Imagine There's No Heaven: How Atheism Helped Create the Modern World Author: Mitchell Stephens | Language: English | ISBN:
B00HY03FVK | Format: PDF
Imagine There's No Heaven: How Atheism Helped Create the Modern World Description
The historical achievements of religious belief have been large and well chronicled. But what about the accomplishments of those who have challenged religion? Traveling from classical Greece to twenty-first century America,
Imagine There’s No Heaven explores the role of disbelief in shaping Western civilization. At each juncture common themes emerge: by questioning the role of gods in the heavens or the role of a God in creating man on earth, nonbelievers help move science forward. By challenging the divine right of monarchs and the strictures of holy books, nonbelievers, including Jean- Jacques Rousseau and Denis Diderot, help expand human liberties, and influence the early founding of the United States. Revolutions in science, in politics, in philosophy, in art, and in psychology have been led, on multiple occasions, by those who are free of the constraints of religious life. Mitchell Stephens tells the often-courageous tales of history’s most important atheists— like Denis Diderot and Salman Rushdie. Stephens makes a strong and original case for their importance not only to today’s New Atheist movement but to the way many of us—believers and nonbelievers—now think and live.
- File Size: 1130 KB
- Print Length: 338 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1137002603
- Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (February 25, 2014)
- Sold by: Macmillan
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00HY03FVK
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
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- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,487 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > History - #3
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > History > Europe > Western - #3
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Religion & Spirituality > Spirituality > Atheism
In “Imagine There’s No Heaven: How Atheism Helped Create The Modern World” author Mitchell Stephens delivers a readable, vibrant history of disbelief and atheistic thought, and argues persuasively that intellectual challenges to religious belief were a major catalyst to increasing knowledge in the modern world.
Stephens’ book is first and foremost a history of disbelief, from the Greeks and Romans, though the low points of the Dark Ages where it was institutionally repressed, then into the Renaissance where it fought to maintain a foothold and finally into the Enlightenment where atheism (and its more prevalent, slightly religious cousin, deism) finally became a valid viewpoint, at least among intellectual circles. He then follows disbelief through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and into our own, before suggesting where atheism might be heading based on his historical analysis up to now.
The history of disbelief is much more prevalent and rich than traditional history has portrayed, as atheism’s role has usually been downplayed or outright denied by conventional histories. Stephens brings out the role of many often overlooked personages, such as Denis Diderot, Jean Meslier and Charles Bradlaugh – the first open atheist elected to Parliament (in 1880) but who was denied his seat until he was re-elected several times.
While primarily a history, as the subtitle of his book suggests Stephens’ also argues that disbelief and the progress of knowledge have gone hand in hand throughout history. Whenever knowledge was taking great leaps forward, religious doubters were right there, stoking the intellectual fires.
Its so ironic that an atheist would still present some of these anti-religion fairy tale stories as fact. I would suggest reading other well researched books by atheist and theist historians alike. A few good examples of books dealing with the history of science is Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion, God's Philosophers, God and Reason in the Middle Ages, Medieval Technology and Social Change, and numerous others.
I just don't see why one can write a great book about atheist scientists like Feynman or Dirac and their wonderful contributions to humanity, without having to spin tales and create myths regarding religions monolithic anti-science stance. I mean trying to use Newton as an example of almost an closet atheist is just absurd. Many scientists and engineers to this day are inspired by religion, which does not interfere or conflict with a rational outlook on the universe.
Things like the "Dark Ages", people believing the world is flat, and the real motivations behind the Galileo affair have been debunked. Some religions, and conservatives for that matter, have greatly supported the sciences both financial and philosophically. Additionally, there have been numerous scientists who have been everything from the devout to deists. Unlike what the author suggests, religion has largely received no credit for its role in scientific achievements and for that matter has only received blame for just about everything in the modern day western educational system.
Unless you like the 19th century Draper & White largely fictional version of history, or just hate religion, you have a lot better options from all different spectrum's and viewpoints out there.
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