The Oxford Handbook of Atheism

Recent books by, among others, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens have thrust atheism firmly into the popular, media, and academic spotlight.This so-called New Atheism is arguably the most striking development in western socio-religious culture of the past decade or more.As such, it has spurred fertile (and often heated) discussions both within, and between, a diverse range of disciplines.Yet atheism, and the New Atheism, are by no means co-extensive.Interesting though it indeed is, the New Atheism is a single, historically and culturally specific manifestation of positive atheism (the that there is/are no God/s), which is itself but one form of a far deeper, broader, and more significant global phenomenon. The Oxford Handbook of Atheism is a pioneering edited volume, exploring atheism--understood in the broad sense of 'an absence of belief in the existence of a God or gods'--in all the richness and diversity of its historical and contemporary expressions.Bringing to