Nonbeliever Nation PDF Download

Author: David Niose
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1137055286
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
A new group of Americans is challenging the reign of the Religious Right Today, nearly one in five Americans are nonbelievers - a rapidly growing group at a time when traditional Christian churches are dwindling in numbers - and they are flexing their muscles like never before. Yet we still see almost none of them openly serving in elected office, while Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and many others continue to loudly proclaim the myth of America as a Christian nation. In Nonbeliever Nation, leading secular advocate David Niose explores what this new force in politics means for the unchallenged dominance of the Religious Right. Hitting on all the hot-button issues that divide the country – from gay marriage to education policy to contentious church-state battles – he shows how this movement is gaining traction, and fighting for its rights. Now, Secular Americans—a group comprised not just of atheists and agnostics, but lapsed Catholics, secular Jews, and millions of others who have walked away from religion—are mobilizing and forming groups all over the country (even atheist clubs in Bible-belt high schools) to challenge the exaltation of religion in American politics and public life. This is a timely and important look at how growing numbers of nonbelievers, disenchanted at how far America has wandered from its secular roots, are emerging to fight for equality and rational public policy.

Author: Petra Klug
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000804429
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Atheists are a growing but marginalized group in the American religious patchwork and they have been the target of ridicule and discrimination throughout the nation’s history. This book is the first comprehensive study of anti-atheism in the United States. It traces anti-atheism through five centuries of American history from colonization to the era of Donald Trump and contemporary conspiracy ideologies, such as the atheist New World Order. Describing anti-atheist prejudices and explaining the social and psychological mechanisms behind anti-atheist attitudes, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, religious studies and history with interests in religion in the United States.

Author: James W. Vining
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793622833
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
New Directions in Rhetoric and Religion reflects the complex and fluid natures of religion, rhetoric, and public life in our globalized, digital, and politically polarized world by bringing together a diverse group of rhetorical scholars to provide a comprehensive and forward-looking collection on rhetoric and religion. This volume addresses these topics in three separate sections: 1. Rhetorics of religion at work in public activism, 2. Rhetorics of religion in contemporary public discourse, and 3. Ways that rhetoric scholars study religion. Scholars of rhetoric, religion, and social sciences will find this book particularly interesting.

Author: Richard Cimino
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199392935
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Surveys over the last twenty years have seen an ever-growing number of Americans disclaim religious affiliations and instead check the "none" box. In the first sociological exploration of organized secularism in America, Richard Cimino and Christopher Smith show how one segment of these "nones" have created a new, cohesive atheist identity through activism and the creation of communities. According to Cimino and Smith, the new upsurge of atheists is a reaction to the revival of religious fervor in American politics since 1980. Feeling overlooked and underrepresented in the public sphere, atheists have employed a wide variety of strategies-some evangelical, some based on identity politics-to defend and assert themselves against their ideological opponents. These strategies include building and maintaining communities, despite the absence of the kinds of shared rituals, texts, and laws that help to sustain organized religions. Drawing on in-depth interviews with self-identified atheist, secularist, and humanist leaders and activists, as well as extensive observations and analysis of secular gatherings and media, Cimino and Smith illustrate how atheists organize and align themselves toward common goals, and how media-particularly web-based media-have proven invaluable in connecting atheists to one another and in creating a powerful virtual community. Cimino and Smith suggest that secularists rely not only on the Internet for community-building, but on their own new forms of ritual. This groundbreaking study will be essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the growing atheist movement in America.

Author: David Trend
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317225430
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
Americans think of their country as a welcoming place where everyone has equal opportunity. Yet historical baggage and anxious times can restrain these possibilities. Newcomers often find that civic belonging comes with strings attached––riddled with limitations or legally punitive rites of passage. For those already here, new challenges to civic belonging emerge on the basis of belief, behavior, or heritage. This book uses the term "elsewhere" in describing conditions that exile so many citizens to "some other place" through prejudice, competition, or discordant belief. Yet, in another way, "elsewhere" evokes an undefined "not yet" ripe with potential. In the face of America’s daunting challenges, can "elsewhere" point to optimism, hope, and common purpose? Through 12 detailed chapters, the book applies critical theory in the humanities and social sciences to examine recurring crises of social inclusion in the U.S. After two centuries of incremental "progress" in securing human dignity, today the U.S. finds itself torn by new conflicts over reproductive rights, immigration, health care, religious extremism, sexual orientation, mental illness, and fear of terrorists. Is there a way of explaining this recurring tendency of Americans to turn against each other? Elsewhere in America engages these questions, charting the ever-changing faces of difference (manifest in contested landscapes of sex and race to such areas as disability and mental health), their spectral and intersectional character (recent discourses on performativity, normativity, and queer theory), and the grounds on which categories are manifest in ideation and movement politics (metapolitics, cosmopolitanism, dismodernism).

Author: Joseph Blankholm
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479809527
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
A radically new way of understanding secularism which explains why being secular can seem so strangely religious For much of America’s rapidly growing secular population, religion is an inescapable source of skepticism and discomfort. It shows up in politics and in holidays, but also in common events like weddings and funerals. In The Secular Paradox, Joseph Blankholm argues that, despite their desire to avoid religion, nonbelievers often seem religious because Christianity influences the culture around them so deeply. Relying on several years of ethnographic research among secular activists and organized nonbelievers in the United States, the volume explores how very secular people are ambivalent toward belief, community, ritual, conversion, and tradition. As they try to embrace what they share, secular people encounter, again and again, that they are becoming too religious. And as they reject religion, they feel they have lost too much. Trying to strike the right balance, secular people alternate between the two sides of their ambiguous condition: absolutely not religious and part of a religion-like secular tradition. Blankholm relies heavily on the voices of women and people of color to understand what it means to live with the secular paradox. The struggles of secular misfits—the people who mis-fit normative secularism in the United States—show that becoming secular means rejecting parts of life that resemble Christianity and embracing a European tradition that emphasizes reason and avoids emotion. Women, people of color, and secular people who have left non-Christian religions work against the limits and contradictions of secularism to create new ways of being secular that are transforming the American religious landscape. They are pioneering the most interesting and important forms of secular “religiosity” in America today.

Author: Lex Bayer
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442236809
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart asks an essential question for the 45 million Americans who self-identify as nonreligious: “So, you don’t believe in God; now what?” This question is increasingly important, as one-third of young adults under the age of thirty consider themselves nonreligious. With a scientific eye and an empathetic heart, the authors turn conventional perceptions about atheism on their head. They show that atheism need not be reactionary (against religion and God), but rather that it can offer a clear set of constructive principles to live by, which establish atheism as a positive worldview. Following a philosophical approach grounded in logic and evidence, Bayer and Figdor take readers on an inspiring journey to discover how to live a reasonable, ethical, and happy life without God. The readers are engaged at every step, encouraged to self-reflect and ultimately uncover their own set of personal beliefs.

Author: PZ Myers
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307739805
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
On his popular science blog, Pharyngula, PZ Myers has entertained millions of readers with his infectious love of evolutionary science and his equally infectious disdain for creationism, biblical literalism, intelligent design theory, and other products of godly illogic. This funny and fearless book collects and expands on some of his most popular writings, giving the religious fanaticism of our times the gleeful disrespect it deserves by skewering the apocalyptic fantasies, magical thinking, hypocrisies, and pseudoscientific theories advanced by religious fundamentalists of all stripes. Forceful and articulate, scathing and funny, The Happy Atheist is a reaffirmation of the revelatory power of humor and the truth-revealing powers of science and reason.

Author: Hemant Mehta
Publisher: Hyperink Inc
ISBN: 161464604X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
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.

Author: Dale McGowan
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 111850920X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
The easy way to understand atheism and secular philosophy For people seeking a non-religious philosophy of life, as well as believers with atheist friends, Atheism For Dummies offers an intelligent exploration of the historical and moral case for atheism. Often wildly misunderstood, atheism is a secular approach to life based on the understanding that reality is an arrangement of physical matter, with no consideration of unverifiable spiritual forces. Atheism For Dummies offers a brief history of atheist philosophy and its evolution, explores it as a historical and cultural movement, covers important historical writings on the subject, and discusses the nature of ethics and morality in the absence of religion. A simple, yet intelligent exploration of an often misunderstood philosophy Explores the differences between explicit and implicit atheism A comprehensive, readable, and thoroughly unbiased resource As the number of atheists worldwide continues to grow, this book offers a broad understanding of the subject for those exploring atheism as an approach to living.