian’s “humble fideism” reading. I also examine whether Hume’s rejections of a positive theology commit him to agnosticism or atheism. My innovative challenge to such conclusions maintains that, while elements of both agnosticism and (...) atheism are found in Hume, these denote, respectively, a methodology and an incidental implication of his philosophy. But neither sufficiently captures his constructive vision for a society, individual psychology, and system of knowledge guided by naturalist principles and aims. For this, an alternate conception is needed that describes Hume’s philosophy of religion beyond mere atheism. (shrink)

The main idea consists in researching the existence of certain characteristics of nature similar to human reasonability and purposeful actions, originating and rigorously inferable from the postulates of quantum mechanics as well as from those of special and general relativity. The pathway of the “free-will theorems” proved by Conway and Kochen in 2006 and 2009 is followed and pioneered further. Those natural reasonability and teleology are identified as a special subject called “God” and studyable by “quantum theology”, a scientific counterpart (...) of classical theology as far as the latter endeavors to justify rationally God (without quotation marks) postulated by religion, but meaning in the present study, first of all, Christianity. The suggested “quantum theology” is situated in the historical opposition and conflict of science and religion in Modernity and its reflection in Heidegger’s conception of “ontotheology”. The conception of “ontomathematics” introduced in previous papers to unite and unify physics, mathematics, and philosophy is reinterpreted in the present context to be conservatively generalized in a way to include “quantum theology”. Two conceptions, “locality” and “nonlocality”, originating initially from physics and especially, from theory of entanglement and quantum information, are also generalized ontomathematically, and thus in relation to the newly introduced “quantum theology”. The “quantum theology” subject of “God” is juxtaposed with God of religion and billions of believers all over the world. Husserl’s conception of “philosophy as a rigorous science” is considered to be generalized now to theology as quantum theology, particularly by the phenomenon (in the sense of his “phenomenology”) of “God”, or by an “epoché” to whether God exists or not. The research of the phenomenon of “God” is extended to the conception of the “totality” being inherent for philosophy, especially for classical German philosophy preceding Husserl’s phenomenology. Those sequences for philosophy implied by the introduction of quantum theology are investigated further, on the pathway of ontomathematics, also in relation to what “God” should mean for today’s physics and mathematics. The option and research field of “experimental quantum theology” is discussed as a direct corollary from quantum theology though being sacrilegious as for classical theology. The concluding section reflects in a more loose way on the relation of “God” for quantum theology to God for religion and billions of believers all over the world. (shrink)

In this article I examine the contemporary discourses and debates that surround the sociology of spirituality, with especial attention to the term “spirituality”. To counter the widespread belief that this term lacks clarity and utility, I suggest reconsidering Max Weber’s use of the term “spirit,” as it refers to a recognisable ethic that results in specific behaviour, while still retaining its religious and spiritual connotations. Through focusing on two influential English figures in the post 9/11 God debate in the West, (...) Richard Dawkins and Karen Armstrong, I provide a brief case study of how Weber’s understanding of “spirit” serves great utility in illuminating what drives the ideas, identity-making and behaviour of contemporary atheists and those defending religion. By utilising Weber’s “spirit,” rather than the term spirituality, I demonstrate that this enables us to dig deep into the social context and backgrounds of these two individuals, and to avoid taking their statements at face value – a common criticism of sociology of spirituality studies. I argue that the use of “spirit,” in terms of a recognisable ethic that results in specific behaviour, would benefit the sociology of spirituality. This is because it grounds the God debaters’ ideas and beliefs in a recognisable human experience that eludes reductive distinctions and disembodied abstractions. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to bring to light some of the factors that allowed the emergence of secularization, and to understand to what extent and in what ways these factors contributed to the formation of the main lines of Spinozism. I will first examine the issues of secularization, emphasizing the importance of the transformations in the status of the Hebrew language during the Renaissance. I will then analyze the role that the Tractatus theologico-politicus may have had in European (...) culture. Finally, I will clarify Spinoza’s relationship to deism and atheism, specifying the nature of the controversies related to his religious attitude. (shrink)

This article presents an argument for atheism that contains a premise stated from the first-person perspective and that is intended to rationally persuade people who satisfy certain conditions. The argument also contains a premise about what God would do, if God existed, that is acceptable to theists and is affirmed in some major monotheistic religious traditions. This article explains how the argument differs from some other familiar arguments for atheism and then discusses some critical responses to it.

The article analyses libertine themes and authors of 17th century in articles, critical notes and reviews of three major Italian journals of the 20th century – Rivista di filosofia, Giornale critico della filosofia italiana and Rivista critica di storia della filosofia (since 1984 titled Rivista di storia della filosofia). The category of ‘libertinism’ refers to various disciplinary fields: philosophy, politics, literature, modern history or religious history. This ambiguity influences the analyses of libertinism in the Italian historic-philosophical debate. The last two (...) decades of the 20th century show a renewed interest of the three journals on libertine themes and on the relationship between libertinism and philosophy. Research on libertine thought focuses mainly on French libertinism (i.e. libertinage érudit) and on the philosophical clandestine literature: the journals discuss or review clandestine texts, as the Theophrastus redivivus (1659), whose critical edition was published in Italy in 1981–1982. (shrink)

Prior research found correlations between reflection test performance and philosophical tendencies among laypeople. In two large studies (total N = 1299)—one pre-registered—many of these correlations were replicated in a sample that included both laypeople and philosophers. For example, reflection test performance predicted preferring atheism over theism and instrumental harm over harm avoidance on the trolley problem. However, most reflection-philosophy correlations were undetected when controlling for other factors such as numeracy, preferences for open-minded thinking, personality, philosophical training, age, and gender. Nonetheless, (...) some correlations between reflection and philosophical views survived this multivariate analysis and were only partially confounded with either education or self-reported reasoning preferences. Unreflective thinking still predicted believing in God whereas reflective thinking still predicted believing that (a) proper names like ‘Santa’ do not necessarily refer to entities that actually exist and (b) science does reveal the fundamental nature of the world. So some robust relationships between reflection and philosophical tendencies were detected even among philosophers, and yet there was clearly more to the link between reflection and philosophy. To this end, demographic and metaphilosophical hypotheses are considered. (shrink)

Sam Harris (2010) argues that, given our neurology, we can experience well-being, and that seeking to maximize this state lets us distinguish the good from the bad. He takes our ability to compare degrees of well-being as his starting point, but I think that the analysis can be pushed further, since there is a (non-religious) reason why well-being is desirable, namely the finite life of an individual organism. It is because death is a constant possibility that things can be assessed (...) as “for” or “against” one (Champagne 2011a; Smith 2000). Such an account lets us objectively adjudicate moral questions, as Harris desires. However, by anchoring itself in the mortal body as a whole and not just the brain, such an account dampens the claim that neuroscience would have all the answers. Moreover, it pivots on an affirmation of one’s life that can seem mysterious by regular scientific standards. This chapter thus explains why the trade-off is worthwhile. (shrink)

The problem of evil is the philosophical question regarding how to reconcile the existence of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God with the pain and suffering in the world. The Hypothesis of Indifference is Paul Draper’s proposal considering that question. His claim is that the pain and pleasure we experience in our lifetimes has nothing to do with God or some other supernatural force acting as an agent of good or evil. In this paper, I argue that Draper’s Hypothesis of (...) Indifference is a better explanation for why we experience pain and pleasure than theism is and that it survives major contemporary criticisms posed by Peter van Inwagen and William Alston. (shrink)

In this book, Roberto Di Ceglie offers an historical, theological, and epistemological investigation exploring how commitments to God and/or the good generate the optimum condition to achieve knowledge. Di Ceglie criticizes the common belief that to attain knowledge, one must always be ready to replace one's convictions with beliefs that appear to be proven. He defends a more comprehensive view, historically exemplified by outstanding Christian thinkers, whereby believers are expected to commit themselves to God and to related beliefs no matter (...) how convincing the evidence contradicting such beliefs appear to be. He also argues that both believers and unbelievers can commit themselves to God and the good, respectively, thereby creating a spiritual turn in epistemology that enables them to generate the best possible condition for conducting rational enquiries and discussion. (shrink)

Calls into question the traditional polarity of theism and atheism.

Humean arguments from evil maintain that the good and evil we know about constitutes powerful evidence against Theism. Unlike other arguments from evil, Humean arguments are abductive arguments, maintaining that some rival to Theism better explains the good and evil we know about than Theism. This article surveys Humean arguments from evil. After explaining Philo’s original argument in Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, it exposits a modern, prototypical Humean argument inspired by the work of Paul Draper. This article explores the (...) distinctive features of Humean arguments; how these arguments can be strengthened; and some common criticisms of these arguments. (shrink)

The article is devoted to an investigation of the preconditions of Heidegger’s methodological atheism, according to which “philosophy is fundamentally atheistic”. Based on biographical evidence which sheds light on the mental experience of the young philosopher (“darkness of depressive sensitivity”, according to H. Ott) the author maintains that Heidegger was very prejudiced against the Catholic tradition. The author suggests that the origins of Heidegger’s methodology should be sought in the first and most important of the “turns” which took place around (...) 1916, when Heidegger was in deep crisis. Two main components can be distinguished in this religious-philosophical turn: (1) the rejection of Catholicism, linked to a youthful experience of dependence on the church that stretched over decade; (2) the Protestant influence of his wife and teacher (but no less so of Luther and Kierkegaard) along with the existential experience of the First World War, in which Heidegger became involved. As a result, the author concludes that Heidegger chooses philosophy as opposed to theology, which sets up a specific understanding of philosophy and a negative attitude towards theology. According to Heidegger, only by renouncing ungenuine religiosity one can stand honestly before God, but this “purifying atheism” ultimately leads not to God, but to Nothing. (shrink)

The article examines the socio-political aspect of the new atheism. Within the framework of this phenomenon, initially associated with the four bestselling authors R. Dawkins, S. Harris, K. Hitchens, D. Dennett, who launched the “fight against religion” in the mid-2000s, a community and a weakly organized movement eventually formed. A number of connected questions are considered: characteristics of the phenomenon of new atheism (origins, sources, specifics); perception of atheism and new atheism by society in the USA and Great Britain; political (...) views of key figures of the new atheism, external assess­ment of their political influence; views and activity of supporters, external assessment of the socio-political influence of the movement. The article focuses on the aspects of the new atheism as a movement in the USA and the UK. The author comes to the fol­lowing conclusions: the “creators” of the new atheism scarcely touch upon the socio-po­litical agenda in their activities (the main foreign policy interest is the fight against Is­lamic terrorism); currently, the new atheism as a movement and a community reacts to politics rather than forms it; not all actions of new atheists aimed at reducing the social and political presence of religion or at reducing discrimination against atheists achieve their goals; the main achievement of the new atheism movement is that atheism as a worldview ceases to be a marginal agenda, and non-believers receive a formalized, pos­itively colored identity for themselves. The latter is important in the context of discrimi­nation of non-believers against believers, which in the United States takes place both in the public consciousness and even at the highest political level. (shrink)

The problem of divine hiddenness discussed among both theist and non- theist circles. From an atheistic perspective the existence of people who are sincerely looking for God but cannot reach Him is a supportive point for atheism. On the other side, same problem supports agnosticism since there are equal evidence from both side for the existence of God from an agnostic perspective. The theists who are belonging to different religion have tried to find some solutions to this problem. For instance; (...) there is a theistic understanding which claims hiddenness of God provides us freedom to believe and another one says it is the only way to have personal relationship with God. A different position brings solution from the Jewish idea that chosen people of God. In this article, I have evaluated those different approaches. In the first section, I have indicated that there is no agreement on the implication of divine hiddenness problem even amongst non-theistic positions by shortly introducing atheistic and agnostic approaches. In the second section, I dealt with theistic approaches and the problems that they produced while trying to provide a solution to the problem. After an inquiry on how we are supposed to understand hiddenness, I have tried to show the problem has nothing new since premises of the divine hiddenness problem are not verifiable by everyone. As a conclusion I have offered postponing the divine hiddenness problem and discussing existence of God on a rational ground by presenting a counterargument. (shrink)

Zarathustra initially describes churches as the stale caves of world-denying priests. However, following his encounter with the eternal return of the same, Zarathustra overcomes this resentful atheism. The pure sky that Zarathustra desires above all else, a sky emptied of the gods, is not visible again through the holes in ruined church roofs, but really thanks to these holes. The pure sky is an image of the world liberated from the teleological time of theistic providence, indeed even from the divine (...) necessity that pantheism attributes to the world. Yet for all that it is god-less, the pure sky is acknowledged to be a gift of the same metaphysical-Christian history of God that it only seems to negate: the sky’s pure eye peers through holes in church roofs. Zarathustra, though an “old atheist,” can now love “even churches.” I call this Zarathustra’s affirmative atheism. I also link affirmative atheism to the conception of eternal recurrence as a self-abolishing anti-teaching. In the eternal return, Zarathustra’s atheism is finally indistinguishable from a history of churches and therefore negates itself. But although it is not a new teaching, affirmative atheism points to something novel. This is an atheism that can no longer be taught in doctrines but must be lived as fate. (shrink)

Joshua Matthan Brown contrasts the concept of God assumed by most analytic philosophers, what he refers to as theistic personalism, with that of the apophatic conception of God endorsed by Eastern Christian thinkers. He maintains that the most powerful and economical response to contemporary arguments for atheism is to reject theistic personalism and adopt apophatic theism. Apophatic theists believe there is a lot we cannot say about God, taking the divine nature to be completely ineffable. Brown develops a coherent account (...) of divine ineffability and provides reasons for adopting this oft misunderstood view. Importantly, he draws upon apophatic theology, and its commitment to divine ineffability, to proffer an undercutting defeater for virtually every contemporary argument for the nonexistence of God. Along the way he anticipates and responds to several significant objections. (shrink)

This book deals with the intricate issue of approaching atheism—methodologically as well as conceptually—from the perspective of cultural pluralism. What does ‘atheism’ mean in different cultural contexts? Can this term be applied appropriately to different religious discourses which conceptualize God/gods/Goddess/goddesses (and also godlessness) in hugely divergent ways? Is my ‘God’ the same as yours? If not, then how can your atheism be the same as mine? In other words, this volume raises the question: Is it not high time that we (...) proposed a comparative study of atheism(s) alongside that of religions, rather than believing that atheism is centered in the ‘Western’ experience? Apart from answering these questions, the book highlights the much-needed focus on the philosophical negotiations between atheism, theism and agnosticism. The fine chapters collected here present pluralist negotiations with the notion of atheism and its ethical, theological, literary and scientific corollaries. (shrink)

This article examines the death of God theme in the work of Jacques Lacan and indicates some convergences with Christian theology. It distinguishes the ‘atheism’ of Lacan from the atheism of Freud. And it demonstrates that if Lacan does not believe in the God equated with Being, the God of the philosophers, the later Lacan’s argument for what he calls the ‘eksistence’ of God beyond language, the God of the mystics, makes for a highly nuanced atheism.

Thirty years after the publication of Dominique Janicaud’s criticism of what he termed the “theological turn” of phenomenology in France, what is the state of the debate? This paper addresses that question, by examining the phenomenology of revelation in Marion, Lacoste, and others, in turn replying to various arguments that have been advanced against the theological turn and on behalf of methodological atheism. Not only is revelation a viable topic of phenomenological analysis, the attempts to formulate a methodologically atheist phenomenology (...) fail. (shrink)

Nagasawa has argued that the suffering associated with evolution presents a greater challenge to atheism than to theism because that evil is incompatible with ‘existential optimism’ about the world – with seeing the world as an overall good place, and being thankful that we exist. I argue that even if atheism was incompatible with existential optimism in this way, this presents no threat to atheism. Moreover, it is unclear how the suffering associated with evolution could on its own undermine existential (...) optimism. Links between Nagasawa's argument and the current debate about the axiology of theism are also explored. (shrink)

There is hardly any theme in Karl Marx’s theoretical corpus that has garnered as much traction as his theory of fetishism. Ever since Marx introduced the term into his critique of political economy in Capital, fetishism became a field of theoretical force, creating its own gravitational center toward which the interest of later generations of historians, social theorists, and political activists has been pulled. While much ink has been spilled on the specific content and theoretical scope of fetishism in Capital (...) for over one and a half centuries, young Marx’s initial exploration of the term rarely enjoyed critical attention. This is especially true in regard to the period from his early journalism in the Rheinische Zeitung (1842–43) to his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. (shrink)