Inquisitive, relevant, thought-provoking. A blog for reflection on religion as an element of public life, coordinated by the Centre for Religion, Conflict and Globalisation, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Groningen.
In today’s post, Terrell Carver reflects on our atheisms series, noting the ways in which conflation occurs across different concepts in public atheist discourses and the risks, challenges and strategies this raises for analysing as well as engaging with atheisms in contemporary global politics and public life. Strong binary contrasts promote instant intelligibility, even if …
Continue reading "Conflationary Consequences in Contemporary Atheisms"
In the past two weeks, The Religion Factor has published a series of posts on the topic of diversity within contemporary atheist movements, leading up to a seminar on ‘Atheisms around the globe’ organized by the CRCPD. In today’s post, Jeroen Weggen reflects back on the seminar and the series, offering some thoughts on which …
Last Friday, Teemu Taira compared and contrasted the rates of atheism of Finland and Sweden and tried to explain this in terms of differing national histories. In today’s contribution, Johannes Quack will draw on his fieldwork with rationalist organizations in India to consider which directions the study of atheism, and more broadly nonreligion, should take. …
Continue reading "Atheism and Nonreligion: Theory and Comparison beyond the North-Atlantic World"
In Wednesday’s post by Stephen LeDrew, the focus was on diversity within American atheism. Today we make the jump from American atheism to European atheism. Teemu Taira will explore the differences between atheism in Finland and atheism in Sweden and relate them to the national histories of these Scandinavian countries and the role that the …
Continue reading "Do National Histories Matter? Explaining the Diversity of Atheism"
Yesterday’s post introduced the phenomenon of the new publicity of atheism and atheist organizations, as well as the issue of diversity. In today’s post, Stephen LeDrew discusses the particular case of atheism in America and the diversity that can be found in the American atheist movement, arguing that this diversity is directly related to the history …
In more and more parts of the world, atheism is becoming publicly visible, yet the ways in which this occurs are many and varied, related to differences in politics, culture, histories of secularism and secularization and a host of other factors. Until now the focus of researchers who study atheism has perhaps been too much …
In the lead-up to his seminar at the University of Groningen next week, guest contributor Terrell Carver from the University of Bristol explores the tensions between atheism, secularism and religious freedom. [i] Until recently atheism seemed to be a relatively lonely, unprovocative and unorganised ‘private’ activity. The anti-religious propaganda and overt policies of repression that …
Continue reading "Where is the line between atheism and secularism?"
