The Varieties of Atheism: Connecting Religion and Its Critics

Thoughtful essays to revive dialogue about atheism beyond belief.   The Varieties of Atheism reveals the diverse nonreligious experiences obscured by the combative intellectualism of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens. In fact, contributors contend that narrowly defining atheism as the belief that there is no god misunderstands religious and nonreligious persons altogether. The essays show that, just as religion exceeds doctrine, atheism also encompasses every dimension of human life: from imagination and feeling to community and ethics. Contributors offer new, expansive perspectives on atheism’s diverse history and possible futures. By recovering lines of affinity and tension between particular atheists and particular religious traditions, this book paves the way for fruitful conversation between religious and non-religious people in our secular age.

Table of Contents:
Introduction The Genealogy of Atheism    David Newheiser 1 Atheism and Science: On Einstein’s “Cosmic Religious Sense”    Mary-Jane Rubenstein 2 Atheism and Society: Hume’s Prefiguration of Rorty    Andre C. Willis 3 Atheism and Power: Nietzsche, Nominalism, and the Reductive Spirit    Denys Turner 4 Atheism and Ethics: Recovering the Link between Truth and Transformation    Susannah Ticciati 5 Atheism and Metaphysics: A Problem of Apophatic Theology    Henning Tegtmeyer 6 Atheism and Politics: Abandonment, Absence, and the Empty Throne    Devin Singh 7 Atheism and Literature: Living without God in Dante’s Comedy    Vittorio Montemaggi 8 Atheism and the Affirmation of Life: Dostoevsky’s Response to Russian Nihilism    George Pattison Afterword: The Drama of Atheism    Constance M. Furey Acknowledgments Contributors Index

About the Author :
David Newheiser is a senior research fellow in the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry at Australian Catholic University. He is the author of Hope in a Secular Age: Deconstruction, Negative Theology, and the Future of Faith.  

Review :
“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.” "Fundamental for anyone interested in the study of atheism." “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.” "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." "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." “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.” “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.” “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.” "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." "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."