atheism Reference library
Oxford Reader's Companion to George Eliot
... . From 1842 , when she lost her faith in Christianity, George Eliot did not believe in God, yet she was more of an agnostic (to use the term that T. H. *Huxley was to coin for himself in 1869 ) than an outright atheist. As she put it in a review of Harriet *Martineau 's Letters in the * Leader in March 1851 , ‘as it is confessed we cannot have direct immediate knowledge of God, so neither can we know that he is not’ ( Ashton 1996 : 83). Moreover, the term atheism suggests a more militant hostility to religious faith than she was inclined to...
atheism Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature (3 ed.)
...gods. Out-and-out atheism as a serious belief, as opposed to the expression of thoughts of an atheistic nature, never attracted a following. Ideas akin to atheism emerged in the Greek world in the sixth century bc among the Milesian philosophers ( see Miletus ), whose work marked the emergence of Greek rationalism. They rejected mythological explanations for the origin of everything, seeing the universe as operating naturalistically according to laws comprehensible to human reason. However they each believed in a first principle (Thales in water,...
agnosticism, atheism Reference library
Oxford Reader's Companion to Trollope
...atheism . For a devout believer like Trollope , these were alien concepts. When the Fortnightly Review was founded ( 1865 ), he wanted to exclude from the pages of this expressly liberal periodical any material that called into question the basis of the Christian faith; and when he interviewed the intellectual John *Morley for the editorship, he challenged his agnosticism outright. In Orley Farm Trollope mounts a ferocious attack on the atheistic hedonism of the commercial traveller Mr Moulder and his friends, ‘pigs out of the sty of...
‘Atheism, The Necessity of’ Quick reference
The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature (4 ed.)
...Atheism, The Necessity of’ A prose pamphlet by P. B. Shelley and his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg , published anonymously at Oxford, 1811 . Using the sceptical arguments of David Hume and John Locke , the authors—then both undergraduates—smartly demolish the grounds for a rational belief in the Deity. Shelley and Hogg were both expelled from the university for circulating the work to heads of colleges and to bishops, and for ‘contumacy’ (obstinate disobedience) in refusing to answer questions about...
‘Atheism, The Necessity of’ Reference library
The Oxford Companion to English Literature (7 ed.)
...Atheism, The Necessity of’ A prose pamphlet by P. B. Shelley and his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg , published anonymously at Oxford, 1811 . Using the sceptical arguments of David Hume and John Locke , the authors—then both undergraduates—smartly demolish the grounds for a rational belief in the Deity. Shelley and Hogg were both expelled from the university for circulating the work to heads of colleges and to bishops, and for ‘contumacy’ (obstinate disobedience) in refusing to answer questions about it....
atheism Quick reference
The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (2 ed.)
... the theory or belief that God does not exist. The word comes (in the late 16th century, via French) from Greek atheos , from a- ‘without’ + theos ...
Necessity of Atheism
Natural Philosophy (Science) Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
... 1795 . However, Coleridge began to think that Newton's followers encouraged a mechanical philosophy that explained too much by secondary causes, leaving God as an indolent First Cause. He concluded that the concept of lifeless matter separated from God was a large step towards atheism; and secondly, that Priestley's alternative of active matter was a form of pantheism. Thus after about 1800 Coleridge sought a natural philosophy that escaped the atomistic and mechanical conceptions of the natural world. This search took him into German Naturphilosophie and...
Religion Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...frank unbelief made their way quietly in higher intellectual circles. The most eminent eighteenth-century instance was the highly influential—and much controverted—philosopher David *Hume , but such views survived the French Revolution to surface in the scepticism or outright atheism of philosophers like Jeremy *Bentham and James *Mill , or of poets like Lord *Byron and Percy *Shelley . Anti-clerical views also made considerable headway in an awakening popular opinion, drawing on old resentments of clerical presumption and on a new awareness of abuses...
Thomas Jefferson Hogg
Nicolas Boindin
Sylvain Maréchal
Léger-Marie Deschamps, dom
William Walwyn
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Queen Mab
Sir Richard Blackmore
Elizabeth Hamilton
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi
