Atheism and Agnosticism Reference library
Stephen Wagley
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World
... and Agnosticism . Atheism in the modern world has both theoretical and practical manifestations, and developed mainly in reaction to Christian theology. The word has meant different things at different times: bad behavior, scoffing at holy things, irreligion, wrong religion (as in the controversies among Christians that followed the Reformation), or a well-thought-out rejection of God and religion. In the West, atheism is usually a rejection of God as understood in Christianity. Western European societies traditionally feared and hated “atheism” and...
Liberation Theology: Latin America Reference library
M. Daniel Carroll R.
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible
...the organic intellectual, and the hope of a socialist state. These theologians, however, have never adopted Marxism wholesale. The appropriation of Marxism has varied from theologian to theologian, and use has been selective and critical. For example, they have rejected the atheism of some official Marxist thought, while appreciating Marxist explanations for their nations' poverty. They also consider certain aspects to be compatible with the critiques of wealth and power found in the Bible and Christian tradition. This manner of doing theology in the Latin...
Churches in Context: The Jesus Movement in the Roman World Reference library
Daniel N. Schowalter
Oxford History of the Biblical World
...for senators. Suetonius also mentions harsh actions taken against the Jews ( Domitian 12.2 ), including a heavy tax burden and physical inspection for circumcision to determine who was liable to pay the tax. Dio tells of Domitian's execution of the consul Flavius Clemens for atheism, mentioning that this was the same charge “on which many others who had veered into the ways of the Jews had been condemned” (Dio Cassius 67.14.10). The book of Revelation is often cited as evidence for Domitian's persecution of another marginal group, the followers of Jesus. ...
Psalms Reference library
C. S. Rodd and C. S. Rodd
The Oxford Bible Commentary
...a threat of punishment, and v. 7 is a wish for the restoration of the nation's prosperity. It is almost a commonplace to stress that the ‘atheism’ of the ‘fool’ is practical—he acts as if God did not exist—and not religious or philosophical, on the grounds that pure atheism would have been impossible in Israelite society, and that the psalmist stresses the moral faults of ‘fools’. But how different is ‘practical atheism’ from a denial of the existence of God? Paul quotes vv. 1–3 in Rom 3:10–18 in an abbreviated form, followed by a series of quotations...
Visions of Kingdoms: From Pompey to the First Jewish Revolt Reference library
Amy-Jill Levine
Oxford History of the Biblical World
...from their Gentile counterparts in terms of ethnic identification, religious practice, and participation in local civic and cultural practices (such as the refusal to offer sacrifices to the emperor and to worship local or imperial gods, for which non-Jews accused them of “atheism”), Diaspora communities often formed individual semi-independent governmental structures. It is unlikely that the majority of Jews had Roman citizenship (as Paul of Tarsus did). On occasion, however, privileges were given to them; for example, Julius Caesar exempted Jews from...
Madrasahs in Bukhara and Samarkand Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World
...Samarkand, c. 1619–1636. Photograph by Joachim Gierlichs / Image Archive Das Bild des Orients, Berlin The importance of madrasahs in Bukhara and Samarkand as centers of Islamic learning greatly declined and many were closed in the twentieth century due to the Soviet policy of atheism and the ensuing secularism of the society between the 1920s and 1990s. Bibliography Abazov, Rafis . Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of Central Asia . New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Bartold, Vasilii . Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion . New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal...
Albania Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World
...and who in 1967 declared Albania the world 's first atheist state. No reliable numbers are available, but experts say the religious composition of Albania 's 3.5 million people is roughly the same as before World War II and immediately after Hoxha 's 1967 decree on atheism: 71 percent Muslim, 29 percent Christian—further broken down as 55 percent Sunnī Muslim, 16 percent Bektāshī (of which about 5 percent are Shīʿī), 19 percent Orthodox Christian, and 10 percent Roman Catholic. Albania 's Muslims have traditionally been divided into two ethnic...
Memorials and Commemoration Reference library
Joseph Anthony Amato
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World
...curriculums were rewritten, research centers were established, state publishing houses were founded, new encyclopedias were published, and books and documents were censored and purged. Museums were established to assure an orthodox past, none as expressive as Soviet museums of atheism located in former Orthodox churches. Dissenting Memory and Critical History. Totalitarianism made the greatest and most systematic attempt of the nation-state to capture the mind and control the memory of all society. In contradistinction, throughout modern and contemporary...
Papacy Reference library
Danilo Raponi
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World
...atheistic, deriding the papacy as a surpassed institution that would be soon destroyed by the need for reason, not faith. They were all strongly condemned and their writings banned by the Catholic hierarchy, but it is undeniable that their ideas raised a wave of agnosticism and atheism throughout Europe. Nonetheless, the French Revolution proved perhaps to be the greatest threat to the papacy. The confiscation of church property of 1789 was only the beginning of a ferocious attack on the spiritual and temporal powers of the pope, which culminated in 1798 ...
Secularism and Politics Reference library
Jeremiah J. Castle and Patrick L. Schoettmer
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion
...throughout the region. As Froese ( 2004 ) points out, the Soviet Union attempted a 70-year effort at forced secularization, persecuting religious believers, broadcasting anti-religious propaganda, and establishing a state-sanctioned “scientific atheism” belief system. The Soviets saw scientific atheism as very much the same thing as a religion, championed at first by the League of Militant Atheists and later the Knowledge Society. Despite their efforts, private secularism never quite thrived in the region. Tsekhanskaia ( 2010 ) reports that the...
Philosophy Reference library
Kelley L. Ross
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World
...now merely of historical or literary importance—figures such as Denis Diderot ( 1713–1784 ) and Voltaire ( 1694–1778 ). Or they survive as political philosophers, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau ( 1712–1778 ). Although theoretical issues of rationalism, science, materialism, or atheism figured in all their thinking, most of these people saw their purpose as political, and the principal effect of the movement is widely believed to be the French Revolution of 1789 . By then there had already been another revolution, the American, in which the influence of French...
Morocco Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World
...spread, so did the Salafī conception of Islam. See Fāsī, Muhammad ʿAllāl al- ; Istiqlāl ; and Salafīyah . Fundamentalist Movements. In 1969 , Abd al-Karīm Mutiʿ founded the “Islamic Youth” (shabībah islāmīyah), an underground political movement that defined itself against atheism, more particularly leftist groups on university campuses. The group was influenced ideologically by the writings of Egyptian Sayyid Qutb. It had a military arm as well as an association, the association of the Islamic Youth that was authorized by the monarchy in 1972 . The...
Judaism Reference library
George R. Wilkes
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World
...regardless of the historical process by which the written text developed. A further challenge to conventional Jewish theological discourse has been thrown up after the Holocaust by the increasingly common rejection of the idea of a covenant and personal relationship with God. Atheism was already a marked feature of European Jewish life in the early twentieth century, particularly on the political left among working-class east Europeans. By the 1930s, Reconstructionist circles, inspired by New York Conservative Mordecai Kaplan ( 1881–1983 ), rejected the...
Victorianism Reference library
Rob Breton
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World
...most influential and revered thinkers, Thomas Carlyle , was vehemently antidemocratic. In Past and Present ( 1843 ), a book he wrote in seven weeks in the heat of responding to working-class uprisings in industrial centers, Carlyle argued that democracy institutionalizes the “atheism” of laissez-faire economics. Carlyle's antidemocratic attitude was later reflected in Victorian intellectuals of both conservative and liberal orientations, such as John Ruskin , Matthew Arnold , George Eliot , and Elizabeth Gaskell . Even John Stuart Mill , who in On...
Central Asia Reference library
Mark David Luce
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World
...Latin alphabets and introduced a newly adapted Cyrillic script for all languages. This facilitated the learning of Russian, but it also eliminated the possibility for the development of a pan-Turkic literature. In the late 1920s a propaganda campaign was launched against Islam. Atheism was promoted, and Islam was depicted as a reactionary religion that humiliated women and was intolerant and xenophobic. In 1927 all traditional Muslim courts were closed. In 1928 all Qur᾽anic schools were banned. All religious endowments ( waqf ) were abolished in 1930 ....
Church Fathers Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome
...earlier advised Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia, that he was to leave Christians in peace unless they drew attention to themselves. As Pliny the Younger records, if an accusation was brought against Christians, they were to be tried, and only if they were found guilty of atheism or of disbelief in the Roman gods should they be punished ( Epistulae 10, 97). Tertullian complains in Apology 2: Trajan “says that they should not be sought [out]—as though they were innocent; then prescribes that they should be punished—as though they were guilty!” In his...
Malcolm X (b. 19 May 1925) Reference library
Encyclopedia of African American History 1896 to the Present
...him too dangerous to be given early parole. During his seven years in prison Malcolm corresponded with his brothers Philbert and Reginald, as well as his sister Hilda, all of whom were members of the Nation of Islam ( NOI ). At first reticent because of his professed atheism, Malcolm soon began to subscribe to the NOI's theology and enthusiastically spread its message among other inmates. In retaliation for this increased activism, in 1950 , he was transferred back to Charlestown State Prison. At Charlestown he began corresponding with the NOI's...
Cavendish, Margaret Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature
...Earth and Sun, sunbeams, sun rays, dews, the poles, frost, fire, echo, light, shadow, music, and thought. Most notably, an entire series explores the notion that “all things are governed by atoms,” a favorite materialist theory of Cavendish that left her open to accusations of atheism. The volume typically contains a considerable amount of prefatory materials in which Cavendish negotiates her status as a female writer. In a dedicatory epistle to Sir Charles Cavendish, she admits: “True it is, Spinning with our Fingers is more proper to our Sexe, then studying...
Historical Psychology Reference library
Noemí Pizarroso López
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the History of Modern Psychology
... ( 1942 ), one of the pillars of Febvrian historical psychology. In it he introduced the concept of outillage mental to refer to those mental materials, that set of instruments, with which people think, feel, and act in a given civilization or era. Febvre’s thesis was that atheism was unthinkable in the 16th century , because neither the language, nor the philosophic vocabulary, nor the technical and scientific development of the time allowed people even to doubt God’s existence. Febvre referred especially to the missing words (absolute, relative,...
Human Rights Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World
...on religion. The provisions regarding religion did not aim at neutrality: Article 10 stated that Islam was the religion of unspoiled nature and prohibited “any form of compulsion on man or to exploit his poverty or ignorance in order to convert him to another religion or to atheism.” Article 9 called for the state to ensure the means to acquire education “so as to enable man to be acquainted with the religion of Islam.” The favored treatment of Islam carried over to freedom of speech, with Article 22(a) stating that expressing opinion freely was allowed “in...
