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The Cambridge Companion to Atheism
In this 2007 volume, eighteen of the world's leading scholars present original essays on various aspects of atheism: its history, both ancient and modern, defense and implications. The topic is examined in terms of its implications for a wide range of disciplines including philosophy, religion, feminism, postmodernism, sociology and psychology. In its defense, both classical and contemporary theistic arguments are criticized, and, the argument from evil, and impossibility arguments, along with a non religious basis for morality are defended. These essays give a broad understanding of atheism and a lucid introduction to this controversial topic.
354 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
November 20, 2020
Decent, but it could have been much better
I found this book to be somewhat difficult to review. Not only am I a theist, and thus might be biased against such a book, but the book seemed to come short of reaching its own goals. I tend to judge a book by the degree to which it accomplishes its goals. But I also take into account the wisdom of the goal itself. What was the goal of this book? Well, the editor of this book said, “The purpose of this volume is to provide general readers and advanced students with an introduction to atheism: its history, present and social context, legal implications, supporting arguments, implications for morality, and relation to other perspectives.” (pg 1) So the goal was to provide an introduction to atheism. In this regard, the book did a sufficient job. However, my two primary critiques are that the book gave too brief of a glance into this topic and that one goal of a book on atheism should also be to provide solid arguments for atheism. To be fair, this book did provide arguments for atheism but the arguments lacked the depth that I was looking for.
The book is comprised of 18 essays (1 per chapter) from 18 different authors. Each essay was quite short (15-20 pages) and I couldn’t help but feel as though we were skimming over much material that would have been better examined in increased depth. That being said, the book is an introduction to atheism. What can we expect? Introductions usually offer only a cursory glimpse into a subject. But an introduction into atheism should provide good, well thought arguments for atheism, now shouldn’t it? But it is hardly possible to provide a solid argument for atheism when your essay is limited to 15 pages! It was therefore unsurprising that each essay seemed cut short and cruelly dismembered in order to fit within the confines of a tiny essay.
But the problems do not end there. Much of the book did not even provide any arguments in support of atheism. The first 65 pages (the first 3 chapters) of this 331-page book concerned merely background information concerning topics such as the history of atheism and atheist demographics. Interesting stuff, to be sure, but this meant that 20% of the book was spent on just the background information. Even when the book finally started talking about the arguments for atheism, the essays were cut way to short.
Chapter 4 is written by the Christian philosopher William Lane Craig. Craig is a respected philosopher whose work I have studied on and off for years. I am happy this book included an essay from Craig because he presents some of the finest contemporary arguments in favor of theism. But unfortunately, Craig was forced to squeeze his entire life’s work into a mere 16 pages. His central argument, the Kalam Cosmological Argument, was crammed into approximately 3 full pages. For comparison, this argument by him was 101 pages long in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. Summarizing a 101-page argument can be done. But turning a 101-page argument into a 3-page argument cannot easily be done very well.
Chapter 5 included Richard M. Gale’s critique of theistic arguments. But his critiques also seemed cut short. In order to counter William Lane Craig’s Kalam argument, Gale asserts that actual infinites could exist. But he doesn’t give much argumentation in order to back up this claim. Chapter 6 also provides too shallow of a critique of theism. Chapter 7 focuses on naturalism and physicalism, while neglecting to present arguments in favor of atheism. Chapter 8 is written by Daniel Dennett and predictably gets bogged down in evolution (to be fair, he made the same mistake in his book, Breaking the Spell). As a theist, my belief in God is not predicated on whether or not evolution is true. It is predicated upon the arguments in favor of theism weighed against the arguments in favor of opposing ideas. Dennett did not provide any reason for me to abandon theism. At least Richard M. Gale tried to provide a reason for atheism!
David Brink’s Chapter 9: The Autonomy of Ethics is arguably the best chapter in the book. In this chapter, Brink gives many well thought out reasons for rejecting the idea that morality is based upon God. But Brink is no moral nihilist, he a moral objectivist that believes moral values, like mathematics or logic, is simply something that exists independently of anything else. He denies God’s metaphysical role in morality and also critiques the theist’s epistemological foundation for morality even if God exists. However, he failed to answer a few rebuttals to his argument that I am aware of but I won’t bother going into the details concerning this in an already long-winded book review. Suffice to say, his argument may have gaping holes in it and this may be more due to the short nature of the essay than to Brink himself. I hope to study Brink’s work more in the future.
Chapter 10 presents the argument from evil by Andrea M. Weisberger. The argument did not seem to be very well put together and I believe it has been thoroughly refuted by Stewart Goetz in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. But once again, maybe the argument was not given the proper light of day due to the essay’s brief nature.
Chapter 11 focuses on Quentin Smith’s Kalam cosmological argument for atheism. His central argument is that the universe is self-caused and there is no first instant of the universe. To me, the idea that the universe had no first instant is ludicrous. Every good cosmological model of the universe shows or at least implies a beginning in time. I think Smith is out of his depth here and has been crushingly refuted by William Lane Craig.
Chapter 12 is written by Patrick Grim who presents impossibility arguments for God. You know the drill, “can God create a rock so heavy that He can’t lift it?” These arguments have always seemed quite silly to me and it usually involves twisting the definition of what it means to be omnipotent in order to make their point. And at best, if it could be proven that a being cannot be simultaneously omnipotent, omniscient, and all good (which I don’t think can be proven), this doesn’t mean God does not exist. God could simply be very powerful, very knowledgeable, and very good. Therefore, this is a poor argument for atheism.
Chapters 13-18 don’t involve arguments for or against atheism. Nevertheless, some of these chapters are quite interesting and informative. But here we run into one of my main problems with this book: Only a small portion of the book was dedicated to arguments in favor of atheism and even these arguments were cut way too short to do them any justice. By my estimate, the only chapters that presented any solid argument for atheism were chapters 5,6,10,11,12. But chapters 5 and 6 lacked depth to the point that I cannot see much justification for their assertions. I feel as though I must consult their work independently in order to see a fair representation of their ideas. Chapter 10 presented a pathetically poor argument, 11 has already been refuted by William Lane Craig, and 12 does not show that atheism is true even if the argument was successful (which I believe it wasn’t). All in all, the lack of arguments for atheism and their short and poor quality are what made me give this book 3 out of 5 stars.
I found this book to be somewhat difficult to review. Not only am I a theist, and thus might be biased against such a book, but the book seemed to come short of reaching its own goals. I tend to judge a book by the degree to which it accomplishes its goals. But I also take into account the wisdom of the goal itself. What was the goal of this book? Well, the editor of this book said, “The purpose of this volume is to provide general readers and advanced students with an introduction to atheism: its history, present and social context, legal implications, supporting arguments, implications for morality, and relation to other perspectives.” (pg 1) So the goal was to provide an introduction to atheism. In this regard, the book did a sufficient job. However, my two primary critiques are that the book gave too brief of a glance into this topic and that one goal of a book on atheism should also be to provide solid arguments for atheism. To be fair, this book did provide arguments for atheism but the arguments lacked the depth that I was looking for.
The book is comprised of 18 essays (1 per chapter) from 18 different authors. Each essay was quite short (15-20 pages) and I couldn’t help but feel as though we were skimming over much material that would have been better examined in increased depth. That being said, the book is an introduction to atheism. What can we expect? Introductions usually offer only a cursory glimpse into a subject. But an introduction into atheism should provide good, well thought arguments for atheism, now shouldn’t it? But it is hardly possible to provide a solid argument for atheism when your essay is limited to 15 pages! It was therefore unsurprising that each essay seemed cut short and cruelly dismembered in order to fit within the confines of a tiny essay.
But the problems do not end there. Much of the book did not even provide any arguments in support of atheism. The first 65 pages (the first 3 chapters) of this 331-page book concerned merely background information concerning topics such as the history of atheism and atheist demographics. Interesting stuff, to be sure, but this meant that 20% of the book was spent on just the background information. Even when the book finally started talking about the arguments for atheism, the essays were cut way to short.
Chapter 4 is written by the Christian philosopher William Lane Craig. Craig is a respected philosopher whose work I have studied on and off for years. I am happy this book included an essay from Craig because he presents some of the finest contemporary arguments in favor of theism. But unfortunately, Craig was forced to squeeze his entire life’s work into a mere 16 pages. His central argument, the Kalam Cosmological Argument, was crammed into approximately 3 full pages. For comparison, this argument by him was 101 pages long in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. Summarizing a 101-page argument can be done. But turning a 101-page argument into a 3-page argument cannot easily be done very well.
Chapter 5 included Richard M. Gale’s critique of theistic arguments. But his critiques also seemed cut short. In order to counter William Lane Craig’s Kalam argument, Gale asserts that actual infinites could exist. But he doesn’t give much argumentation in order to back up this claim. Chapter 6 also provides too shallow of a critique of theism. Chapter 7 focuses on naturalism and physicalism, while neglecting to present arguments in favor of atheism. Chapter 8 is written by Daniel Dennett and predictably gets bogged down in evolution (to be fair, he made the same mistake in his book, Breaking the Spell). As a theist, my belief in God is not predicated on whether or not evolution is true. It is predicated upon the arguments in favor of theism weighed against the arguments in favor of opposing ideas. Dennett did not provide any reason for me to abandon theism. At least Richard M. Gale tried to provide a reason for atheism!
David Brink’s Chapter 9: The Autonomy of Ethics is arguably the best chapter in the book. In this chapter, Brink gives many well thought out reasons for rejecting the idea that morality is based upon God. But Brink is no moral nihilist, he a moral objectivist that believes moral values, like mathematics or logic, is simply something that exists independently of anything else. He denies God’s metaphysical role in morality and also critiques the theist’s epistemological foundation for morality even if God exists. However, he failed to answer a few rebuttals to his argument that I am aware of but I won’t bother going into the details concerning this in an already long-winded book review. Suffice to say, his argument may have gaping holes in it and this may be more due to the short nature of the essay than to Brink himself. I hope to study Brink’s work more in the future.
Chapter 10 presents the argument from evil by Andrea M. Weisberger. The argument did not seem to be very well put together and I believe it has been thoroughly refuted by Stewart Goetz in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. But once again, maybe the argument was not given the proper light of day due to the essay’s brief nature.
Chapter 11 focuses on Quentin Smith’s Kalam cosmological argument for atheism. His central argument is that the universe is self-caused and there is no first instant of the universe. To me, the idea that the universe had no first instant is ludicrous. Every good cosmological model of the universe shows or at least implies a beginning in time. I think Smith is out of his depth here and has been crushingly refuted by William Lane Craig.
Chapter 12 is written by Patrick Grim who presents impossibility arguments for God. You know the drill, “can God create a rock so heavy that He can’t lift it?” These arguments have always seemed quite silly to me and it usually involves twisting the definition of what it means to be omnipotent in order to make their point. And at best, if it could be proven that a being cannot be simultaneously omnipotent, omniscient, and all good (which I don’t think can be proven), this doesn’t mean God does not exist. God could simply be very powerful, very knowledgeable, and very good. Therefore, this is a poor argument for atheism.
Chapters 13-18 don’t involve arguments for or against atheism. Nevertheless, some of these chapters are quite interesting and informative. But here we run into one of my main problems with this book: Only a small portion of the book was dedicated to arguments in favor of atheism and even these arguments were cut way too short to do them any justice. By my estimate, the only chapters that presented any solid argument for atheism were chapters 5,6,10,11,12. But chapters 5 and 6 lacked depth to the point that I cannot see much justification for their assertions. I feel as though I must consult their work independently in order to see a fair representation of their ideas. Chapter 10 presented a pathetically poor argument, 11 has already been refuted by William Lane Craig, and 12 does not show that atheism is true even if the argument was successful (which I believe it wasn’t). All in all, the lack of arguments for atheism and their short and poor quality are what made me give this book 3 out of 5 stars.
May 14, 2014
Surprisingly some of the essays had quite a low level of argumentation. I would say even naive. After hundreds years of debate I had expected much better arguments than the ones depicted in this book. It seems most of the authors just tried to put their own ideas instead of listing the ones developed by philosophy and atheists over the centuries. It is bit a like reinventing the wheel just in a very amateur way. I had expected much more from this book. Some of the essays were so bad I could counter them myself which I did not expect at all. The only part I really enjoyed was the history of Atheism. This is the only part of this book which maintained the level. I think a decent physicist or biologist could make better arguments than some of the philosophers. I am afraid this book is an easy prey for all the creationists since it gives them many opportunities to counter argument. It is extremely disappointing.
June 27, 2011
Solid book...owe this book the Jorge treatment in a forthcoming review.
April 19, 2014
A great book with a wide range of topics covered.
August 8, 2010
A great collection of philosophical writings concerning atheism and some more modern versions of arguments for god. Martin is thorough, making this collection of essays a great book.
August 3, 2011
The most interesting parts of the book for me were those that dealt with evolution, the number of atheists in different countries and especially, the psychological profile of atheists.
July 31, 2015
While I was writing my undergraduate thesis around atheist identities this book was seminal to my research. A good selection of essays on various atheist-related topics.
April 13, 2021
Excelente livro sobre ateísmo filosófico. Editado pelo Proeminente filósofo ateísta da religião, Michael Martin (um dos meus favoritos), o livro traz uma série de abordagens críticas sobre a visão teísta e avalia vários argumentos em favor e contra a crença teística. Se esse assunto te interessa, sua leitura é indispensável!
July 3, 2018
Ponderous, disjointed (from having each chapter independently written). I will not read again.
May 26, 2022
Luettu elämänkatsomustiedon aineopintoja varten.
June 29, 2016
The Cambridge Companion to Atheism is a compendium of articles on atheism, ranging from discussions of atheism in the ancient, classical modern, and contemporary periods; arguments for atheism; arguments against atheism; rebuttals to arguments against atheism; assumptions of atheism, including interpretations of the world as natural and physical; explanations of evolutionary theory as an alternative to a design theory; ethical issues related to atheism and theism; connections of atheism to religion, feminism, freedom of religion, and postmodernism; anthropological theories of religion; and psychological interpretations of the atheist mindset. The reader, no matter her religious orientation, will find this an illuminating study.
January 1, 2016
120 juta penduduk bumi adalah orang atheis. Itu berarti Atheisme adalah kepercayaan terbesar ketiga setelah Kristen dan Islam. Banyak banget ya?
Buku ini kumpulan tulisan akademisi dari berbagai universitas mengenai Atheisme mencakup perdebatan melawan theisme, implikasi moral dari atheisme, kaitannya dengan sains.
Saya membaca buku ini biar tahu saja konsep atheisme yang original itu seperti apa. Supaya saya gak perlu nanggepin kalau ada orang mengklaim dirinya atheis dengan pikiran ngawur, sok logis, sok ilmiah, sok keren-kerenan. Kesannya maju gitu klo jadi atheis. Hehe. Padahal seseorang tidak jadi keren hanya dengan mengaku mempercayai sesuatu.
Buku ini kumpulan tulisan akademisi dari berbagai universitas mengenai Atheisme mencakup perdebatan melawan theisme, implikasi moral dari atheisme, kaitannya dengan sains.
Saya membaca buku ini biar tahu saja konsep atheisme yang original itu seperti apa. Supaya saya gak perlu nanggepin kalau ada orang mengklaim dirinya atheis dengan pikiran ngawur, sok logis, sok ilmiah, sok keren-kerenan. Kesannya maju gitu klo jadi atheis. Hehe. Padahal seseorang tidak jadi keren hanya dengan mengaku mempercayai sesuatu.
June 11, 2008
Interesting book about atheism and related ideas. I haven't read all the chapters but the ones I read were quite inspiring.
January 17, 2010
This is a really "heady" book for seriously trained intellectuals and philosophers. Not really for an amateur like myself but still worth reading...
August 11, 2014
One of the best compilations about atheism; written by scholars of a wide range of disciplines including philosophy, religion, feminism, postmodernism, sociology and psychology.
December 5, 2016
The quality was all over the place. I was a bit disappointed.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews