What Is Atheism, Secularism, Humanism
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Christianity Unveiled; Being an Examination of the Principles and Effects of the Christian Religion
Christianity Unveiled; Being An Examination Of The Principles And Effects Of The Christian Religion by Paul Henri d’Holbach - 1761 [1819 translation by W. M. Johnson] CONTENTS. A LETTER from the Author to a Friend. CHAPTER I. - Of the necessity of an Inquiry respecting Religion, and the Obstacles which are met in pursuing this Inquiry. CHAPTER II. - Sketch of the History of the Jews. CHAPTER III. - Sketch of the History of the Christian Religion. CHAPTER IV. - Of the Christian Mythology, or the Ideas of God and his Conduct, given us by the Christian Religion. CHAPTER V. - Of Revelation. CHAPTER VI. - Of the Proofs of the Christian Religion, Miracles, Prophecies, and Martyrs. CHAPTER VII. - Of the Mysteries of the Christian Religion. CHAPTER VIII. - Mysteries and Dogmas of Christianity. CHAPTER IX. - Of the Rites and Ceremonies or Theurgy of the Christians. CHAPTER X. - Of the inspired Writings of the Christians. CHAPTER XI. - Of Christian Morality. CHAPTER XII. - Of the Christian Virtues. CHAPTER XIII. - Of the Practice and Duties of the Christian Religion. CHAPTER XIV. - Of the Political Effects of the Christian Religion. CHAPTER XV. - Of the Christian Church or Priesthood. CHAPTER XVI. - Conclusions. A LETTER FROM THE AUTHOR TO A FRIEND I RECEIVE, Sir, with gratitude, the remarks which you send me upon my work. If I am sensible to the praises you condescend to give it, I am too fond of truth to be displeased with the frankness with which you propose your objections. I find them sufficiently weighty to merit all my attention. He but ill deserves the title of philosopher, who has not the courage to hear his opinions contradicted. -
The Enlightenment, Special Ediction October 2010
The Enlightenment The Newsletter of the Humanist Association of London and Area An Affiliate of Humanist Canada (HC) Volume 6 Number 8 Special Issue Two Contrasting Legacies of the Axial Age Grecian Philosophical Rationalism & Monotheistic Christianity From about 900 to 200 BCE (Before the Common Era) in different regions of the world, four great traditions came into being that have continued to influence humanity to this day. They were Confucianism and Taoism in China; Hinduism and Buddhism in India; monotheistic Judaism in Israel (followed by its offshoot Christianity); and philosophical rationalism in Greece. This was the period of Confucius, Buddha, Jeremiah and Socrates. During this era, which came to be known as The Axial Age, spiritual and philosophical geniuses pioneered intense creativity and generated new kinds of human experiences unlike anything that had occurred up until that time. This special issue of The Enlightenment will explore the outcomes of two of these historical entities, the glory that was Greece and the monotheistic Judaism in Israel that led to the invention of Christianity and the founding of the early Roman Catholic Church. In the centuries leading up to the beginning of the Common Era (CE) great things were happening in Greece. This was the civilization that spawned philosophy, democracy, and humanism, among other things, in a polytheistic society that honoured many gods and goddesses. At the same time, not far away in Palestine, the Jews were worshiping only one God called Yahweh. In the first century CE, one of these Jews who went by the name of Jesus, organized a band of twelve disciples and began preaching a reformed gospel that irritated the leaders in the Jerusalem Temple, and possibly the Roman civic authorities as well. -
Article Constitutional Bad Faith
VOLUME 129 FEBRUARY 2016 NUMBER 4 © 2016 by The Harvard Law Review Association ARTICLE CONSTITUTIONAL BAD FAITH David E. Pozen CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................ 886 I. BAD FAITH BASICS ............................................................................................................... 890 II. JUDICIAL TOLERATION OF CONSTITUTIONAL BAD FAITH ..................................... 896 A. Doctrinal Responses ......................................................................................................... 897 1. Explicit Enforcement Zones ....................................................................................... 898 2. Implicit Enforcement Zones ....................................................................................... 902 3. Nonenforcement Zones ................................................................................................ 905 B. Explanations ...................................................................................................................... 909 III. VARIETIES OF CONSTITUTIONAL BAD FAITH ............................................................. 918 A. Subjective Bad Faith ....................................................................................................... 920 1. Dishonesty .................................................................................................................... 920 2. Disloyalty ..................................................................................................................... -
A Short Course on Humanism
A Short Course On Humanism © The British Humanist Association (BHA) CONTENTS About this course .......................................................................................................... 5 Introduction – What is Humanism? ............................................................................. 7 The course: 1. A good life without religion .................................................................................... 11 2. Making sense of the world ................................................................................... 15 3. Where do moral values come from? ........................................................................ 19 4. Applying humanist ethics ....................................................................................... 25 5. Humanism: its history and humanist organisations today ....................................... 35 6. Are you a humanist? ............................................................................................... 43 Further reading ........................................................................................................... 49 33588_Humanism60pp_MH.indd 1 03/05/2013 13:08 33588_Humanism60pp_MH.indd 2 03/05/2013 13:08 About this course This short course is intended as an introduction for adults who would like to find out more about Humanism, but especially for those who already consider themselves, or think they might be, humanists. Each section contains a concise account of humanist The unexamined life thinking and a section of questions -
A Contextual Examination of Three Historical Stages of Atheism and the Legality of an American Freedom from Religion
ABSTRACT Rejecting the Definitive: A Contextual Examination of Three Historical Stages of Atheism and the Legality of an American Freedom from Religion Ethan Gjerset Quillen, B.A., M.A., M.A. Mentor: T. Michael Parrish, Ph.D. The trouble with “definitions” is they leave no room for evolution. When a word is concretely defined, it is done so in a particular time and place. Contextual interpretations permit a better understanding of certain heavy words; Atheism as a prime example. In the post-modern world Atheism has become more accepted and popular, especially as a reaction to global terrorism. However, the current definition of Atheism is terribly inaccurate. It cannot be stated properly that pagan Atheism is the same as New Atheism. By interpreting the Atheisms from four stages in the term‟s history a clearer picture of its meaning will come out, hopefully alleviating the stereotypical biases weighed upon it. In the interpretation of the Atheisms from Pagan Antiquity, the Enlightenment, the New Atheist Movement, and the American Judicial and Civil Religious system, a defense of the theory of elastic contextual interpretations, rather than concrete definitions, shall be made. Rejecting the Definitive: A Contextual Examination of Three Historical Stages of Atheism and the Legality of an American Freedom from Religion by Ethan Gjerset Quillen, B.A., M.A. A Thesis Approved by the J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies ___________________________________ Robyn L. Driskell, Ph.D., Interim Chairperson Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Baylor University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Approved by the Thesis Committee ___________________________________ T. -
Chapter Three Point Five
Religious Neutrality Chapter Three Draft: Feb. 14, 2011 Please do not cite or quote Chapter Three The American Specification of Neutrality Secularism in the United States has never been a secularism of governmental religion-blindness.1 Rather, it is secularism of a religion-friendly kind, which aims at broad, nondenominational support for religion while remaining neutral among religious factions. Neutrality’s fluidity means that it can vary in both its conceptual scope and its field of application. Religious neutrality, for example, could mean neutrality among varieties of Protestantism, or varieties of Christianity, or varieties of monotheism, or something even broader and vaguer. Whatever conceptual scope is attributed to it, the obligation of neutrality could be held to apply only to judges, or to both judges and legislators, or to citizens when voting. In this chapter, I will examine the specific variety of neutrality that has been followed in American law. It has never stopped treating religion as a distinctive human good. That neutrality, however, has shifted over time, becoming vaguer and more inclusive. Modes of secularism Which specification of neutrality we actually adopt will depend on our substantive reasons for adopting neutrality in the first place. Bruce Ackerman (who capitalizes “Neutrality” because it is the master concept of his political theory) observes that “it would be a category mistake to imagine that there could be a Neutral justification for the practice of Neutral justification – for Neutrality makes no sense except as a part of the practice it constitutes.”2 It is not possible to be blind to an issue with respect to which one has resolved to remain neutral. -
The Sources of Islamic Revolutionary Conduct
Joint Military Intelligence College LAMBERT Y Y The Sources of Islamic Revolutionary Conduct TEL IN LIG Y E R N A C T E I L C I O M L L T E N G I E O J 1962 Major Stephen P. Lambert U.S. Air Force TEL IN LIG Y E R N A C ISBN 1-932946-02-0 T E PCN 56747 I L C I O M L L T E N G I E O J 1962 The Joint Military Intelligence College supports and encourages research on intelligence issues that distills lessons and improves Intelligence Community capabilities for policy-level and operational consumers Y: The Sources of Islamic Revolutionary Conduct, Major Stephen P. Lambert, U.S. Air Force This product has been reviewed by senior experts from academia and government, and has been approved for unrestricted distribution by the Directorate for Freedom of Information and Security Review, Washington Headquarters Services. It is available to the public through the National Technical Information Service (www.ntis.gov). The author has also arranged for publication of this study through the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. The projected publication date is 2005. The Hoover Institution book includes commentar- ies on Major Lambert’s work by an even greater variety of scholars than included in the present book. [email protected], Editor and Director Center for Strategic Intelligence Research Library of Congress Control Number 2004114330 ISBN 1-932946-02-0 Y The Sources of Islamic Revolutionary Conduct Major Stephen P. Lambert, U.S. Air Force Research Fellow In g ic t e e g ll t ii a g e r n tt c SS c ee rr R R o o e e f f s s e e r r a a e e t r t r n c n Joint Military c e h e h C Intelligence College C WASHINGTON, DC April 2005 With the cooperation and support of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) USAF Academy, Colorado Springs The views expressed in this book are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense or the U.S. -
Ludwig Feuerbach and the Formation of the Marxian Revolutionary Idea Charles N
Document generated on 09/25/2021 10:59 p.m. Laval théologique et philosophique Ludwig Feuerbach and the Formation of the Marxian Revolutionary Idea Charles N. R. McCoy Volume 7, Number 2, 1951 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1019857ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1019857ar See table of contents Publisher(s) Laval théologique et philosophique, Université Laval ISSN 0023-9054 (print) 1703-8804 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this article McCoy, C. N. R. (1951). Ludwig Feuerbach and the Formation of the Marxian Revolutionary Idea. Laval théologique et philosophique, 7(2), 218–248. https://doi.org/10.7202/1019857ar Tous droits réservés © Laval théologique et philosophique, Université Laval, This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit 1951 (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ Ludwig Feuerbach and the Formation of the Marxian Revolutionary Idea I. INTRODUCTION It is a most curious coincidence and one of profound interest that both the chroniclers of western democratic ideas and the father of Communism agree in seeing in the seventeenth century revival of Stoic ideas and of those of the other post-Aristotelian schools a great step in the direction of human freedom. The point of agreement seems to lie in this : that Aristotle’s division of the reason into speculative and practical had left the speculative or theoretical reason bound to an order of things which it cannot change or affect : the whole order of nature, for example, including the natural bases of society. -
Burns* (Skidmore College)
Klesis – Revue philosophique – 2011 : 19 – Autour de Leo Strauss Leo Strauss’s Life and Work Timothy Burns* (Skidmore College) I. Life Leo Strauss (1899-1973) was a German-born American political philosopher of Jewish heritage who revived the study of political philosophy in the 20 th century. His complex philosophical reflections exercise a quietly growing, deep influence in America, Europe, and Asia. Strauss was born in the rural town of Kirchhain in Hesse-Nassau, Prussia, on September 20, 1899, to Hugo and Jenny David Strauss. He attended Kirchhain’s Volksschule and the Rektoratsschule before enrolling, in 1912, at the Gymnasium Philippinum in Marburg, graduating in 1917. The adolescent Strauss was immersed in Hermann Cohen’s neo-Kantianism, the most progressive German-Jewish thinking. “Cohen,” Strauss states, “was the center of attraction for philosophically minded Jews who were devoted to Judaism.” After serving in the German army for a year and a half, Strauss began attending the University at Marburg, where he met Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jacob Klein. In 1921 he went to Hamburg, where he wrote his doctoral thesis under Ernst Cassirer. In 1922, Strauss went to the University of Freiburg-im-Breisgau for a post- doctoral year, in order to see and hear Edmund Husserl, but he also attended lecture courses given by Martin Heidegger. He participated in Franz Rosenzweig’s Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus in Frankfurt-am-Main, and published articles in Der Jude and the Jüdische Rundschau . One of these articles, on Cohen’s analysis of Spinoza, brought Strauss to the attention of Julius Guttmann, who in 1925 offered him a position researching Jewish Philosophy at the Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin. -
Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil.Pdf
Leo Strauss Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil A course offered in 1971–1972 St. John’s College, Annapolis, Maryland Edited and with an introduction by Mark Blitz With the assistance of Jay Michael Hoffpauir and Gayle McKeen With the generous support of Douglas Mayer Mark Blitz is Fletcher Jones Professor of Political Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College. He is author of several books on political philosophy, including Heidegger’s Being and Time and the Possibility of Political Philosophy (Cornell University Press, 1981) and Plato’s Political Philosophy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), and many articles, including “Nietzsche and Political Science: The Problem of Politics,” “Heidegger’s Nietzsche (Part I),” “Heidegger’s Nietzsche (Part II),” “Strauss’s Laws, Government Practice and the School of Strauss,” and “Leo Strauss’s Understanding of Modernity.” © 1976 Estate of Leo Strauss © 2014 Estate of Leo Strauss. All Rights Reserved Table of Contents Editor’s Introduction i–viii Note on the Leo Strauss Transcript Project ix–xi Editorial Headnote xi–xii Session 1: Introduction (Use and Abuse of History; Zarathustra) 1–19 Session 2: Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorisms 1–9 20–39 Session 3: BGE, Aphorisms 10–16 40–56 Session 4: BGE, Aphorisms 17–23 57–75 Session 5: BGE, Aphorisms 24–30 76–94 Session 6: BGE, Aphorisms 31–35 95–114 Session 7: BGE, Aphorisms 36–40 115–134 Session 8: BGE, Aphorisms 41–50 135–152 Session 9: BGE, Aphorisms 51–55 153–164 Session 10: BGE, Aphorisms 56–76 (and selections) 165–185 Session 11: BGE, Aphorisms 186–190 186–192 Session 12: BGE, Aphorisms 204–213 193–209 Session 13 (unrecorded) 210 Session 14: BGE, Aphorism 230; Zarathustra 211–222 Nietzsche, 1971–72 i Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil Mark Blitz Leo Strauss offered this seminar on Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil at St John’s College in Annapolis Maryland. -
1 Remembering Marx's Secularism* Scholars Engaged in the Critique Of
Remembering Marx’s Secularism* Scholars engaged in the critique of secularism have struggled with the numerous meanings of the secular and its cognates, such as secularism, secularization, and secularity. Seeking coherence in the secular’s semantic excess, they have often elided distinctions between these meanings or sought a more basic concept of the secular that can contain all of its senses (Asad 2003; Taylor 2007; see Weir 2015). Numerous scholars have observed strong similarities between secularism and Protestantism (Fessenden 2007; Modern 2011; Yelle 2013; see McCrary and Wheatley 2017), at times echoing a Christian theological tradition that has long been anti-secular (Taylor 2007; Gregory 2012; see Reynolds 2016). Unlike this anti-secular tradition, the strongest version of the critique of secularism is a critique of the conditions that produce a distinction between secular and religious and a critique of the ways that empire benefits from this distinction. Overcoming a tidy separation between secularism and religion requires fracturing both and reassembling them in new ways that allow messy life to exceed governance (Hurd 2015, 122- 27). Remembering Karl Marx’s secularism provides an opportunity to recover the differences within secularism and its difference from Christianity, but also its odd similarities with religion. This recovery can help refine the critique of secularism and preserve some important tools for improving material conditions. * Joseph Blankholm, Department of Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA. E-mail: [email protected]. I owe thanks to several PhD students at the University of California, Santa Barbara for their valuable insights and feedback, including Matthew Harris, as well as the students in my seminar on materialism: Timothy Snediker, Lucas McCracken, Courtney Applewhite, and Damian Lanahan-Kalish. -
U Ottawa L'universite Canadienne Canada's University FACULTE DES ETUDES SUPERIEURES 1^=1 FACULTY of GRADUATE and ET POSTOCTORALES U Ottawa POSDOCTORAL STUDIES
nm u Ottawa L'Universite canadienne Canada's university FACULTE DES ETUDES SUPERIEURES 1^=1 FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND ET POSTOCTORALES U Ottawa POSDOCTORAL STUDIES L'Universitc canadienne Canada's university Steven Tomlins M.A. (Religious Studies) _._„„__„„„._ Department of Religious Studies In Science we Trust: Dissecting the Chimera of New Atheism TITRE DE LA THESE / TITLE OF THESIS Lori Beaman Peter Beyer Anne Vallely Gary W. Slater Le Doyen de la Faculte des etudes superieures et postdoctorales / Dean of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies IN SCIENCE WE TRUST: DISSECTING THE CHIMERA OF NEW ATHEISM Steven Tomlins Student Number: 5345726 Degree sought: Master of Arts, Religious Studies University of Ottawa Thesis Director: Lori G. Beaman © Steven Tomlins, Ottawa, Canada, 2010 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-73876-4 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-73876-4 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Nnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciaies ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats.