Matt McCormick - Atheism: Oxford Bibliographies Online Research Guide

ATHEISM

OXFORD BIBLIOGRAPHIES ONLINE RESEARCH GUIDE

Matt McCormick

California State University, Sacramento

2011 by Oxford University Press, Inc.

ISBN: 9780199808663

TABLE OF CONTENTS

OXFORD BIBLIOGRAPHIES ONLINE RESEARCH GUIDE

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OXFORD BIBLIOGRAPHIES ONLINE | Philosophy

Authority and Innovation for Scholarly Research Written by a leading international authority and bearing the Oxford University Press stamp of excellence, this article is a definitive guide to the most important resources on the topic. The article combines annotated citations, expert recommendations, and narrative pathways through the most important scholarly sources in both print and online formats. All materials recommended in this article were reviewed by the author, and the article has been organized in tiers ranging from general to highly specialized, saving valuable time by allowing researchers to easily narrow or broaden their focus among only the most trusted scholarly sources. This is just one of many articles within the subject area of Atlantic History, which is itself just one of the many subjects covered by Oxford Bibliographies Onlinea revolutionary resource designed to cut through academic information overload by guiding researchers to exactly the right book chapter, journal article, website, archive, or data set they need.

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INTRODUCTION

The term atheist describes a person who does not believe that God or a divine being exists. The sort of divine being that has received the most attention in atheological arguments has been the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving creator of the universe that is the central focus of the major monotheistic traditions. It has come to be widely accepted that to be an atheist is to deny that a God or gods exist. Atheism can be narrow or wide in scope; that is, a person can be a narrow atheist about the existence of a particular divine being, such as Zeus. Or a person can lack belief in the existence of any supernatural beings. Theism and atheism are primarily ontological positions about what sorts of things exist. Some theists believe that there is sufficient evidence to rationally justify the conclusion that God is real; others believe in God, but take a weaker view about the state of the evidence, sometimes invoking faith. Atheists typically take the view that there is sufficient evidence to justify concluding that there is no God. Agnosticism is an epistemological category; it describes someone who is not sure whether there is a God or not. Typically, the agnostic has the view that there is insufficient available evidence to draw a reasonable conclusion one way or the other, and as a result the responsible attitude is to suspend judgment. While some authors in the past have offered criticisms of believing or argued against the existence of God, atheism as we know it is a relatively recent development. People began to consider the possibility of a fully viable alternative to theism after Darwin, and the practice of giving a direct philosophical argument for the nonexistence of God became common even later.

GENERAL OVERVIEWS

There are surprisingly few good general overviews of the topic. Rowe 1998 covers the central issues, particularly concerning the problem of evil, but it does not summarize several important recent threads of argument. McCormick 2010 parallels this bibliography and discusses the important arguments at some length. Smart 2004 is not up to date with the key literature. Baggini 2003, Krueger 1998, and Flynn 2007 give useful but introductory accounts of the central issues.

Baggini, Julian. Atheism: A Very Short Introduction . New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

A useful philosophical introduction to the topic and several related issues such as atheism and ethics.

Flynn, Tom, ed. The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief . Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2007.

A useful but somewhat eclectic survey of important people, movements, and concepts in atheism. Not confined to philosophical sources.

Krueger, Douglas E. What is Atheism? A Short Introduction . Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1998.

An introduction addressing many of the important issues, written for a general audience. This book is good but too brief. Useful only for the most basic distinctions and lines of justification.

Le Poidevin, Robin. Arguing for Atheism: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion . London: Routledge, 1996.

A useful introduction and survey of the problems with the standard arguments for the existence of God. Written for undergraduates.

McCormick, Matt. Atheism
URL: (http://iep.utm.edu/atheism/). In The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Edited by James Fieser and Bradley Dowden. 2010.

A more detailed survey of the atheism literature and the arguments that have become influential in the 20th and 21st centuries; parallels this bibliography.

Rowe, William L. Atheism. In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Vol. 1. Edited by Edward Craig, 530534. London: Routledge, 1998.

Covers the problem of evil, but leaves out several recent trends in the argument.

Smart, J. J. C. Atheism and Agnosticism
URL: (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/). In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Edited by Edward N. Zalta. 2004.

An outdated and idiosyncratic survey of the topic. Heavily influenced by early 20th-century positivism.

ANTHOLOGIES

A number of anthologies represent the stages of discussion on the topic in the last fifty years. Early collections such as Flew and MacIntyre 1955 show the influence of logical positivism on philosophical theism and the question of the nature and role of theological language. These influences can still be seen in recent discussions. Later discussions turned to more a priori and formal analyses of the properties of God, as in Morris 1987 (cited under Important Works on Theism: Anthologies). The greatest number of anthologies by far have focused on the problem of evil and are cited under Problem-of-Evil Anthologies and Problem-of-Evil Arguments against Gods Existence. Finally, and most recently, the Martin and Monnier 2003, Martin and Monnier 2006, and Martin 2007 anthologies have served to crystallize the genre of direct deductive and inductive arguments for the nonexistence of God.