Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Home
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

19 results

  • Introduction
  • Edited by Stephen Bullivant, St Mary's University, Twickenham, London
  • Michael Ruse, Florida State University
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Atheism
  • Published online: 25 September 2021
  • Print publication: 16 September 2021, pp 1-8
  • View extract

    Summary

    Atheism in the early twenty-first century is a much-discussed topic. From New Atheism’s explosion onto bestseller lists and bus sides in the mid-years of the “noughties,” to ongoing human-rights abuses both of non-believers in some highly religious countries and of religious believers by officially atheistic ones, to a steady stream of surveys showing the rapid rise of non-religiosity in parts of the world, to – well – a great deal else besides, the topic is often in the media, and thus the public eye. This is not, in itself, a new phenomenon. Particular issues, campaigns, movements, philosophies, and people, relating to atheism in various ways, might come and go. But they have been coming and going for an awfully long time, and in a very wide spread of cultures and contexts. Atheism was “a much-discussed topic” in fourth-century BC Athens, second-century AD Asia Minor, eleventh-century France, thirteenth-century India, seventeenth-century England, and nineteenth-century South Africa.

  • 59 - Atheism Throughout the World
  • from Part VIII - Emerging Atheisms in the Twenty-First Century
  • Edited by Stephen Bullivant, St Mary's University, Twickenham, London
  • Michael Ruse, Florida State University
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Atheism
  • Published online: 25 September 2021
  • Print publication: 16 September 2021, pp 1095-1112
  • View extract

    Summary

    Two informed estimates of the numbers of atheists and/or agnostics in the world, each published in the last fifteen years by reputable social scientists in major reference works, place the figure around or above half a billion people (Zuckerman 2007; Keysar and Navarro-Rivera 2013). Both rely, in very large measure, on what their authors readily admit to being reasonable guesswork. There is no shame whatsoever in this. Rigorous, nationally representative surveys don’t exist in large swathes of the world. In many places where they do, respondents may have reasonable anxieties about declaring, even on a seemingly confidential poll, a politically ‘wrong’ answer – in either direction. For example, China and Vietnam are the world’s first and fifteenth most populous countries, both are officially atheist, and neither is famous for freedoms of conscience or religion.

The Cambridge History of Atheism
  • The Cambridge History of Atheism
  • Edited by Stephen Bullivant
  • Michael Ruse
  • Published online: 25 September 2021
  • Print publication: 16 September 2021
  • View description
    The two-volume Cambridge History of Atheism offers an authoritative and up to date account of a subject of contemporary interest. Comprised of sixty essays by an international team of scholars, this History is comprehensive in scope. The essays are written from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including religious studies, philosophy, sociology, and classics. Offering a global overview of the subject, from antiquity to the present, the volumes examine the phenomenon of unbelief in the context of Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, and Jewish societies. They explore atheism and the early modern Scientific Revolution, as well as the development of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and its continuing implications. The History also includes general survey essays on the impact of scepticism, agnosticism and atheism, as well as contemporary assessments of thinking. Providing essential information on the nature and history of atheism, The Cambridge History of Atheism will be indispensable for both scholarship and teaching, at all levels.