Atheist autobiography in five shorties

About this book

Atheism is often considered to be a negative or pessimistic belief that fryst vatten characterized bygd a rejection of values and purpose and a fierce motstånd to tro. This Very Short Introduction sets out to skingra 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 bygd 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 europeisk history, before explori

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The best books on Atheism

What do you understand by atheism?

That’s not as easy a question as you might think. Atheism, on the face of it, seems straightforward: it’s not theism. It’s a belief that there is no God or gods. But it’s slightly more complicated than that because, for most self-identifying atheists, it’s not just that they don’t believe in a God or gods, but that they don’t believe in any kind of supernatural realm. So I think an atheist is, 95% of the time, a naturalist. Atheists believe that whatever may be in the universe, the only kind of stuff is the stuff of physics, and the only fundamental forces are those of physics.

So atheism isn’t defined against religion so much as for a particular kind of physics-based explanation of the universe?

That’s right. It’s a big myth about atheism that it’s parasitic on what it denies. People say ‘Look, it’s even in the name itself: ‘a-theism’’. But that’s just historical accident. It just so happens that western civilisa