atheism n. Quick reference
A Dictionary of Psychology (4 ed.)
... n. Rejection of belief in God. atheist n. One who rejects belief in God. Compare agnosticism , deism , pantheism , theism . atheistic or atheistical adj. [From Greek a - without + theos a god + - ismos indicating a state or...
Sir George Gabriel Stokes
steady-state universe Reference library
The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science
...XII suggested in 1952 that big-bang cosmology agreed with the notion of a transcendental creator, and was in harmony with Christian dogma—an extrapolation for which he was later criticized at the Second Vatican Council. Steady-state theory may thus have been too tainted with atheism. Soviet astronomers rejected both steady-state and big-bang cosmologies as idealistic and unsound. Hoyle associated steady-state theory with personal freedom and anti-Communism. Observational challenges to steady-state theory came from the new science of radio astronomy. Martin...
Evolution and Muslim Responses to It Reference library
Mohammed Ghaly
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Science, and Technology in Islam
...theory in his book al-Khāṭirāt (Ideas), in which he distinguished between Darwin’s theory and the ideas of philosophers such as Büchner, Spencer, and Shiblī Shumayyil. These philosophers, al-Afghānī argued, unjustifiably used Darwin’s theory for propagating materialism and atheism. He added that the theory of evolution is reconcilable with Islam and that its basics were already known for early Muslim alchemists such as Abū Bakr ibn Bishrūn. The response of the Egyptian intellectual Muḥammad Farīd Wajdī ( d. 1954 ) was more nuanced than the moderate version...
holism Reference library
The Oxford Companion to the Body
...The political geography of twentieth-century holism was extremely complex. Conservatives and liberals, fascists and communists, feminists and male chauvinists, racists and internationalists were all known to help themselves to holist rhetoric. Variously opposing alienation, atheism, bureaucracy, democracy, free-market capitalism, industrialism, mass culture, and metropolitan life, some holists have sought to defend human individuality as an absolute, whilst others have subsumed individuals into groups, be they classes, nations or — as most notoriously in...
natural theology Reference library
The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science
...species to perish. Despite this and other difficulties, natural theology continued to be relevant to the promotion of the sciences in the English-speaking world. It provided a vocabulary in which scientific knowledge could be presented as spiritually edifying, destructive of atheism, and above suspicion. Cambridge geologist Adam Sedgwick could still argue in the 1830s that the repeated introduction of new species, apparent from the fossil record, indicated a deity with a continuing interest in the world. Precisely because the sciences were purposed to...
religion and science Reference library
The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science
...and integrity of God's creation they also functioned as a creative aesthetic. Many people who would not otherwise have known much science studied it in popular natural theology texts. Following the French Revolution fear of a popular uprising was fuelled by the materialism and atheism associated with such leading French scientists as Pierre-Simon de Laplace , Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck , and Georges-Louis LeClerc , Comte de Buffon . Over the next few decades the “The March of the Mind,” as manifested by Mechanics' Institutes, popular science lectures, and...
deism n. Quick reference
A Dictionary of Psychology (4 ed.)
... n. Belief in a god who created the universe but does not govern worldly events, does not answer prayers, and has no direct involvement in human affairs. deist n. One who espouses deism. Compare agnosticism , atheism , pantheism , theism . deistic or deistical adj. [From Latin deus a god + Greek -ismos indicating a state or...
pantheism n. Quick reference
A Dictionary of Psychology (4 ed.)
... n . Belief in nature, the universe, or the order and lawfulness of everything that happens as representations (usually metaphorical) of God. Compare agnosticism , atheism , deism , theism . pantheist n . One who espouses pantheism. pantheistic or pantheistical adj . [From Greek pan all + theos a god + - ismos indicating a state or...
theism n. Quick reference
A Dictionary of Psychology (4 ed.)
... n . Belief in a god who created the universe and continues to govern everything that happens, in most theistic belief systems answering prayers and being directly involved with human affairs. Compare agnosticism , atheism , deism , pantheism . theist n . One who espouses theism. theistic or theistical adj . [From Greek theos a god + -ismos indicating a state or...
agnosticism n. Quick reference
A Dictionary of Psychology (4 ed.)
... n. A belief that nothing is or can be known about God. More loosely, a belief that the existence of God cannot be known with certainty, but this sense is avoided in careful usage. agnostic adj. n. (Of or pertaining to) one who espouses agnosticism. Compare atheism , deism , pantheism , theism . [Coined in 1869 by the English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley ( 1825–95 ), from Greek a - without + gnostos known + - ismos indicating a state or...
science and religion Reference library
John Polkinghorne
The Oxford Companion to the Mind (2 ed.)
...people, even if they had trouble with the ecclesiastical authorities (Galileo) or with Christian orthodoxy (Newton). In the 18th century, however, and particularly in France, an increasingly mechanical account of the physical world led many to reject religion and to embrace atheism. In the 19th century, many of the leading physicists ( Faraday , Maxwell , Kelvin ) were religious believers, but the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 led to conflicts between biologists and theologians, though there were some religious thinkers who...
Religion And Science Reference library
Ronald L. Numbers
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the History of American Science, Medicine, and Technology
...pirated. “The Vestiges has been all the rage for a time,” exclaimed a Princeton student in 1847 . Although Chambers denied dispensing with the Creator, critics thought otherwise. The teaching of Vestiges , fumed one American critic, is nothing but “atheism—blank atheism, cold, cheerless, heartless, atheism,” an outburst that led one reader to complain that “a more rabid tirade can scarcely be found this side of the Middle Ages, & the smell of roast heretic is truly overpowering throughout.” More than any other work antedating Darwin’s Origin of Species,...
Creationism Reference library
Ronald L. Numbers
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the History of American Science, Medicine, and Technology
...through the mollusk, the lobster, the bird, the quadruped, and the monkey.” Even more pointed was Charles Hodge ( 1797–1878 ), the leading Calvinist theologian in America, who devoted a small book to answering the question What Is Darwinism? ( 1874 ). The answer: “It is Atheism.” The issue of human evolution understandably provoked the greatest outrage. One conservative Protestant, H. L. Hastings, wrote a tract called Was Moses Mistaken? or, Creation and Evolution ( 1896 ), in which he addressed this “delicate” topic: I do not wish to meddle with any...
humanism Reference library
Edmund Leach
The Oxford Companion to the Mind (2 ed.)
...of classical Greece and Rome, which was rated as ‘the humanities’ because it was the secular work of man whereas the Bible and the patristic commentaries were treated as the divinely inspired works of God. Contemporary humanism is a morally concerned style of intellectual atheism openly avowed by only a small minority of individuals (for example, those who are members of the British Humanist Association) but tacitly accepted by a wide spectrum of educated people in all parts of the Western world. The essence of this modern humanism is summed up in the...
physicalism Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Consciousness
...century. Perhaps because of the difference between Newtonian physics and classical atomism, in the 18th century, materialism evolved beyond mere atomism to be essentially the denial of the existence of a soul, and because of the soul's connections with a religious world view, to atheism. In the 20th century analytic philosophy the idea achieved considerable prominence again, finding support in such figures as Quine ( 1960 ) and Lewis ( 1994 ). Indeed, it not unreasonable to say that, just as idealism was the metaphysics du jour for the philosophers of the...
Creationism Reference library
Encyclopedia of Evolution
...of an intrinsic human propensity to sin or to disobey God. Cain, D. “ Let There Be Light. ” Eternity (May 1982): 30–31. Graphical contrast of fourteen “literal” interpretations of Genesis. Dawkins, R. The Blind Watchmaker . New York, 1986. Argues that evolution makes atheism intellectually respectable (but see Ruse, 2001). Gould, S. J. “ Non-overlapping Magisteria. ” Natural History 106.2 (1997): 16–22, 60–62. Gould, S. J. Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life . New York, 1999. Good review of the controversy and an eloquent...
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,...
James McCosh: Bridge Builder Between Old and New Psychology Reference library
Elissa N. Rodkey
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the History of Modern Psychology
...had himself worried “lest I might unsettle the faith of the students committed to my care” (p. x) by disclosing his own acceptance of evolution. But he soon decided to openly share how he was “sure that religion is safe whatever be the decision come to” (p. 2). Darwinism was not atheism, as Princeton theological seminarian Charles Hodge had written; instead, McCosh believed that if “properly limited and explained” (p. xi) evolution was compatible with orthodox Christian belief. George Macloskie, professor of natural history at Princeton, credited McCosh with...
Cold War Psychology in Eastern Europe Reference library
Julien Kiss
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the History of Modern Psychology
...Experimental Psychology at the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava, under the coordination of Damian Kovac, was also underfunded. In 1983 , a controversial change took place when the Psychology Laboratory at Brno University merged with the Institute of Social Awareness and Atheism Research. At this time, psychology was, of course, interpreted from a Marxist perspective, and the institute reflected this interpretation that consciousness itself was considered as a purely social dimension. In the same year, Karel Balcar published a paper on personality...
