Society and Atheism - Bibliography

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The hero of not only English Atheism, but world Atheism, Joseph McCabe left a legacy of aggressive Atheist and antireligious literature that remains fresh and insightful today. His works could constitute a library of Atheism by themselves. Joseph McCabehe wrote nearly 250 books.

Is The Position Of Atheism Growing Stronger - infidels.org
by Joseph McCabe - HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS
Born in 1867, Joseph McCabe became a Franciscan monk at the age of nineteen. But disgusted with his fellow monks and the Christian doctrine, he left the priesthood for good on February 19, 1896. He began to write, first against the priesthood itself and then for the position of Atheism. He was one of the founding members of Britain's Rationalist Press Association, and was a prolific writer for Haldeman-Julius Publications. He was also a much-respected speaker, giving, by his own estimate, three or four thousand lectures in the United States, Australia, and Great Britain by the age of eighty. Still fighting against the injustices and dishonesties of religion, he died on January 10, 1955, at the age of eighty-seven. The epitaph he requested was "He was a rebel to his last day."

After Atheism: Religion and Ethnicity in Russia and Central Asia (Caucasus World) - by David C. Lewis - Book Description - Based on interviews with people throughout Siberia, Central Asia and European Russia about their spiritual experiences, this book brings together insights into the religious worldview of those who claim to be Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, pagan or even atheist. Throughout the ex-Soviet Union peoples of many different ethnic backgrounds report such experiences but often do not know how to interpret them, a position helped or hindered by the fact that at the same time these people are trying to rediscover their ethnic and cultural identity. More than 200 illustrations help to demonstrate these experiences.

David Noebel on Atheism and Biological Evolution (2000) - Jeffery Jay Lowder
Noebel points out, secular humanism is not only atheistic, but naturalistic since secular humanism denies the existence of the supernatural. Moreover, Noebel accurately summarizes some of the standard atheistic critiques of the ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments. However, Noebel's treatment of atheism is weakened substantially by some very significant flaws:
First, when talking about atheists, Noebel often resorts to name-calling and ridicule. For example, Noebel refers to atheism as "militant" (p. 53) and "dogmatic" (p. 57). Elsewhere (pp. 52-53), Noebel portrays a couple of humanists as presumptuous for deciding at a "tender age"--one decided at the age of eighteen while the other decided at the age of thirteen--whether God exists. Yet Noebel would clearly not consider teenage Christians presumptuous for deciding at a "tender age" that God does exist, for his ministry is designed to equip Christian high school and college students to defend Christianity! Noebel is applying a double standard.

(Extract) CHAPTER I - THE ODDS AGAINST THE ATHEIST
In my 'Rise and Fall of the Gods' (1931) I traced the weird and ever-changing belief in Gods from the days of man's infancy to our own time. I showed that at every period during the 5,000 years of history when men developed a higher culture Atheism appeared. We find it in ancient Egypt in spite of the scantiness of the literary remains and the despotic power of the priests. We see it so widespread in civilization 2,500 years ago that it takes a prominent place in history in the form of the Ionian philosophy of Greece and the ethic of Buddha and Confucius in Asia. Then there is the high cultural development of the Greek-Roman civilization, and from 300 B.C. to 300 A.D. we find the thinly veiled Atheism of the Stoics. Epicureans, and Skeptics accepted by the great majority of the better-educated. Atheism perishes again with the crass ignorance and clerical tyranny of the Iron Age, but it spreads widely in the light of the Arab-Persian civilization, wherever the fanatics are checked, and at the Renaissance it reappears in Christendom. The hardening of the religious attitude after the Reformation again checks it, but in the 18th Century it enters upon a development which has, in spite of murderous clerical tyranny in some countries, proceeded steadily ever since.

Books and journal articles on atheism:

Philosophy & Atheism: In Defense of Atheism - by Kai Nielsen.
Against the Faith: Essays on Deists, Skeptics, and Atheists - by Jim Herrick.
Critiques of God: Making the Case against Belief in God - by Peter A. Angeles.
Naturalism without Foundations (Part Four: "Toward a Nonscientistic Atheism") - by Kai Nielsen.
The Human Enterprise: An Attempt to Relate Philosophy to Daily Life (Chap. X "The Two Atheisms") - by M. C. Otto.
American Freethought, 1860-1914 (Chap. 8 "Atheism: Left-Wing of the Freethought Movement") - by Sidney Warren.
The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur (Chap. 20 "Ricoeur on Atheism: A Critique") - by Lewis Edwin Hahn. .
Secular Utilitarianism: Social Science and the Critique of Religion in the Thought of Jeremy Bentham (includes "Conclusion: Atheism and the Secular Utilitarian Society") - by James E. Crimmins.
Religion and the Enlightenment: From Descartes to Kant (Chap. 6 "From Scepticism to Atheism") - by James M. Byrne.
God and Secularity (Chap. 7 "The Reality of God") - by John Macquarrie.

Plato, Phaedo, in The Last Days of Socrates (Penguin Classics, 1995).
David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Penguin Classics, 1990).
Thomas H. Huxley, Agnosticism and Christianity and Other Essays (Prometheus Books, 1992).
James Thrower, Western Atheism: A Short History (Prometheus Books, 2000).
S.T. Joshi, ed., Atheism: A Reader (Prometheus Books, 2000).

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