Arguing that a 'new atheism', driven largely by Darwinian objections to God's existence, has limited debate to a scientific framework, The Atheist's Primer reinstates the importance of philosophy in the debate about God's existence and in so doing recovers the distinguished philosophical tradition of atheism, which Dawkins and others have obscured. Beginning with the Ancient Greeks and culminating with Hume, Michael Palmer provides the philosophical framework on which scientific objections to theism are hung. He explicates and comments on the thinking behind atheism, discussing issues such as evil, morality, miracles, and the motivations for belief. Although delving deeply into epistemological concerns, emphasising the disheartening limitations of man's capacity for knowledge and our materialist dependencies, Palmer concludes on a positive note arguing - alongside Nietzsche, Marx and Freud and many others - that happiness and personal fulfilment are to be found in the very materialism that religious belief rejects. An eloquent abridgment of his previous work, The Atheist's Creed, which was aimed at the educational market, The Atheist's Primer is written in fluent and concise prose, making it an accessible introduction for the general reader.
A former Teaching Fellow at McMaster University and Humboldt Fellow at Marburg University, Dr Palmer has taught at Marlborough College and Bristol University. For many years Founding Head of the Department of Religion and Philosophy at the Manchester Grammar School, Dr Palmer is also the author of the best-selling textbook Moral Problems as well as of the two-volume textbook The Philosophy of Religion. More recently he has written The Atheist's Creed (2010) and The Atheist's Primer (2012).
Table of Contents
Contents The Atheist's Creed Introduction
1. The Meaning of Atheism i. Atheism: A Definition ii. Atheism and Agnosticism 2. The Origins of Atheism i. The Age of the Sophists ii. Epicureans & Sceptics iii. The Christian Era and the Re-emergence of Religious Doubt 3. Two Arguments for God's Existence: An Atheistic Critique i. Introduction ii. The Arguments from Cause and Design iii. The Atheistic Critique 4. The Problem of Evil i. Introduction ii. The Logical (or Deductive) Argument from Evil iii. The Evidential (or Inductive) Argument from Evil 5. Morality and Religion i. Introduction ii. Criticisms of the Moral Argument iii. Life After Death and Morality iv. Nietzsche's Critique of Religious Morality 6. Miracles i. The Meaning of 'Miracle' ii. The Critique of Miracles: Their Impossibility iii. The Critique of Miracles: Their Improbability 7. The Motivations of Belief i. Introduction ii. The Impulse to Believe (a) Ludwig Feuerbach: God as the Projection of Man (b) Karl Marx: Religion as the Opium of the People (c) Sigmund Freud: Religion as a Universal Obsessional Neurosis
Conclusion Guide to Further Reading Index of Names Index of Subjects
