RELS 380 Atheism
What are the characteristics of atheists or agnostics in the U.S. in 2004
Politically liberal, democrats, independents, younger, lining in the west, students, and those who are living with someone without being roommates
Who is the first "atheist" and what happened to him
Protagoras was condemned to death
What accounts for the staggering differences in rates of un/belief between nations
Rates of unbelief are characterized by plentiful food distribution, excellent public health care, and widely accessible housing while rates of belief are characterized by a scarcity of food and shelter and generally less stable
What is Zuckerman's overall conclusion
Religion is not innate, and rather links to high levels of individual and societal security and high levels of societal health
What is some evidence that atheists are liberal and very tolerant
Religion is tied to tradition, authority, and hierarchy; and those who reject religion show less ethnocentrism than those that accept it; correlation between rejection of religious beliefs and radical political views is clearly established by studies
Marx
tied Christianity to capitalism and predicted the downfall of religion with an oncoming political revolution
What was the name of one of Protagoras' most famous essays
"Concerning the Gods"
What are the opening words of Protagoras' essay (which Bremmer discusses)
"Concerning the gods I am unable to discover whether they exist or not, or what they are like in form; for there are many hindrances to knowledge, the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life."
How does Hyman define modernity
"Modern" is a term that is used loosely depending on which sphere of thought one is attempting to attribute modernity to
Panentheism
(meaning "all-in-God", from the Ancient Greek) also known as Monistic Monotheism, [1] is a belief system which posits that the divine - whether as a single God, number of gods, or other form of "cosmic animating force" [2] - interpenetrates every part of the universe and extends, timelessly (and, presumably, spacelessly) beyond it.
What are, for Alston, "religious making" characteristics of religion
1) Belief in super natural beings 2) A distinction between sacred and profane objects 3) Ritual acts focused on sacred objects 4) A moral code believed to be sanctioned by the gods 5) Religious feelings that tend to be aroused in the presence of sacred objects during the practice of ritual 6) Prayer and other forms of communication with gods 7) Worldview as a whole and a place of the individual therein. 8) Total organization of ones life based on the world view 9) A social group bound together by the above
What are some of Overall's reasons why feminist should be atheists
1) Religion harms women: (argument from evil) the shameful and dispiriting litany of harms inflicted on women by proponents of monotheistic religions suggest that such religions are not compatible with feminism and that freeing women from involvement in or allegiance to monotheistic religions would increase women's liberty, autonomy, well being, and freedom from discrimination and stereotyping 2) Moral objection - whatever women have experienced is in accord with their second class status or is the righteous result of their failure to be obedient to God's commands or is in some cases a consequence of the fallibility of men who interpret their god given status as a license to mistreat
What are, for Beardsley and Beardsley, basic religious questions
1) What are the fundamental characteristics of human beings and the chief problem they face? 2) What are the characteristics of nonhuman reality that are of greatest significance for human life? 3) Given the nature of man and the universe, how should men try to live? 4) Given the answers to the first 3 questions, what practices will best develop and sustain in men an understanding of the nature of human and nonhuman reality and a dedication to the ideal of human life? 5) In seeking true answers to the first 4 questions, what method(s) should be used?
Brad laugh
1st atheist in parliament
About how many people in the world do not believe in God
500-750 million people
Theodicy
A theodicy is often based on a prior natural theology, which attempts to prove the existence of God, and seeks to demonstrate that God's existence remains probable after the problem of evil is posed by giving a justification for God's permitting evil to happen.
What are some connections between parents and atheism
Apostasy, a defection from one religion to a private secularization, is viewed as a form of rebellion against parents.
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Most inclusively, atheism is the absence of belief that any deities exist.
What's Beit-Hallahmi's methodology
Based on regarding religiosity as a continuous variable, ranked on a scale of 0-100. 0 being atheist and 100 being the most devout
What does Bremmer feel about Louis Febvre's findings
Bremmer feels that the findings of Louis Febvre's might be a little presumptuous considering evidence of atheistic development during times considered ancient and medieval
If so, which ones and how so
Buddhism - believed in cycles of rebirth until reaching enlightenment Confucianism - set of ethical standards established by Confucius; no explicit reference of the existence of a higher power but rather an implied assumption that something beyond our grasp exists Jainism - differentiates "god(s)" (not free of life and death cycle) as a higher state of existence greater than our human existence but still separates godhood from supreme power that created our universe
What did Origen say about pagans
Charged them with atheistic polytheism
What three historical periods does his essay examine
Classical, Helenistic, Christian
What's the difference between "coercive atheism" and "organic atheism"
Coercive atheism is forced upon a society with political enforcement where organic atheism is more likely to develop throughout a society through education and understanding of logic and social justice
What is Critias' view of the gods
Critias viewed the gods as something that mankind had manufactured in order to establish peace and justice by instilling fear of a god into the minds of the uneducated
Who was the first atheist philosopher
Diderot
Why did the first atheist philosophy become an atheist
Diderot built his foundation of knowledge off of the basis that Descartes and Newton created, but freed Descartes from what he considered unwarranted metaphysics and newton from pointing beyond his own theory to nonmechanical principles
What is Martin's conclusion
Due to the existence of atheistic religions, it follows that atheism and religio adon not necessarily stand in opposition to one another
What is "soft atheism"
Explicit "negative" / "weak" / "soft" atheists do not assert the above but reject or eschew a belief that any deities exist.
What did the Athenians charge Socrates of
Failing to acknowledge the gods and creating new deities
Is atheism, for Martin, antireligious
For martin, atheism is not antireligious because of the existence of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Jainism. Yet he does state that removing the concept of an all powerful creationist "god" would not change the foundations of all 3 atheistic religions.
Who described himself as a "secularist"
George Jacob Holyoake
Who coined the phrase "age of theism" and when did the age begin
Gerhard Ebeling; the last 40 years of the 20th century
Who invented the term atheos
Greek tem for "godless, without gods, forsaken"
Who discovered the utility of the term "atheist" as a means to label opponents
Greeks and romans, then pagans and christians
Who are some of the great atheist psychologists
Hall, Watson, Rogers, Ellis, Leuba, Maslow, SKiner, Eysenck, Cattell
What is Bremmer's overall or main argument
He outlines the development of the foundations of what we know to be contemporary atheism with a focus on how what we define as atheism has grown out of oppression and persecution
What methodological hurdles does Zuckerman acknowledge in his study
He states 4 reasons: 1) low response rate, 2) nonrandom sampling, 3) adverse political and cultural climate, and 4) a lack of agreed upon definition that establishes unified terminology.
What are some connections between Jewish identity and atheism
High levels of education, low degree of organized religion, political liberalism
What is Zuckerman's overall or main argument
His argument states that according to the numbers that religion is not innately built into the human condition. He is also able to correlate organic atheism with higher levels of academic prowess, tolerance, and social justice, where ironically those that practice religion correlate with the exact opposite.
What's Beit-Hallahmi's main argument
His argument stems from the original thoughts that religion is innate in all humans there fore anyone who doesn't believe is inherently flawed without that key to the human condition. I think his actual argument opposes that train of thought and is trying to shed light upon which demographic actually identifies as atheist.
Who coined the term "agnosticism"
Huxley
What is Hyman's overall or main argument
Hyman's main argument would be that Atheism is a "symptom" of modern society and a modern way of thinking. Theism is a characteristic that modern society is losing while atheism is a characteristic that modern society is gaining.
Problem of Evil
In the philosophy of religion, the problem of evil is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil with that of a God who is, in either absolute or relative terms, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent
Why doesn't Bremmer use Philodemus' scheme
It doesn't mention atheism as a labeling device to slander your opponents, be they philosophical or religious ones
What modern conception of God did modern atheism reject
It rejected the parallels that connected god to man; as religion was forced to incorporate rational thinking into the basics of their foundation, theists had to come up with a way to still sound possible. Determined establishing benchmarks to measure transcendence could not be done so there is no way to describe god in humanly terms
What's Beit-Hallahmi's overall conclusion
Model atheist is more likely to be a married and educated man. Likely to be less authoritarian and suggestible, less dogmatic, less prejudiced, more tolerant, law abiding, compassionate, conscientious, and well educated.
What movement did Protagoras belong to
Sophistic
What are the top ten countries with the largest percentage of people who identify as atheist, agnostic, or nonbeliever in God
Sweden, Vietnam, Denmark, Norway, Japan, Czech Republic, Finland, France, South Korea, Estonia
What is Hyman's final conclusion
That atheism and modernity are inextricably linked
What is Martin's main argument
That atheism is not a religion
Deism
The belief that God has created the universe but remains apart from it and permits his creation to administer itself through natural laws. Deism thus rejects the supernatural aspects of religion, such as belief in revelation in the Bible, and stresses the importance of ethical conduct.
Who discovered theoretical atheism
The greeks
What are some of the Bremmer's self-described limitations of the essay
The limitations found refer to how atheist ideologies developed, at one point the term atheist switched from a disbelief in popular belief systems to those that disbelieved in deities based on cultural and period contexts
Is worldwide atheism growing or declining
The number of atheists is increasing but is being outdone by the numbers of theists so our percentage is decreasing
What is Bremmer's definition of atheism
Thinkers and people who denied the existence of the gods or put forward theories to explain the existence of the gods
What did Huxley think about "atheism"
Thought it was too dogmatic; made definitive claims that there was insufficient evidence to back up
And what is his main reason(s) for holding the position
Using either definition of religion, atheism fails to meet the conditions of being a religion
What did Xenophanes and Anaxagoras think about the gods
Xenophanes tried to introduce new ideas of the divine rather than abolishing the idea of the divine altogether; Anaxagoras' observation stripped the sun of its divine nature
Are there, for Martin, atheistic religions
Yes
What are the characteristics of the unaffiliated U.S. population in the 70s and 80s
Younger, mostly male, with higher levels of education and income, more liberal, more unhappy and alienated from society
Apostate
a person who renounces a religious or political belief or principle.
Positive Atheism
also called strong atheism and hard atheism, is the form of atheism that asserts that no deities exist
Negative Atheism
also called weak atheism and soft atheism, is any other type of atheism, i.e. where a person does not believe in the existence of any deities and does not explicitly assert that there are none
Theism
belief in the existence of a god or gods, especially belief in one god as creator of the universe, intervening in it and sustaining a personal relation to his creatures.
Aquinas
belief that humans as a species are unable to grasp the concept of god's representation
Scotus
believed that god was in fact finite and that we shared this world, with the exception that god had much greater control over a spectrum that humans see as godlike
Cheke
defined atheism as a lack of god's intervention rather than the denial of god's existnace in general
Nietzsche and Newman
foresaw that religious uninterest would increasingly characterize the educated intellect and that its influence would eventually tell upon every routine aspect of civilization
Omnibenevolence
is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "unlimited or infinite benevolence".
Pantheism
is the belief that the Universe (or nature as the totality of everything) is identical with divinity, or that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent god. Pantheists thus do not believe in a distinct personal or anthropomorphic god.
Omniscience
is the capacity to know everything that there is to know. In particular, Hinduism and the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) believe that there is a divine being who is omniscient.
Agnosticism
one who believes it impossible to know anything about God or about the creation of the universe and refrains from commitment to any religious doctrine. An atheist is one who denies the existence of a deity or of divine beings.
Diderot
recognized as the 1st self-proclaimed explicit atheist; was considered intelligent enough to further the learnings of Newton and Descartes to expand upon knowledge Christians understood to be true
Feuerbach
saw theism as a projection of humanity
Henry More
states that the traditional understanding of religion is incorrect. Instead, God is within every living and non living thing as a part of the plane of existence
Anthropomorphism
the attribution of human characteristics or behavior to a god, animal, or object
Polytheism
the belief in or worship of more than one god.
Monotheism
the doctrine or belief that there is only one God.
Omnipotence
the quality of having unlimited or very great power.
