Varieties of Atheism

David Newheiser is a senior research fellow in the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry at Australian Catholic University. He is the author of Hope in a Secular Age: Deconstruction, Negative Theology, and the Future of Faith.

• IntroductionThe Genealogy of AtheismDavid Newheiser1 Atheism and Science: On Einstein’s “Cosmic Religious Sense”Mary-Jane Rubenstein2 Atheism and Society: Hume’s Prefiguration of RortyAndre C. Willis3 Atheism and Power: Nietzsche, Nominalism, and the Reductive SpiritDenys Turner4 Atheism and Ethics: Recovering the Link between Truth and TransformationSusannah Ticciati5 Atheism and Metaphysics: A Problem of Apophatic TheologyHenning Tegtmeyer6 Atheism and Politics: Abandonment, Absence, and the Empty ThroneDevin Singh7 Atheism and Literature: Living without God in Dante’s ComedyVittorio Montemaggi8 Atheism and the Affirmation of Life: Dostoevsky’s Response to Russian NihilismGeorge PattisonAfterword: The Drama of AtheismConstance M. FureyAcknowledgmentsContributorsIndex

“What does it mean to be an atheist? It’s not just one thing, it’s not just disbelief in god. There’s a positive expression connected to ideas of ethics, our relationship with authority, how reason and experience and the material world inform our lives, when does science become moral–these are big questions that we have to ask. This book points the way to a positive belief.”