Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient WorldKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 10. nóv. 2015 - 304 síður How new is atheism? Although adherents and opponents alike today present it as an invention of the European Enlightenment, when the forces of science and secularism broadly challenged those of faith, disbelief in the gods, in fact, originated in a far more remote past. In Battling the Gods, Tim Whitmarsh journeys into the ancient Mediterranean, a world almost unimaginably different from our own, to recover the stories and voices of those who first refused the divinities. |
From inside the book
... humans are born capable of glimpsing the divine. All people have that capacity, even if some choose not to use it. That is why there has never been, and never will be, a society without gods. THERSANDER: Humans created gods. Primitive ...
... human culture as far back as we can trace it. The problem lies with the normative claims built on that observation. Too often religious practice is imagined to be the regular state of affairs, needing no explanation, whereas any.
... human beingsxis everywhere in the modern world. There is a growing trend toward speaking of religion as ¡ingrained,¢ or even ¡hardwired¢ into the human subject. So-called neurotheologists have even sought to identify a part of the brain ...
... human rights issue: it is about recognizing atheists as real people deserving of respect, tolerance, and the opportunity to live their lives unmolested. Atheism, in my opinion, is demonstrably at least as old as the monotheistic ...
... humans, like Ajax and Achilles (and in time historical individuals like Alexander the Great and any given Roman emperor); and an almost limitless assortment of minor beings whose roles were limited to specific ritual functions (like ...
Efni
Battling the Gods | |
The Material Cosmos | |
Cause and Effect | |
Concerning the Gods I Cannot Know | |
Playing the Gods | |
Plato and the Atheists | |
Gods and Kings | |
Philosophical Atheism | |
Epicurus Theomakhos | |
With Gods on Our Side | |
Virtual Networks | |
Acknowledgments | |
Atheism on Trial | |