Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists.

The term ''atheism'' originated from the Greek (''atheos''), meaning "without god", which was applied with a negative connotation to those thought to reject the gods worshipped by the larger society. With the spread of freethought, skeptical inquiry, and subsequent increase in criticism of religion, application of the term narrowed in scope. The first individuals to identify themselves as "atheist" appeared in the 18th century.

Atheists tend to be skeptical of supernatural claims, citing a lack of empirical evidence. Atheists have offered various rationales for not believing in any deity. These include the problem of evil, the argument from inconsistent revelations, and the argument from nonbelief. Other arguments for atheism range from the philosophical to the social to the historical. Although some atheists have adopted secular philosophies, there is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere.

In Western culture, some atheists are frequently assumed to be irreligious, although other atheists are spiritual. Moreover, atheism also figures in certain religious and spiritual belief systems, such as Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Neopagan movements such as Wicca. Jainism and some forms of Buddhism do not advocate belief in gods, whereas Hinduism holds atheism to be valid, but difficult to follow spiritually.

Since conceptions of atheism vary, determining how many atheists exist in the world today is no easy task. According to one estimate, about 2.3% of the world's population are atheists, while a further 11.9% are nonreligious. According to another, rates of self-reported atheism are among the highest in Western nations, although also to quite varying degrees—United States (4%), Italy (7%), Spain (11%), Great Britain (17%), Germany (20%), and France (32%).

Etymology

thumb|left|The Greek word (''atheoi''), as it appears in the Epistle to the Ephesians () on the early 3rd-century Papyrus 46. It is usually translated into English as "[those who are] without God".

In early ancient Greek, the adjective '''' (, from the privative ἀ- + "god") meant "godless". It was first used as a term of censure roughly meaning "ungodly" or "impious". In the 5th century BCE, the word began to indicate more deliberate and active godlessness in the sense of "severing relations with the gods" or "denying the gods". The term ἀσεβής ('''') then came to be applied against those who impiously denied or disrespected the local gods, even if they believed in other gods. Modern translations of classical texts sometimes render '''' as "atheistic". As an abstract noun, there was also (''''), "atheism". Cicero transliterated the Greek word into the Latin ''''. The term found frequent use in the debate between early Christians and Hellenists, with each side attributing it, in the pejorative sense, to the other.

The term ''atheist'' (from Fr. ''''), in the sense of "one who denies or disbelieves the existence of God", predates ''atheism'' in English, being first found as early as 1566, and again in 1571. ''Atheist'' as a label of practical godlessness was used at least as early as 1577. The term ''atheism'' was derived from the French '''', and appears in English about 1587. An earlier work, from about 1534, used the term ''atheonism''. Related words emerged later: ''deist'' in 1621, ''theist'' in 1662, ''deism'' in 1675, and ''theism'' in 1678. At that time "deist" and "deism" already carried their modern meaning. The term ''theism'' came to be contrasted with deism.

Karen Armstrong writes that "During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the word 'atheist' was still reserved exclusively for polemic ... The term 'atheist' was an insult. Nobody would have dreamed of calling ''himself'' an atheist." In the middle of the seventeenth century it was still assumed that it was impossible not to believe in God; atheist meant not accepting the current conception of the divine.

''Atheism'' was first used to describe a self-avowed belief in late 18th-century Europe, specifically denoting disbelief in the monotheistic Abrahamic god. In the 20th century, globalization contributed to the expansion of the term to refer to disbelief in all deities, though it remains common in Western society to describe atheism as simply "disbelief in God".

Some atheists have doubted the very nature of the term "atheism". In his book ''Letter to a Christian Nation'', Sam Harris wrote:

In fact, "atheism" is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a "non-astrologer" or a "non-alchemist." We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.

Definitions and distinctions

Writers disagree how best to define and classify ''atheism'', contesting what supernatural entities it applies to, whether it is an assertion in its own right or merely the absence of one, and whether it requires a conscious, explicit rejection. A variety of categories have been proposed to try to distinguish the different forms of atheism.

Range

Some of the ambiguity and controversy involved in defining ''atheism'' arises from difficulty in reaching a consensus for the definitions of words like ''deity'' and ''god''. The plurality of wildly different conceptions of god and deities leads to differing ideas regarding atheism's applicability. The ancient Romans accused Christians of being atheists for not worshiping the pagan deities. Gradually, this view fell into disfavor as ''theism'' came to be understood as encompassing belief in any divinity.

With respect to the range of phenomena being rejected, atheism may counter anything from the existence of a deity, to the existence of any spiritual, supernatural, or transcendental concepts, such as those of Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism and Taoism.

Implicit vs. explicit

Definitions of atheism also vary in the degree of consideration a person must put to the idea of gods to be considered an atheist. Atheism has sometimes been defined to include the simple absence of belief that any deities exist. This broad definition would include newborns and other people who have not been exposed to theistic ideas. As far back as 1772, Baron d'Holbach said that "All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God." Similarly, George H. Smith (1979) suggested that: "The man who is unacquainted with theism is an atheist because he does not believe in a god. This category would also include the child with the conceptual capacity to grasp the issues involved, but who is still unaware of those issues. The fact that this child does not believe in god qualifies him as an atheist." Smith coined the term ''implicit atheism'' to refer to "the absence of theistic belief without a conscious rejection of it" and ''explicit atheism'' to refer to the more common definition of conscious disbelief. Ernest Nagel contradicts Smith's definition of atheism as merely "absence of theism", acknowledging only explicit atheism as true "atheism".

Positive vs. negative

Philosophers such as Antony Flew, and Michael Martin, have contrasted positive (strong/hard) atheism with negative (weak/soft) atheism. Positive atheism is the explicit affirmation that gods do not exist. Negative atheism includes all other forms of non-theism. According to this categorization, anyone who is not a theist is either a negative or a positive atheist. The terms ''weak'' and ''strong'' are relatively recent, while the terms ''negative'' and ''positive'' atheism are of older origin, having been used (in slightly different ways) in the philosophical literature and in Catholic apologetics. Under this demarcation of atheism, most agnostics qualify as negative atheists.

While Martin, for example, asserts that agnosticism entails negative atheism, most agnostics see their view as distinct from atheism, which they may consider no more justified than theism or requiring an equal conviction. The assertion of unattainability of knowledge for or against the existence of gods is sometimes seen as indication that atheism requires a leap of faith. Common atheist responses to this argument include that unproven ''religious'' propositions deserve as much disbelief as all ''other'' unproven propositions, and that the unprovability of a god's existence does not imply equal probability of either possibility. Scottish philosopher J. J. C. Smart even argues that "sometimes a person who is really an atheist may describe herself, even passionately, as an agnostic because of unreasonable generalised philosophical skepticism which would preclude us from saying that we know anything whatever, except perhaps the truths of mathematics and formal logic." Consequently, some atheist authors such as Richard Dawkins prefer distinguishing theist, agnostic and atheist positions by the probability that each assigns to the statement "God exists".

Definition as impossible or impermanent

Before the 18th century, the existence of God was so universally accepted in the western world that even the possibility of true atheism was questioned. This is called ''theistic innatism''—the notion that all people believe in God from birth; within this view was the connotation that atheists are simply in denial.

There is also a position claiming that atheists are quick to believe in God in times of crisis, that atheists make deathbed conversions, or that "there are no atheists in foxholes." Some proponents of this view claim that a benefit of religion is that religious faith enables humans to endure hardships better, functioning as an "opium of the people". There have however been examples to the contrary, among them examples of literal "atheists in foxholes."

Other usage of the term "positive atheism"

As mentioned above, the terms ''negative'' and ''positive'' have been used in philosophical literature in a similar manner to the terms ''weak'' and ''strong''. However, the book ''Positive Atheism'' by Goparaju Ramachandra Rao, first published in 1972, introduced an alternative use for the phrase. Having grown up in a hierarchical system with a religious basis, Gora called for a secular India and suggested guidelines for a positive atheist philosophy, meaning one that promotes positive values. Positive atheism, defined this way, entails such things as being morally upright, showing an understanding that religious people have reasons to believe, not proselytising or lecturing others about atheism, and defending oneself with truthfulness instead of aiming to "win" any confrontations with outspoken critics.

Philosophical concepts

thumb|[[Baron d'Holbach|Paul Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach, an 18th century advocate of atheism. ''"The source of man's unhappiness is his ignorance of Nature. The pertinacity with which he clings to blind opinions imbibed in his infancy, which interweave themselves with his existence, the consequent prejudice that warps his mind, that prevents its expansion, that renders him the slave of fiction, appears to doom him to continual error." ''The System of Nature ]]

The broadest demarcation of atheistic rationale is between practical and theoretical atheism.

Practical atheism

In ''practical'' or ''pragmatic'' atheism, also known as ''apatheism'', individuals live as if there are no gods and explain natural phenomena without resorting to the divine. The existence of gods is not rejected, but may be designated unnecessary or useless; gods neither provide purpose to life, nor influence everyday life, according to this view. A form of practical atheism with implications for the scientific community is methodological naturalism—the "tacit adoption or assumption of philosophical naturalism within scientific method with or without fully accepting or believing it."

Practical atheism can take various forms:

Absence of religious motivation—belief in gods does not motivate moral action, religious action, or any other form of action;

Active exclusion of the problem of gods and religion from intellectual pursuit and practical action;

Indifference—the absence of any interest in the problems of gods and religion; or

Unawareness of the concept of a deity.

Theoretical atheism

Ontological arguments

Theoretical (or theoric) atheism explicitly posits arguments against the existence of gods, responding to common theistic arguments such as the argument from design or Pascal's Wager. Actually the ''theoretical atheism'' is mainly an ontology, precisely a physical ontology.

Epistemological arguments

Epistemological atheism argues that people cannot know a God or determine the existence of a God. The foundation of epistemological atheism is agnosticism, which takes a variety of forms. In the philosophy of immanence, divinity is inseparable from the world itself, including a person's mind, and each person's consciousness is locked in the subject. According to this form of agnosticism, this limitation in perspective prevents any objective inference from belief in a god to assertions of its existence. The rationalistic agnosticism of Kant and the Enlightenment only accepts knowledge deduced with human rationality; this form of atheism holds that gods are not discernible as a matter of principle, and therefore cannot be known to exist. Skepticism, based on the ideas of Hume, asserts that certainty about anything is impossible, so one can never know the existence of a God. The allocation of agnosticism to atheism is disputed; it can also be regarded as an independent, basic worldview.

Other arguments for atheism that can be classified as epistemological or ontological, including logical positivism and ignosticism, assert the meaninglessness or unintelligibility of basic terms such as "God" and statements such as "God is all-powerful." Theological noncognitivism holds that the statement "God exists" does not express a proposition, but is nonsensical or cognitively meaningless. It has been argued both ways as to whether such individuals can be classified into some form of atheism or agnosticism. Philosophers A. J. Ayer and Theodore M. Drange reject both categories, stating that both camps accept "God exists" as a proposition; they instead place noncognitivism in its own category.

Metaphysical arguments

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[[File:Epikouros BM 1843.jpg|thumb|left|Epicurus is credited with first expounding the problem of evil. David Hume in his ''Dialogues concerning Natural Religion'' (1779) cited Epicurus in stating the argument as a series of questions: "Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?"]]

Logical arguments

Logical atheism holds that the various conceptions of gods, such as the personal god of Christianity, are ascribed logically inconsistent qualities. Such atheists present deductive arguments against the existence of God, which assert the incompatibility between certain traits, such as perfection, creator-status, immutability, omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, omnibenevolence, transcendence, personhood (a personal being), nonphysicality, justice and mercy.

Theodicean atheists believe that the world as they experience it cannot be reconciled with the qualities commonly ascribed to God and gods by theologians. They argue that an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent God is not compatible with a world where there is evil and suffering, and where divine love is hidden from many people. A similar argument is attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism.

Reductionary accounts of religion

Philosophers such as Ludwig Feuerbach and Sigmund Freud argued that God and other religious beliefs are human inventions, created to fulfill various psychological and emotional wants or needs. This is also a view of many Buddhists. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, influenced by the work of Feuerbach, argued that belief in God and religion are social functions, used by those in power to oppress the working class. According to Mikhail Bakunin, "the idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind, in theory and practice." He reversed Voltaire's famous aphorism that if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him, writing instead that "if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him."

Alternatives

Axiological, or constructive, atheism rejects the existence of gods in favor of a "higher absolute", such as humanity. This form of atheism favors humanity as the absolute source of ethics and values, and permits individuals to resolve moral problems without resorting to God. Marx and Freud used this argument to convey messages of liberation, full-development, and unfettered happiness.

One of the most common criticisms of atheism has been to the contrary—that denying the existence of a god leads to moral relativism, leaving one with no moral or ethical foundation, or renders life meaningless and miserable. Blaise Pascal argued this view in his Pensées.

Atheist existentialism

French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre identified himself as a representative of an "atheist existentialism" concerned less with denying the existence of God than with establishing that "man needs ... to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God." Sartre said a corollary of his atheism was that "if God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept, and ... this being is man." The practical consequence of this atheism was described by Sartre as meaning that there are no ''a priori rules'' or absolute values that can be invoked to govern human conduct, and that humans are "condemned" to invent these for themselves, making "man" absolutely "responsible for everything he does".

Academic Rhiannon Goldthorpe suggested that some of Sartre's writing was "pervaded by a 'Christian atheism' in which ancient beliefs still feed the imagination and the sensibility of the most hardened skeptic". Academic Stephen Priest described Sartre's perspective as "an atheistic metaphysics". Sartre translator Hazel Barnes wrote of Sartre: "The God he rejects is not some vague power, an unknown X which would account for the origin of the universe, nor is it an ideal or a mythus to symbolize man's quest for the Good. It is specifically the God of the Scholastics or at least any idea of God as a specific, all powerful, absolute, existing Creator."

History

Although the term ''atheism'' originated in 16th-century France, ideas that would be recognized today as atheistic are documented from the Vedic period and the classical antiquity.

Early Indic religion

Atheistic schools are found in early Indian thought and have existed from the times of the historical Vedic religion. Among the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy; Samkhya, the oldest philosophical system do not accept God and the early Mimamsa also rejected the notion of God. The early Mimamsa not only did not accept God but asserted that human action itself was enough to create the necessary circumstances for the enjoyment of its fruits. The thoroughly materialistic and anti-theistic philosophical Cārvāka (also called ''Nastika'' or ''Lokaiata'') school that originated in India around the 6th century BCE is probably the most explicitly atheistic school of philosophy in India, similar to the Greek Cyrenaic school. This branch of Indian philosophy is classified as heterodox due to its rejection of the authority of Vedas and hence is not considered part of the six orthodox schools of Hinduism, but it is noteworthy as evidence of a materialistic movement within Hinduism. Chatterjee and Datta explain that our understanding of Cārvāka philosophy is fragmentary, based largely on criticism of the ideas by other schools, and that it is not a living tradition:

"Though materialism in some form or other has always been present in India, and occasional references are found in the Vedas, the Buddhistic literature, the Epics, as well as in the later philosophical works we do not find any systematic work on materialism, nor any organized school of followers as the other philosophical schools possess. But almost every work of the other schools states, for refutation, the materialistic views. Our knowledge of Indian materialism is chiefly based on these."

Other Indian philosophies generally regarded as atheistic include Classical Samkhya and Purva Mimamsa. The rejection of a personal creator God is also seen in Jainism and Buddhism in India.

Classical antiquity

Western atheism has its roots in pre-Socratic Greek philosophy, but did not emerge as a distinct world-view until the late Enlightenment. The 5th-century BCE Greek philosopher Diagoras is known as the "first atheist", and is cited as such by Cicero in his ''De Natura Deorum''. Critias viewed religion as a human invention used to frighten people into following moral order. Atomists such as Democritus attempted to explain the world in a purely materialistic way, without reference to the spiritual or mystical. Other pre-Socratic philosophers who probably had atheistic views included Prodicus and Protagoras. In the 3rd-century BCE the Greek philosophers Theodorus Cyrenaicus and Strato of Lampsacus also did not believe gods exist.

Socrates (c. 471–399 BCE), was accused of impiety (see Euthyphro dilemma) on the basis that he inspired questioning of the state gods. Although he disputed the accusation that he was a "complete atheist", saying that he could not be an atheist as he believed in spirits, he was ultimately sentenced to death. Socrates also prays to various gods in Plato's dialogue Phaedrus and says "By Zeus" in the dialogue ''The Republic''.

Euhemerus (c. 330–260 BCE) published his view that the gods were only the deified rulers, conquerors and founders of the past, and that their cults and religions were in essence the continuation of vanished kingdoms and earlier political structures. Although not strictly an atheist, Euhemerus was later criticized for having "spread atheism over the whole inhabited earth by obliterating the gods".

Atomic materialist Epicurus (c. 341–270 BCE) disputed many religious doctrines, including the existence of an afterlife or a personal deity; he considered the soul purely material and mortal. While Epicureanism did not rule out the existence of gods, he believed that if they did exist, they were unconcerned with humanity.

The Roman poet Lucretius (c. 99–55 BCE) agreed that, if there were gods, they were unconcerned with humanity and unable to affect the natural world. For this reason, he believed humanity should have no fear of the supernatural. He expounds his Epicurean views of the cosmos, atoms, the soul, mortality, and religion in ''De rerum natura'' ("On the nature of things"), which popularized Epicurus' philosophy in Rome.

The Roman philosopher Sextus Empiricus held that one should suspend judgment about virtually all beliefs—a form of skepticism known as Pyrrhonism—that nothing was inherently evil, and that ataraxia ("peace of mind") is attainable by withholding one's judgment. His relatively large volume of surviving works had a lasting influence on later philosophers.

The meaning of "atheist" changed over the course of classical antiquity. The early Christians were labeled atheists by non-Christians because of their disbelief in pagan gods. During the Roman Empire, Christians were executed for their rejection of the Roman gods in general and Emperor-worship in particular. When Christianity became the state religion of Rome under Theodosius I in 381, heresy became a punishable offense.

Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance

The espousal of atheistic views was rare in Europe during the Early Middle Ages and Middle Ages (see Medieval Inquisition); metaphysics, religion and theology were the dominant interests. There were, however, movements within this period that forwarded heterodox conceptions of the Christian God, including differing views of the nature, transcendence, and knowability of God. Individuals and groups such as Johannes Scotus Eriugena, David of Dinant, Amalric of Bena, and the Brethren of the Free Spirit maintained Christian viewpoints with pantheistic tendencies. Nicholas of Cusa held to a form of fideism he called ''docta ignorantia'' ("learned ignorance"), asserting that God is beyond human categorization, and our knowledge of God is limited to conjecture. William of Ockham inspired anti-metaphysical tendencies with his nominalistic limitation of human knowledge to singular objects, and asserted that the divine essence could not be intuitively or rationally apprehended by human intellect. Followers of Ockham, such as John of Mirecourt and Nicholas of Autrecourt furthered this view. The resulting division between faith and reason influenced later theologians such as John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, and Martin Luther.

The Renaissance did much to expand the scope of freethought and skeptical inquiry. Individuals such as Leonardo da Vinci sought experimentation as a means of explanation, and opposed arguments from religious authority. Other critics of religion and the Church during this time included Niccolò Machiavelli, Bonaventure des Périers, and François Rabelais.

Early modern period

The Renaissance and Reformation eras witnessed a resurgence in religious fervor, as evidenced by the proliferation of new religious orders, confraternities, and popular devotions in the Catholic world, and the appearance of increasingly austere Protestant sects such as the Calvinists. This era of interconfessional rivalry permitted an even wider scope of theological and philosophical speculation, much of which would later be used to advance a religiously skeptical world-view.

Criticism of Christianity became increasingly frequent in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially in France and England, where there appears to have been a religious malaise, according to contemporary sources. Some Protestant thinkers, such as Thomas Hobbes, espoused a materialist philosophy and skepticism toward supernatural occurrences, while the Jewish-Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza rejected divine providence in favour of a panentheistic naturalism. By the late 17th century, deism came to be openly espoused by intellectuals such as John Toland who coined the term "pantheist". Despite their ridicule of Christianity, many deists held atheism in scorn. The first known explicit atheist was the German critic of religion Matthias Knutzen in his three writings of 1674. He was followed a half century later by another explicit atheist writer, the French priest Jean Meslier.

Knutzen and Meslier were in turn followed by other openly atheistic thinkers, such as Baron d'Holbach and Jacques-André Naigeon. The philosopher David Hume developed a skeptical epistemology grounded in empiricism, undermining the metaphysical basis of natural theology. The French Revolution took atheism and anti-clerical deism outside the salons and into the public sphere. A major goal of the French revolution was a restructuring and subordination of the clergy with respect to the state through the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Attempts to enforce it led to anti-clerical violence and the expulsion of many clergy from France. The chaotic political events in revolutionary Paris eventually enabled the more radical Jacobins to seize power in 1793, ushering in the Reign of Terror. The Jacobins were deists and introduced the Cult of the Supreme Being as a new French state religion. Some atheists surrounding Jacques Hébert instead sought to establish a Cult of Reason, a form of atheistic pseudo-religion with a goddess personifying reason. Both movements in part contributed to attempts to forcibly de-Christianize France. The Cult of Reason ended after three years when its leadership, including Jacques Hébert was guillotined by the Jacobins. The anti-clerical persecutions ended with the Thermidorian Reaction.

The Napoleonic era institutionalized the secularization of French society, and exported the revolution to northern Italy, in the hopes of creating pliable republics. In the 19th century, atheists contributed to political and social revolution, facilitating the upheavals of 1848, the Risorgimento in Italy, and the growth of an international socialist movement.

In the latter half of the 19th century, atheism rose to prominence under the influence of rationalistic and freethinking philosophers. Many prominent German philosophers of this era denied the existence of deities and were critical of religion, including Ludwig Feuerbach, Arthur Schopenhauer, Max Stirner, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Since 1900

Atheism in the 20th century, particularly in the form of practical atheism, advanced in many societies. Atheistic thought found recognition in a wide variety of other, broader philosophies, such as existentialism, objectivism, secular humanism, nihilism, anarchism, logical positivism, Marxism, feminism, and the general scientific and rationalist movement.

Logical positivism and scientism paved the way for neopositivism, analytical philosophy, structuralism, and naturalism. Neopositivism and analytical philosophy discarded classical rationalism and metaphysics in favor of strict empiricism and epistemological nominalism. Proponents such as Bertrand Russell emphatically rejected belief in God. In his early work, Ludwig Wittgenstein attempted to separate metaphysical and supernatural language from rational discourse. A. J. Ayer asserted the unverifiability and meaninglessness of religious statements, citing his adherence to the empirical sciences. Relatedly the applied structuralism of Lévi-Strauss sourced religious language to the human subconscious in denying its transcendental meaning. J. N. Findlay and J. J. C. Smart argued that the existence of God is not logically necessary. Naturalists and materialistic monists such as John Dewey considered the natural world to be the basis of everything, denying the existence of God or immortality.

The 20th century also saw the political advancement of atheism, spurred on by interpretation of the works of Marx and Engels. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, there was increased religious freedom for religious minorities, which lasted for a few years. While the Soviet Constitution of 1936 guaranteed freedom to hold religious services, the Soviet state under Stalin's policy of state atheism did not consider religion a private matter; it outlawed religious instruction and waged campaigns to persuade people to abandon religion. Several other communist states also opposed religion and mandated state atheism, including the former governments of the Albania, and currently, China, North Korea, and Cuba.

Other leaders like E. V. Ramasami Naicker (Periyar), a prominent atheist leader of India, fought against Hinduism and Brahmins for discriminating and dividing people in the name of caste and religion. This was highlighted in 1956 when he arranged for the erection of a statue depicting a Hindu god in a humble representation and made antitheistic statements.

In 1966, ''''Time'''' magazine asked "Is God Dead?" in response to the Death of God theological movement, citing the estimation that nearly half of all people in the world lived under an anti-religious power, and millions more in Africa, Asia, and South America seemed to lack knowledge of the one God.

In 1967, the Albanian government under Enver Hoxha announced the closure of all religious institutions in the country, declaring Albania the world's first officially atheist state, although religious practice in Albania was restored in 1991. These regimes enhanced the negative associations of atheism, especially where anti-communist sentiment was strong in the United States, despite the fact that prominent atheists were anti-communist.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the number of actively anti-religious regimes has reduced considerably. In 2006, Timothy Shah of the Pew Forum noted "a worldwide trend across all major religious groups, in which God-based and faith-based movements in general are experiencing increasing confidence and influence vis-à-vis secular movements and ideologies." However, Gregory S. Paul and Phil Zuckerman consider this a myth and suggest that the actual situation is much more complex and nuanced.

The religiously motivated terrorist events of 9/11 and the partially successful attempts of the Discovery institute to change the American science curriculum to include creationist ideas, together with support for those ideas from George W. Bush in 2005, all triggered the noted atheist authors Sam Harris, Daniel C. Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Victor J. Stenger and Christopher Hitchens to publish books that were best sellers in America and worldwide.

A 2010 survey found that those identifying themselves as atheists or agnostics are on average more knowledgeable about religion than followers of major faiths. Nonbelievers scored better on questions about tenets central to Protestant and Catholic faiths. Only Mormon and Jewish faithful scored as well as atheists and agnostics.

Atheism 3.0 is a movement within atheism that does not believe in the existence of God, but says that religion has been beneficial to both individuals and society, and that eliminating it is of lesser importance than other things that need to be done.

Demographics

It is difficult to quantify the number of atheists in the world. Respondents to religious-belief polls may define "atheism" differently or draw different distinctions between ''atheism'', non-religious beliefs, and non-theistic religious and spiritual beliefs. A Hindu atheist would declare oneself as a Hindu, although also being an atheist at the same time. A 2005 survey published in ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' found that the non-religious made up about 11.9% of the world's population, and atheists about 2.3%. This figure did not include those who follow atheistic religions, such as some Buddhists.

A November–December 2006 poll published in the ''Financial Times'' gives rates for the United States and five European countries. The lowest rates of atheism were in the United States at only 4%, while the rates of atheism in the European countries surveyed were considerably higher: Italy (7%), Spain (11%), Great Britain (17%), Germany (20%), and France (32%). The European figures are similar to those of an official European Union survey, which reported that 18% of the EU population do not believe in a god. Other studies have placed the estimated percentage of atheists, agnostics, and other nonbelievers in a personal god as low as single digits in Poland, Romania, Cyprus, and some other European countries, and up to 85% in Sweden, 80% in Denmark, 72% in Norway, and 60% in Finland. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 19% of Australians have "no religion", a category that includes atheists. Between 64% and 65% of Japanese are atheists, agnostics, or do not believe in a god.

An international study has reported positive correlations between levels of education and not believing in a deity, and the EU survey finds a positive correlation between leaving school early and believing in a God. A letter published in ''Nature'' in 1998 reported a survey suggesting that belief in a personal god or afterlife was at an all-time low among the members of the U.S. National Academy of Science, 7.0% of whom believed in a personal god as compared with more than 85% of the general U.S. population, although this study has been criticized for its stringent definition of belief in God. An article published by ''The University of Chicago Chronicle'' that discussed the above study, stated that 76 percent of physicians believe in God, more than the 7% of scientists above, but still less than the 85% of the general population. Another study assessing religiosity among scientists who are members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that "just over half of scientists (51%) believe in some form of deity or higher power; specifically, 33% of scientists say they believe in God, while 18% believe in a universal spirit or higher power." Frank Sulloway of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Michael Shermer of California State University conducted a study which found in their polling sample of "credentialed" U.S. adults (12% had Ph.Ds and 62% were college graduates) 64% believed in God, and there was a correlation indicating that religious conviction diminished with education level. An inverse correlation between religiosity and intelligence has been found by 39 studies carried out between 1927 and 2002, according to an article in ''Mensa Magazine''. These findings broadly agree with a 1958 statistical meta-analysis by Professor Michael Argyle of the University of Oxford. He analyzed seven research studies that had investigated correlation between attitude to religion and measured intelligence among school and college students from the U.S. Although a clear negative correlation was found, the analysis did not identify causality but noted that factors such as authoritarian family background and social class may also have played a part. Studies of the proportion of prison convicts without religious training place the percentage at about 1/10 of 1%.

Atheism, religion, and morality

Association with world views and social behaviors

Sociologist Phil Zuckerman analyzed previous social science research on secularity and non-belief, and concluded that societal well-being is positively correlated with irreligion. His findings relating specifically to atheism include:

Compared to religious people, "atheists and secular people" are less nationalistic, prejudiced, antisemitic, racist, dogmatic, ethnocentric, close-minded, and authoritarian.

In the US, in states with the highest percentages of atheists, the murder rate is lower than average. In the most religious US states, the murder rate is higher than average.

Atheism and irreligion

People who self-identify as atheists are often assumed to be irreligious, but some sects within major religions reject the existence of a personal, creator deity. In recent years, certain religious denominations have accumulated a number of openly atheistic followers, such as atheistic or humanistic Judaism and Christian atheists.

The strictest sense of positive atheism does not entail any specific beliefs outside of disbelief in any deity; as such, atheists can hold any number of spiritual beliefs. For the same reason, atheists can hold a wide variety of ethical beliefs, ranging from the moral universalism of humanism, which holds that a moral code should be applied consistently to all humans, to moral nihilism, which holds that morality is meaningless.

Divine command vs. ethics

Although it is a philosophical truism, encapsulated in Plato's Euthyphro dilemma, that the role of the gods in determining right from wrong is either unnecessary or arbitrary, the argument that morality must be derived from God and cannot exist without a wise creator has been a persistent feature of political if not so much philosophical debate. Moral precepts such as "murder is wrong" are seen as divine laws, requiring a divine lawmaker and judge. However, many atheists argue that treating morality legalistically involves a false analogy, and that morality does not depend on a lawmaker in the same way that laws do. Other atheists, such as Friedrich Nietzsche, have disagreed with this view and have stated that morality "has truth only if God is truth—it stands or falls with faith in God."

There exist normative ethical systems that do not require principles and rules to be given by a deity. Some include virtue ethics, social contract, Kantian ethics, utilitarianism, and Objectivism. Sam Harris has proposed that moral prescription (ethical rule making) is not just an issue to be explored by philosophy, but that we can meaningfully practice a science of morality. Any such scientific system must, nevertheless, respond to the criticism embodied in the naturalistic fallacy.

Philosophers Susan Neiman and Julian Baggini (among others) assert that behaving ethically only because of divine mandate is not true ethical behavior but merely blind obedience. Baggini argues that atheism is a superior basis for ethics, claiming that a moral basis external to religious imperatives is necessary to evaluate the morality of the imperatives themselves—to be able to discern, for example, that "thou shalt steal" is immoral even if one's religion instructs it—and that atheists, therefore, have the advantage of being more inclined to make such evaluations. The contemporary British political philosopher Martin Cohen has offered the more historically telling example of Biblical injunctions in favour of torture and slavery as evidence of how religious injunctions follow political and social customs, rather than vice versa, but also noted that the same tendency seems to be true of supposedly dispassionate and objective philosophers. Cohen extends this argument in more detail in ''Political Philosophy from Plato to Mao'' in the case of the Koran which he sees as having had a generally unfortunate role in preserving social codes from the early 7th century through changes in secular society.

Dangers of religions

Some prominent atheists—such as Bertrand Russell, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins—have criticized religions, citing harmful aspects of religious practices and doctrines. Atheists have often engaged in debate with religious advocates, and the debates sometimes address the issue of whether religions provide a net benefit to individuals and society.

One argument that religions can be harmful, made by atheists such as Sam Harris, is that Western religions' reliance on divine authority lends itself to authoritarianism and dogmatism. Atheists have also cited data showing that there is a correlation between religious fundamentalism and extrinsic religion (when religion is held because it serves ulterior interests) and authoritarianism, dogmatism, and prejudice. These arguments—combined with historical events that are argued to demonstrate the dangers of religion, such as the Crusades, inquisitions, witch trials, and terrorist attacks—have been used in response to claims of beneficial effects of belief in religion. Believers counter-argue that some regimes that espouse atheism, such as in Soviet Russia, have also been guilty of mass murder.

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

Stenger, Victor J. (2007). ''God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist.'' Amherst, NY: Prometheus. ISBN 1-59102-481-1

Walters, Kerry (2010). ''Atheism: A Guide for the Perplexed.'' New York: Continuum. ISBN 978-0-8264-2493-8

External links

Atheism in ''The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''

The New Atheists in ''The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''

– Includes links to organizations and websites.

Positive atheism: Great Historical Writings Historical writing sorted by authors.

Religion & Ethics—Atheism at bbc.co.uk.

Secular Web library – Library of both historical and modern writings, a comprehensive online resource for freely available material on atheism.

The Demand for Religion – A study on the demographics of Atheism by Wolfgang Jagodzinski (University of Cologne) and Andrew Greeley (University of Chicago and University of Arizona).

Atheism at enotes.com

* Category:Criticism of religion Category:Disengagement from religion Category:Philosophy of religion Category:Secularism Category:Philosophical movements

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Coordinates	12°2′36″N77°1′42″N
name	Richard Dawkins
birth name	Clinton Richard Dawkins
birth date	March 26, 1941
birth place	Nairobi, Kenya Colony
nationality	British
education	MA, DPhil (Oxon)
alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
doctoral advisor	Nikolaas Tinbergen
doctoral students	Alan Grafen, Mark Ridley
occupation	Ethologist
years active	1967–present
employer	University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of Oxford
organization	Fellow of the Royal SocietyFellow of the Royal Society of Literature
known for	Gene-centered view of evolution, concept of the meme, as well as advocacy of atheism and science.
notable works	''The Selfish Gene'' (1976)''The Extended Phenotype'' (1982)''The Blind Watchmaker'' (1986)''The God Delusion'' (2006)
influences	Charles Darwin, Ronald Fisher, George C. Williams, W. D. Hamilton, Daniel Dennett, Bertrand Russell
spouse	Marian Stamp Dawkins (m. 1967–1984)Eve Barham (m. 1984–?)Lalla Ward (m. 1992–present)
children	Juliet Emma Dawkins (born 1984)
parents	Clinton John DawkinsJean Mary Vyvyan (née Ladner)
awards	Faraday Award (1990)Kistler Prize (2001)
website	The Richard Dawkins Foundation
footnotes	}}

Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL (born 26 March 1941), known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008.

Dawkins came to prominence with his 1976 book ''The Selfish Gene'', which popularised the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the term ''meme''. In 1982 he introduced an influential concept into evolutionary biology, presented in his book ''The Extended Phenotype'', that the phenotypic effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organism's body, but can stretch far into the environment, including the bodies of other organisms.

Dawkins is an atheist and humanist, a Vice President of the British Humanist Association and supporter of the Brights movement. He is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design. In his 1986 book ''The Blind Watchmaker'', he argued against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he described evolutionary processes as analogous to a ''blind'' watchmaker. He has since written several popular science books, and makes regular television and radio appearances, predominantly discussing these topics. In his 2006 book ''The God Delusion'', Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious faith is a delusion—a fixed false belief. As of January 2010 the English-language version has sold more than two million copies and had been translated into 31 languages, making it his most popular book to date.

Biography

Dawkins was born in Nairobi, Kenya. His father, Clinton John Dawkins (1915–2010), returning to England in 1949, when Dawkins was eight. His father had inherited Over Norton Park, which he turned from a country estate into a commercial farm. Both his parents were interested in natural sciences; they answered Dawkins' questions in scientific terms.

Dawkins describes his childhood as "a normal Anglican upbringing". Though he began having doubts about the existence of a god when he was about nine years old, he was persuaded by the argument from design, an argument for the existence of a god or a creator based on perceived evidence of order, purpose, or design in nature, and embraced Christianity.

He attended Oundle, a Church of England school, Dawkins' research in this period concerned models of animal decision-making.

From 1967 to 1969, he was an assistant professor of zoology at the University of California, Berkeley. During this period, the students and faculty at UC Berkeley were largely opposed to the ongoing Vietnam War, and Dawkins became heavily involved in the anti-war demonstrations and activities. He returned to the University of Oxford in 1970 taking a position as a lecturer, and in 1990, as a reader in zoology. In 1995 he was appointed Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a position that had been endowed by Charles Simonyi with the express intention that the holder "be expected to make important contributions to the public understanding of some scientific field", and that its first holder should be Richard Dawkins.

Since 1970 he has been a fellow of New College. He has delivered a number of inaugural and other lectures, including the Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture (1989), first Erasmus Darwin Memorial Lecture (1990), Michael Faraday Lecture (1991), T.H. Huxley Memorial Lecture (1992), Irvine Memorial Lecture (1997), Sheldon Doyle Lecture (1999), Tinbergen Lecture (2004) and Tanner Lectures (2003). In 1991 he gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for Children. He has also served as editor of a number of journals, and has acted as editorial advisor to the ''Encarta Encyclopedia'' and the ''Encyclopedia of Evolution''. He is a senior editor of the Council for Secular Humanism's ''Free Inquiry'' magazine, for which he also writes a column. He has been a member of the editorial board of ''Skeptic'' magazine since its foundation.

He has sat on judging panels for awards as diverse as the Royal Society's Faraday Award and the British Academy Television Awards, and has been president of the Biological Sciences section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2004 Balliol College, Oxford instituted the Dawkins Prize, awarded for "outstanding research into the ecology and behaviour of animals whose welfare and survival may be endangered by human activities". In September 2008, he retired from his professorship, announcing plans to "write a book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in 'anti-scientific' fairytales."

Personal life

On 19 August 1967, Dawkins married fellow ethologist Marian Stamp in Annestown, County Waterford, Ireland; they divorced in 1984. Later that same year, on 1 June, he married Eve Barham (19 August 1951–28 February 1999) in Oxford. They had a daughter, Juliet Emma Dawkins (born 1984, Oxford). Dawkins and Barham divorced; she died of cancer. In 1992 he married actress Lalla Ward in Kensington and Chelsea, London. Dawkins met her through their mutual friend Douglas Adams, who had worked with her on the BBC's ''Doctor Who''.

Work

Evolutionary biology

In his scientific works, Dawkins is best known for his popularisation of the gene-centred view of evolution. This view is most clearly set out in his books ''The Selfish Gene'' (1976), where he notes that "all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities", and ''The Extended Phenotype'' (1982), in which he describes natural selection as "the process whereby replicators out-propagate each other". In his role as an ethologist, interested in animal behaviour and its relation to natural selection, he advocates the idea that the gene is the principal unit of selection in evolution.

Dawkins has consistently been sceptical about non-adaptive processes in evolution (such as spandrels, described by Gould and Lewontin) and about selection at levels "above" that of the gene. He is particularly sceptical about the practical possibility or importance of group selection as a basis for understanding altruism. This behaviour appears at first to be an evolutionary paradox, since helping others costs precious resources and decreases one's own fitness. Previously, many had interpreted this as an aspect of group selection: individuals were doing what was best for the survival of the population or species as a whole, and not specifically for themselves. British evolutionary biologist W. D. Hamilton had used the gene-centred view to explain altruism in terms of inclusive fitness and kin selection − that individuals behave altruistically toward their close relatives, who share many of their own genes. Similarly, Robert Trivers, thinking in terms of the gene-centred model, developed the theory of reciprocal altruism, whereby one organism provides a benefit to another in the expectation of future reciprocation. Dawkins popularised these ideas in ''The Selfish Gene'', and developed them in his own work.

He has also been strongly critical of the Gaia philosophy theory of the independent scientist James Lovelock.

Critics of Dawkins' approach suggest that taking the gene as the unit of ''selection'' − of a single event in which an individual either succeeds or fails to reproduce − is misleading, but that the gene could be better described as a unit of ''evolution'' − of the long-term changes in allele frequencies in a population. In ''The Selfish Gene'', Dawkins explains that he is using George C. Williams' definition of the gene as "that which segregates and recombines with appreciable frequency." Another common objection is that genes cannot survive alone, but must cooperate to build an individual, and therefore cannot be an independent "unit". In ''The Extended Phenotype'', Dawkins suggests that because of genetic recombination and sexual reproduction, from an individual gene's viewpoint all other genes are part of the environment to which it is adapted.

Advocates for higher levels of selection such as Richard Lewontin, David Sloan Wilson, and Elliot Sober suggest that there are many phenomena (including altruism) that gene-based selection cannot satisfactorily explain. The philosopher Mary Midgley, with whom Dawkins clashed in print concerning ''The Selfish Gene'', has criticised gene selection, memetics and sociobiology as being excessively reductionist and suggests that the popularity of Dawkins' work is due to factors in the Zeitgeist such as the increased individualism of the Thatcher/Reagan decades.

In a set of controversies over the mechanisms and interpretation of evolution (the so-called 'Darwin Wars'), one faction was often named after Dawkins and its rival after the American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, reflecting the pre-eminence of each as a populariser of pertinent ideas. In particular, Dawkins and Gould have been prominent commentators in the controversy over sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, with Dawkins generally approving and Gould generally being critical. A typical example of Dawkins' position was his scathing review of ''Not in Our Genes'' by Steven Rose, Leon J. Kamin and Richard C. Lewontin. Two other thinkers on the subject often considered to be allied to Dawkins are Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett; Dennett has promoted a gene-centred view of evolution and defended reductionism in biology. Despite their academic disagreements, Dawkins and Gould did not have a hostile personal relationship, and Dawkins dedicated a large portion of his 2003 book ''A Devil's Chaplain'' posthumously to Gould, who had died the previous year.

Dawkins' book ''The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution'' expounds the evidence for biological evolution. All of his previous works dealing with evolution had assumed its truth, and not explicitly provided the evidence to this effect. Dawkins felt that this represented a gap in his oeuvre, and decided to write the book to coincide with Darwin's bicentennial year.

Meme

Dawkins coined the word ''meme'' (the behavioral equivalent of a gene) to describe how Darwinian principles might be extended to explain the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. This has spawned the field of memetics. Dawkins' ''memes'' refer to any cultural entity that an observer might consider a replicator of a certain idea or a complex of ideas. He hypothesised that people could view many cultural entities as capable of such replication, generally through exposure to humans, who have evolved as efficient (although not perfect) copiers of information and behaviour. Memes are not always copied perfectly, and might indeed become refined, combined or otherwise modified with other ideas, resulting in new memes, which may themselves prove more, or less, efficient replicators than their predecessors, thus providing a framework for a hypothesis of cultural evolution, analogous to the theory of biological evolution based on genes. Since originally outlining the idea in his book ''The Selfish Gene'', Dawkins has largely left the task of expanding upon it to other authors such as Susan Blackmore.

Although Dawkins invented the specific term ''meme'' independently, he has not claimed that the idea itself was entirely novel, and there have been other expressions for similar ideas in the past. For instance, John Laurent has suggested that the term may have derived from the work of the little-known German biologist Richard Semon. In 1904 Semon published ''Die Mneme'' (which appeared in English in 1924 as ''The Mneme''). This book discussed the cultural transmission of experiences, with insights parallel to those of Dawkins. Laurent also found the term ''mneme'' used in Maurice Maeterlinck's ''The Life of the White Ant'' (1926), and has highlighted the similarities to Dawkins' concept.

Criticism of creationism

Dawkins is a prominent critic of creationism (the religious belief that humanity, life and the universe were created by a deity, without recourse to evolution). He has described the Young Earth creationist view that the Earth is only a few thousand years old as "a preposterous, mind-shrinking falsehood," and his 1986 book, ''The Blind Watchmaker'', contains a sustained critique of the argument from design, an important creationist argument. In the book, Dawkins argued against the watchmaker analogy made famous by the 18th-century English theologian William Paley in his book ''Natural Theology''. Paley argued that, just as a watch is too complicated and too functional to have sprung into existence merely by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. Dawkins shares the view generally held by scientists that natural selection is sufficient to explain the apparent functionality and non-random complexity of the biological world, and can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, albeit as an automatic, nonintelligent, ''blind'' watchmaker.

thumb|left|Dawkins at the 34th annual conference of American Atheists, 2008In 1986 Dawkins participated in a Oxford Union debate, in which he and English biologist John Maynard Smith debated Young Earth creationist A. E. Wilder-Smith and Edgar Andrews, president of the Biblical Creation Society. In general, however, Dawkins has followed the advice of his late colleague Stephen Jay Gould and refused to participate in formal debates with creationists because "what they seek is the oxygen of respectability", and doing so would "give them this oxygen by the mere act of ''engaging'' with them at all." He suggests that creationists "don't mind being beaten in an argument. What matters is that we give them recognition by bothering to argue with them in public."

In a December 2004 interview with American journalist Bill Moyers, Dawkins said that "among the things that science does know, evolution is about as certain as anything we know". When Moyers questioned him on the use of the word ''theory'', Dawkins stated that "evolution has been observed. It's just that it hasn't been observed while it's happening." He added that "it is rather like a detective coming on a murder after the scene... the detective hasn't actually seen the murder take place, of course. But what you do see is a massive clue... Huge quantities of circumstantial evidence. It might as well be spelled out in words of English."

Dawkins has ardently opposed the inclusion of intelligent design in science education, describing it as "not a scientific argument at all, but a religious one". He has been referred to in the media as "Darwin's Rottweiler", a reference to English biologist T. H. Huxley, who was known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's evolutionary ideas. He has been a strong critic of the British organisation Truth in Science, which promotes the teaching of creationism in state schools, and he plans—through the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science—to subsidise the delivery of books, DVDs and pamphlets to schools, in order to counteract what he has described as an "educational scandal".

Advocacy of atheism

Dawkins is an outspoken atheist and a prominent critic of religion. In an interview with Thomas Bass for a book published in 1994 he described himself as a 'fairly militant atheist'. In 1996, when asked if he'd prefer to be known as a scientist or a militant atheist, he replied "Bertrand Russell called himself the Passionate Sceptic. It's aiming high, but I'll shoot for that." Dawkins is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society, a vice-president of the British Humanist Association (since 1996), a Distinguished Supporter of the Humanist Society of Scotland, a member of the Secular Coalition for America advisory board, a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism, and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. In 2003 he became a signatory of the humanist manifesto ''Humanism and Its Aspirations'', published by the American Humanist Association. As a result of his advocacy of atheism, Dawkins has sometimes been described as a vocal, militant rationalist, and as "the UK's Chief Atheist".

Dawkins believes that his own atheism is the logical extension of his understanding of evolution and that religion is incompatible with science. In his 1986 book ''The Blind Watchmaker'', Dawkins wrote:

{{blockquote| An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: "I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one." I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. }}

In his 1991 essay "Viruses of the Mind" (from which the term ''faith-sufferer'' originated), he suggested that memetic theory might analyse and explain the phenomenon of religious belief and some of the common characteristics of religions, such as the belief that punishment awaits non-believers. According to Dawkins, faith − belief that is not based on evidence − is one of the world's great evils. He claims it to be analogous to the smallpox virus, though more difficult to eradicate. Dawkins is well-known for his contempt for religious extremism, from Islamist terrorism to Christian fundamentalism; but he has also argued with liberal believers and religious scientists, from biologists Kenneth Miller and Francis Collins to theologians Alister McGrath and Richard Harries. Dawkins has stated that his opposition to religion is twofold, claiming it to be both a source of conflict and a justification for belief without evidence. However, he describes himself as a "cultural Christian", and proposed the slogan "Atheists for Jesus".

Following the 11 September 2001 attacks, when asked how the world might have changed, Dawkins responded:

{{blockquote| Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful! }}

Dawkins has especially risen to prominence in contemporary public debates relating science and religion since the publication of his 2006 book ''The God Delusion'', which has achieved greater sales figures worldwide than any of his other works to date. Its success has been seen by many as indicative of a change in the contemporary cultural zeitgeist, central to a recent rise in the popularity of atheistic literature. ''The God Delusion'' was praised by among others the Nobel laureates Sir Harold Kroto and James D. Watson and by psychologist Steven Pinker. In the book, Dawkins suggested that atheists should be proud, not apologetic, because atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind. He sees education and consciousness-raising as the primary tools in opposing what he considers to be religious dogma and indoctrination. These tools include the fight against certain stereotypes, and he has adopted the term ''Bright'' as a way of associating positive public connotations with those who possess a naturalistic worldview. Dawkins notes that feminists have succeeded in arousing widespread embarrassment at the routine use of "he" instead of "she". Similarly, he suggests, a phrase such as "Catholic child" or "Muslim child" should be considered just as socially absurd as, for instance, "Marxist child": children should not be classified based on their parents' ideological beliefs. According to Dawkins, there is no such thing as a Christian child or a Muslim child, as children have about as much capacity to make the decision to become Christians or Muslims as they do to become Marxists. Critics have said that the programme gave too much time to marginal figures and extremists, and that Dawkins' confrontational style did not help his cause and exhibited similarities with the approaches of religious fundamentalists more than with the approaches of the dispassionate, analytic approach of 'hard' science; Dawkins rejected these claims, citing the number of moderate religious broadcasts in everyday media as providing a suitable balance to the extremists in the programmes. He further remarked that someone who is deemed an "extremist" in a religiously moderate country may well be considered "mainstream" in a religiously conservative one. The unedited recordings of Dawkins' conversations with Alister McGrath and Richard Harries, including material unused in the broadcast version, have been made available online by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.

Dawkins' work has been controversial, and a number of Christian thinkers have responded to it. For example, Oxford theologian Alister McGrath (author of ''The Dawkins Delusion'' and ''Dawkins' God'') maintains that Dawkins is ignorant of Christian theology, and therefore unable to engage religion and faith intelligently. In reply, Dawkins asks "do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in leprechauns?", and − in the paperback edition of ''The God Delusion'' − he refers to the American biologist PZ Myers, who has satirised this line of argument as "The Courtier's Reply". Dawkins had an extended debate with McGrath at the 2007 ''Sunday Times'' Literary Festival.

Dawkins argues that "the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis like any other". He disagrees with Stephen Jay Gould's principle of nonoverlapping magisteria. In an interview with ''Time'' magazine, Dawkins said:

I think that Gould's separate compartments was a purely political ploy to win middle-of-the-road religious people to the science camp. But it's a very empty idea. There are plenty of places where religion does not keep off the scientific turf. Any belief in miracles is flat contradictory not just to the facts of science but to the spirit of science.

Astrophysicist Martin Rees, who has described himself as an unbeliever who identifies with Christianity from a cultural perspective, has suggested that Dawkins' attack on mainstream religion is unhelpful. Regarding Rees' claim in his book ''Our Cosmic Habitat'' that "such questions lie beyond science", Dawkins asks "what expertise can theologians bring to deep cosmological questions that scientists cannot?" Elsewhere, Dawkins has written that "there's all the difference in the world between a belief that one is prepared to defend by quoting evidence and logic, and a belief that is supported by nothing more than tradition, authority or revelation." He has said that the publication of ''The God Delusion'' is "probably the culmination" of his campaign against religion.

In 2007 Dawkins founded the Out Campaign to encourage atheists worldwide to declare their stance publicly and proudly. Inspired by the gay rights movement, Dawkins hopes that atheists' identifying of themselves as such, and thereby increasing public awareness of how many people hold these views, will reduce the negative opinion of atheism among the religious majority.

In September 2008, following a complaint by Islamic creationist Adnan Oktar, a court in Turkey blocked access to Dawkins' website ''richarddawkins.net''. The court decision was made due to "insult to personality". As of 8 July 2011, ''richarddawkins.net'' is no longer blocked in Turkey.

In October 2008, Dawkins officially supported the UK's first atheist advertising initiative, the Atheist Bus Campaign. Created by Guardian journalist Ariane Sherine and administered by the British Humanist Association the campaign aimed to raise funds to place atheist adverts on buses in the London area, and Dawkins pledged to match the amount raised by atheists, up to a maximum of £5,500. However, the campaign was an unprecedented success, raising over £100,000 in its first four days, and generating global press coverage. The campaign, started in January 2009, features adverts across the UK with the slogan: "''There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.''" Dawkins said that "this campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think — and thinking is anathema to religion."

In 2010 Dawkins supported legal efforts to charge Pope Benedict XVI with crimes against humanity. Dawkins and fellow anti-religion campaigner Christopher Hitchens were believed to have explored the option of attempting to have the Pope arrested under the same legal principle that saw Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet arrested during a visit to Britain in 1998. Dawkins has given support to the idea of an atheists' "free thinking" school, that would teach children to "ask for evidence, to be sceptical, critical, open-minded".

On 15 September 2010, Dawkins, along with 54 other public figures, signed an open letter published in ''The Guardian'', stating their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI making a ''State'' visit to the United Kingdom.

Richard Dawkins Foundation

In 2006 Dawkins founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (RDFRS), a non-profit organisation. The foundation is in developmental phase. It has been granted charitable status in the United Kingdom and the United States. RDFRS plans to finance research on the psychology of belief and religion, finance scientific education programs and materials, and publicise and support secular charitable organisations. The foundation also offers humanist, rationalist and scientific materials and information through its website.

Other fields

In his role as professor for public understanding of science, Dawkins has been a critic of pseudoscience and alternative medicine. His 1998 book ''Unweaving the Rainbow'' takes John Keats' accusation that, by explaining the rainbow, Isaac Newton had diminished its beauty, and argues for the opposite conclusion. He suggests that deep space, the billions of years of life's evolution, and the microscopic workings of biology and heredity contain more beauty and wonder than do "myths" and "pseudoscience". Dawkins wrote a foreword to John Diamond's posthumously published ''Snake Oil'', a book devoted to debunking alternative medicine, in which he asserted that alternative medicine was harmful, if only because it distracted patients from more successful conventional treatments, and gave people false hopes. Dawkins states that "there is no alternative medicine. There is only medicine that works and medicine that doesn't work."

Dawkins has expressed concern about the growth of the planet's human population, and about the matter of overpopulation. In ''The Selfish Gene'', he briefly mentions population growth, giving the example of Latin America, whose population, at the time the book was written, was doubling every 40 years. He is critical of Roman Catholic attitudes to family planning and population control, stating that leaders who forbid contraception and "express a preference for 'natural' methods of population limitation" will get just such a method in the form of starvation.

As a supporter of the ''Great Ape Project'' – a movement to extend certain moral and legal rights to all great apes – Dawkins contributed the article "Gaps in the Mind" to the ''Great Ape Project'' book edited by Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer. In this essay, he criticises contemporary society's moral attitudes as being based on a "discontinuous, speciesist imperative".

Dawkins also regularly comments in newspapers and weblogs on contemporary political questions; his opinions include opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the British nuclear deterrent and the actions of U.S. President George W. Bush. Several such articles were included in ''A Devil's Chaplain'', an anthology of writings about science, religion and politics. He is also a supporter of the Republic campaign to replace the British monarchy with a democratically elected president. Dawkins has described himself as a Labour voter in the 1970s and voter for the Liberal Democrats since the party's creation. In 2009 he spoke at the party's conference in opposition to blasphemy laws, alternative medicine and faith schools. In the UK general election of 2010, Dawkins officially endorsed the Liberal Democrats, in support of their campaign for electoral reform and for their "refusal to pander to 'faith'."

In the 2007 TV documentary ''The Enemies of Reason'', Dawkins discusses what he sees as the dangers of abandoning critical thought and rationale based upon scientific evidence. He specifically cites astrology, spiritualism, dowsing, alternative faiths, alternative medicine and homeopathy. He also discusses how the Internet can be used to spread religious hatred and conspiracy theories with scant attention to evidence-based reasoning.

Continuing a long-standing partnership with Channel 4, Dawkins participated in a five-part television series ''The Genius of Britain'', along with fellow scientists Stephen Hawking, James Dyson, Paul Nurse, and Jim Al-Khalili. The five-episode series was broadcast in June 2010. The series focussed on major British scientific achievements throughout history.

Dawkins presented a More4 documentary entitled 'Faith School Menace' in which he argued for "us to reconsider the consequences of faith education, which... bamboozles parents and indoctrinates and divides children."

In 1998 Dawkins expressed his appreciation for two books, famous for their criticism of postmodernism in US universities, in departments like literary studies, anthropology and other cultural studies; the two books are ''Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science'' (by Gross and Levitt) and ''Intellectual Impostures'' (by Sokal and Bricmont), both related to the Sokal affair hoax. In the same occasion Dawkins also criticised Cambridge University for awarding philosopher Jacques Derrida an honorary doctorate.

In 2011 Dawkins joined the professoriate of the New College of the Humanities, a new private university in London established by A. C. Grayling, which is scheduled to open in September 2012.

Awards and recognition

Dawkins was awarded a Doctor of Science by the University of Oxford in 1989. He holds honorary doctorates in science from the University of Huddersfield, University of Westminster, Durham University, the University of Hull, and the University of Antwerp, and honorary doctorates from the University of Aberdeen, Open University, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and the University of Valencia. He also holds honorary doctorates of letters from the University of St Andrews and the Australian National University (HonLittD, 1996), and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1997 and the Royal Society in 2001. He is one of the patrons of the Oxford University Scientific Society.

In 1987 Dawkins received a Royal Society of Literature award and a ''Los Angeles Times'' Literary Prize for his book, ''The Blind Watchmaker''. In the same year, he received a ''Sci. Tech'' Prize for Best Television Documentary Science Programme of the Year, for the BBC ''Horizon'' episode ''The Blind Watchmaker''.

His other awards have included the Zoological Society of London Silver Medal (1989), Finlay innovation award (1990), the Michael Faraday Award (1990), the Nakayama Prize (1994), the American Humanist Association's Humanist of the Year Award (1996), the fifth International Cosmos Prize (1997), the Kistler Prize (2001), the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic (2001), the Bicentennial Kelvin Medal of The Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow (2002) and the Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest (2009).

Dawkins topped ''Prospect'' magazine's 2004 list of the top 100 public British intellectuals, as decided by the readers, receiving twice as many votes as the runner-up. He has been short-listed as a candidate in their 2008 follow-up poll. In 2005 the Hamburg-based Alfred Toepfer Foundation awarded him its Shakespeare Prize in recognition of his "concise and accessible presentation of scientific knowledge". He won the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science for 2006 and the Galaxy British Book Awards Author of the Year Award for 2007. In the same year, he was listed by ''Time'' magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2007, and he was ranked 20th in ''The Daily Telegraph'''s 2007 list of 100 greatest living geniuses. He was awarded the Deschner Award, named after German anti-clerical author Karlheinz Deschner.

Since 2003, the Atheist Alliance International has awarded a prize during its annual conference, honouring an outstanding atheist whose work has done most to raise public awareness of atheism during that year. It is known as the Richard Dawkins Award, in honour of Dawkins' own work.

In February 2010 he was named to the Freedom From Religion Foundation's Honorary Board of distinguished achievers.

Media

Selected publications

(Scheduled to publish on 4 October 2011)

Documentary films

''Nice Guys Finish First'' (1986)

''The Blind Watchmaker'' (1987)

''Growing Up in the Universe'' (1991)

''Break the Science Barrier'' (1996)

''The Root of All Evil?'' (2006)

''The Enemies of Reason'' (2007)

''The Genius of Charles Darwin'' (2008)

''Faith School Menace'' (2010)

Other appearances

''Doctor Who: The Stolen Earth'' (2008) – as himself

''Doctor Who: The Big Bang'' (2010) – as himself

Notes

b. The debate ended with the motion "That the doctrine of creation is more valid than the theory of evolution" being defeated by 198 votes to 115.

References

External links

General

Official website

Richard Dawkins' page on Academia.edu

The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science

Video

National Geographic Interviews – A series of video interviews with National Geographic Channel with Richard Dawkins on Darwin, Evolution and God.

TED Talks: Richard Dawkins on militant atheism at TED in 2002

TED Talks: Richard Dawkins on our "queer" universe at TED Global in 2005

Video interview with Riz Khan for Al Jazeera English

Video interview at Big Think

Selected writings

Viruses of the Mind (1993) – Religion as a mental virus.

The Real Romance in the Stars (1995) – A critical view of astrology.

The Emptiness of Theology (1998) – A critical view of theology. (Alternative link at RDFRS.)

Snake Oil and Holy Water (1999) – Suggests that there is no convergence occurring between science and theism.

What Use is Religion? (2004) – Suggests that religion may have no survival value other than to itself.

Race and Creation (2004) – On race, its usage and a theory of how it evolved.

The giant tortoise's tale, The turtle's tale and The lava lizard's tale (2005) – A series of three articles written after a visit to the Galápagos Islands.

Dawkins' ''Huffington Post'' articles

Audio

Richard Dawkins on RadioLIVE's Weekend Variety Wireless – Richard Dawkins appears live on New Zealand's RadioLIVE, taking calls from the audience.

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Coordinates	12°2′36″N77°1′42″N
type	Cardinal
honorific-prefix	His Eminence
name	George Pell
honorific-suffix	AC
title	Archbishop of Sydney
see	Sydney
enthroned	26 March 2001
ended	''incumbent''
predecessor	Edward Bede Clancy
ordination	16 December 1966
consecration	21 May 1987
cardinal	21 October 2003
rank	Cardinal-Priest of ''Santa Maria Domenica Mazzarello''
other post	Auxiliary Bishop of Melbourne (1987–96)Archbishop of Melbourne (1996–2001)
birth date	June 08, 1941
birth place	Ballarat, Victoria
nationality	Australian
religion	Roman Catholic }}

George Pell AC (born 8 June 1941) is an Australian cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He is the eighth and current Archbishop of Sydney, serving since 2001. He previously served as auxiliary bishop (1987–96) and archbishop (1996–2001) of the Archdiocese of Melbourne. He was created a cardinal in 2003.

Early life and education

Pell was born in Ballarat, Victoria, to George Arthur and Margaret Lillian (née Burke) Pell. His father, a non-practising Anglican whose ancestors were from Leicestershire in England, was a heavyweight boxing champion; his mother was a devout Catholic of Irish descent. During World War II, his father served in the Australian Defence Force. His sister, Margaret, became a violinist with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. As a child, he underwent twenty-four operations to remove an abscess in his throat.

Pell received his early education at Loreto Convent and at St. Patrick's College, both in his native Ballarat. One of his classmates at St. Patrick's was Paul Bongiorno. At St Patrick's, Pell played as a ruckman on the first XVIII from 1956 to 1959. He even signed to play with the Richmond Football Club. However, his ambitions later turned to the priesthood. Speaking of his decision to become a priest, Pell once said, "To put it crudely, I feared and suspected and eventually became convinced that God wanted me to do His work, and I was never able to successfully escape that conviction."

In 1960, he began his priestly studies at Corpus Christi College, then located in Werribee. One of his fellow seminarians at Corpus Christi was Denis Hart, Pell's future successor as archbishop of Melbourne. Pell continued to play football, and served as class prefect in his second and third years. In 1963, he was assigned to continue his studies at the Pontifical Urbaniana University in Rome. He was ordained to the diaconate on 15 August 1966.

Priesthood

On 16 December 1966, Pell was ordained a priest by Cardinal Grégoire-Pierre Agagianian at St. Peter's Basilica. He received a Licentiate of Sacred Theology from the Urbaniana University in 1967, and continued his studies at the University of Oxford, where he earned a Ph.D in church history in 1971. During his studies at Oxford, he also served as a chaplain to Catholic students at Eton, where he celebrated the first Roman Catholic Mass since the Protestant Reformation.

In 1971, he returned to Australia and was assigned to serve as an assistant pastor in Swan Hill, where he remained for two years. He then served at a parish in Ballarat East from 1973 to 1983, becoming administrator of the parish of Bungaree in 1984. In 1982, he earned a Master of Education degree from Monash University in Melbourne. During his tenure in Ballarat East and Bungaree, he also served as Episcopal Vicar for Education (1973–84), director of the Aquinas campus of the Institute of Catholic Education (1974–84), and principal of the Institute of Catholic Education (1981–84). He was also editor of ''Light'', the diocesan newspaper of Ballarat, from 1979 to 1984.

From 1985 to 1987, Pell served as seminary rector of his ''alma mater,'' Corpus Christi College.

Episcopacy

Pell was appointed an auxiliary bishop of Melbourne and Titular Bishop of Scala on 30 March 1987. He received his episcopal consecration on 21 May 1987 from Archbishop Frank Little, with bishops Ronald Mulkearns and Joseph O'Connell serving as co-consecrators. He served as Bishop for the Southern Region of Melbourne (1987–96). During this time, he was a parish priest in Mentone.

Pell was named seventh Archbishop of Melbourne on 16 July 1996, receiving the pallium from Pope John Paul II on 29 June 1997. He was later appointed eighth Archbishop of Sydney on 26 March 2001 and again received the pallium from John Paul on 29 June 2001.

Pell was a consultor of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace from 1990 to 1995 and a member from 2002. From 1990 to 2000 he was a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In April 2002, John Paul II named him President of the Vox Clara commission to advise the Congregation for Divine Worship on English translations of liturgical texts. In December 2002 he was appointed a member of the Pontifical Council for the Family, having previously served as a consultor to the council.

Pell has written widely in religious and secular magazines, learned journals and newspapers in Australia and overseas and regularly speaks on television and radio. In September 1996 Oxford University Press published his ''Issues of Faith and Morals'', written for senior secondary classes and parish groups. His other publications include ''The Sisters of St Joseph in Swan Hill 1922–72'' (1972), ''Catholicism in Australia'' (1988), ''Rerum Novarum – One Hundred Years Later'' (1992), ''Catholicism and the Architecture of Freedom'' (1999) and ''Be Not Afraid'', a collection of homilies and reflections published in 2004. A biography of Pell was published by Queensland journalist Tess Livingstone in 2002.

Church role

Since Pell's appointment as Archbishop of Melbourne he has maintained a high public profile on a wide range of issues, while retaining a strict adherence to Catholic orthodoxy.

Pell worked co-operatively with his Anglican counterpart, Peter Jensen, on political issues while avoiding theological controversies. This was referred to in Sydney as "the ecumenism of the right". In defending the importance of religious belief in building a just society, Pell worked with representatives of non-Christian faiths, arguing in 2001 that "the most significant religious change in Australia over the past 50 years is the increase of people without religion, now about one fifth of the population. All monotheists, Christians and Jews, Muslims and Sikhs, must labour to reverse this. We must not allow the situation to deteriorate as it had in Elijah's time, 850 years before Christ, where monotheism was nearly swamped by the aggressive paganism of the followers of Baal."

cardinal name	George Pell
dipstyle	His Most Reverend Eminence
offstyle	Your Eminence
relstyle	Monsignor
see	Sydney
deathstyle	}}

On 28 September 2003 Pope John Paul II announced that he would nominate Pell and 28 others to the College of Cardinals. In the consistory of 21 October he was created and proclaimed Cardinal-Priest of ''S. Maria Domenica Mazzarello''. For the first time ever, from Pell's elevation to the cardinalate in 2003 until Edward Bede Clancy's 80th birthday on 13 December 2003, there were three Australian cardinal electors (had a papal election become necessary), including Clancy and Edward Idris Cassidy, president emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

Pell was one of the electors who participated in the 2005 papal conclave that selected Pope Benedict XVI. It has been speculated that Pell served as a type of "campaign manager" behind Benedict's election. While there was a little speculation in the Australian media that he had an outside chance of becoming Pope himself, international commentary on the papal succession (aside from one Italian source) did not mention Pell as a contender. However, Pell was mentioned as a possible successor to Benedict XVI as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This position was given to William Levada, former Archbishop of San Francisco. Pell remains eligible to participate in any future papal conclaves that begin before his 80th birthday on 8 June 2021.

In 2006 Pell made a successful bid for Sydney to host the 2008 World Youth Day, one of the largest regular international gatherings of young people in the world, often attracting crowds of millions. The 2008 event brought Pope Benedict XVI on his first papal visit to Australia. "We take it for granted that people will always give to the poor and be concerned about social justice", Pell said soon after winning the bid, in remarks which spelled out his pastoral priorities. "But this doesn't just happen by itself. Many great civilisations have shown no regard for these values at all and have even considered them weaknesses...Every society requires a goodly percentage of active believers to ensure that the values of a fair go and respect for others are promoted, and passed on the next generation. World Youth Day will make a powerful contribution to this vital work".

Views

Pell is regarded as a conservative on matters of faith and morals. He has often been wary of what he calls the "callousness" of unrestrained capitalism. He has written that a Catholic is someone who is not only a person of personal conscience but "is someone who believes Christ is Son of God, accepts His teachings and lives a life of worship, service and duty in the community. Catholics are not created by the accident of birth to remain only because their tribe has an interesting history."

''Ad orientem'' liturgy

Pell supports, in the abstract but not as a proposal for immediate application, mandatory celebration of the Canon of the Mass with the ''ad orientem'' orientation of the priest, facing in the same direction as the congregation. "There's nothing like a consensus in favour of that at the moment. I think I would be in favour of it because it makes it patently clear that the priest is not the centre of the show, that this an act of worship of the one true God, and the people are joining with the priest for that."

Afghanistan and Iraq Wars

Pell has written that he supported the Afghanistan War but believed that the Iraq War was "not morally justified".

Asylum seekers and refugees

Pell has criticised the bipartisan policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers in Australia and called for "empathy and compassion" towards displaced peoples. Pell said that while a policy of detterence was justifiable, the practice of the policy was coming at too great a "moral cost". Describing conditions in some of Australia's mandatory detention camps in 2001 as "pretty tight and miserable" and "no place for women and children", Pell called for investigation of any maltreatment of detainees and said that, while Australia has the right to regulate the number of refugees it accepts, as a rich and prosperous country, it can "afford to be generous" and must treat refugees who reach Australia humanely.

Australian republicanism

Pell was appointed a delegate to the Australian Constitutional Convention 1998 which considered the issue of Australia becoming a republic. Pell supported change, and called on Australia's political leaders to embrace the republic, noting "Without support from most of the front benches of both sides of the parliament, it would be wasteful to go to a referendum." Towards the end of proceedings, he called on conservatives to support change:

Divorce

Pell says that, outside exceptional circumstances such as relationships involving physical abuse, it is better for individuals and for society if couples do not divorce, particularly where children are involved.

In 2001, ABC radio's "The World Today" reported that Pell wanted a return to a divorce system based on the fault of one spouse. Pell told the program that, in an effort to "focus attention on the damage, personal and financial, that unfortunately often follows from divorce" he had prepared a list for public consideration of possible penalties to discourage divorce (particularly where fault by one party was involved); as well as benefits to support couples who stayed together. Other interviewees rejected these proposals: the Law Council's Garry Watts, said that benefits to children would not come and that Pell proposed to "imprison" unhappy parents in dysfunctional marriages. Canon Ray Cleary, director of Anglicare in Victoria said a punitive response to divorce would be "out of touch with the realities of the modern world".

Environmental concerns

Pell aroused criticism from Senator Christine Milne of the Greens political party with the following comment in his 2006 Legatus Summit speech: :''Some of the hysteric and extreme claims about global warming are also a symptom of pagan emptiness, of Western fear when confronted by the immense and basically uncontrollable forces of nature. Belief in a benign God who is master of the universe has a steadying psychological effect, although it is no guarantee of Utopia, no guarantee that the continuing climate and geographic changes will be benign. In the past pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.''

In a 2007 article for the Sunday Telegraph, Pell wrote that while climate had changed, he was '"certainly sceptical about extravagant claims of impending man-made climatic catastrophes, because the evidence is insufficient".

Responding to the Anglican bishop and environmentalist George Browning, who told the Anglican Church of Australia's general synod that the cardinal was out of touch with the Catholic Church as well as with the general community, Pell stated: :''"Radical environmentalists are more than up to the task of moralising their own agenda and imposing it on people through fear. They don't need church leaders to help them with this, although it is a very effective way of further muting Christian witness. Church leaders in particular should be allergic to nonsense." He added, I am certainly sceptical about extravagant claims of impending man-made climatic catastrophes. Uncertainties on climate change abound ... my task as a Christian leader is to engage with reality, to contribute to debate on important issues, to open people's minds, and to point out when the emperor is wearing few or no clothes.

HIV / AIDS

In 2009, Pell supported the comments made by Pope Benedict XVI in Africa in relation to controlling the spread of AIDS, in which the Pope reiterated the Catholic teaching that the solution to the AIDS epidemic lay not in the distribution of condoms, but in the practice of sexual abstinence and monogamy within marriage. The Pope said that AIDS could not be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which "can even increase the problem". In response to global coverage of these remarks, Pell said that AIDS was "great spiritual and health crisis" and a huge challenge, but that "Condoms are encouraging promiscuity. They are encouraging irresponsibility." Pell compared AIDS infection rates in the Catholic Philippines with that of Thailand which, he said, was struggling to cope with an epidemic of the disease.

In 2010, in "Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times", a book-length interview by German journalist Peter Seewald, Pope Benedict said that while the church did not consider condoms as a "real or moral solution", there were times where the "intention of reducing the risk of infection" made condom use "a first step" towards a better way. Pell released a statement saying this did not signal a major new shift in Vatican thinking.

As Archbishop of Sydney, Pell has strongly supported the work of Catholic health organisations such as St Vincent's Hospital and the Tree of Hope Centre in caring for those living with HIV/AIDS.

Islam

Pell has written of a need to "deepen friendship and understanding" with Muslims in the post–September 11 environment and has said that though there is a continuing struggle throughout the Muslim world between moderates and men of violence, he believes that, in Australia, "the moderates are in control".

In 2004, speaking to the Acton Institute on the problems of "secular democracy", Pell drew a parallel between Islam and Communism: "Islam may provide in the 21st century, the attraction that communism provided in the 20th, both for those that are alienated and embittered on the one hand and for those who seek order or justice on the other."

In 2006, at the Legatus Summit in Naples, Florida, Pell declared, "Considered strictly on its own terms, Islam is not a tolerant religion and its capacity for far-reaching renovation is severely limited." However, he added that the human factor of many Muslims being uncomfortable with the violence and harsh intolerance of traditional Islamic practices provides hope for positive change as has occurred in more moderate Muslim nations. He also denounced "the blithe encouragement of large scale Islamic migration into Western nations" as "one example of the secular incomprehension of religion," and claimed that Islam has had a "detrimental impact on economic and cultural development at certain times and in certain places..."

Ordination of women and priestly celibacy

Pell supported Pope John Paul II's view that the ordination of women is impossible according to the church's divine constitution and has also expressed his opinion that abandoning the tradition of clerical celibacy would be a "serious blunder".

Sexuality

Pell has received much attention for his attitudes to sexuality issues, particularly homosexuality. He has said that "Christian teaching on sexuality is only one part of the Ten Commandments, of the virtues and vices, but it is essential for human wellbeing and especially for the proper flourishing of marriages and families, for the continuity of the human race." Upon becoming Archbishop of Sydney, he stated ''"Any genuine religion has two important moral tasks; firstly, to present norms and ideals, goals for our striving; and secondly, to offer aids for our weakness, forgiveness and healing for every wrong doer and sinner who repents and seeks forgiveness."''

Society of St. Pius X

Pell has expressed agreement with the lifting of the excommunication of the four bishops of the Traditionalist Catholic Society of St. Pius X (SSPX). He has said that "I think it is certainly a worthy goal to try to reconcile that wing of the Church", but also insisted that the SSPX must accept the teachings of the Second Vatican Council before it can be fully reconciled with the Holy See, saying: "I think it would be quite incongruous wanting to be formally reconciled with the Church if you are explicitly disavowing key elements of Vatican II", among which he mentioned the teaching that "the state cannot coerce belief" and the council's "condemnation of anti-semitism".

Stem cell debate controversy

Pell supports research on the therapeutic potential of adult stem cells but opposes embryonic stem cell research on the basis that the church cannot support anything which involves "the destruction of human life at any stage after conception". Under Pell, the Sydney archdiocese has provided funding for adult stem cell research but has actively opposed moves by New South Wales Parliament to liberalise laws pertaining to use of embryonic stem cells.

In remarks made at a media conference, in June 2007 on a conscience vote overturning the state ban on therapeutic cloning, Pell said that "Catholic politicians who vote for this legislation must realise that their voting has consequences for their place in the life of the Church". Some members of parliament condemned Pell's comments, calling them hypocritical and drawing comparisons with comments made earlier in the year by Sheik Hilali. Australian Greens MP Lee Rhiannon referred Pell's remarks to the New South Wales parliamentary privileges committee for allegedly being in "contempt of parliament". Pell described this move as a "clumsy attempt to curb religious freedom and freedom of speech". In September the Committee tabled a report clearing him of this charge and recommending that no further action be taken.

Views on political leaders

John Howard

When John Howard departed the office of Prime Minister of Australia following the 2007 Australian federal election, Pell wrote that, along with Bob Hawke, Howard had been the outstanding figure of Australian life since Robert Menzies, and that he had brought eleven years of prosperity and "changed Australian life for the better". Pell wrote that Howard "understood that traditional families are the cement which hold society together and he was generally supportive of Christian values". Pell said that Howard went a step too far on industrial relations policy and that the Iraq War did not go well, but that the "biggest blot on his record will remain the treatment of the refugees".

John F. Kennedy

Pell describes himself as "an old Kennedy groupie" – referring to John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic President of the United States of America.

Barack Obama

Following the 2008 election of Barack Obama as President of the United States, Pell wrote for the Sunday Telegraph that "Obama is a superb orator with a gift for language and a capacity to inspire loyalty and hope" and that the "importance of a black President for the U.S.A. and the world cannot be underestimated; especially a black President with a Muslim father. No country in Europe could produce such a result."

Pell expressed a need for universal health care in the United States, but criticised Obama's support for abortion, saying that he had the "most anti-life voting record of any contemporary senator" which, Pell wrote, "contrasts strongly with his humanitarianism in many other areas". Pell said that Obama would have to move beyond the "radical left" if he wanted to "win over the middle ground in the fight for healing and prosperity".

In a 2009 interview with ''The Catholic Herald'', Pell said of Obama, "[H]is record on life issues is very, very bad indeed" and expressed his opposition to the Freedom of Choice Act.

Kevin Rudd

When the Australian Labor Party replaced Kevin Rudd as its leader in 2010 and Julia Gillard became Prime Minister of Australia, Pell wrote that "As leaders Rudd and Opposition leader Tony Abbott are historically unusual by Australian standards because both worship regularly and have publicly acknowledged the huge Christian contribution to Australia. The rise and fall of Kevin Rudd has no parallel nationally. While he talked himself out of his job with his inflated rhetoric, he had many virtues and Australia avoided recession. John Howard was voted out by the Australian public; Rudd's departure will leave a nasty taste in many mouths."

Health

In February 2010 it was reported that Pell "had a heart turn in Rome recently and that he's in hospital there or has been in hospital there". It is thought that Pell was taken to hospital when he first arrived in Rome after he collapsed due to ill health and exhaustion. He was released from hospital the same day and sources close to Pell said that he has been in good health since.

Eulogy reforms

In February 2007 Pell instituted new guidelines when it comes for family members to speak at funerals. He said that, "on not a few occasions, inappropriate remarks glossing over the deceased's proclivities (drinking prowess, romantic conquests etc) or about the Church (attacking its moral teachings) have been made at funeral Masses." Pell's guidelines make it clear that the eulogy must never replace the officiating priest's homily, which should focus on God's compassion and the mystery of the resurrection of Jesus.

Other roles

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sydney takes the role of Visitor of St John's College, a residential college within the University of Sydney. This is a largely ceremonial role but he can also be called upon to give guidance and resolve internal disputes. Under the direction of the archbishop the college associates itself with the interests of the church and its mission, particularly by the fostering of appropriate academic directions in education, charity, social justice, ethics and the environment.

Pell accepted the invitation to be patron of the Oxford University Newman Society and to deliver their inaugural St Thomas More Lecture on 6 March 2009.

Pell is a regular contributor of articles for the Australian media, including regular columns for Sydney's Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

Accusation of sexual abuse

In June 2002, Pell was accused of having sexually abused a 12-year-old boy at a Roman Catholic youth camp in 1961 whilst a seminarian. Pell vehemently denied all the accusations and was subsequently exonerated by an inquiry chaired by Justice Alec Southwell.

Pell stood aside, but did not resign, as archbishop as soon as the allegations were made public. The complainant agreed to pursue his allegations through the church's own process for dealing with allegations of sexual misconduct, the National Committee for Professional Standards (NCPS). The subsequent inquiry found that the accusations had not been established. Justice Southwell concluded:

Doubts about the handling of the accusation arose following the publication by the Australian ''Herald Sun'' on 6 October 2002 of details about the accuser, whose anonymity had been preserved in previous media coverage. As relayed by the Zenit news service, "Pell's alleged victim was, it turned out, a career criminal. He had been convicted of drug dealing and involved in illegal gambling, tax evasion and organized crime in a labour union. A commission probing the union devoted a whole chapter of its report to the man's activities. As the inquiry report noted, 'The complainant has been before the court on many occasions, resulting in 39 convictions from about 20 court appearances.'"

Writings

''Issues of Faith and Morals'' by George Pell (1997)

''God and Caesar: Selected Essays on Religion, Politics, and Society'' by George Pell. Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press (2007)

''Test Everything: Hold Fast to What Is Good'' by George Pell (2010)

See also

St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney

St John's College, University of Sydney

References

External links

Sunday Telegraph Columns

Sydney Catholic archdiocese website

Category:1941 births Category:Living people Category:Australian cardinals Category:Roman Catholic bishops in Australia Category:Roman Catholic Archbishops of Melbourne Category:People from Ballarat Category:Religious leaders from Melbourne Category:Companions of the Order of Australia Category:Monash University alumni Category:Academics of the University of Oxford Category:Academics of the University of Cambridge Category:Alumni of Campion Hall, Oxford Category:20th-century Roman Catholic archbishops Category:21st-century Roman Catholic archbishops Category:Cardinals created by Pope John Paul II Category:Delegates to the 1998 Australian Constitutional Convention Category:Members of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelisation

de:George Pell fr:George Pell it:George Pell la:Georgius Pell nl:George Pell no:George Pell pl:George Pell pt:George Pell ru:Пелл, Джордж sl:George Pell fi:George Pell sv:George Pell uk:Джордж Пелл

Coordinates	12°2′36″N77°1′42″N
name	Alain de Botton
birth date	December 20, 1969
birth place	Zürich, Switzerland
occupation	writer, documentary maker
nationality	Swiss
period	1993–
influences	Seneca, Marcel Proust, Montaigne, Stendhal, Gustave Flaubert
website	http://www.alaindebotton.com/ }}

Alain de Botton (born 1969) is a Swiss writer, television presenter, and entrepreneur, resident in the UK. His books and television programs discuss various contemporary subjects and themes in a philosophical style, emphasizing philosophy's relevance to everyday life. In August 2008, he was a founding member of a new educational establishment in central London called The School of Life. In May 2009, he was a founding member of a new architectural organization called "Living Architecture". In October that year, de Botton was appointed an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, in recognition of his services to architecture.

Early life

Born in 20 December 1969 in Zurich, De Botton comes from a Sephardic Jewish family, originating from a small Castilian town of Boton (now vanished) on the Iberian peninsula. He is the only son of his father, banker Gilbert de Botton who co-founded Global Asset Management with Jacob Rothschild and Mark Weinberg. Alain's father and mother, Jacqueline Burgauer, married in 1962. He has one sister Miel.

De Botton spent the first eight years of his life in Switzerland where he learned to speak French and German. He was sent to the Dragon School, a boarding school in Oxford, where he learned to speak English. Describing himself as a shy child, he subsequently boarded at Harrow School. He achieved a double starred first in history at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (1988–1991) and completed his master's degree in philosophy at King's College London (1991–1992). He began a PhD in French philosophy at London University, but gave up research to write books for the general public.

Writing

De Botton has written in a variety of formats to mixed response. Positive reviews of de Botton's books claim that he has made literature, philosophy and art more accessible to a wider audience.

Ambivalence is apparent in the following example,

De Botton's idea of bringing philosophy to the masses and presenting it in an nonthreatening manner (and showing how it might be useful in anyone's life), is admirable; the way he has gone about it is less so. —''The Independent''

Negative reviews allege that de Botton tends to state the obvious from a position of privilege and have characterized some of his books as pompous and lacking focus.

His books include black-and-white photographs punctuating the text.

Essays

De Botton has written books of essays in which his own experiences and ideas are interwoven with those of artists, philosophers and thinkers. These have been called a "philosophy of everyday life."

Fiction

In his first novel, ''Essays In Love'' (titled ''On Love'' in the U.S.), published in 1993, De Botton deals with the process of falling in and out of love. The style of the book is unusual because it mixes elements of a novel with reflections and analyses normally found in non-fiction. In 2010, ''Essays in Love'' was adapted to film by director Julian Kemp for the romantic comedy ''My Last Five Girlfriends''.

Non-fiction

In 1997 he published his first non-fiction book, ''How Proust Can Change Your Life'', based on the life and works of Marcel Proust. It is a mixture of a "self-help" envelope and analysis of one of the most revered but unread books in the Western canon, ''In Search of Lost Time''. It was a bestseller in the U.S. and UK.

This was followed by ''The Consolations of Philosophy'' in 2000. The title of the book is a reference to Boethius's ''Consolation of Philosophy'', in which philosophy appears as an allegorical figure to Boethius to console him in the period leading up to his impending execution. Though sometimes described as works of popularization, ''Proust'' and ''Consolations'' were attempts to develop original ideas about friendship, art, envy, desire, and inadequacy, among other things, with the help of thoughts of other thinkers. In ''The Consolations of Philosophy'', de Botton attempts to demonstrate how the teachings of philosophers such as Epicurus, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Seneca, and Socrates can be applied to modern everyday woes such as unpopularity, feelings of inadequacy, financial worries, broken hearts, and the general problem of suffering. The book has been both praised and criticized for its therapeutic approach to philosophy.

De Botton then returned to a more lyrical, personal style of writing. In ''The Art of Travel'', he looked at themes in the psychology of travel: how we imagine places before we see them, how we remember beautiful things, what happens to us when we look at deserts, stay in hotels, and go to the countryside.

In ''Status Anxiety'' (2004), de Botton examines an almost universal anxiety that is rarely mentioned directly: what others think of us; about whether we're judged a success or a failure, a winner or a loser.

In ''The Architecture of Happiness'' (2006), he discusses the nature of beauty in architecture and how it is related to the well-being and general contentment of the individual and society. He describes how architecture affects people every day, though people rarely pay particular attention to it. A good portion of the book discusses how human personality traits are reflected in architecture. He ends up defending Modernist architecture, and chastising the pseudo-vernacular architecture of housing, especially in the UK. "The best modern architecture," he argues, "doesn't hold a mirror up to nature, though it may borrow a pleasing shape or expressive line from nature's copybook. It gives voice to aspirations and suggests possibilities. The question isn't whether you'd actually like to live in a Le Corbusier home, but whether you'd like to be the kind of person who'd like to live in one."

In ''The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work'' (2009), a survey of ten different jobs, including accountancy, rocket science and biscuit manufacture, which includes two hundred original images and aims to unlock the beauty, interest and occasional horror of the modern world of work.

In response to a question about whether he felt "pulled" to be a writer, de Botton responded:

So I think where people tend to end up results from a combination of encouragement, accident, and lucky break, etc. etc. Like many others, my career happened like it did because certain doors opened and certain doors closed. You know, at a certain point I thought it would be great to make film documentaries. Well, in fact, I found that to be incredibly hard and very expensive to do and I didn’t really have the courage to keep battling away at that. In another age, I might have been an academic in a university, if the university system had been different. So it’s all about trying to find the best fit between your talents and what the world can offer at that point in time.

In August 2009, de Botton replied to a competition advertised among British literary agents by BAA, the airport management company, for the post of "writer-in-residence" at Heathrow Airport. The post involved being seated at a desk in Terminal 5, and writing about the comings and goings of passengers over a week. De Botton was duly appointed to the position. The result was the book, ''A Week at the Airport'', published by Profile Books in September 2009. The book features photographs by the documentary photographer Richard Baker, with whom de Botton also worked on ''The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work''.

Newspapers, lecturing and television

De Botton writes regular articles for several English newspapers, and from 1998 to 2000, wrote a regular column for ''The Independent on Sunday''. He also travels extensively to lecture on his works. He owns and helps run his own production company, Seneca Productions, making television documentaries based on his works.

Other projects

''The School of Life''

De Botton's project from 2008 is The School of Life – a new cultural enterprise based in central London aiming to offer instruction on how to lead a fulfilled life. In an interview with metkere.com de Botton said:

The idea is to challenge traditional universities and reorganize knowledge, directing it towards life, and away from knowledge for its own sake. In a modest way, it’s an institution that is trying to give people what universities should I think always give them: a sense of direction and wisdom for their lives with the help of culture.

''Living Architecture''

In May 2009, de Botton was named as the chief inspiration for a new architecture project called "Living Architecture" – which proposes to build a series of innovative houses in the U.K. using leading contemporary architects. These include Peter Zumthor, MVRDV, JVA, NORD and Michael and Patti Hopkins. The houses will be rented out to the general public. De Botton's aim is to improve the appreciation of good contemporary architecture – and seems a practical continuation of his theoretical work on architecture in his book ''The Architecture of Happiness''. In October 2009, de Botton was appointed an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, in recognition of his services to architecture.

Personal life

When his father died, his family was left a trust fund of over £200 million, although de Botton says his income is derived solely from the proceeds of his book sales. His stepmother Janet de Botton is a prominent patron of the arts and competition bridge player. De Botton lives in London with his wife Charlotte and their children.

Publications

''Essays In Love'' (1993), also published as ''On Love: A Novel'' (2006)

''The Romantic Movement'' (1994)

''Kiss and Tell'' (1995)

''How Proust Can Change Your Life'' (1997)

''The Consolations of Philosophy'' (2000)

''The Art of Travel'' (2002)

''Status Anxiety'' (2004)

''The Architecture of Happiness'' (2006)

''The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work'' (2009)

''A Week at the Airport'' (2009)

Filmography

''My Last Five Girlfriends'' (based on ''Essays in Love'')

TV series

Philosophy: A Guide To Happiness (from ''The Consolations of Philosophy'')

# ''Socrates on Self-Confidence'' # ''Epicurus on Happiness'' # ''Seneca on Anger'' # ''Montaigne on Self-Esteem'' # ''Schopenhauer on Love'' # ''Nietzsche on Hardship'' (featuring Cathal Grealish)

''Status Anxiety (film)''

''The Art Of Travel'' Prix européen de l'essai Charles Veillon

''The Perfect Home'' (from ''The Architecture of Happiness'')

References

External links

Living Architecture

Open Library. Works by de Botton

Compendium of reviews of ''The Consolations of Philosophy''

Archived web chat

Interview with 3AM Magazine (2002)

Alain de Botton interview: "The City as a Cure for Loneliness"

Alain de Botton at the Internet Movie Database

Interview with Colin Marshall

Alain de Botton at TedGlobal filmed on July 2009: A kinder, gentler philosophy of success

Audio: Alain de Botton in conversation on the BBC World Service discussion show ''The Forum''

Category:1969 births Category:Living people Category:Old Dragons Category:Old Harrovians Category:Alumni of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Category:Alumni of King's College London Category:Harvard University alumni Category:English writers Category:English Jews Category:Jewish writers Category:Swiss Jews Category:Swiss philosophers Category:Swiss expatriates in the United Kingdom Category:20th-century Sephardi Jews Category:21st-century Sephardi Jews

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