History of Atheism

Przysługujący widmom wywrotowy, niemalże rewolucyjny potencjał został odsunięty oraz zagubiony poprzez pozbycie się tej kontrowersyjnej kategorii z terytorium metafizyki i zbyt pośpieszne odesłanie jej do przestrzeni badań nad literaturą, sprowadzając ją jedynie do roli użytecznego, bezpiecznego narzędzia interpretacji.

Książka Andrzeja Marca odzyskuje niepokojący charakter widmontologii i ponownie wprowadza widma do myśli metafizycznej. Czym nawiedzona i przeniknięta jest tradycyjna metafizyka, co właściwie ją dręczy, nie daje spokoju oraz nieustannie podmywa jej stabilność?

Kategoria widma Derridy posłużyła Marcowi przede wszystkim do rozważań nad charakterem współczesności i przeobrażeń, jakie dokonały się w obrębie myśli ponowoczesnej. Współczesna kultura, zdaniem Marca, stała się miejscem powstawania widm, nieustannie powracających z przeszłości. Uznając, że nie jesteśmy już w stanie tworzyć utopijnych wizji przyszłości, autor stara się zdać sprawę z widmowego charakteru współczesnej kultury, analizując m. in. strategie vintage, retro, nurt no future w kulturze lat 70. czy nurt fantastyki naukowej w literaturze.

Le prêtre : Arrivé à cet instant fatal, où le voile de l'illusion ne se déchire que pour laisser à l'homme séduit le tableau cruel de ses erreurs et de ses vices, ne vous repentez-vous point, mon enfant, des désordres multipliés où vous ont emporté la faiblesse et la fragilité humaine ?

This collection of studies by social anthropologists describes the complex and often controversial processes of religious change occurring in the postsocialist world. By critically examining the influx of missionaries, the adoption of ‘new’ faiths, and the reactions to these unanticipated shifts in religious landscape, the authors offer valuable insight into the fate of state supported secularism as well as providing fresh critiques of anthropological studies of conversion.

There are numerous existing political atheologies that can be characterised by three movements – negative, positive, and critical atheological projects. By focusing on the critical atheologies of two political theorists, Richard Rorty and William Connolly, this article presents an insider's view of the influence that atheism has on political thought. After drawing out just what makes Rorty and Connolly's philosophies atheological, this article sets itself the task of drawing the consequences of a critical atheology for two fundamental concepts of contemporary political theory: secularism and toleration. These Enlightenment ideals can be rescued and re-framed following a pluralist critique. By refining our understanding of secularism beyond a strict church-state separation, an agonistic secularism which promotes an ethos of engagement is defended therein. Secondly, toleration is then defended in its agonistic form to include the practice of critique against conceptions of indifference or respect. Finally, the hard case of the French ban on veils in public schools is discussed to highlight the contribution of this political atheology to an important social issue.

Jessica Kingsley Publishers, due 2016
Explores the relationship and dialogue between religion and atheism, focusing upon Christian, Islamic, Buddhist and other, e.g. Pagan, traditions in their encounter with secularism and atheism. It explores such issues as faith and reason, science and religion, gender and sexuality, 'texts of terror', and the use and abuse of arguments, evidence, and concepts.

The absence of scholarship that takes seriously the progressive Jewish response to atheism and skepticism is not easy to explain. Historical accounts tend to follow the view that Reform Judaism was a “response to modernity” in the sense that it was an attempt to integrate secular learning into Jewish life in general and/or to emulate the newly encountered Christian response, both in thought and practice, which was viewed as a model in this regard. Much of the scholarship on this period has focused on the political ambitions of assimilationist lay Jews and, with respect to secular learning, has tended to concentrate on biblical criticism, which certainly had a defining impact in Germany, and also in the United States and United Kingdom even if not initially. There has also been considerable interest in the theological concerns of the religious leaders and intellectual pioneers of Reform, but these concerns have tended to focus on inward-orientated debates about the status of the Law or on the weight of traditional rabbinic authority. Insofar as historians have noted engagement with atheism or skepticism, the Reformers' interest in disbelief has been conflated with a more general concern with the dangers of assimilation. That is, the significance of engagement with atheistic or skeptical philosophies has been understood to lie in this engagement's strategic utility in countering the threat to religious Jewish continuity. This article will consider the case of US Reform Judaism and its engagement with the prominent infidels and unbelievers Robert Ingersoll and Felix Adler. In doing so, it will also offer an overview of changing attitudes toward scientific naturalism and philosophical materialism within the US Reform movement more broadly, drawn from sermons and writings of such prominent nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century religious leaders as Isaac Mayer Wise, Kaufmann Kohler, Emil G. Hirsch, Joseph Krauskopf, Aaron Hahn, and J. Leonard Levy. Together, these individuals' discussions represent a rich discourse of doubt important for understanding the history of Reform Judaism. Among other things, this discourse helps explain a unique cluster of US Reform interests, including a tendency toward panentheism and a pronounced interest in modernist justifications of immortality.

In this book, I argue that black atheists reject belief in God more for political than epistemological reasons.  The God-concept was frequently used as an ideological instrument for subjugating and violating blacks.  Therefore, to make a more just polity possible, atheism is a political must.  Included here is the introduction to the book.

Resumen: El “detestable misterio de la iniquidad” sólo encontrará su fin el día en el que “el último noble de la Tierra sea colgado con las tripas del último cura”. A partir de esta elocuente afirmación, podría concebirse a la Mémoire des pensées et des sentiments de Jean Meslier como un intento filosófico por desmitificar y derrumbar los fundamentos teológico-políticos sobre los que sostiene la dominación. Indicado esto, es posible señalar que la presente comunicación se ofrece como una primera reconstrucción de dicho intento, la que se realiza a su vez desde una perspectiva particular: la que pretende vincular los argumentos ateos y anticlericales de Meslier con las consideraciones escépticas realizadas por Michel de Montaigne.

struirsi tutti gli Annali di Ennio pronti per la lettura: un risultato che il caso non riuscirebbe a realizzare neppure limitatamente a un solo verso!». Certo, è da ingenui pensare che dietro alla regolarità dei fenomeni naturali, all'armonia di un mondo "saggio, felice e sensibile" come lo definiva Zenone, che mostra la «connessione di tutti gli esseri […] in una perfetta unità di finalità e di intenti» ci siano dei antropomorfi. Il principio divino è il mondo stesso.

L'article étudie le rapport entre sciences sociales et athéisme dans l'Albanie communiste, particulièrement après l'interdiction de la religion en 1967. Si les sciences sociales se doivent de respecter la ligne du Parti, elles alimentent aussi sa propagande et justifient l'interdiction de la religion, d'une part, en faisant du thème de la trahison des clergés une vérité historique et, d'autre part, en montrant que les religions chrétiennes et musulmanes n'ont eu que peu d'influence sur la culture albanaise et qu'au contraire, le paganisme a toujours perdurer et que le peuple albanais est naturellement athée.

communication au colloque Sciences Humaines et religion(s), 16e-20e s., Paris, EHESS, 21-23 septembre 2005.

Compte rendu critique de L'Essence du Christianisme de Ludwig FEUERBACH (EPHE, mai 2019).

A l’appui de la tradition patristique et théologique et d’une herméneutique ample du texte et des dogmes religieux chrétiens, Feuerbach met au jour  l’interpénétration de Dieu et de l’homme dans le culte religieux dans son ensemble. La thèse qu’il expose dans son Introduction en deux parties est en effet la suivante : l’homme n’est pas créé à l’image de Dieu, mais c’est au contraire Dieu qui est produit à l’image de l’homme comme sa propre représentation idéale. A partir d’une critique aussi stimulante de la religion envisagée sous l’angle de l’humaine conscience de soi, le philosophe de la religion est amené à redécouvrir l’enracinement des figures de la religion dans l’expérience humaine. 
Cette thèse ne manque pas de soulever un ensemble de problèmes et de contradictions : peut-on soutenir à la fois et contradictoirement que la religion est cause et effet de l'illusion ? Une herméneutique de l'illusion n'implique-t-elle pas une métaphysique des degrés de réalité, précisément celle que nie la philosophie anti-métaphysique de Feuerbach ? Enfin, quelles sont les garanties d'objectivité d'une réduction du réel au point de vue humain ?
Dans cet article, nous nous employons à présenter la thèse feuerbachienne et à exposer les critiques qu'elle suscite, en particulier chez Jean Borella, dans le cadre d'une philosophie chrétienne de la religion.

I believe that the best way to approach our topic is to walk the path of history. I don't say it in order to force the present discussion onto a plain that's familiar and comfortable for megiven the fact that my work is as a Church historian -, but rather because I want us to consider the new evangelisation as principally a historical issue. It is a theological category that ripened within a peculiar history and that ushered in, at the same time, a new stage in the Church's history, in which we currently find ourselves.

Sur le localisme des religions antiques, voir en dernier lieu John Schied, Review of Kaiser und Gott Herrscherkult im römischen Reich par Manfred Clauss, Gnomom 75. Bd., H. 8, 2003, p. 708. 2. Sur ce principe de convertibilité ou d'équivalence d'un panthéon à un autre, voir Jan Assamn, Moïse l'Égyptien (« Contre-religion et traductibilité religieuse dans l'Ancien Monde »), trad. Laure Bernardi, Paris, Flammarion, 2001, p. 82-95. 3. En laissant de côté bien sûr le cas du judaïsme, religion nationale à contenu éthique universalisable.

Previous research has alluded to the predominance of atheism in participant pools of the Nonhuman Animal rights movement (Galvin and Herzog 1992; Guither 1998), as well as the correlation between atheism and support for anti-speciesism (Gabriel et al. 2012; The Humane League 2014), but no study to date has independently examined this demographic. This article presents a profile of 210 atheists and agnostics, derived from a larger survey of 287 American vegans conducted in early 2017. Results demonstrate that atheists constitute one of the movement's largest demographics, and that atheist and agnostic vegans are more likely to adopt veganism out of concern for other animals. While these vegans did not register a higher level of social movement participation than religious vegans, they were more intersectionally oriented and more likely to politically identify with the far left. Given the Nonhuman Animal rights movement's overall failure to target atheists, these findings suggest a strategic oversight in overlooking the movement's potentially most receptive demographic.

By digging deep into our knowledge of the past, I present an archaeological and anthropological investigation: Understanding Religion Evolution: Animism, Totemism, Shamanism, Paganism, & Progressed Organized Religion The above picture is my art and I am going to explain some of its imagery. The Interconnectedness of Religious Thinking? " Religion is an Evolved Product " In a general way, it all starts with Animism (a theoretical belief in supernatural powers/spirits) and this is physically expressed in or with Totemism (a theoretical belief in a mythical relationship with powers/spirits through a totem item), which then enlists a full-time specific person to perform this worship and believed interaction as Shamanism (a theoretical belief in access and influence with spirits through rituals). In addition, there is the further employment of myths and gods added to all the above, which is Paganism and is often a lot more nature-based than most current top world religions, thus hinting to their close link to more ancient religious thinking from which it stems. My hypothesis is expressed with an explanation of the building of a theoretical house (modern religions development). It seems ancient peoples had to survived amazing threats in a " dangerous universe by superstition perceived as good and evil " , and human " immorality or imperfection of the soul " , which was thought to affect the still living and led to ancestor worship. Presumably, this ancestor worship led to the belief in supernatural beings, which some of these were turned into the belief in gods. This feeble myth called gods were just a human conceived idea that was " made from nothing into something over and over, changing again and again, taking on more as they evolve, and all the while, they are thought to be special. " However, it is just supernatural animistic spirit-belief perceived as sacred.

Examining the birth and development of early modern atheism from Spinoza’s Tractatus theologico-politicus (1670) to d’Holbach’s Système de la nature (1770), this study considers Spinoza, Hobbes, Cudworth, Bayle, Meslier, Boulainviller, Du Marsais, Fréret, Toland, Collins, Hume, Diderot, Voltaire, and d’Holbach, and positions them in a general interpretive scheme, based on the idea that early modern atheism is itself an unwanted fruit of early modern metaphysics and theology.

This work is a philosophical and historical exploration of religious transformation among Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. The research includes a substantial amount of unique survivor testimonial material from the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive. These recorded interviews provide a variety of anecdotes from eyewitnesses, which require a certain caution when utilizing as source material. Although some Jewish survivors obtained a newfound spiritual strength through their experiences, this particular investigation focuses on those who were at one point connected with their religious traditions and have since abandoned their belief in God completely. For contextual coherence, the testimonial material is organized alongside the historical events of World War II, specifically the rise of Hitler, the escalation of the Nazi occupation in Europe, and the mass extermination of the Jews that followed.
This exploration highlights the dramatic modifications and additions to Jewish spiritual thought, especially in regards to the notion of theodicy. This work discusses various positions of Holocaust theology, and how survivor testimonial information can serve as an outlet for interpretation in the effort to answer the difficult questions surrounding the concept of faith in light of the Shoah. Analyzing the personal experiences and convictions of Holocaust survivors allows for a deeper understanding of their religious metamorphosis. Prior to the Holocaust, Jewishness was defined much more precisely than how it is today. This work argues that Jewish atheism, however contradictory as it may seem, assuredly deserves to stand among any other recognized philosophy. First-hand experiences with utter inhumanity have led many Jews to reject the validity of God’s covenant. This work demonstrates how the horrors of genocide have provided a transformational vessel towards the abandonment of faith.


Recommended Citation
Lassley, Jennifer (2015) "A Defective Covenant: Abandonment of Faith among Jewish Survivors of the Holocaust," International Social Science Review: Vol. 90: Iss. 2, Article 3.
Available at: http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol90/iss2/3

Con empia mano e lingua scellerata. Asebeia e crimini contro il sacro nell'Atene del V secolo a.C. * Eschilo, con l'ingresso delle Erinni nelle sue Eumenidi, ha frmato una delle scene più potenti del teatro mondiale. Fiutando selvaggiamente l'odore della colpa, come cagne 1 feroci, esse inseguono e fnalmente scovano la loro preda, un Oreste supplice, avvinghiato alla statua di Atena. Sono furibonde, le Erinni: l'eroe forse spera di sotoporsi ad un processo per sfuggire ai loro tormenti, per scampare alla punizione per l'omicidio della madre Clitemnestra? Si sbaglia. Solo il sangue lava il sangue e fno all'ultima goccia le tre sorelle implacabili pretendono di berne dalle sue vene, per poi trascinarlo tra le ombre -ché la sua colpa non ha ragioni: il 'nobile crimine' è un'illusione, ἀσέβεια ποικίλα, κακοφρόνων τ᾽ἀνδρῶν παράνοια, «empietà subdola, follia di uomini dalla mente malvagia» 2 . Non sarà certo solo, all'inferno, il matricida: «E vedrai laggiù chiunque altro tra i mortali si sia reso colpevole con azioni empie contro gli dèi, contro gli ospiti, o contro i cari genitori, ricevendo ciascuno da giustizia la propria pena. Grande giudice degli uomini è, soto la terra, Ade, che tuto registra e tuto osserva» 3 .

When the Bolsheviks set out to build a new world in the wake of the Russian Revolution, they expected religion to die off. Soviet power used a variety of tools--from education to propaganda to terror—to turn its vision of a Communist world without religion into reality. Yet even with its monopoly on ideology and power, the Soviet Communist Party never succeeded in overcoming religion and creating an atheist society.

A Sacred Space Is Never Empty presents the first history of Soviet atheism from the 1917 revolution to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Drawing on a wealth of archival material and in-depth interviews with those who were on the front lines of Communist ideological campaigns, Victoria Smolkin argues that to understand the Soviet experiment, we must make sense of Soviet atheism. Smolkin shows how atheism was reimagined as an alternative cosmology with its own set of positive beliefs, practices, and spiritual commitments. Through its engagements with religion, the Soviet leadership realized that removing religion from the "sacred spaces" of Soviet life was not enough. Then, in the final years of the Soviet experiment, Mikhail Gorbachev—in a stunning and unexpected reversal—abandoned atheism and reintroduced religion into Soviet public life.

A Sacred Space Is Never Empty explores the meaning of atheism for religious life, for Communist ideology, and for Soviet politics.

Can one really claim to be devoted to science without being fastidious about facts? Who would take a contractor seriously who boasted of building the finest quality homes in town but was notorious for cutting corners on materials to save money and increase his profit margin? Isn't it the same sort of thing building arguments upon supposed facts you got wrong because you failed to look them up? These are the questions I often find myself puzzling over when reading the energetic bloviations of atheist apologists like Richard Dawkins. In his illuminating book The Science Delusion, the atheist writer Curtis White accuses Richard Dawkins, and another atheist writer of similar notoriety, of missing the point that "their critics are not only talking about their scholarly limitations but about their errors, errors that a more informed or careful critic wouldn't make…". 1 My purpose here is to examine a single, rather striking, example of the kinds of errors White describes.

A review of Dan Barker's tome, godless, how an evangelical pastor abandoned fundamentalist faith and embraced so-called New Atheism. Mr. Barker is now codirector of Freedom From Religion Foundation. Barker's justifiable excoriation of his evangelical easy believism seems trite on the surface, but for him it was critical, life changing. How religious experience is not reliable and there is even in the most sincere theist experience a vacuum for something bigger than a movement, a belief, a faith even in the resurrected Christ. I read and reviewed this during my own period of agnostic experience, weary from the divisions in Christianity. From whence I rose, returned, and re-embraced "the Church of the firstborn... the pillar and foundation of the truth." I found my doubts embraced by love. In my own experience, as many Evangelicals who have not experienced Christian orthodoxy in its historic expression, we have only our experience from which to judge something entirely mysterious as the Church revealed from God who gives the Bible its authority. Bible fundamentalism was not enough to keep Barker and it almost lost me to skeptical agnosticism. Individual liberty from religion may be the epitome of Barker's New Atheism, while for me Orthodox Christianity is the epitome of life in Christ.

در بافتار کنونی ایران، کسی که بخواهد پرسشِ آزادی های فردی و اجتماعی را بدون پرداختن به
پروازش در فضای نظریه‌ی ولایت فقیه پیش ببرد، در خام اندیشی از کبوتر سبکبالی که می‌پندارد تهی از هوا بسیار آسانتر می باشد درخواهد گذشت. چون این یک در پرواز آزادانه اش از احساس
ایستادگیِ هوا به چنین پنداشتی می‌رسد، و آن یک از سر آنچه بال آزادی را پیشاپیش می‌بندد، به
سادگی می پرد. پرشی که بایستگیِ پرسش آزادی را هم بی جا می کند.

Theophrastus redivivus (1659) is one of the longest, most
ponderous, and most reasoned clandestine philosophical
manuscripts (1090 folios, 900 pages in
the printed edition) and also the first systematic
and explicit treatise of atheism in the entire history
of philosophy, both ancient and early modern.

Relations between the Czech society and the Church have historically manifest themselves in an extraordinarily dramatic fashion. Author explores the various processes which culminated in Roman Catholicism drastically falling in both position and status in the modern Czech culture, society, and state.  A powerful state church and respected social institution with extensive symbolic prestige at the beginning of the 19th century, the Czech Catholic Church succumbed to mass secularization throughout the second half of the same century. This historically development was further reinforced by the rise of totalitarian ideologies, thus rendering a privileged and self-confident national church a problematic, humiliated, barely tolerated and, for much of the 20th century, brutally persecuted community.

En las clases anteriores hemos concluido que una mirada contemplativa sobre el mundo nos lleva a descubrir su riqueza-y, sobre todo, la de las personas-y que, a partir de esa riqueza, es inevitable llegar racionalmente a la existencia de un Dios creador. La clave de toda prueba de la existencia de Dios (como, por ejemplo, las famosas "cinco vías" de Sto. Tomás de Aquino) radica no tanto en el proceso racional de las pruebasque es muy sencillo-, cuanto en la aceptación del punto de partida. De aquí que no haga falta ser un filósofo profesional para recorrer ese camino racional hacia Dios. Toda persona con una auténtica fe lo ha hecho, al menos implícitamente, en la medida en que su mirada haya sido verdaderamente receptiva, cuanto más sencilla mejor. Pero este itinerario racional hacia Dios tiene un obstáculo. Y esa dificultad teórica es, también, el mayor desafío práctico o existencial de nuestras vidas. Se trata del problema del mal. Que es EL problema. En el Catecismo de la Iglesia Católica se afirma que "no hay rasgo del mensaje cristiano que no sea en parte una respuesta a la cuestión del mal" (Nº 309). Pero aquí debemos afrontar filosóficamente este gran misterio. Se trata de un indispensable-¡el más importante!-paso previo a la fe. El planteo de Epicuro Se ha dicho que debemos al filósofo Epicuro, que vivió entre los siglos IV y III a. C., una de las primeras formulaciones precisas de este problema:

The Theophrastus redivivus is perhaps the most important clandestine philosophical manuscript of the seventeenth century. Written in France around 1659, it is the first known example of an avowedly atheist philosophy. Yet the authorship of the text has always been considered an enigma. Writing in an era of persecution, the new Theophrastus adopts a whole series of measures to conceal his identity. But perhaps the solution to the riddle is less difficult than one might have expected: the writer, indeed, mentions himself in the text, nor does he refrain from praising himself under the cover of anonymity. A massive corpus of bibliographical and textual comparisons helps to break the secret and strengthens the conclusion: Guy Patin, one of the most famous «erudite libertines» of the seventeenth century, can now be considered the author of the Theophrastus redivivus.

PRÉSENTATION DU COURS

Dans ce cours, qui vise à présenter quelques-unes des lectures/réceptions les plus significatives de la pensée de Nicolas Malebranche – et notamment de la Recherche de la vérité – pendant le XVIIIe siècle, je me concentrerai particulièrement sur la figure de Jean Meslier (1664-1729).

Étant donné que Meslier n’est pas aussi populaire parmi les étudiants et les chercheurs en philosophie que d’autres philosophes des Lumières, tels que Voltaire, Rousseau ou le baron d’Holbach, je vais d’abord faire une rapide présentation de ce curé athée, de sa vie et de ses œuvres.

Ensuite, je voudrais vous raconter un peu la manière dont était composée la petite bibliothèque du curé d’Etrépigny, et formuler quelques hypothèses sur ses pratiques de lecture. En fait, d’après moi, Meslier n’est qu’un « lecteur pyromane », qu’un incendiaire de la philosophie clandestine. En ce sens, je pense que son Mémoire des pensées et des sentiments pourrait être relié sans difficulté à d’autres « manuscrits philosophiques clandestins » – le corpus de textes sur lequel je travaille actuellement –, tels que L’Esprit de Spinoza ou L’âme matérielle, car ils adoptent tous la technique du copié-collé . Qu’est-ce que cela signifie ? Que leur originalité ne réside pas tant dans les idées et les arguments que ces textes présentent, mais dans la manière dont ces idées et ces arguments sont présentés. Selon Pierre-François Moreau, par exemple, les manuscrits ont souvent une « originalité d’intention » .

Enfin, en tenant compte de certains des exemples qu’on peut trouver dans le Mémoire des pensées et des sentiments (c. 1729), je voudrais vous montrer la façon dont Meslier a lu et a utilisé de nombreux passages de la Recherche de la vérité de Malebranche pour construire sa propre pensée. En d’autres termes, je vais essayer d’illustrer la manière dont la théologie rationnelle de Malebranche se transforme en matérialisme athée dans les dernières pages du manuscrit de Meslier. Mais auparavant, je vous rappellerai quelques-unes des thèses les plus importantes de Meslier, je passerai en revue la structure générale du Mémoire et je présenterai brièvement les discussions sur le rapport qui, selon différents spécialistes, peut être établi entre Meslier et Malebranche.

Ce cours est donc divisé en trois parties : la première est de nature biographique et bibliographique ; la seconde est liée à l’histoire du livre et de la lecture, ainsi qu’aux pratiques de réception et de production – autrement dit, de lecture et d’écriture – pendant le XVIIIe siècle ; la troisième, enfin, est de nature strictement philosophique, ou historiographique-philosophique.

As fossil fuelled capitalism drags global civilisation towards the strange attractor of ecological implosion, can we get any help from outside (what the secular mainstream in the west generally recognises as), the human social field? This paper makes the case for the pedagogical potential of the naturally-occurring psycho-active 'entheogens', that is, substances which, taken sacramentally, are held to 'engender the divine within'. Handled in a thoughtful way, these substances, I argue, are potential allies for the remaking of the revolutionary movement in an age where human extinction is now thinkable. Between the existing radical left in its various forms, and this ally, however, there are some obstacles. One such obstacle is the atheism of the dominant European revolutionary tradition. In this paper Mikhail Bakunin's influential critique of religion as a form of human domination , as an enemy of human freedom, is taken as exemplary of this tradition. The testimony, meanwhile, of entheogenic experience puts this familiar leftist-atheist standpoint in question. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews with users of entheo-gens including ayahuasca, vaporised DMT, and 5-MeO-DMT toad venom, I argue that a left willing to open itself to these experiences could gain a new standpoint from which to oppose and outflank capitalist ecocide.

Interview given over WhatsApp (21/10 and 25/10 2021). This interview is circulated among my students as course material. An Italian translation is scheduled to be published in the Italian magazine L'Atea in 2022. The entire document (PDF) can be circulated freely; however, if you intend to post the text somewhere, I'd be grateful if you could take the time to inform me (mail above). Ideally, however, the text should not be modified in any way including selecting and abbreviating sections.

The Varieties of Atheism reveals the diverse nonreligious experiences obscured by the combative intellectualism of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens. In fact, contributors contend that narrowly defining atheism as the belief that there is no god misunderstands religious and nonreligious persons altogether. The essays show that, just as religion exceeds doctrine, atheism also encompasses every dimension of human life: from imagination and feeling to community and ethics. Contributors offer new, expansive perspectives on atheism’s diverse history and possible futures. By recovering lines of affinity and tension between particular atheists and particular religious traditions, this book paves the way for fruitful conversation between religious and non-religious people in our secular age.