REVIEWS
“What is atheism? Neither a mere negation, nor a single (self-evident?) truth: this book makes clear that it is as rich, varied, and nuanced as religion itself. To call yourself an atheist is not to state a position, but to start a conversation—a conversation for which this book is an excellent primer.”
— Alec Ryrie, author of 'Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt'
“An excellent collection of essays by well-established and up-and-coming voices in religious studies, this book is both critical of New Atheism’s reductive critique of religion and constructive with new possibilities—theological, philosophical, ethical, and political. It enriches the debates by giving atheism histories and subtleties that debates themselves frequently lack.”
— Graham Ward, University of Oxford
“Just as contemporary scholars of religion have pushed us to move beyond simplistic equations between religion and belief, this stimulating collection of essays urges us to recognize that atheism also comes in many varieties. By exploring the implications of different forms of atheism and their relation to different conceptions of science, politics, power, ethics, literature, and, indeed, life, this book is a major contribution to the study of religion and its critics. Anyone interested in the relation between religion and the modern world will have much to learn from this exciting collection.”
— Leora Batnitzky, Princeton University
“What does it mean to be an atheist? It’s not just one thing, it’s not just disbelief in god. There’s a positive expression connected to ideas of ethics, our relationship with authority, how reason and experience and the material world inform our lives, when does science become moral–these are big questions that we have to ask. This book points the way to a positive belief.”
— Beyond Atheism Podcast
"Fundamental for anyone interested in the study of atheism."
— Reading Religion
“The strength of Varieties of Atheism is its imaginative reach. We are invited to enter into the atheist mind and heart; in many cases, this means getting in touch with the atheist within: the atheist not as the antagonist but as the fellow-traveler. . . . Varieties of Atheism represents a curious and attractive faith community in itself, one that embraces belief and non-belief simultaneously, rather like Browning’s Bishop Blougram. . . . [The conversation is] a kind of drama, implying that to hold affirmation and negation in tension (to use Newheiser’s phrasing) is dynamic and purposive. To move from the battlefield onto the stage would be progress indeed.”
— Heythrop Journal
"A convincing case for the ways religious and secular thinkers alike have labored under simplistic misapprehensions of nonbelief. The collective argument of this volume is not only that atheism has not been treated with sufficient credulity, but also that such incredulity comes at the expense of a richer theological appraisal."
— Theological Studies
"Full of insights, this study helps grasp the phenomenon of the recent decline in religious identification and the growing popularity of nonreligious ways of life."
— The Muslim World Book Review
"The book’s chapters link atheism with the following topics: science, society, power, ethics, metaphysics, politics, literature, and the affirmation of life. The range is remarkably wide."
— American Journal of Theology and Philosophy
"Sophisticated and satisfying. Insights abound. . . .All contributions laudably advance the volume’s central aim: to impel readers to appropriate the task that the contributors perform, to find access points for new, non-polemical interaction between Christians and atheists, to encourage life’s affirmation."
— Missiology
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: The Genealogy of Atheism -David Newheiser
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226822686.003.0001
[atheism;religion;secularization;theism;medieval;modern;science;unbelief;belief;lived religion]
This introduction develops a brief genealogy of atheism from the premodern period into the present. Most writing on atheism (whether scholarly or not) tends to share the assumption that atheism and theism are incompatible beliefs concerning the existence of a divine being. In response, this introduction argues that defining atheism in terms of belief obscures the cultural shifts through which modern atheism emerged, and it flattens the diversity of atheism in different times and places. Much as scholars of religious studies have argued that it is misleading to equate religion with belief, this history indicates that atheism is broader as well. On this reading, atheism it not simply a matter of belief—instead, it also encompasses ethical disciplines, embodied practices, social structures, and affective states. In order to understand atheism it is therefore necessary to attend to the intersecting lines of affinity and tension that connect particular atheisms with particular religious traditions. (pages 1 - 18)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
1. Atheism and Science: On Einstein’s “Cosmic Religious Sense” -Mary-Jane Rubenstein
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226822686.003.0002
[Albert Einstein;cosmic religious sense;religion;pantheism;pantheology;perspectivism;cosmology;atheism]
The early to mid-twentieth century produced a little-remembered “scandal” over Einstein’s denial of a personal God. Although he was immediately charged with atheism, Einstein did not deny the existence of God; rather, he re-coded divinity as the partly knowable, ultimately mysterious, neverthelessrationalorder of the universe. The chapter at hand calls upon this decades-long scandal as a means, first of examining the alleged equivalence of pantheism and atheism, and second, of analyzing the conceptual coherence of such “atheistic” pantheism. In particular, the chapter reads Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity against his own “cosmic religious sense,” arguing that Einstein’s theology falls short of the complexity of the science it purportedly reflects. Ultimately, it calls upon the theory of relativity—and the quantum that Einstein so fervently rejected—to propose a more compelling, less deterministic, and more coherent “pantheism” than Einstein himself was willing to deliver. Such “perspectival” pantheism may or may not be equivalent to atheism, depending on what one means by atheism. (pages 19 - 40)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
2. Atheism and Society: Hume’s Prefiguration of Rorty -Andre C. Willis
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226822686.003.0003
[David Hume;Richard Rorty;pragmatism;atheism;metaphysics;belief;unbelief;social practice]
This chapter situates atheism as a social practice that has profound practical effects. Whereas statements of religious belief (or unbelief) are often evaluated as abstract theoretical claims, the chapter appeals to a philosophical tradition that interprets utterances of this kind in terms of their pragmatic implications. In its analysis, the eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume prefigures Richard Rorty’s twentieth-century account of contingency. Rorty and Hume share a similar suspicion of metaphysical debates, and they both emphasize the linguistic features of belief. Because both authors criticized religious practices that undermine social order, they are often anthologized as atheists, and yet they both acknowledge that religion can contribute to the flourishing of society. Insofar as Hume distinguishes religion (as practiced) from theoretical theism, the chapter suggests that it is possible to be a theoretical atheist while practicing a religion that one values for its social effects. (pages 41 - 64)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
3. Atheism and Power: Nietzsche, Nominalism, and the Reductive Spirit -Denys Turner
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226822686.003.0004
[David Hume;Richard Dawkins;Friedrich Nietzsche;William of Ockham;Thomas Hobbes;nominalism;medieval;politics;atheism;morality]
This chapter suggests that a truly consistent atheism would be politically radical. It argues that atheists like David Hume and Richard Dawkins dispense with God in the name of scientific materialism, but they fail to follow the political consequences of this gesture. In contrast, Friedrich Nietzsche argues that atheism requires a wholesale transformation that overturns Newtonian science, conventional morality, and conservative politics. The chapter traces Nietzsche’s revolutionary vision to medieval debates over nominalism. Nominalists such as William of Ockham deny the existence of essences, and—against essentialists such as Plato and Thomas Aquinas—on this ground they conclude that every thing that exists is individual and utterly contingent. Whereas later nominalists such as Hume and Thomas Hobbes left the prevailing social order intact, Nietzsche recognized that nominalism removes every source of stability—whether theological, scientific, or political. On this view, Nietzsche saw that nominalism entails atheism, but atheism requires not simply a shift in belief but a social and political transformation. (pages 65 - 84)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
4. Atheism and Ethics: Recovering the Link between Truth and Transformation -Susannah Ticciati
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226822686.003.0005
[atheism;New Atheists;New Atheism;Richard Dawkins;Scripture;Christian;Bible;theology;ethics;God]
This chapter argues that the driving concern of the New Atheists is an ethical concern, and one that should be taken seriously even by those who disagree with them. It takes to task those Christian theologians who respond to the New Atheists for their inadequate response to this concern. Specifically, it argues that the theologians tend to mirror the New Atheists in their separation of truth from ethical transformation (in practice if not in theory), and thus that they miss an important opportunity to articulate the intrinsically transformative character of Christian truth. Even when this is articulated, the polemical cast of the debate prevents the theologians from joining forces with the New Atheists in what is a common ethical concern: doing so would enable a response that is not just polemical but constructive. The chapter offers just such a response, arguing from a close reading of several passages of Christian Scripture for the inseparability of truth from transformation, showing that the truth of Christian utterances such as "God exists" is inseparable from the ethical conditions under which they are uttered. (pages 85 - 104)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
5. Atheism and Metaphysics: A Problem of Apophatic Theology -Henning Tegtmeyer
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226822686.003.0006
[generalized apophatics;sacramentalism;scripturalism;invocationalism;fictionalism;Martin Heidegger;John Caputo;Jean-Luc Marion]
In this chapter, it is argued that staging a productive conversation between atheism and religious thought requires clarity on the question of metaphysics. More specifically, the text responds to Christian thinkers who appeal to apophatic theology, which holds that Christian speech must use “apophasis” (or negative language). Theologians such as John Caputo and Jean-Luc Marion reinterpret this ancient tradition on the basis of Martin Heidegger’s critique of “onto-theology,” i.e., of metaphysical theology. The chapter argues that, in contrast to classic apophatic theology, this anti-metaphysical apophaticism renders conversation with atheism impossible: whereas theologians such asCaputo collapse any distinction between atheism and theism, others (such as Marion) preclude the common ground required for conversation. The chapter examines several strategies to avoid this problem, arguing that none of them is successful. (pages 105 - 128)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
6. Atheism and Politics: Abandonment, Absence, and the Empty Throne -Devin Singh
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226822686.003.0007
[political theology;sovereignty;absence;ascension;Giorgio Agamben;Carl Schmitt;Erik Peterson]
This chapter uses atheism as an interpretive tool to highlight the ambivalence of religious faith. It observes that, although Christian scripture records Jesus’s physical departure from the church, Christians claim that Jesus remains present in other ways. It goes on to argue that this disavowal of absence generates a political theology that legitimates earthly institutions—for instance, imperial power. On this view, rather than anxiously asserting that it can secure Jesus’s presence, Christian theology ought to acknowledge its own atheism. Where protest atheism rages at the absence of a divine king who provides justice to all, this chapter suggests that Christians can accept Jesus’s absence as a sign that all sovereignty is suspect. (pages 129 - 154)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
7. Atheism and Literature: Living without God in Dante’s Comedy -Vittorio Montemaggi
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226822686.003.0008
[atheism;literature;Dante Alighieri;Divine Comedy;hope;living without God]
This chapter asks what atheism might mean in the context of literature, whichworks through narrative reflection and a focus on embodied particularity rather than propositional, abstract assertion. In particular, the chapter explores the contribution Dante’sDivine Comedycan make to contemporary debates on atheism. It argues that engagement with Dante’sComedy opens up perspectives that might otherwise not be so readily available in current discussions around atheism. At the same time, the chapter argues that contemporary debates on atheism open up perspectives on interpretation of Dante’sComedythat might otherwise not be so readily available and that would merit further study. Dante’sComedydoes not speak of atheism, but the poem describes a spiritual journey that explores the myriad ways in which peoplechoose to live without God. However, for Dante damnation does not divide those whoprofess belief from those who do not. The keydistinction concerns those who have hope, and that distinction depends not on abstract knowledge but on theintegrity of love. For this reason, on Dante’s terms, those who consider themselves to beChristian may be atheists, while Christians may understand atheism as contributingto a spiritual journey that intersects with their own. (pages 155 - 174)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
8. Atheism and the Affirmation of Life: Dostoevsky’s Response to Russian Nihilism -George Pattison
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226822686.003.0009
[Fyodor Dostoevsky;doubt;nihilism;God;immortality;basic trust;the Church;beauty;nationalism]
Dostoevsky was closely associated with the development of protest atheism in the twentiethcentury. At the same time, he dedicated his work to offering a Christian response to the atheism of some of his best-known characters. Acknowledging that his own faith was born in a "crucible of doubt,"this Christian response was also the expression of an inner struggle. In this way, his work can be seen as an internal criticism of atheism rather than simply an external apologetic response. Drawing on the major novels, this chapter addresses such themes as immortality (an important element in faith for Dostoevsky), basic trust in life as a gateway to faith in God, and the critique of atheism as offering a series of inadequate God-substitutes, from the self-deification of radical nihilism, through life in a Church that has become untrue to its faith, aestheticism and the cult of beauty, and on to nationalism. (pages 175 - 198)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
Afterword: The Drama of Atheism -Constance M. Furey
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226822686.003.0010
[Henri de Lubac;theology;affect theory;Jesuits;hope;faith;Fyodor Dostoevsky;Hannah Arendt;Karl Marx;Friedrich Nietzsche]
This afterword highlights the role of affect in each essay in this collection, implicitly situating them in the context of actual lives. It begins with an account of reading Henri de Lubac’sDrama of Atheist Humanism,noting how de Lubac’s interest in atheism as a “living force” foreshadows this project’s disinterest in fruitless debates about the existence of God. As the chapter hails the essays for their shared refusal to assume a simple opposition between atheism and theology, it also suggests that thinking with integrity means acknowledging the way in which affect and theory are bound up with each other in the complex interplay of an unfolding life. (pages 199 - 202)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Index
