50 voices of disbelief : why we are atheists

Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Now More Important than Ever – Voices of Reason 1 Russell Blackford and Udo Schüklenk Unbelievable! 5 Russell Blackford My “Bye Bull” Story 10 Margaret Downey How Benevolent Is God? – An Argument from Suffering to Atheism 16 Nicholas Everitt A Deal-Breaker 23 Ophelia Benson Why Am I a Nonbeliever? – I Wonder . . . 28 J. L. Schellenberg Wicked or Dead? Reflections on the Moral Character and Existential Status of God 33 John Harris Religious Belief and Self-Deception 41 Adèle Mercier The Coming of Disbelief 48 J. J. C. Smart What I Believe 50 Graham Oppy Too Good to Be True, Too Obscure to Explain: The Cognitive Shortcomings of Belief in God 57 Thomas W. Clark How to Think About God: Theism, Atheism, and Science 65 Michael Shermer A Magician Looks at Religion 78 James Randi Confessions of a Kindergarten Leper 82 Emma Tom Beyond Disbelief 86 Philip Kitcher An Ambivalent Nonbelief 97 Taner Edis Why Not? 105 Sean M. Carroll Godless Cosmology 112 Victor J. Stenger Unanswered Prayers 118 Christine Overall Beyond Faith and Opinion 123 Damien Broderick Could It Be Pretty Obvious There’s No God? 129 Stephen Law Atheist, Obviously 139 Julian Baggini Why I am Not a Believer 145 A. C. Grayling Evil and Me 157 Gregory Benford Who’s Unhappy? 161 Lori Lipman Brown Reasons to be Faithless 165 Sheila A. M. McLean Three Stages of Disbelief 168 Julian Savulescu Born Again, Briefly 172 Greg Egan Cold Comfort 177 Ross Upshur The Accidental Exorcist 182 Austin Dacey Atheist Out of the Foxhole 187 Joe Haldeman The Unconditional Love of Reality 191 Dale McGowan Antinomies 197 Jack Dann Giving Up Ghosts and Gods 200 Susan Blackmore Some Thoughts on Why I Am an Atheist 204 Tamas Pataki No Gods, Please! 211 Laura Purdy Welcome Me Back to the World of the Thinking 220 Kelly O’Connor Kicking Religion Goodbye . . . 226 Peter Adegoke On Credenda 230 Miguel Kottow “Not Even Start to Ignore Those Questions!” A Voice of Disbelief in a Different Key 236 Frieder Otto Wolf Imagine No Religion 252 Edgar Dahl Humanism as Religion: An Indian Alternative 259 Sumitra Padmanabhan Why I Am NOT a Theist 263 Prabir Ghosh When the Hezbollah Came to My School 270 Maryam Namazie Evolutionary Noise, not Signal from Above 274 Athena Andreadis Gods Inside 279 Michael R. Rose and John P. Phelan Why Morality Doesn’t Need Religion 288 Peter Singer and Marc Hauser Doctor Who and the Legacy of Rationalism 294 Sean Williams My Nonreligious Life: A Journey From Superstition to Rationalism 300 Peter Tatchell Helping People to Think Critically About Their Religious Beliefs 310 Michael Tooley Human Self-Determination, Biomedical Progress, and God 323 Udo Schüklenk About the Contributors 332 Index 338