RELG 029B. Atheism in Theory and Practice: The History, Philosophy, and Politics of Unbelief

Rejecting the supernatural has a history and a tradition. In this course we'll explore the skeptics and radicals of early modern France, the deist democrats of America, the flowering of unbelief in 19thcentury England, the rich culture of secular Judaism in Eastern Europe and Israel, and the secular political religions of the 20th century. We will read classics in this tradition: Lucian, Cicero, Hume, Spinoza, Nietzsche, Marx, Tom Paine, Freud, Emma Goldman, John Dewey, Santayana, Bertrand Russell as well as the aggressive "New Atheists" Daniel Dennett, Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris. Can God and Faith survive the critics?
Humanities.
1 credit.
Catalog chapter: Religion  
Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion


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