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[...]... that atheism can provide a more wholesome, morally alert, and psychologically liberating way to live One recent attempt at a psychological profiling of atheists concludes that the typical atheist is male, tolerant, law-abiding, well-educated, and less authoritarian than many of his contemporaries Atheists, we are assured, make good neighbours.3 To a large extent, we are dealing with an English-language... learn from the other whether that is about the persistence of faith or its many pathological expressions in the world This, moreover, may be a moral imperative in today’s world where international cooperation and cross -faith alliances are increasingly needed Introduction 13 Notes 1 1 Peter 3:15 2 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 3 3 Benjamin Beit-Hallahim,... some courage in face of a hostile majority As David Wooton notes, the Reformation saw the rapid construction of an extensive vocabulary in both Latin and the vernacular to describe forms of unbelief and impiety.6 Heretics, deviants, and backsliders were denounced as atheist, deist, Epicurean, libertine, and antinomian In being named thus, one was perceived as a danger to ecclesial and civic life The... isolating the beliefs and practices of a religion from those of a broader culture Patterns of dress and eating, forms of family and social life, and observance of rituals and festivals are all integral to religion To sequester the more cognitive dimensions of faith as the key index to religious identity is both to ignore its broad practical context, while also imposing a homogeneity upon adherents across... the Christian faith, or the God of Judaeo-Christian theism, or perhaps still more broadly the God of the three Abrahamic faiths Again it is essentially reactive, taking as its starting point the basic beliefs of a religion or society and offering a revisionist or sceptical judgement upon these Although there are acknowledged affinities with earlier pagan philosophies, this modern atheism has its own distinct... inessential now emerges It is sometimes claimed that with the rise of modern science, particularly following Newton, the place for divine action and influence in the world was marginalized No longer an admixture of natural and supernatural causes, the world now became the arena of mechanical forces The regularity of scientific laws across space and time thus generated belief in a world that was entirely... character of faithand religious disagreement.14 And, second, a degree of disenchantment and differentiation of functions may help to sober some religious sensibilities and offset the potential for pathological expressions of faith This ought to be recognized by exponents of belief It would be hard to argue that this has not played a positive factor in the gradual decline of sectarianism in Scotland... places where silence and scepticism serve us better than the passionate certainties that may later appear misplaced and even harmful At least, this can sometimes happen The history of Christian theology reveals that the tradition developed and was shaped decisively by encounter with opponents and revisionists Much of what we intuitively believe is the product of history and patterns of interpretation... human beings in a godless universe.21 There is a dramatic quality to this rejection of belief which sets it apart from the more urbane dismissal of religion in much Anglo-American philosophy Sartre’s atheism also recalls us to the practical features of religious commitment According to all faith traditions, a lively belief in God is integral to a broader set of intellectual, practical, and emotional... design theory in public schools, remains at the forefront of contemporary debate Much of the hostility heaped on religion is directed at the perceived obscurantism of evangelical Christianity and its particular disbelief in Darwinian evolution A second feature of the recent debate concerns what is called ‘Islamism’, a militant and deviant brand of Islam that advocates violent opposition to the hegemony . acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Fergusson, David. Faith and its critics: a conversation / David Fergusson. p Michael Fuller, Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Neil Spurway, Sandy Stewart, Alexander Broadie, Graeme Auld, Hans Barstad, George Newlands, Paul Heelas, Iain Torrance, Larry Hurtado and Christian Lange Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in