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Forskning i irreligiøsitet (non-religion, sekularisering, ateisme etc.) vinder stadigt frem. Begrebet ‘det skandinaviske paradoks’ betegner det tilsyneladende modstridende faktum, at skandinaver forbliver medlemmer af deres nationale kirker, men i stadigt højere grad selv-identificerer som irreligiøse. Jeg introducerer til den hidtidige forskning begået i relation til henholdsvis irreligion og kulturreligion og argumenterer for, at vi mangler mere empiri for at kvalificere vores forståelse af disse fænomener. Jeg præsenterer derefter data fra en samling af 30 kvalitative interviews gennemført i Danmark som del af et forskningsprojekt, der delvist udbedrer manglen på data. Baseret på eksplorative analyser er det mit ønske at åbne for en debat omkring, hvordan vi opfatter og konceptualiserer irreligion, kristendom og kulturreligion i en moderne dansk kontekst. Jeg foreslår at vi, i stedet for at karakterisere individer ved hjælp af adskilte, fastforhandlede kategorier (som eksempelvis religiøs kontra irreligiøs), arbejder ud fra en forståelse af sådanne kategorier som mere dynamiske og kontekst-afhængige snarere end statiske og gensidigt udelukkende. Moderne tilgange til religion og irreligion har stadigt mere fokus på, hvordan (ir)religiøse identiteter, overbevisninger og praksisser er skiftende og situerede. Inspireret af disse tilgange argumenterer jeg for, at informanterne bevæger sig mellem forskellige identiteter afhængigt af, hvorvidt de eksempelvis udtrykker en individuel, irreligiøs identitet eller deltager i en kollektiv, kristen identitet og videre, at det er kombinationen af og muligheden for at oscillere mellem disse identiteter, vi kan betegne som kulturreligion og mere specifikt kulturkristendom i Danmark.

Full-Blooded religion is not acceptable in mainstream bioethics. This article excavates the cultural history that led to the suppression of religion in bioethics. Bioethicists typically fall into one of the following camps. 1) The irreligious, who advocate for suppressing religion, as do Timothy F. Murphy, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins. This irreligious camp assumes American Fundamentalist Protestantism is the real substance of all religions. 2) Religious bioethicists, who defend religion by emphasizing its functions and diminishing its metaphysical commitments. Religious defenders empty religion of its theology to present its feel-good functions in a way that is acceptable to the irreligious. However, religion reduced to its functions dissolves into a counter-culture that may counteract materialism but lacks the power to motivate much more. This article criticizes both camps, as both presume Enlightenment myths and consequently neuter religion. Both irreligious and religious bioethicists commonly presume Enlightenment myths about secularity and religion. Secularity is presumed neutral and rational. Religion is presumed divisive and irrational. This myth provides built-in value-judgements; we have already judged secularity as good and religion as bad. Much of the debate over religion in bioethics is arguing over false stereotypes of religion. Consequently, mainstream bioethics neuters religion, while the irreligious are gifted political power to define the field.

espanolEn el articulo se explica y se aboga a favor de la propuesta de Quentin Meillassoux de “filosofia irreligiosa” o “irreligion filosofica”, es decir, de una tercera postura entre religion y ateismo que plantea la concepcion de un Dios inexistente y por venir (Dios virtual) y de una recuperacion etico-filosofica de las nociones de esperanza, iortalidad, justicia y divinidad. Con referencias a distintos pensadores de la historia de la filosofia se busca enmarcar el significado y valor de la concepcion de Meillassoux. Despues de una exposicion breve de la filosofia del pensador frances, se realiza en sucesivos apartados la recuperacion critico-filosofica de conceptos religiosos basicos para concluir con una breve exposicion de la refutacion del “nihilismo” que hace Meillassoux, tarea filosofica importante como ninguna en nuestro tiempo. EnglishThe article explains and advocates in favor of Quentin Meillassoux’s proposal of “irreligious philosophy” or “philosophical irreligion”, that is, of a third position between religion and atheism that defends the conception of a nonexistent God and a God to come (virtual God), as well as an ethicalphilosophical recovery of the notions of hope, immortality, justice, and divinity. With references to different thinkers in the history of philosophy, we seek to frame the meaning and value of Meillassoux’s conception. After a brief exposition of his philosophy, the critical-philosophical recovery of basic religious concepts is carried out in successive sections, to conclude with a brief exposition of Meillassoux’s refutation of “nihilism”, an important philosophical task like none in our time.

Timothy Murphy has done those of us in the field of bioethics a great service by being forthright about how irreligious centers of power work against theology and theologians. This has opened the door to direct and honest conversation about some facts that were previously known (especially to theologians working in the field) but rarely discussed publicly. Now, eight years after Murphy’s important article appeared in the American Journal of Bioethics, there is room to engage the facts and arguments surrounding the (lack of a) role for theology in the field. It is important, first of all, to agree that if theology is to be excluded while other normative traditions included this must be defended on the basis of a coherent set of defensible claims, not merely raw assertions and power plays. Once the field comes to terms with the fact that no coherent set of defensible claims exist which can justify excluding theology from the field, this will create the conditions for the possibility of the kind of intellectual solidarity which can transform bioethics into a field that is at once much more diverse and inclusive while also of its very nature interested in robust debate which includes references first principles and metaphysical foundations.

Fil: Tizziani, Manuel. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales del Litoral. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas. Centro Cientifico Tecnologico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales del Litoral; Argentina

Quentin Meillassoux (1967) es un filósofo francés que ha cobrado notoriedad a partir de la publicación de Après la finitude. Essai sur la nécessité de la contingence en 2006. Su obra se inscribe en el Realismo Especulativo, movimiento de reciente expansión en el campo filosófico contemporáneo que promueve una ontología realista. Además de reivindicar una filosofía materialista, Meillassoux defiende la inmanencia ya en su tesis doctoral L'inexistence divine y, especialmente, en el artículo "L'immanence: d'outre-monde" (2009), donde afirma que una verdadera filosofía de la inmanencia no puede fundamentarse en un pensamiento de la finitud sino en una ética de la inmortalidad. Meillassoux opone su perspectiva, aparentemente paradójica, de una inmanencia "de otro mundo" a los pensamientos contemporáneos de la inmanencia, esencialmente al de Deleuze, quien hizo de dicho concepto un blasón de su proyecto filosófico. En este artículo queremos ensayar una confrontación entre la idea de Meillassoux de una creencia en el Mundo de la Justicia y la propuesta deleuziana de una creencia en este mundo con vistas a elucidar convergencias y divergencias relevantes en sus abordajes de la inmanencia y sus concepciones del vínculo entre la filosofía y el ateísmo. French Philosopher Quentin Meillassoux (1967) has become renowned since the publication of Après la finitude. Essai sur la nécessité de la contingence in 2006. His work is set within Speculative Realism, a vibrant recent movement in the upsurge, which enhances a realistic ontology. Beyond supporting a materialistic philosophy, Meillassoux has embraced immanence from the start of his career; this is clearly depicted in his PhD thesis L’inexistence divine. He especially fostered it further in his article “L’immanence: d’outre-monde” (2009), in which he states that a true philosophy on immanence cannot be based on the thought of finitude, but on the ethics of immortality. Meillassoux contrasts his perspective, apparently paradoxical, of “otherwordly immanence” to contemporary thoughts on immanence, principally Deleuze’s, who made of this concept the scaffolding of his philosophical project. In this article we aim at portraying a confrontation between Meillassoux’s belief in the World of Justice and Deleuze’s proposal of a belief in this world. This shall enable us to shed light on relevant similarities and differences regarding their approaches to immanence and their conception of the bond between philosophy and religion Fil: Antonelli Marangi, Marcelo Sebastián. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Pedagógica Nacional; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de San Martín; Argentina

Jean-Marie Guyau est un promoteur original de la laïcité. L’anomie, absence de loi fixe, est le concept par lequel il pense la laïcité comme une conséquence nécessaire de l’évolution de la pensée et de la moralité. Pour ce faire, il montre d’abord que la métaphysique dogmatique est impuissante à fonder l’obligation morale : le doute, en ce sens, est plus moral que la foi. La morale scientifique, quant à elle, ne peut prétendre prendre le relais de la morale religieuse : elle esquisse bien la solidarité comme horizon de l’obligation, mais s’avère impuissante à persuader le sentiment. C’est lorsque le sujet s’implique activement, se risque à parier en situation d’incertitude sur l’inconnaissable par une hypothèse métaphysique personnelle et libre que le sentiment religieux peut émerger sans que n’interfère pourtant la religion. C’est dire que la morale peut être laïque sans perdre sur le plan des affects tout en gagnant sur le plan des idées. Jean-Marie Guyau was one of the original proponents of secularism. Anomia - the absence of a fixed set of rules - is the concept he uses to present secularism as a necessary consequence of the evolution of thought and morality. Firstly, he demonstrates that the use dogmatic metaphysics results in an inability to create moral obligation; in that sense, doubt is more moral than faith. As for scientific morality, it cannot claim to replace religious moral rule. Although it roughly outlines the notion of charity as the final goal of moral obligation, it fails in appealing to and in convincing the emotional dimension of moral ethics. It is when the subject involves themselves actively, - that they are willing to bet on the unknowable when the situation is unsure by means of a metaphysical hypothesis both inherently personal and free - that religious sentiment can surface, without any interference from religion. That is to say that moral ethics can be secular without losing any of their emotional, affective aspects - on the contrary, they can gain additional meaning on the subject of ideas.

In contrast to a growing body of literature examining the experiences and trends of those who leave their faith tradition—particularly among Christian denominations—relatively little is known about those who specifically disaffiliate from Mormonism, although some evidence suggests that former Mormons may be especially likely to embrace secularity or irreligion rather than other religious beliefs and practices. Pursuant to empirically investigating this reactionary dynamic, the current study compared the relative religiosity and secularity of an online sample of active Mormons (n = 194) and former Mormons (n = 109) using the Abbreviated Religiousness Measure (ARM), an updated questionnaire of multidimensional religiosity. Results supported the ARM’s improved psychometrics and its hypothesized three-factor structure with both subsamples. Additionally, multivariate and univariate results indicated that active and former Mormon participants from our sample, significantly polarized in their self-reported level of religious beliefs, rituals, and influence on daily behaviors, with active Mormon reporting high religiosity and former Mormons reporting low religiosity or high secularity. Although these results comport with reactionary deconversion dynamics found in other high cost religions, limits to generalizability are discussed. Reasons for and implications of this reactionary phenomenon are also posited.

This article inquires into the piecemeal, provisional de-marginalization of American irreligion and analyzes the social stakes and strategies of dis/belief's invocation during the long nineteenth century. It does so by considering the era's corpus of American deathbed narratives. It argues that late-century irreligionists mimed and subverted the deathbed strategies of their Christian detractors to convince a skeptical American audience to concede the contested sincerity of their disbelief. For much of the nineteenth century, Christian-produced infidel deathbed narratives mapped the mixture and multiplicity of inner irreligion and interrogated the sincerity of disbelief. In response, irreligionists—initially ambivalent about the interpretability of the deathbed—eventually came to invest it with as much power to prove sincerity as had American Christians. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, irreligionists developed a nationwide network of irreligious dying and selectively, strategically deployed the deathbed's accrued power to prove the uniform sincerity of their disbelief. By the turn of the century, they had largely neutralized the derisive force of the infidel deathbed genre, leaving disbelief a partially, provisionally less marginal and less multiplex marker in American society, and re-tethering themselves to their Christian detractors in the process.

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) has long suffered accusations of insincerity and expediency, especially with regard to his religious position. The mercurial novelist and prime minister famously evaded reference to his theological opinions. His official biographers, W.F. Moneypenny and G.E. Buckle, claimed that an “absolute reticence as to his personal religion was one of [Disraeli's] marked characteristics” (qtd. in Vincent 38). In June of 1832 – early in Disraeli's literary career – a critic in the Monthly Review even charged him with outright irreligion. The subject of the column was Disraeli's new novel Contarini Fleming (1832), which called itself a “psychological romance.” Speaking to the protagonist's various experiments with the hedonism of poetic expression, devout Roman Catholicism, and political pragmatism throughout the novel, the reviewer asked, “What are we to understand by the exemption from ‘sectarian prejudices’? The absence of religion. What is meant by the [artist's] ‘flowing spirit of creation’? Simply that there is no God” (qtd. in Letters 1: 284). Days after the review was published, Disraeli wrote to his sister, Sarah, “I suppose you have read the Review in the Monthly [-] where I am accused of Atheism, because I retire in Solitude to write novels” (Letters 1: 284).

The myth of [H]Elias Artista (or ‘Elijah of the Arts’) is one of the most interesting components of the rich 16th-century Paracelsian tradition from the margins of the post-Reformation orthodoxy. It signals a surprising development within the Christian apocalyptic tradition since ‘Helias artium chymicarum’, the messianic Experimentator as a human Christ-like figure and an end-of-time counterpart of the biblical blacksmith Tubal-cain, is an original transformation of the Jewish apocalyptic Elijah in a context of the early modernity on the eve of the Thirty Years War. That figure is an example from the broader domain of the Paracelsian ‘theoalchemy’ (Telle), which may be construed as a typically modern hybrid in the Latourian sense. Furthermore, in order to understand the peculiar post-Reformation phenomenon of the mysticism of nature (Dorn, Khunrath, Gutman, Arndt, Boehme, and others), which is in stark tension with orthodox theologies, it is necessary to take into account that it was a product of the new powerful intellectual formation which can be dubbed the nature (or cosmological) apocalypticism.It is claimed that that ‘vertical’ (non-eschatological) apocalypticism of nature is an early modern form of the ancient Jewish apocalyptic tradition transformed under the new social-cultural conditions into a formula of the ‘learning the secrets of nature’ in a complex process of renegotiating the power relations, and it produced the ample resource of the cognitive motivations for experimental activity, quite independently of the gradually waning millenarian affects. Thus, that transformation is important for understanding the religious early modernity and its immanentist, activist attitudes and getting beyond the one-dimensional discourses of the secularization paradigm, which obliterates or ignores the ‘vertical’ axis of apocalypticism and fixes itself upon the horizontal (millenarian) dimension while (re)constructing the criticized unpicturesque ‘irreligion of progress’ (Lowith). Early modernity could be better understood as a diffused turn (effect) associated with the innovative material (e.g. medical or chemical) practices and their new conceptualisations of matter and knowledge, where philosophy, theology, science of matter and social revolt seem inseparable. The myth of the Elijah of the Arts, contrary to a superficial secularization interpretation, is one of the symptoms of the growing process of ‘de-eschatologization’ through the alternative direction of apocalypticism, i.e., shifting an interest to nature and matter as the religious objects available to exploration, which produced the new power conflicts typical of modernity but also the ‘laboratory’ as a space of unveiling that which is hidden in nature.

A number of different studies carried out in the twentieth century demonstrated a correlation between higher education and loss of religious belief. However, recent research seems to indicate that contemporary social changes have undermined this previously solid connection: it appears that the irreligious—especially the non-religious who do not self-identify as members of any religion—are no longer substantially more educated than the religious. The decline in higher education represents an important component of an emerging consensus that, in effect, ‘normalizes’ the non-religious. In the present study, this imputed characteristic is challenged by an examination of education data from the national censuses of Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

This essay considers how American Enlightenment moralists and Evangelical religious revivalists responded to “Jacobinism” at the College of New Jersey, which later became Princeton University, from 1800 through 1817. At this time, disruptive student activities exemplified alleged American “Jacobin” conspiracies against civil society. The American response to “Jacobins” brought out tensions between two different competing intellectual currents at the College of New Jersey: a revival of Christian religious principles led by Princeton trustee Reverend Ashbel Green and, in contrast, the expansion of Samuel Stanhope Smith's system of moral education during his tenure as college president from 1795 through 1812. As a moralist, Smith appealed to Scottish Common Sense philosophy in teaching the instinctive “rules of duty” as a way to correct unrestrained “passions” and moderate “Jacobin” radicalism. In doing so, Smith developed a moral quasi-relativism as an original feature of his moral philosophy and contribution to American Enlightenment intellectual culture. Green and like-minded religious revivalists saw Princeton student uprisings as Smith's failure to properly address irreligion. This essay shows the ways in which “Jacobinism” and then the emerging age of religious revivalism, known as the Second Great Awakening, arrived at the cost of Smith's “Didactic Enlightenment” at Princeton.

In The Riddle of Hume’s Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism, and Irreligion (2008), Paul Russell makes a strong case for the claim that “The primary aim of Hume’s series of skeptical arguments, as developed and distributed throughout the Treatise, is to discredit the doctrines and dogmas of Christian philosophy and theology with a view toward redirecting our philosophical investigations to areas of ‘common life, ’ with the particular aim of advancing ‘the science of man’”; (2008, 290). Understanding Hume in this way, according to Russell, sheds light on the “ultimate riddle”; of the Treatise: “is it possible to reconcile Hume’s (extreme) skeptical principles and conclusions with his aim to advance the ‘science of man’”; (2008, 3)? Or does Hume’s skepticism undermine his “secular, scientific account of the foundations of moral life in human nature”; (290)? Russell’s controversial thesis is that “the irreligious nature of Hume’s fundamental intentions in the Treatise”; is essential to solving the riddle (11). Russell makes a compelling case for Hume’s irreligion as well as his atheism. Contrary to this interpretation I argue that Hume is an irreligious theist and not an atheist.

Despite their shared empiricism, it is tempting to regard Locke and Berkeley as natural enemies when it comes to religious epistemology. Locke's religious epistemology has recently been much discussed,1 and the scholarly consensus is that, as Michael Ayers aptly put it, Locke's "evident purpose" in his theorizing on this subject "was to clip the wings of revelation."2 Locke's whole Essay is characterized by a modest, if not skeptical, epistemology and has as one of its key conclusions the denial that genuine knowledge is to be had in revealed religion. Berkeley's religious epistemology has received considerably less critical attention, but it certainly seems that he is out to defend claims to religious knowledge. His aim, in his well-known early works, is to identify and refute "the grounds of Scepticism, Atheism, and Irreligion,"3 and the grounds he identifies are Locke's doctrines of abstraction and material substratum. To all appearances, (future) Bishop Berkeley, like Bishop Stillingfleet before him, is out to protect the religious establishment from Locke's wing-clipping.In this article, I argue that these appearances are deceiving. This simplistic picture is contradicted by later works in which Berkeley is decidedly pessimistic about the prospects for religious knowledge, and discusses the matter in strikingly Lockean terms. In these late works, Berkeley selfconsciously endorses the main principles of Locke's religious epistemology and, in doing so, he does not contradict any of the major theses of his early works. Recognizing this fact will help to clarify Berkeley's relationship to Locke and to prominent critics of Locke, such as Stillingfleet. In particular, I will argue that one of Berkeley's main aims in the famous early works was to show that Stillingfleet and others had misidentified the grounds of skepticism, atheism, and irreligion in Locke's philosophy. Locke's epistemology is innocent; the doctrines of matter and abstraction are to blame.I. THE TEMPTING NARRATIVEIn this section, I lay out in more detail the story I will call the "Tempting Narrative," which sees Berkeley as fitting into the tradition of religious critics of Locke's epistemology.4 I begin with a description of Locke's religious epistemology and an overview of the critical responses, then proceed to show how and why Berkeley might be thought to fit into this tradition.1.1 Locke's Religious EpistemologyThe general tendency of Locke's philosophy is toward epistemic humility or, as Locke's opponents called it, skepticism. Locke famously endorsed a strong form of epistemic individualism, arguing that, "We may as rationally hope to see with other Mens Eyes, as to know by other Mens Understandings."5 However, the individual understanding, he says, "comes exceeding short of the vast Extent of Things."6 Failure to recognize our limitations, Locke argued, leads to confusion and doubt. In order to have any secure knowledge at all, we must first know that there are many things we do not (and cannot) know. Locke's moderate skepticism is thus advertised as the only antidote to "perfect Scepticism,"7 or the denial that there is any knowledge at all.In the chapter "Of Faith and Reason"8 in the Essay, Locke applies these general principles to religious questions. Here, as elsewhere, Locke believes that people have supposed that knowledge was available, or even that knowledge was actually possessed, where only probable belief is possible. Locke describes this error as a confusion regarding the "distinct provinces" of faith and reason and says that it "may possibly have been the cause, if not of great Disorders, yet at least of great Disputes, and perhaps Mistakes in the World."9 It is likely that Locke intends this as an ironic understatement, since it is clear from his political writings that Locke believes that excessive religious confidence is not merely a possible cause of disputes and mistakes, but an actual cause of violence and persecution. …

The creature is a new species that threatens to supplant the supremacy of man, not out of evil intent, but simply by enacting the natural process described by Erasmus Darwin. The massive form of Frankenstein's creature is evocative of image and Darwin's rampage of destruction is made all the more frightful when he is seen as a personification of the proletariat. While Darwin and most other evolutionary theorists were overtly deistic in the exposition of their ideas, the trauma of the French Revolution led social conservatives to criticise anything related to a worldview in which God was not a constant intervening force. In 1797, the aptly titled Anti-Jacobin was created to guard against anything 'devoted to the cause of sedition and irreligion, to the pay or principles of France'. As the anti-Jacobins saw it, their censure of Darwin was at the same time a condemnation of evolutionary biology and revolutionary ideas of progress and perfectibility.

Among the great western philosophers, David Hume enjoys at present as high and honoured a position as any, especially with the attention he has drawn in 2011, which marked the three-hundredth anniversary of his birth. The general drift of the accounts of Hume’s philosophical ideas has tended over the past few dozen years and more to be extremely positive and typically celebratory. Admirers of the man—widely regarded as the very model of the philosophical life—and of his philosophical views, are legion. Hume’s works are pored over endlessly, and his interpreters generally vie with one another for the degrees of subtlety and acuity which they elaborate from those texts. At earlier times, Hume was often read and assessed much more negatively. In his own day, primary focus was on his scepticism and irreligion. Several nineteenth-century critics, including John Stuart Mill, T. H. Green, and L. A. Selby-Bigge, saw a brilliant, yet massively inconsistent, Hume. I this essay I review and discuss their cr...

Historically, many Christians have understood God’s transcendence to imply God’s properties categorically differ from any created properties. For multiple historical figures, a problem arose for religious language: how can one talk of God at all if none of our predicates apply to God? What are we to make of creeds and Biblical passages that seem to predicate creaturely properties, such as goodness and wisdom, of God? Thomas Aquinas offered a solution: God is to be spoken of only through analogy (the doctrine of analogy). Gavin Hyman argues Aquinas’s doctrine of analogy was neglected prior to the early-modern period and the neglect of analogy produced the conception of a god vulnerable to atheistic arguments. Contra Hyman, in this paper, I show early-modern atheism arose in a theological context in which there was an active debate concerning analogy. Peter Browne (1665–1735) and William King (1650–1729) offered two competing conceptions of analogical predication that were debated through the 19th century, with interlocutors such as the freethinker Anthony Collins (1676–1729), theologian/philosopher George Berkeley (1685–1753), and skeptic David Hume (1711–1776). Lastly, I discuss the 18th century debate over theological analogy as part of the background relevant to understanding Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion .

Academics concerned with nonreligion will be familiar with the history of the field: although Colin Campbell’s book, Toward a Sociology of Irreligion, was published in 1971, nonreligion (including atheism) subsequently became a topic for theological, philosophical, and historical research, and has only relatively recently (in the early 2000s) resurfaced as a topic for sociological consideration. Cimino and Smith were amongst the first academics to take up the sociological study of nonreligion. Based on over a decade of sociological inquiry, Atheist Awakening presents a picture of atheism in the contemporary United States. As their title indicates, Cimino and Smith suggest that there has been an “awakening” amongst atheists. They argue that the increased visibility of atheism over the last ten years is due only in small part to an increase in the proportion of nonreligious people. Rather, nonreligious people have been “mobilised”, or encouraged think of their atheism as an important aspect of their identity (p. 2–3). Approaching atheism as a social movement, Atheist Awakening is largely concerned with the formation of collective atheist identities in the US. Cimino and Smith observe that atheists in America portray themselves as a subculture, standing in contrast to, and resisting, the perceived norm of religiosity in the US (p. 10). The authors identify two techniques deployed in the construction of this collective identity: the use of identity politics, and the use of minority discourses (p. 10). Using identity politics, atheists appropriate arguments from the civil rights and gay rights movements. Perhaps the most obvious example is the use of the phrase “coming out”, borrowed from the gay rights movement, to describe the process of disclosing one’s atheism. By “minority discourses”, Cimino and Smith refer to the tendency of atheists in the US to emphasise that they are few in number. The collective atheist identity described by Cimino and Smith is a response to the wider socio-political context in which it forms. The authors point out that American atheists position themselves in opposition to evangelical Protestants (p. 33). Atheists might, for example, attempt to debunk literalist readings of the Bible, held by some evangelical Protestants. Whether or not these efforts succeed in convincing others, they nevertheless enhance public awareness of atheism. This exemplifies a recurring theme in the book: the idea that non-believers and believers exist in symbiotic relationships, such that the behaviour and activities of one group form a resource for the other. Perhaps wary of painting an overly homogenous picture of the atheist movement, much of Cimino and Smith’s fourth chapter is concerned with describing internal differences within the atheist movement. Some individuals and groups support greater ritualisation, others disagree; some are only concerned with the influence of religion in the public sphere, others find religion in the private sphere equally problematic. The chapter reads as an attempt to acknowledge this diversity of opinion, peppered with cautionary remarks that hint of the authors’ wish to avoid exaggerating these internal differences. Both authors and readers might find Luther Gerlach’s SPIN model of social movements useful to understand intra-movement dynamics. According to Gerlach, social movements are segmented and polycentric: they are composed of different groups, with different visions and different leadership. They are also integrated networks: the segments interact through structural, personal, and ideological ties, and segments can unite if necessary (Gerlach, 1987, p. 115).

Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason, published in two parts (1794 and 1795), was certainly not the first attack by a deist on revealed religion, the Bible, and Christianity. For nearly a hundred years, the fortress of Christianity had been assailed by a cadre of deists who argued that religious truths must conform to reason, and that divine revelation was either unreliable or dangerous superstition.1 The defenders of Christianity in Europe and America did not sit idly by as the basis of their faith was questioned, and for a hundred years they had met the deist threat squarely, and, in their opinion, with triumph.2 As many of Paine’s detractors were only too happy to point out, there was very little “new” in The Age of Reason, and Paine was frequently charged with being little more than a plagiaristic imitator of previous British and French deists. American minister G. W. Snyder, for example, called The Age of Reason “nothing but a jumble of sentences, which the author borrowed from … deistical writers” such as Thomas Hobbes, John Toland, Anthony Collins, Thomas Chubb, Matthew Tindal, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the arch-infidel Voltaire.3 A pseudonymous Scottish author even slyly suggested that perhaps The Age of Reason would be more aptly named “The Age of Plagiarism.”4

Atheism and secularity are not static, fixed orientations. Rather, atheism and secularity are contoured, malleable, and deeply shaped by cultural and social forces. A clear example of the degree to which atheism and secularity can be lived and expressed quite differently in different socio-cultural locations is revealed by comparing and contrasting the ways in which they are manifested in the United States and Scandinavia.

Matthias Knutzen (born 1646 – died after 1674 ) was the first author we know of who self- identified as an atheist (Schroder 2010 : 8 ). Before this, the term had solely been used pejoratively to label others. While Knutzen is almost completely forgotten now, authors such as Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, or Sigmund Freud are better remembered and might even be considered classic writers in the history of the atheist criticism of religion. Whatever may be said about the influence of any one of these authors, there is no doubt that Germany looks back on a notable history in this field. About a decade ago, Germany’s capital Berlin was even dubbed ‘the world capital of atheism’ by the American sociologist Peter L. Berger ( 2001 : 195 ). Given this situation, I am bewildered by the expression ‘ New Atheism’. Yet, undoubtedly, the term has become a catchphrase that is commonly used in the public discourse of several countries. The most prominent authors to be labelled ‘New Atheists’ are Richard Dawkins ( The God Delusion , 2006 ), Daniel Dennett ( Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon , 2006 ), Sam Harris ( The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason , 2004 , and Letter to a Christian Nation , 2006 ), and Christopher Hitchens ( God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Every­thing , 2007 ). These authors and their books – all of them international bestsellers – have been intensely discussed around the world, including in Germany. In this paper, I intend to illuminate some of the characteristics and remarkable traits of the German discourse on the ‘New Atheism’. Here we can distinguish between two phases. The German media initially characterised ‘New Atheism’ as a rather peculiarly American phenomenon. However, it soon came to be understood to be a part of German culture as well.

Commenting on the lack of self-conscious atheists in apparently secularised Western European societies, the British sociologist Steve Bruce has argued that strong expressions of unbelief are in fact symptomatic of religious cultures. In 1996’s Religion in the Modern World, for instance, he writes: ‘it should be no surprise that, though there are more avowed atheists than there were twenty years ago, they remain rare. Self-conscious atheism and agnosticism are features of religious cultures and [in Britain] were at their height in the Victorian era. They are postures adopted in a world where people are keenly interested in religion.’ (Bruce 1996: 58.) Likewise, discussing possible ‘endpoints’ of European secularisation in 2002’s God is Dead, Bruce states: In so far as I can imagine an endpoint, it would not be conscious irreligion; you have to care too much about religion to be irreligious. It would be widespread indifference (what Weber called being religiously unmusical); no socially significant shared religion; and religious ideas being no more common than would be the case if all minds were wiped blank and people began from scratch to think about the world and their place in it. (Bruce 2002: 42, my emphasis.)Paradoxical though it may sound at first, Bruce’s basic­ argument makes considerable sense. The idea that certain forms of particularly positive atheism – by which I mean a definite belief in the non-existence of a God or gods, as opposed to the simple absence of a belief in the same (negative atheism) – might be motivated, conditioned, or reinforced, by contrast with certain, socially prevalent religious beliefs or practices is scarcely controversial. After all, it would be strange to take one’s atheism seriously in a society where no one took theism seriously. A society that is indifferent to manifestations of religion (such as Bruce and others depict many late-modern western societies as being) ought, therefore, to be just as indifferent to manifestations of ‘nonreligion’.

In this paper I focus on a difficulty in our contemporary discourse about atheism. My rough thesis is that certain important problems stem from the fact that contemporary culture at large is already fine tuned with many of the crucial ‘virtues’ that are held forth strongly by leading atheists. Thus, one might perhaps claim that the New Atheists are mostly preaching to the already converted. However, the main problem with this picture is that a ‘cultural atheism’, or secularism, of the kind that I have in mind is far from identical with the ‘ideological atheisms’ of the contemporary debates. The theologians who respond to atheists are extremely frustrated and the debate is asymmetrical. If there is some sort of cultural identity between these camps it is constituted by an invisible cultural logic that expresses a profound godlessness beyond ideological distinctions. I will focus on the Swedish context and its peculiarities in order to theorise this cultural logic. In dialogue with Friedrich Nietzsche, I develop a notion of moral emptiness and connect it to the idea of profound godlessness. I then suggest that his creative and affirmative criticism of nihilism is an interesting opening for further debate.

‘I am not a Manichean - nor an Any-chean’ stated Byron during the furore surrounding his poem Cain: A Mystery. Yet many still insisted on ‘accusing [him] of irreligion’, labelling him an ‘infidel’ because of the presence of heresy in his poetry. Assuming for the moment that these allegations were based on actual heretical doctrines present in his poems, from where did Byron gain his extensive knowledge? There is one source which has not been considered, which is Byron's translations of 3 Corinthians and its companion Epistle from the Corinthians, found in the Armenian Apocrypha, but not in the Bibles of Western Christianity. This article examines the importance of these Armenian translations with relation to Byron's understanding of heretical doctrines. It also contains passages from the diary of his Armenian tutor, Pascal Aucher, which have not previously been translated into English, providing a fascinating insight into Byron's interaction with these Epistles.

The Catholic polemicist John Sergeant published three major works of philosophy towards the end of his literary career, The Method to Science (1696), Solid Philosophy (1697) and Metaphysics (1700). They were highly critical of what Sergeant saw as the idea‐grounded epistemology of the Cartesians and John Locke, whom he labelled ‘ideists’. Previous scholars have interpreted Sergeant's texts as manifestations of his lifelong obsession with certainty, as initially developed in his Restoration polemics against Anglican divines. Using a previously neglected autobiographical letter, it is demonstrated that Sergeant's intentions were very different. Like Edward Stillingfleet and other critics, Sergeant saw Locke's philosophy as inspiring contemporary heterodoxy. The article identifies the specific channels by which Sergeant saw Lockeanism seeping into irreligion. Moreover, unlike Locke's Anglican critics, Sergeant resorted not to polemical accusations, but to abstract philosophy. This must also be explained cont...

What if thinking the gift could offer a way of rethinking two of society's most irreconcilable cultural spheres—the religious and the irreligious? The gift is irreducibly dual, marked by both gratuity and reciprocity, excess and exchange. What, then, if Creation is a gift? (The ‘ifness’ of the proposition is duly acknowledged, discussed, and affirmed.) Religious responses to the possible gift of Creation may be interpreted as reflecting and respecting the circular dimension involved in gifting (religion as thanking and reciprocating), while secular-hedonistic responses reflect and respect its gratuity (irreligion as taking and enjoying).

List of Illustrations List of Contributors Note on Editions Introduction 1. Epicurean Subversion? Lucretius' First Proem and Contemporary Roman Culture 2. Lucretius in the Early Modern Period: Texts and Contexts 3. Lucretian Naturalism and the Evolution of Machiavelli's Ethics 4. Poetic Flights or Retreats? Latin Lucretian Poems in Sixteenth-Century Italy 5. Lucretius, Irreligion, and Atheism in Early Modern Venice 6. 'Well said/well thought': How Montaigne Read his Lucretius 7. Michel de Marolles's 1650 Translation of Lucretius and its Reception in England 8. Lucretianism and Some Seventeenth-Century Theories of Human Origin 9. Natural Reason and the Laws of Nature in Early Modern Versions of Lucretius 10. Atheists and Republicans: Interpreting Lucretius in Revolutionary England 11. Political Philosophy in a Lucretian Mode Bibliography Index

This chapter outlines an alternative interpretation of Hume’s philosophy, one that aims, among other things, to explain some of the most perplexing puzzles concerning the relationship between Hume’s skepticism and his naturalism. The key to solving these puzzles, it is argued, rests with recognizing Hume’s fundamental irreligious aims and objectives, beginning with his first and greatest work, A Treatise of Human Nature. The irreligious interpretation not only reconfigures our understanding of the unity and structure of Hume’s thought, it also provides a radically different picture of the way in which Hume’s philosophy is rooted in its historical context. By altering our understanding of the fundamentals of Hume’s philosophy in this way, the irreligious interpretation also challenges the adequacy of the familiar and entrenched framework of “British Empiricism.”

Devotion to the Bible remains an underappreciated aspect of American religious life partly because it fails to generate controversy. This essay opens a window onto America's relationship with the Bible by exploring a controversial moment in the history of the Bible in America: the public reception of University of Chicago professor Edgar J. Goodspeed'sAmerican Translation(1923). Initially, at least, most Americans flatly rejected Goodspeed's impeccably credentialed attempt to cast the language of the Bible in contemporary “American” English. Accusations of the professor's irreligion, bad taste, vulgarity, and crass modernity emerged from nearly every quarter of the Protestant establishment (with the exception of some card-carrying theological modernists), testifying to a widespread but unexplored attachment to the notion of a traditional Bible in the early twentieth century. By examining this barrage of reaction, “Monkeying with the Bible” argues that Protestants, along with some others in 1920s America, believed that traditional biblical language was among the forces that helped stabilize the development of American civilization.

In the early eighteenth century Newtonianism became popular in the Netherlands both in academic (Boerhaave, ’sGravesande, Van Musschenbroek) and non-academic circles. The ‘Book of Nature’ was interpreted with the help of Newton’s natural philosophy and his ideas about a providential deity, thereby greatly enhancing the attractiveness of physico-theology in the eighteenth-century United Provinces. Like other Europeans the Dutch welcomed physico-theology as a strategic means in their battle against irreligion and atheism. Bernard Nieuwentijt, Johan Lulofs, Petrus Camper, and Johannes Florentius Martinet were prominent experts in the field. Combining Newtonian notions with Leibnizian optimism and romanticist trends, physico-theology remained popular in the Netherlands well into the nineteenth century.

Widespread atheism in the general population is one of the defining characteristics of twentieth-century British society, yet until very recently, it has largely been unregarded by historians. This study attempts to contribute to the remedy of this omission by considering autobiographies and oral histories of non-elite atheists between 1890 and 1980. It shows that atheisation (the transition from religious belief to atheism) is principally a phenomenon of childhood and adolescence, with 80% of the sources becoming atheist by the age of twenty. The reasons the subjects gave for their irreligion were varied, of greatest significance were nearly two thirds who regarded religion as irrelevant to their lives, showing a lack of engagement with religion, its concepts and rituals. Many of these were from weakly religious or irreligious backgrounds who experienced ‘irreligious socialisation’, rendering religion irrelevant and contributed significantly to the progress of atheisation. Religious trauma, criticism of religion, personal trauma, radical politics, and rationalism accounted for similar proportions of reasons, and were mentioned by only 12–18% of sources. The potential influence of parental attitude to religion, other childhood experiences, religious education, reducing existential threat, historic events, and the social revolution of the 1960s are also considered as ‘unarticulated causes’ of the subjects’ irreligion.

The common tendency to characterize Hume’s philosophy as simply “skeptical,” “naturalist,” “empiricist,” or “irreligious” is a mistake. Rather, his philosophy is best seen as responding to a number of specific issues that captured his attention in the 1730s, mostly involving causation and thus explaining his particular enthusiasm for applying the Copy Principle to that idea. Other enthusiasms that shaped Book 1 of the Treatise (e.g., for sensory atomism and a crude theory of relations and mental acts) later faded, but the “Chief Argument” around causation—and causal/inductive inference—remains the consistent core of Hume’s theoretical philosophy through the Abstract and the many editions of the first Enquiry. In the Enquiry, moreover, Hume manages to tame the corrosive skepticism of the Treatise, enabling him to pursue his ambitions towards a naturalistic “science of man” while maintaining a discriminating skepticism towards aprioristic metaphysics and religion.