Atheists And Atheism Before The Enlightenment

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Atheists and Atheism before the Enlightenment

Author : Michael Hunter
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 233 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2023-06-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9781009268752

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Atheists and Atheism before the Enlightenment by Michael Hunter Pdf

Anxiety about the threat of atheism was rampant in the early modern period, yet fully documented examples of openly expressed irreligious opinion are surprisingly rare. England and Scotland saw only a handful of such cases before 1750, and this book offers a detailed analysis of three of them. Thomas Aikenhead was executed for his atheistic opinions at Edinburgh in 1697; Tinkler Ducket was convicted of atheism by the Vice-Chancellor's court at the University of Cambridge in 1739; whereas Archibald Pitcairne's overtly atheist tract, Pitcairneana, though evidently compiled very early in the eighteenth century, was first published only in 2016. Drawing on these, and on the better-known apostacy of Christopher Marlowe and the Earl of Rochester, Michael Hunter argues that such atheists showed real 'assurance' in publicly promoting their views. This contrasts with the private doubts of Christian believers, and this book demonstrates that the two phenomena are quite distinct, even though they have sometimes been wrongly conflated.

Atheism, Religion and Enlightenment in Pre-revolutionary Europe

Author : Mark Curran
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Page : 228 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2012
Category : History
ISBN : 9780861933167

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Atheism, Religion and Enlightenment in Pre-revolutionary Europe by Mark Curran Pdf

This book examines the reception of the works of the Baron d'Holbach throughout Francophone Europe. It insists that d'Holbach's historical importance has been understated, argues the case for the existence of a significant 'Christian Enlightenment', and much more.

Anti-Atheism in Early Modern England 1580-1720

Author : Kenneth Sheppard
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 347 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2015-06-02
Category : History
ISBN : 9789004288164

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Anti-Atheism in Early Modern England 1580-1720 by Kenneth Sheppard Pdf

Anti-Atheism in Early Modern England traces the emergence and transformation of a distinct apologetic discourse called the confutation of atheism.

Atheists and Atheism before the Enlightenment

Author : Michael Hunter
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 233 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2023-06-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9781009268776

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Atheists and Atheism before the Enlightenment by Michael Hunter Pdf

Presents detailed case-studies of the expression of atheistic opinion in early modern England and Scotland.

Battling the Gods

Author : Tim Whitmarsh
Publisher : Faber & Faber
Page : 213 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2016-02-02
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780571279326

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Battling the Gods by Tim Whitmarsh Pdf

How new is atheism? In Battling the Gods, Tim Whitmarsh journeys into the ancient Mediterranean to recover the stories of those who first refused the divinities. Long before the Enlightenment sowed the seeds of disbelief in a deeply Christian Europe, atheism was a matter of serious public debate in the Greek world. But history is written by those who prevail, and the Age of Faith mostly suppressed the lively free-thinking voices of antiquity. Tim Whitmarsh brings to life the fascinating ideas of Diagoras of Melos, perhaps the first self-professed atheist; Democritus, the first materialist; and Epicurus and his followers. He shows how the early Christians came to define themselves against atheism, and so suppress the philosophy of disbelief. Battling the Gods is the first book on the origins of the secular values at the heart of the modern state. Authoritative and bold, provocative and humane, it reveals how atheism and doubt, far from being modern phenomena, have intrigued the human imagination for thousands of years.

Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment

Author : Michael Cyril William Hunter,David Wootton
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 307 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 1992
Category : Atheism
ISBN : OCLC:252653574

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Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment by Michael Cyril William Hunter,David Wootton Pdf

The rise of atheism and unbelief is a key factor in the development of the modern world, yet it has been relatively little explored by historians. This book presents a series of studies of irreligious ideas in various parts of Europe during the two centuries following the Reformation.

Religious Tolerance from Renaissance to Enlightenment

Author : Eric MacPhail
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2019-11-22
Category : History
ISBN : 9781000767469

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Religious Tolerance from Renaissance to Enlightenment by Eric MacPhail Pdf

This new study examines the relationship of atheism to religious tolerance from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment in a broad array of literary texts and political and religious controversies written in Latin and the vernacular primarily in France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. The main authors featured are Desiderius Erasmus, Sebastian Castellio, Jean Bodin, Michel de Montaigne, Dirck Coornhert, Justus Lipsius, Gisbertus Voetius, the anonymous Theophrastus redivivus, and Pierre Bayle. These authors reflect and inform changing attitudes to religious tolerance inspired by a complete reconceptualization of atheism over the course of three centuries of literary and intellectual history. By integrating the history of tolerance in the history of atheism, Religious Tolerance from Renaissance to Enlightenment: Atheist’s Progress should prove stimulating to historians of philosophy as well as literary specialists and students of Reformation history.

Atheism: A Very Short Introduction

Author : Julian Baggini
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 145 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2021-08-26
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780192598851

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Atheism: A Very Short Introduction by Julian Baggini Pdf

Atheism is often considered to be a negative or pessimistic belief which is characterized by a rejection of values and purpose and a fierce opposition to religion. This Very Short Introduction sets out to dispel the myths that surround atheism, arguing that most western atheism is so-named only because it exists in a tradition in which theism is the norm. Julian Baggini instead asserts that atheists are typically naturalists, who believe that meaning and morality are possible in a finite, natural world. This second edition includes a new chapter covering the impact and legacy of 'New Atheism', a powerful new movement in atheism in the early twenty first century, driven by books from authors such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, and which is having a profound impact across the Western world. Baggini also considers whether East Asia has been historically atheist, and atheism in recent European history, before exploring the position of atheists around the world today. Throughout, the book presents an intellectual case for atheism that rests as much upon positive arguments for its truth as on negative arguments against religion. Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Bodies of Thought

Author : Ann Thomson
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2008-07-03
Category : History
ISBN : 9780191553080

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Bodies of Thought by Ann Thomson Pdf

Examining the development of a secular, purely material conception of human beings in the early Enlightenment, Bodies of Thought provides a fresh perspective on the intellectual culture of this period, and challenges certain influential interpretations of irreligious thought and the 'Radical Enlightenment'. Beginning with the debate on the soul in England, in which political and religious concerns were intertwined, and ending with the eruption of materialism onto the public stage in mid-eighteenth-century France, Ann Thomson looks at attempts to explain how the material brain thinks without the need for an immaterial and immortal soul. She shows how this current of thinking fed into the later eighteenth-century 'Natural History of Man', the earlier roots of which have been overlooked by many scholars. Although much attention has been paid to the atheistic French materialists, their link to the preceding period has been studied only partially, and the current interest in what is called the 'Radical Enlightenment' has served to obscure rather than enlighten this history. By bringing out the importance of both Protestant theological debates and medical thinking in England, and by following the different debates on the soul in Holland and France, this book shows that attempts to find a single coherent strand of radical irreligious thought running through the early Enlightenment, coming to fruition in the second half of the eighteenth century, ignore the multiple channels which composed Enlightenment thinking.

Seven Types of Atheism

Author : John Gray
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 176 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2018-04-26
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780241199428

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Seven Types of Atheism by John Gray Pdf

SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'A highly readable, fascinating book that jerks the debate on religion versus atheism right out of its crusted rut into the light of serious intellectual scrutiny' Observer A meditation on the importance of atheism in the modern world - and its inadequacies and contradictions - by one of Britain's leading philosophers 'When you explore older atheisms, you will find some of your firmest convictions - secular or religious - are highly questionable. If this prospect disturbs you, what you are looking for may be freedom from thought.' For a generation now, public debate has been corroded by a shrill, narrow derision of religion in the name of an often very vaguely understood 'science'. John Gray's stimulating and extremely enjoyable new book describes the rich, complex world of the atheist tradition, a tradition which he sees as in many ways as rich as that of religion itself, as well as being deeply intertwined with what is so often crudely viewed as its 'opposite'. The result is a book that sheds an extraordinary and varied light on what it is to be human and on the thinkers who have, at different times and places, battled to understand this issue.

Imagine There's No Heaven

Author : Mitchell Stephens
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2014-02-25
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781137437655

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Imagine There's No Heaven by Mitchell Stephens Pdf

The historical achievements of religious belief have been large and well chronicled. But what about the accomplishments of those who have challenged religion? Traveling from classical Greece to twenty-first century America, Imagine There's No Heaven explores the role of disbelief in shaping Western civilization. At each juncture common themes emerge: by questioning the role of gods in the heavens or the role of a God in creating man on earth, nonbelievers help move science forward. By challenging the divine right of monarchs and the strictures of holy books, nonbelievers, including Jean- Jacques Rousseau and Denis Diderot, help expand human liberties, and influence the early founding of the United States. Revolutions in science, in politics, in philosophy, in art, and in psychology have been led, on multiple occasions, by those who are free of the constraints of religious life. Mitchell Stephens tells the often-courageous tales of history's most important atheists— like Denis Diderot and Salman Rushdie. Stephens makes a strong and original case for their importance not only to today's New Atheist movement but to the way many of us—believers and nonbelievers—now think and live.

The Roots of Enlightenment

Author : Shoaib Rahman
Publisher : Fadew, Inc.
Page : 98 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2022-03-10
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9798430111953

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The Roots of Enlightenment by Shoaib Rahman Pdf

"The Empire of Reason," the distinguished American historian Henry Steele Commager calls the Enlightenment. The French called it the "L'Age des Lumieres," meaning the age of "Light"- understanding, discovery, and insight - a period of legendary thinkers. The period might very well be entitled the Age of Research because people "re-searched" the great questions about the nature of the human-animal, society, and cosmos. Another name might be "The Age of Titans." The works of such representatives of the Enlightenment as Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Madison, Diderot, d'Alembert, d'Holbach, Condorct, Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Condillac, Turgot, David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, George Berkeley, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, Johann von Herder, and Gottfried Leibniz recall the gift of the last of the Titans, Prometheus the Firebringer. It is from this Enlightened crucible that Atheism would emerge as a modern system of thought. The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement that swept through the West in the eighteenth century, accelerating by 1750 and cresting in Europe at the time of the French Revolution and somewhat later for the United States. The Enlightenment was strong in England, Holland, Scotland, the United States, and especially in France where it was more organized than elsewhere. The Enlightenment was a loose association of Atheists, deists, and liberal clerics; it was not a school or group which required a person to accept certain tenets. This book briefly discusses the French philosophes, the intellectual leaders of the Enlightenment of seventeenth and eighteenth-century Europe.

The New Atheist Denial of History

Author : B. Painter
Publisher : Springer
Page : 194 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2014-11-19
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781137477699

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The New Atheist Denial of History by B. Painter Pdf

This compact, forcefully argued work calls Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, and the rest of the so-called 'New Atheists' to account for failing to take seriously the historical record to which they so freely appeal when attacking religion. The popularity of such books as Harris's The End of Faith, Dawkins's The God Delusion, and Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great set off a spate of reviews, articles, and books for and against, yet in all the controversy little attention has focused on the historical evidence and arguments they present to buttress their case. This book is the first to challenge in depth the distortions of this New Atheist history. It presents the evidence that the three authors and their allies ignore. It points out the lack of historical credibility in their work when judged by the conventional criteria used by mainstream historians. It does not deal with the debate over theism and atheism nor does it aim to defend the historical record of Christianity or religion more generally. It does aim to defend the integrity of history as a discipline in the face of its distortion by those who violate it.

Atheists

Author : Nick Spencer
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 331 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2014-05-08
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781472902986

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Atheists by Nick Spencer Pdf

The clash between atheism and religion has become the defining battle of the 21st century. Books on and about atheism retain high profile and popularity, and atheist movements on both sides of the Atlantic capture headlines with high-profile campaigns and adverts. However, very little has been written on the history of atheism, and this book fills that conspicuous gap. Instead of treating atheism just as a philosophical or scientific idea about the non-existence of God, Atheists: The Origin of the Species places the movement in its proper social and political context. Because atheism in Europe developed in reaction to the Christianity that dominated the continent's intellectual, social and political life, it adopted, adapted and reacted against its institutions as well as its ideas. Accordingly, the history of atheism is as much about social and political movements as it is scientific or philosophical ideas. This is the story not only of Hobbes, Hume, and Darwin, but also of Thomas Aitkenhead hung for blasphemous atheism, Percy Shelley expelled for adolescent atheism, and the Marquis de Sade imprisoned for libertine atheism; of the French revolutionary Terror and the Soviet League of the Militant Godless; of the rise of the US Religious Right and of Islamic terrorism. Looking at atheism in its full sociopolitical context helps explain why it has looked so very different in different countries. It also explains why there has been a recent upsurge in atheism, particularly in Britain and the US, where religion has unexpectedly come to play such a significant role in political affairs. This leads us to a somewhat paradoxical conclusion: we should expect to hear more about atheism in the future for the simple reason that God is back.

Atheism Revisited

Author : Szymon Wróbel,Krzysztof Skonieczny
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2020-01-14
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9783030343682

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Atheism Revisited by Szymon Wróbel,Krzysztof Skonieczny Pdf

Atheism Revisited is a collection of essays that explore the multifaceted nature of atheism. Starting from the notion that today’s atheism is shaped by the defining processes of Modernity—such as secularization and the breakup of science, philosophy, and theology—the first part of the book undertakes a thorough scrutiny of Modern atheisms, from Spinoza and Hobbes to Marx and Nietzsche. The second part of the book seeks to draw practical conclusions from this scrutiny and answer the questions: what is the state of atheism today? What is the role of an atheist in a world affected by religious fundamentalisms? What should the relationship between atheists and religious people look like? The wide scope of the book allows readers to see atheism as a central concern of many intellectual movements, from Marxism and French Theory to post-secularism and the reevaluation of Modernity, and to understand atheism as a focal point of the most important contemporary philosophical debates.