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Atheists in American Politics by Richard J. Meagher Pdf
In this book, one of the first to take atheism seriously as a social movement, Richard J. Meagher examines the political history of American atheism and freethought. Meagher demonstrates how changes in resources, opportunities, and movement identity help explain the political mobilization of atheists in America.
The Politics of New Atheism by Stuart McAnulla,Steven Kettell,Marcus Schulzke Pdf
New atheism is best known as a literary and media phenomenon which has resulted in the widespread discussion of the anti-religious arguments of authors such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, yet it also has strongly political dimensions. This book analyses the political aspects of new atheism and offers an analysis that is informed by insights from political science and political theory. The authors locate new atheism within a diverse history of politically-oriented atheisms. It is argued the new atheist movement itself contains a considerable variety of political viewpoints, despite coalescing around forms of secularist campaigning and identity politics. New atheist views on monotheism, public life, morality and religious violence are examined to highlight both limitations and strengths in such perspectives. Conservative, feminist and Marxist responses to new atheism are also evaluated within this critical analysis. The book rejects claims that new atheism is itself a form of fundamentalism and argues that the issues it grapples with often reflect wider dilemmas in liberal-left thought which have ongoing relevance in the era of Trump and Brexit. It will be of great interest to researchers and scholars in the fields of new atheism, political atheism, secularism, non-religion, and secular-religious tensions.
Atheists in American Politics by Richard J. Meagher Pdf
In this book, one of the first to take atheism seriously as a social movement, Richard J. Meagher examines the political history of American atheism and freethought. Meagher demonstrates how changes in resources, opportunities, and movement identity help explain the political mobilization of atheists in America.
Author : Isaac Kramnick,R. Laurence Moore Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company Page : 240 pages File Size : 55,7 Mb Release : 2018-08-21 Category : Political Science ISBN : 9780393254976
Godless Citizens in a Godly Republic: Atheists in American Public Life by Isaac Kramnick,R. Laurence Moore Pdf
If the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects religious liberty, why doesn’t it protect atheists? God occupies our nation’s consciousness, even defining to many what it means to be American. Nonbelievers have often had second-class legal status and have had to fight for their rights as citizens. As R. Laurence Moore and Isaac Kramnick demonstrate in their sharp and convincing work, avowed atheists were derided since the founding of the nation. Even Thomas Paine fell into disfavor and his role as a patriot forgotten. Popular Republican Robert Ingersoll could not be elected in the nineteenth century due to his atheism, and the suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton was shunned when she questioned biblical precepts about women’s roles. Moore and Kramnick lay out this fascinating history and the legal cases that have questioned religious supremacy. It took until 1961 for the Supreme Court to ban religious tests for state officials, despite Article 6 of the Constitution. Still, every one of the fifty states continues to have God in its constitution. The authors discuss these cases and more current ones, such as Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., which address whether personal religious beliefs supersede secular ones. In Godless Citizens in a Godly Republic, the authors also explore the dramatic rise of an "atheist awakening" and the role of organizations intent on holding the country to the secular principles it was founded upon.
Atheists Can't Be Republicans - If Facts and Evidence Matter by Cj Werleman Pdf
Widely known for his hard hitting, no punches held journalism and criticism of religious belief, Werleman comes out with the gloves off, but this time he takes aim at atheist Republicans. Atheists Can't Be Republicans exposes the insane economic and social policies of today's Republican Party. Policies that have been proven abjectly false and dangerous, in much the same way religious belief is false and dangerous. Werleman contends that atheists who cling onto modern U.S. conservative ideology are hanging onto ideas that have either been proven mythical at worst or remain unproven at best. If atheists applied the same litmus test to their political ideology as they do to theology, then clearly an atheist cannot be a Republican.
A compelling history of atheism in American public life A much-maligned minority throughout American history, atheists have been cast as a threat to the nation’s moral fabric, barred from holding public office, and branded as irreligious misfits in a nation chosen by God. Yet village atheists—as these godless freethinkers came to be known by the close of the nineteenth century—were also hailed for their gutsy dissent from stultifying pieties and for posing a necessary secularist challenge to the entanglements of church and state. In Village Atheists, Leigh Eric Schmidt explores the complex cultural terrain that unbelievers have long had to navigate in their fight to secure equal rights and liberties in American public life. He rebuilds the history of American secularism from the ground up, giving flesh and blood to these outspoken infidels. Village Atheists demonstrates that the secularist vision for the United States proved to be anything but triumphant in a country where faith and citizenship were—and still are—closely interwoven.
Political Religion and Religious Politics by David S. Gutterman,Andrew R. Murphy Pdf
Profound demographic and cultural changes in American society over the last half century have unsettled conventional understandings of the relationship between religious and political identity. The "Protestant mainline" continues to shrink in numbers, as well as in cultural and political influence. The growing population of American Muslims seek both acceptance and a firmer footing within the nation’s cultural and political imagination. Debates over contraception, same-sex relationships, and "prosperity" preaching continue to roil the waters of American cultural politics. Perhaps most remarkably, the fastest-rising religious demographic in most public opinion surveys is "none," giving rise to a new demographic that Gutterman and Murphy name "Religious Independents." Even the evangelical movement, which powerfully re-entered American politics during the 1970s and 1980s and retains a strong foothold in the Republican Party, has undergone generational turnover and no longer represents a monolithic political bloc. Political Religion and Religious Politics:Navigating Identities in the United States explores the multifaceted implications of these developments by examining a series of contentious issues in contemporary American politics. Gutterman and Murphy take up the controversy over the "Ground Zero Mosque," the political and legal battles over the contraception mandate in the Affordable Health Care Act and the ensuing Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision, the national response to the Great Recession and the rise in economic inequality, and battles over the public school curricula, seizing on these divisive challenges as opportunities to illuminate the changing role of religion in American public life. Placing the current moment into historical perspective, and reflecting on the possible future of religion, politics, and cultural conflict in the United States, Gutterman and Murphy explore the cultural and political dynamics of evolving notions of national and religious identity. They argue that questions of religion are questions of identity -- personal, social, and political identity -- and that they function in many of the same ways as race, sex, gender, and ethnicity in the construction of personal meaning, the fostering of solidarity with others, and the conflict they can occasion in the political arena.
African American Atheists and Political Liberation by Michael Lackey Pdf
This study of atheist African American writers poses a substantive challenge to those who see atheism in despairing and nihilistic terms. Lackey argues that while most white atheists mourn the loss of faith, many black atheists--believing the "God-concept" spawns racism and oppression--consider the death of God a cause for personal and political hope. Focusing on a little-discussed aspect of African American literature, this full-length analysis of African American atheists' treatment of God fills a huge gap in studies that consistently ignore their contributions. Examining how a belief in God and His "chosen people" necessitates a politics of superiority and inferiority, Lackey implicitly considers the degree to which religious faith is responsible for justifying oppression, even acts of physical and psychological violence. In their secular vision of social and political justice, black atheists argue that only when the culture adopts and internalizes a truly atheist politics--one based on pluralism, tolerance, and freedom--will radical democracy be achieved. Of primary interest to scholars of African American studies, this volume also will appeal to religious scholars, philosophers, anthropologists, freethinkers, and religious and secular humanists. A recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, Michael Lackey is an associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
Author : Robert D. Putnam,David E. Campbell Publisher : Simon and Schuster Page : 720 pages File Size : 54,8 Mb Release : 2012-02-21 Category : Political Science ISBN : 9781416566731
American Grace by Robert D. Putnam,David E. Campbell Pdf
Draws on three national surveys on religion, as well as research conducted by congregations across the United States, to examine the profound impact it has had on American life and how religious attitudes have changed in recent decades.
Most atheists don’t know that there’s never been an atheist president, that no members of Congress are atheists, and that in seven states it’s illegal for atheists to run for office. Atheists are convinced that atheism is intellectual when it’s the exact opposite. There is nothing more foolish than believing the scientific impossibility that nothing created everything. Ray addresses this fact, at the same time showing that there is credible scientific evidence for God, and exposing what atheists are doing to the once great country. This is a book that you can give to your partying and boozy neighbor, your likeable but unsaved Uncle Fred, or the Christian mom who is grieved that her beloved church-going son has turned atheist. America is having a revival of atheism, and is being swallowed by moral darkness. This book is a small but powerful light. Written to help reach atheists because of the horrid reality of HellContains a clear gospel presentation to help Christians share the power of God’s graceHere is the book to give away to those who are wandering into the darkness of atheism.
The Friendly Atheist: Thoughts on the Role of Religion in Politics and Media by Hemant Mehta Pdf
Every semester, in the weeks leading up to final exams, I hand out a study guide to all of my high school math students and have them complete it so that they have a sense of what to expect on the big test. Inevitably, students ask: "If I just study this packet, will I be prepared for the exam?" I sigh. I stare at them. I give them the response every teacher knows by heart: No, of course the packet isn't enough. You should go through your notes, your homework, and the textbook. You should redo the examples we did in class and try more practice problems from the book. The study guide is only a summary of the big ideas from the semester. If you really want to understand the subject, you have to go much more in depth. In a sense, this book is a study guide for the things I've written about over the past several years. My name is Hemant Mehta, and I began FriendlyAtheist.com in 2006 (before I began teaching high school) in order to talk about a topic I was incredibly passionate about—religion. Not necessarily to convince people that God didn't exist, but to talk about the issues that mattered now that we were Godless. What you see in this book is a compilation of posts discussing the subjects I have written the most about. They are reprinted here, with minimal editing, to offer a glimpse into my world and to show you the concerns I've had as an American atheist. That means talking about atheists who fight for their (and, in many respects, our) rights, responding to people who smear us just because we're not religious, and making people aware of the way atheists are viewed by the majority of Americans (hint: we're not very popular). That means talking about politics and social issues (in particular: the fight for equal rights for the LGBT community), since those are the major issues in our country where rational thinking, free from religious tradition, is needed but seldom found. That means talking about the obstacles that young atheists have to deal with on a regular basis. Their challenges are so different than the ones we face in the "real world," yet their courage inspires all of us. To be a vocal atheist is never easy, and there are students promoting rational thinking on campus while keeping their administrators in check. They do this despite risking their social capital. At the same time, when those students are not around to act as watchdogs, we must do it for them and shine a spotlight on illegal intrusions of religion into our public schools. Are these the only issues that matter to atheists? No, but they are the issues that have taken up the bulk of my writing in the years since I began covering atheism-related news. If you want to get a fuller picture of what atheists are talking about, what our activism involves, and what our future looks like, no single writer can do that for you, just as no single study guide will prepare you for a final exam.
The concept of evolution is widely considered to be a foundational building block in atheist thought. Leaders of the New Atheist movement have taken Darwin's work and used it to diminish the authority of religious institutions and belief systems. But they have also embraced it as a metaphor for the gradual replacement of religious faith with secular reason. They have posed as harbingers of human progress, claiming the moral high ground, and rejecting with intolerance any message that challenges the hegemony of science and reason. Religion, according to the New Atheists, should be relegated to the Dark Ages of superstition and senseless violence. Yet Darwin did not see evolution as a linear progression to an improved state of being. The more antagonistic members of the New Atheist movement who embrace this idea are not only employing bad history, but also the kind of rigid, black-and-white thinking they excoriate in their religious opponents. Indeed, Stephen LeDrew argues, militant atheists have more in common with religious fundamentalists than they would care to admit, advancing what LeDrew calls secular fundamentalism. In reaction to fundamentalist Christianity and Islamism, this strain of atheism has become an offshoot of the religion it tries so hard to malign. The Evolution of Atheism outlines the essential political tension at the heart of the atheist movement. The New Atheism, LeDrew shows, is part of a tradition of atheist thought and activism that promotes individualism and scientific authority, which puts it at odds with atheist groups that are motivated by humanistic ethics and social justice. LeDrew draws on public relations campaigns, publications, podcasts, and in-depth interviews to explore the belief systems, internal logics, and self-contradictions of the people who consider themselves to be atheists. He argues that evolving understandings of what atheism means, and how it should be put into action, are threatening to irrevocably fragment the movement.
There is No God by David Williamson,George A. Yancey Pdf
There Is No God: Atheists in America answers several questions pertaining to how the atheist population has grown from relatively small numbers to have a disproportionately large impact on important issues of our day, such as the separation of church and state, abortion, gay marriage, and public school curricula. Williamson and Yancey answer the common questions surrounding atheism. Just how common is the dismissal and derision of religion expressed by atheists? How are we to understand the world view of atheists and their motivations in political action and public discourse? Finally, is there any hope for rapprochement in the relationship of atheism and theism? In There Is No God, the authors begin with a brief history of atheism to set the stage for a better understanding of contemporary American atheism. They then explore how the relationship between religious and atheistic ideologies has evolved as each attempted to discredit the other in different ways at different times and under very different social and political circumstances. Although atheists are a relatively small minority, atheists appear to be growing in number and in their willingness to be identified as atheists and to voice their non-belief. As those voices of atheism increase it is essential that we understand how and why those who are defined by such a simple term as "non-believers in the existence of God" should have such social and political influence. The authors successfully answer the broader question of the apparent polarization of the religious and non-religious dimensions of American society.
Atheism: A Very Short Introduction by Julian Baggini Pdf
Do you think of atheists as immoral pessimists who live their lives without meaning, purpose, or values? Think again! Atheism: A Very Short Introduction sets out to dispel the myths that surround atheism and show how a life without religious belief can be positive, meaningful, and moral.
